I agree. House deserved at least that. In 10 years nobody will remember that retrospective but they will remember how the show ended.
I still say the retrospective was a classy tribute to the many people who worked very hard to make the show, the people without whom the show would never have existed. I wish more shows would do such celebrations of their production teams, who far too often go unsung and ignored just because they aren't the ones with their faces on the screen every week. Whether the audience will remember the retrospective is beside the point. The crew members will remember that the star of their show made this public acknowledgment and celebration of their years of hard work. And they deserve it. Many shows' production teams deserve it, but never get it.
Oh, I enjoyed the retrospective but I wish we had it and a two-hour finale. Since Fox only has a 2-hour primetime slot then to have a two-hour finale we'd need to retrospective to be either the week before or week after. (Week before would probably have built up more suspension.) I think with a full two-hour finale a lot more could have been fleshed out with the various "ghosts" of other characters visiting House and maybe even between House and seeing something of "himself" in the POTW and fleshed that out more to make it clearer how House went from saving the guy to them ending up in burning warehouse with the POTW dead.
Putting the retrospective the week after the finale makes no sense; it would be too much of an anticlimax. Putting it the week before would've required two consecutive 2-hour blocks, and that means other shows would've had to give way, which might not have been practical. And airing the retrospective by itself wouldn't have gotten much in the way of ratings. I think it worked best exactly where it was, as part of the series' "Swan Song" -- the stars coming out on stage and talking to the audience a bit before they start the final performance. And I don't see how fleshing this episode out to 2 hours would've improved it much. I think the progression from treating the patient to shooting up with him was explained perfectly clearly; surely we're savvy enough viewers that we don't need our hands held through every step of the process. We knew House didn't feel he could survive without Wilson, and we knew he was going to prison for 6 months and would lose those last few months with Wilson. We saw his attempts to get out of that prison sentence fail one by one, and House sinking deeper into despair. We saw the patient extolling the benefits of surrendering to heroin and escaping from all the problems of real life. We know House has always turned to drugs to escape pain, and we were given more than enough setup to establish that he saw no other possibility of escape. I thought it was absolutely clear how he ended up there. As for the ghosts, from a logistical standpoint, they couldn't get everyone back; Shore said in that interview that they did try to get more people but these were the only ones they could wrangle. TV production is about what's practical, not what's ideal. And from a storytelling standpoint, I think that depending on hallucinations is a well this series has gone to more than enough. I was skeptical of them bringing it back here, and the key to making it viable was not taking it too far. Two hours' worth of House talking to dramatizations of parts of his own mind would've been way too self-indulgent. So I just don't see any way this story would've been improved by making it two hours long. Heck, it essentially was part two of a two-parter already, following on the cliffhanger from last week. Or maybe the final part of the multi-episode arc about Wilson's cancer.
They could have added more story with a two parter with 13 or something else. One episode did feel rushed with so many guest stars in it. This is the last swan song of House after all. The retrospective didn't have to be part of the 2 hour block. It could take the place of a House episode and then next week do the two parter.
But it's not like this was an isolated piece; it was the culmination of a storyline that's been going on for 4-5 weeks. And Thirteen was in the second-last episode as well as this one. So they already delivered what you're asking for -- it just wasn't in a single 2-hour block. As I already said, that would've been a bad idea from a ratings perspective. I believe that behind-the-scenes stuff like this deserves attention, but I'm aware that a large portion of the TV audience doesn't feel the same way and probably wouldn't bother to tune in for something like this if it weren't paired with an actual episode. And it wouldn't have had the same impact either, I feel, if it weren't part of the actual finale event itself. It was aired exactly where it belonged.
If nothing else, I have to say that ending with a Warren Zevon song was very appropriate, both the song and when you consider some of the similarities between WZ and the character of House.
Sure, but an arc is an arc and a two parter is a two parter that is a little more self contained. They could have used the two parter to do a new story to salute the last 8 years of the show and wrap up the Wilson Arc. It didn't need to include 13 but a two part finale would have had a bit more momentum than one episode that spent a lot of time bringing back old cast members.
Well, there are probably dozens of things they "could've" done. Ultimately they had to choose one. They chose this one. It's not wrong just because it wasn't the only possibility.
They could'a had, ya know ALIENS, and and, ya know, like ,vampires and shit, and, and, House could'a had a vampire bite Wilson and then he'd never die - well, the one time, sher, but, ya know, or, or, the aliens can cure ANYthing so, so, Wilsom would'a never hadda die and, and, ya know, shit like that...
Not wrong but from my perspective i've enjoyed two part episodes, especially ones that wrap up an entire series because it's the last time we'll ever see it. Ds9, BSG, Lost all had arcs but had 2 or 3 part episodes to do a final story within the bigger story that gave all the characters some piece of final glory. The series was largely based on the mysterious illness of the week patients and yet we see little actual investigation or an interesting patient in the last episode. Compared to the absolutely thrilling 2 part episode with Amber and that Bus crash.
I think in the burning warehouse House should have stumbled around looking for something to serve as a cane, picked up a stick and then became Thor.
It was largely based on the patients for the first few seasons, but the patients have been afterthoughts for years now, the medical stuff just a formulaic backdrop for stories that have long been mainly about the main characters' soap opera. They even lampshaded that in House's flashbacks here, where the differential was just people saying "Blah blah blah" and House explaining, "Nobody cares about that stuff."
and a fun contrast to the haunting way that hallucination Amber sang it when House thought he was losing his mind.
Something interesting just occurred to me. The lingering question is what will House do after Wilson dies? One option is suicide, but I believe the argument of this episode was House considering suicide and turning away from it. I don't think House would do it. For an answer to House's future, I think back to something from an earlier episode. Someone once asked House why he became a doctor, and House described a childhood memory of a hospital where all the doctors ran to the janitor asking him for the solution to their medical problem. How could that kind of situation ever happen? Well, we were just given an answer. With his "death", House's options will be limited. As a person with no identity, he'll be left with the same job prospects that illegal aliens have - one of the more prominent being janitorial work. It's not hard to believe House would be attracted to working in a hospital ; and after throwing out a few suggestions that solve cases, House will be the janitor that all the doctors run to for help. It's almost poetic; House could end up truly being what supposedly attracted him to medicine.