House: Series Finale. "Everybody Dies." Discussion/Spoilers

[Agent Richard07]

Christopher wrote:

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It didn't look like he had time to reach another exit before the deflagration, but that could've been a trick of editing, suggesting Wilson and Foreman's subjective perception of the event.

Subjective perception on the part of Foreman and Wilson is the only thing that makes sense. House was standing right near a window as he was engulfed by flames. He didn't duck, was nowhere near a back door and it didn't look like he had enough time to avoid catastrophe by falling through the floor.

[kirk55555]

I thought the series finale was pretty good. I love House as a series, and I think it was a good ending for the series. I liked House seeing various people he knew while in the burning building. If they could have gotten Cuddy's actress to do a cameo, it probably would have been a bit better. Thats one of the flaws with the last season of House, Cuddy (who was a major character for most of the series) leaves, and there really is no resolution to her and House. I get that (story wsie) she'd want to get away from the obessive guy who drove through her house. Still, a final cameo would have been nice.

That said, getting Cutner, 13, and Cameron was cool, as was House's ex girlfriend.

[Agent Richard07]

Some interesting articles...

The show's creator David Shore reveals what caused the fire in the abandoned building and how House survived the collapsing floor and the explosion.

Read more... 'House M.D.' Boss Explains the Mysteries in Series Finale

Did you worry that having almost every major character back would make it more glaring that Lisa Edelstein's Cuddy was missing?
Shore: I don't want to go into it too much. I did want her back. That's all I'm going to say.

Read more... House Comes to an End: Creator David Shore Answers Our Burning Finale Questions

[Christopher]

Agent Richard07 wrote:

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Subjective perception on the part of Foreman and Wilson is the only thing that makes sense. House was standing right near a window as he was engulfed by flames.

Or rather, a burning rafter fell between him and the door. As the producer says in the interview linked above, it was meant to be ambiguous whether it had fallen in front of him or on top of him, but I definitely read it as the former. (Though that's probably because someone spoiled the ending for me before I watched it on DVR.)

kirk55555 wrote:

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If they could have gotten Cuddy's actress to do a cameo, it probably would have been a bit better. Thats one of the flaws with the last season of House, Cuddy (who was a major character for most of the series) leaves, and there really is no resolution to her and House.

I think the resolution came when she wrote him off altogether after he smashed through her house. That's about as final as it gets.

[Forbin]

That addict's body would have to be burned REAL thoroughly for them to not get any DNA from it, no? If they bother to test for that, anyway.

[Trekker4747]

Forbin wrote:

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That addict's body would have to be burned REAL thoroughly for them to not get any DNA from it, no? If they bother to test for that, anyway.

DNA tests are expensive and time-consuming. Why go through that process when dental records and can be check much more cheaply and quicker? Besides, the body was inside a heavily burning building for presumably several hours between when the explosion occurred and when the fire was extinguished. I'd think that'd be plenty of time to burn the body down enough to make a DNA test unreliable if not impossible.

[gazomg]

gh4chiefs wrote:

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I don't know if it was because I was bored with the episode and not paying proper attention, or i'm just dense, but why exactly was House in that warehouse with that patient?

because it was a rubbish episode.........was disappionted with this episode.

[137th Gebirg]

Agent Richard07 wrote:

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Some interesting articles...

Read more... 'House M.D.' Boss Explains the Mysteries in Series Finale

Read more... House Comes to an End: Creator David Shore Answers Our Burning Finale Questions

I liked the final ep, but the fact that Shore had to explain what happened after the fact belies sloppy writing and/or editing for the final cut. He spoke of some more explanation in the "original cut". Perhaps they should have left that in...

[Christopher]

I don't think it needed more explanation. The way he explained the events at the burning building were pretty much how I assumed they went. The only unexplained thing was how the building caught fire; that was explained in scripted and shot material, but cut for time, and it wasn't really essential to know it. A fire at an abandoned building where junkies shoot up isn't exactly a shocking or unprecedented event.

[Trekker4747]

I really wish this was more of a full two-hour episode with the Retrospective maybe airing the week after or something.

[EliyahuQeoni]

Christopher wrote:

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I don't think it needed more explanation. The way he explained the events at the burning building were pretty much how I assumed they went. The only unexplained thing was how the building caught fire; that was explained in scripted and shot material, but cut for time, and it wasn't really essential to know it. A fire at an abandoned building where junkies shoot up isn't exactly a shocking or unprecedented event.

Agreed. Nothing he said was a great revelation. I thought all of that, save how the fire started, was perfectly clear from the episode.

[Saul]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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I really wish this was more of a full two-hour episode with the Retrospective maybe airing the week after or something.

I agree. House deserved at least that. In 10 years nobody will remember that retrospective but they will remember how the show ended.

[Christopher]

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.

[Trekker4747]

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.

[Christopher]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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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.