Last night on May 11, 2009, House M.D. aired its season 5 Finale episode. The show had advertised that it would be the most shocking House episode ever, and it really made it seem like such a big twist would happen.
Furthermore, there was an article on CNN, and many other television programs & news sites talking about the big “season finale” week. People spoke of the House finale like it was really going to be huge.
Warning: There are some spoilers on this page about the Season 5 Finale
The House M.D. Season 5 Finale Was Not Shocking, and the Twist Was Boring
So how did the big “twist” turn out? Was the episode great? No, it was very mediocre at best, and in fact, it kind of sucked. One thing that annoys me is the same monotonous story lines from week to week. It just seems like if you have seen 1 episode of House, then you have seen them all.
The same story happens every week: A patient comes in with a mysterious problem. They spend the entire show trying to solve it (and failing always until the end). During this failing process, you are almost guaranteed to see some vomiting of blood, urinating of blood, heart rates going crazy or people having seizures, or some other gross example that they use over & over again to indicate the patient is still sick.
Then, in the midst of the patient’s problems, there is usually a back story & House is as cranky, outspoken, and mean as he can be. The show usually concludes with a happy ending for the patient, and everything works out with the back story (which usually involves House suspecting something big is going on with another character, which in fact, turns out to be nothing big at all).
It seems that they never really take the stories anywhere. Here we are 5 seasons into this show, and nothing significant has really happened. Sure, Kutner died. Sure, there have been something happen. But they have been few & far between. I want to see more development with House. They constantly tease the audience with what seems like interesting story lines, only to pull the rug out from under us each week. Example: This last Season 5 finale episode.
The previous episode featured House hallucinating, and Lisa Cuddy (his boss), helps him to detox. They end up sleeping together (after lots of chemistry throughout the past seasons). So the pre-finale episode ended on an intriguing note, and it left me excited to see where they would go with it. But as fate would have it, once again, the interesting story evaporates, and everything is back to usual (kind of).
The episode ends with the whole thing being a hallucination by House. He still sees people, and he is still addicted to his prescription pain medication (Vicodin). He checks in to a psychiatry clinic at the end.
So that is the big twist? Not a big twist at all to me. A big twist at this point would be to actually have the story go somewhere, and develop more character story lines as opposed to it always being so patient oriented. Oh well. House sees dead people, who cares? I can already imagine the boring Season 6 Premier of House MD: House detoxes, and is fine and returns to work. Then, it is the same boring stuff the whole season through.
Overall, the season finale wasn’t terrible, it just wasn’t “shocking” or awesome either. It was yet another typical episode of House MD, which at this point, is starting to get seriously boring & predictable.