From: Alex
Date: 05/03/2009 |
My heart aches for House here. What a horrible Christmas! With a horrible, selfish mother who infantilizes her long grown up son relentlessly, spouts platitudes a la "you're perfect, dear" constantly but at the same time never is satisfied with how he acts and shows so - and conveniently ignores any hint that perhaps if she hadn't let and condoned her husband abusing her son through childhood he would have continued to be "cheerful and optimistic". Yeah, I wonder why House wasn't happy in such a "loving" family and was hell-bent in keeping his distance once he could! It's a complete mystery. Or not. And Wilson, whose main occupation here seems to be racking up House's shortcomings, glory in and gloat about his discomfort and set himself up as self-righteous judge in matters he has no clue about. Well, aside from EVERYTHING being House's sole fault of course, that one he's perfectly clear about. Good thing it's always so easy to pinpoint the villain.... In a way Blythe and Wilson here are a match made in heaven: both outwardly socially smooth and acceptable. But neither with an ounce of sense of personal responsibility for their own actions, and never once taking into account the motives and preferences of others. As soon as those clash with theirs the others are automatically wrong, selfish or just make a "scene" (i.e. don't behave as they want them to) for the sake of making a scene, not because they might be justifiably upset or have a valid reason for their reaction... No wonder these two get along like a house on fire! And House. The sad contrast to those two because HE takes everything and the kitchen sink as his responsibility and his fault and is always ready to believe those close to him when they assign blame and the worst possible motives to his own actions/reactions. Thus denying him any right to be upset, hurt, furious or plain sad about his treatment and past wrongs because it "disturbs" the surface-peace and social conventions they hold so dear. With House always caving and falling to the emotional blackmail, denying in the end the validity of his own emotions because they might anger and upset others. The letter was like a punch in the gut. A clever piece of rhetoric twisting the knife one last time. No acknowledgement whatsoever of the hurt and harm caused to Greg, to his child in all but blood. Instead subtly shifted blame: John did his best and all he could, he really tried to the best of his abilities - Greg just wasn't able to appreciate it! Which is really his own problem since John did all he could, he says. Not his fault that Greg simply could never be satisfied with John's "best efforts" and always expected more... House had every right to be fucking furious about that masterpiece of self-absolution. It's not an apology; it's not even an acknowledgement. It's certainly not the "you've been right, you've done right. I'm proud." that he would have liked to hear at one point from his father. And that is the thing he's supposed to be grateful for: that John sees/has seen him as his son, biological/cuckoo child or not. Well, it's comforting to know for Greg that he would have also been abused by John if he had been his biological son. That apparently his bad treatment at John's hand didn't hinge on Greg having been sired by another man. Who wouldn't feel better learning that? *irony* Wilson's reaction of course was all about him: HE would have liked a proper written goodbye from Amber - so House obviously has to be grateful for getting a letter from "dad"! Never mind that the situation, history and lack of any acknowledgement of mistreatment or caused harm in that letter is completely different from Wilson's mourning of his 4 months of eternal tru love.... Wilson would have enjoyed a letter from Amber, thus House is an ungrateful swine if he isn't happy about his from John House. Talk about self-centered and lack of basic empathy. This makes me wish House had stayed home alone drinking away the holidays. That would probably have been less taxing on his self-esteem in the long run than constantly being berated and put down by two of his few loved ones.... Hell, hanging around in front of Cuddy's in the cold and then slinking away would have been more cheerful and less soul-destroying than this! Poor House.
|