No Robot

[swatkat]

I enjoyed this episode quite a bit, even though it was mostly filler + setting things up for the mid-season arc. The POTW plot was highly enjoyable (horribly cheesy montage notwithstanding), and clearly foreshadowing an upcoming Vicodin plotline. Despite the occasional urge to punch Chase, I like his hair and his chemistry with Thirteen. I loved Foreman vs. The Team (I'm not sure why his being the team leader is a surprise, since he has been second-in-command since Season 4?), and Foreman's 'Who's Your Daddy' PWNage. The Cuddy scenes in this episode, I've decided, were written personally for me, because they had:

- Cuddy obsessively typing on her Blackberry
- Cuddy GLEEFULLY PWNing Foreman
- Cuddy GLEEFULLY PWNing the Team
- Cuddy looking hot

Which is all I ask for, really. ♥

The House/Wilson plot made me immensely happy while it lasted, and I LOLed through most of it (my compartmentalisation skills, let me show you them). In retrospect, though, it only makes me uncomfortable—angry, even, as I think about it. There has been some fabulous discussion on zulu's LJ on the episode's 'gay'. zulu read the episode's representation of Wilson/House being disturbingly close, on a subtextual level, to that of a closeted gay/bi man in love with an oblivious/uninterested bi/straight man. That's not how the episode pinged me, initially—unlike, say, Morgana/Gwen in parts of Merlin S2, which basically read as lesbian/bi girl (who, incidentally, will also go evil) in love with an oblivious/uninterested bi/straight girl—but I can understand how it can come across that way, and it's disturbing, to say the least (go read the discussion on her LJ, it's fantastic). I had a less disturbing reading of it, because many things in the episode reminded me of HIMYM's 'World's Greatest Couple', which, I think, does a fantastic job of mocking straight men's assumptions about 'normal' and 'gay', while at the same time highlighting—to the audience—the 'gay'ness of the characters' everyday 'normal'. HIMYM, of course, does fantastic things with conventional gender roles and 'bromance' which House seldom does, but there were places. For instance, the ironic invocation of the Guy Code (the 'Bro' Code, to quote Barney Stinson), or the gentle mockery in the final scene that is evident to the audience, but not to the characters. It's a reading I could live with.

Equally disturbing was House's treatment of Nora as a vagina and a pair of boobs, and if the narrative did not have Nora being revolted, I might have just had to kill someone. That said, what did the Nora episode tell us? That heterosexual men and women can't be friends. This, in the context of a show that has consistently privileged straight male friendships over male/female ones (female/female friendships are non-existent—the two remaining females of the show don't actually interact) and romance over friendship (a show that, in the previous episode, had one male character 'punish' a female character for daring to reject his BFF) is problematic, and I'm more than a little annoyed.