Lots of viewers cheered when Cuddy snapped of Cameron "she's not so delightful as she thinks she is." I wanted to backhand Cuddy. She was so insanely wrong and so awfully damaging at the time. I don't care why she said it, I don't care if Cameron was in the right at that particular time, it doesn't make that statement any less true for me, that line just sums up Cameron.

But Cameron isn't nearly as delightful as she thinks she is. Even Cuddy being wrong about what was going on with House doesn't make her wrong about Cameron. If we look at the DVD commentary on Half-Wit, they said that the approach of each of the ducklings was supposed to tell us something about that character and then got a laugh about what it told us about Cameron--she'll kiss you and stab you at the same time. I think they've been chipping away the surface facade's this season. We're seeing what's been there all along.

Cameron--she'll kiss you and stab you at the same time. So she is like the scorpion from that tale? Very accurate POV about her IMO. :wink:

Lots of viewers cheered when Cuddy snapped of Cameron "she's not so delightful as she thinks she is." I wanted to backhand Cuddy. She was so insanely wrong and so awfully damaging at the time. I, on the other hand, liked it because that's actually something people do - lashing out at the person pointing out their flaws, rather than addressing the real problem at hand. In real life, the person who goes "My God, you're right, I don't know why I wasn't seeing it that way!" rarely exists.

Wilson's enabling and seeming doormat-y behavior looks pathetic when all you're watching and rewatching are the Tritter episodes or the post-Tritter episodes, but they're cast in a new light when you watch the pre-Tritter episodes. Wilson guilt-trips House like CRAZY, and it's totally nuts the way he's lying to him. The frustrating part is that the writers seem to have used the character of Wilson to further this plot point (about Cuddy teaching House humility and failing), and it actually makes the character kinda schizoid. It's hard to see the inconsistencies in Wilson's character because RSL is such a great actor, IMHO. But watching these episodes again makes me think very long and hard about the differences between the Wilson of S3 episodes 1-4 and Tritter-arc!Wilson. They're gigantic! Wilson really is odd in the first few episodes of the season. Kind of bitchy, to be honest. Meaning and Cane & Able are the only episodes where I've ever found myself almost disliking him. And it's not really even the Lie but the way he was being written, like continuously lecturing House in the most pompous manner possible (the levels of happiness lecture in Meaning is especially hard to take) and in C&A telling House, "You're not always right House, you've proven that lately", which was just plain LOW. I think his intentions were good, and I think he was motivated by worry & stress over House, but the writing really is a bit off, IMO. This is one episode I don't really enjoy rewatching.

I share the views expressed above that the Lie was a low point for both Wilson and Cuddy. I do not think it compromises in any serious way their statuses as close friends or once-and-future lovers for House. I think it would be useful to think of their awful behaviors at the start of season 3 as the twisted expressions of their own traumas suffered as a result of House's shooting in "No Reason." We are never told much about how Wilson and Cuddy reacted to the initial news of the shooting, how Cuddy handled the double violation of her friend and her hospital. We can imagine the stress but we do not have direct evidence of how they reacted. We do know that House shared with Wilson some or all of his visions and gave clues as to his change of heart. We don't know if Wilson or House shared any of this with Cuddy. I suspect not. So what we have is an intensely emotional, terrifying event for Cuddy and for Wilson with no apparent resolution or relief until the moment that House comes jogging into Cuddy's office at the beginning of "Meaning." I think that in this context, both Cuddy and Wilson would be prepared to do almost any thing to get House to change his behaviors. Saving him became a top priority that pushed out all reason and thought for them. The Lie and the efforts at forced detox were the frantic and fearful outcomes of their desire for House to get better before he gets dead. At some level, I think House gets this core truth about Cuddy and Wilson -- they care for him not wisely but fiercely -- and that is why he moves toward forgiveness in the episodes after "Words and Deeds." This is why I have no difficulty in imagining a renewed love affair between Cuddy and House during season 4, its not rational, but it does make emotional sense to me.

This is the only episode of House that I refuse to watch again - I despise it. I hate Wilson (sob!), it's the beginning of weak Cuddy, House is portrayed as poor, pathetic, guy (I hate that goddamn treadmill scene) and to me it's just... worst.episode.ever.

*deep breath* I couldn't watch this episode again, either, for most of the same reasons. But also, I'm a wimp and weird. I can't watch Autopsy because of the kiss, Hunting because of the meth!sex, Maternity because of the dead baby, The mistake because of, well, the mistake, and I can't watch this beacuse of Chase and Foreman seeming to hate each other. Cuddy and Wilson trying to 'teach House a lesson', and the return of the pain.

I just figure that if TPTB can ignore the fact that HOUSE NEARLY GOT MURDERED BUT WOKE UP ALL HAPPY, we can ignore the fact that Wilson and Cuddy got really, truly weird for a while. And the "arc" made no sense. Like House getting shot. If I was one of the kids, I would've been jumping out of my skin everytime someone walked through the door. The lack of continuity took me out of what I feel for the show. If they wanted House to have an out of body experience, why not have a good old fashioned accident? True, I wouldn't have got the Hugh Laurie/Elias Koteas orgasmatronicity that I got from No Reason, but Meaning was meaningless (or I really missed the meaning) and this ep was...bollocks. Unpopular opinion time, but I feel that the characters never got back on track (in all their flawed and sometimes wrong glory) until Tritter turned up. (God bless his thermometer-abused asshole!)

Unpopular opinion time, but I feel that the characters never got back on track (in all their flawed and sometimes wrong glory) until Tritter turned up. (God bless his thermometer-abused asshole!) I'll join you in the unpopular opinion camp, timber_z. ITA that this episode is meaningless and everyone was being so cruel to House... Why? I wouldn't have got the Hugh Laurie/Elias Koteas orgasmatronicity that I got from No Reason You could! If it was an hallucination, everything would make sense, or not. He could be hallucinating that he was shot.

For me, this was the episode that cemented, in my mind, the fact that Foreman is a piece of slime. In S2 we learned that he will stab anyone in the back (or leg) to get ahead or to help himself. In this episode we learn that he will do it just to be mean and, unlike House, he likes to wait until someone is down to attack. (House, of course, attacks when people are down, up or anywhere in between.) His very first words in the episode are "You are 0 for 1 since you came back. You just want to make sure..." Ignoring the fact that House diagnosed Scurvy Girl (so, at worst, he was 1 for 2), I was willing to give Foreman a pass on this. After the number of times House has rubbed Foreman's nose in it when he was wrong, this qualified as a little revenge. But, after Cameron finds out that House had cured Richard, she tells Foreman. And later Foreman says "The hallucinations and seizures indicate problems in the temporal lobe. Sorry, House. Looks like you’re wrong, again." And that was the action of a creepy little piece of something the filters would probably change.

I just think all these problems can be solved by the writers watching all of their episodes in the right order the week before they start writing new ones. Maybe a healthy dip into the fandom pool as well.

Maybe the problems can be solved but that doesn't change my agreement with Poeia Foreman is a piece of slime who thinks he knows a lot more than he actually does about diagnostics.