OK, phew, now onto the review Ranee linked. I mostly agree with the suggestions, but I was staggered by the fact that she (?) accuses House of 'always ruining his friend's happiness'. In my opinion Wilson has always been perfectly capable of doing that himself.

ITA, Wilson's capable of doing that himself, but also House does have an incredible tendency to meddle (not always successfully). There seems to be a lot of s4 reflections going on, from tv guide there's also this Has House gotten too predictable?

As much as I like Wilson, I have to agree on that one jonne. And as much as House didn't excactly help, I don't think it's fair to put the blame for Wilson's ruined happiness on him. But so much for happiness. If he really was happy in any of his marriages or relationships, they wouldn't have failed one right after the other. What I loved about this review was the writer's suggestion re: Thirteen. Nothing that we haven't said here of course, it was just nice to read it outside of HHoW.

Ditto re this suggestion Nine main characters on the show does not work. No one believes it works. and this Wilson/House. What? It would be interesting! LOL!

Nine main characters on the show does not work. No one believes it works. I like season 4 and even I would admit that. They should cut Cameron and Chase while keeping Foreman and the newbies. I've always liked Foreman, the writers obviously know how to include him in the narrative, and some of his scenes with the newbies have been great. Together, Taub and Foreman are gold, IMO.

A solid round of persuasive opposition can make me think more carefully about my own POV, or even sway me to the other side. (Those chocolates help, I must say.) But when things get uncivilized, and other people's well-argued viewpoints (not even necessarily my own) are devalued, my armor rattles and my white charger whinnies in the courtyard. If you guys can't settle down and courteously beat each other's brains out with, well, brains, I'd rather turn in my club. I almost feel like I must have been reading a completely different line of discussion. I never saw anything needing a white charger--a clarification or two, but from more than one side of the discussion. We're all going to have YMMV points and we're all from time to time going to have to clarify something that wasn't as completely clear as we thought when we hit send. I think posters on BOTH sides of the hoyay divide felt their points were not being interpreted correctly from time to time, but hopefully we did all end up with the common ground that posts from all points of view are acceptable at HHOW. I don't think that makes us "quarrelsome company."

The problem with that is that it's too late to cut Cameron and Chase. If they had done it at the end of season 3 when there was a clean break it would have made narrative and dramatic sense. If they ushered them out again it would be akin to the monster in the horror movie that never quite dies. D.itching one, or preferably all, of the newbies makes the most amount of sense I think it would make less sense to cut the new team they just hired than to send one or the other of the old team on to new pastures. They can have Cameron have an arc where she realises she is addicted to House, it's not good for her and she has to take all she's learned and move on. Nice goodbye for her, more space opened up on the show.

I don't think either Cameron or Chase would necessarily have to resign or leave. They'd could just be put further and further into the background until they're just a recurring player, if they're seen at all. They could even be referred to on occasion -- say, Cameron sent up a case from the ER -- without requiring them to be seen. Just as Evil Nurse Brenda is seen on occasion and referred to every once in a while. She's there, we just don't see her. I have no idea if either actor is up for doing an occasional recurring appearance, but there doesn't necessarily have to be a big "Cameron resigns" arc at this point. I do think, though, that House is going to reach the point of doing a Chase style firing of Foreman. His take on Foreman at the end of the third season was that Foreman wasn't ready yet. What we're seeing now is that Foreman is moving more toward that status of being ready -- or at least he no longer resistant to House just to fight House.

That's why I said "if they're seen at all" bailey. My point is that they've already left House's direct world. There's no need for a resignation scenario, since they already resigned -- and conceivably no need to see them at all.

The problem is, they've already been seen. They've been specifically brought back. They were brought back in a way that the audience couldn't fail to miss them even though they were quickly disappeared into the heap of nonsense that was the seemingly endless games. Since TPTB have made the effort to bring them back regulating them now to the back of the pack counts as truly pointless storytelling. They have to deal with them one way or the other or they've created a big, stupid mess. I would agree with this if I thought they actually were needed characters now. Yeah, they've shown up on occasion but in the three eps after the game, we got one brief scene with Chase and then both him and Cameron at the Christmas party, a Cameron subplot (that I personally was there to get the newbies out of the way so House could bond with Cate) and Chase in a couple of scenes in DEC. To me, that's not much of an effort to bring them back. When the show comes back, maybe things will be different but I don't think it's inconceivable to get rid of them now. In fact, I personally feel that they would be the easiest to get rid of now. With the exception of Chase in DEC, their scenes are mostly filler scenes and IMO, not very interesting ones at that.