*Now I can’t stop wondering if this thread is really the right place for my post…* I don’t see anything particularly romantic in the House and Cuddy ‘dance’ –screwed up, yes. Very. But to tell the truth I’m always surprised when people refer to their interactions as a ‘romance’, either in the traditional sense, or otherwise. What I see are two incredible confused characters – each one by their own personal reasons - that don’t know what to do around each other, and since they are a man and a woman, the first thing that come to their minds by default, is sex or some sort of romantic relationship. But I really don’t believe any of them really cares about or want the other in that way – and that’s why things never get a resolution – this and because the show is still on… What I’m having a really hard time to understand – and I’d love to be enlightened – is the reason that they needed to trash Cuddy’s character so much to make this whole arc. It’s a personal opinion, but angst and coy do not become her. This is by far my main complaint about this season, at least until now. And yes, the returning desk was a nice touch, and I could have put it among the unusual romantic or lovely gestures House is able to – along with prescriptions for a heart condition and milk&donuts – IF he immediately didn’t cancel it with the hooker. So, for me, the desk was a peace offer, and in the same way so many other things between them – the kiss included – was misunderstood, especially by Cuddy. (And I really hope that being bored by their ‘dance” does not count as bitterness… :wink: )

I've never bought into the fandom meme that somehow Cuddy's character has been trashed. She never had control over House. She'd have maybe 1 success out of every 10 attempts even in the first season. Granted, in the pilot she had a higher rate of success, but that's because they were introducing her and had to let her win one with forcing him to work clinic hours to gain MRI access. But don't forget that she also lost in that episode as well. She was wrong about the patient (and had that pretty much tossed in her face when she marched into the patient's room ready to take her off of steroids, and the patient said she was feeling much better). I never saw her issues with trying to cope with the baby's arrival as demeaning to her status as a high powered successful woman. Instead, I saw this as someone who's always been successful being forced into a situation in which she has little control, and she's struggling with that. She's thrown into the deep end (she may have wanted a baby for a long time, but the actual process of Rachel's arrival was very unexpected) and manages to swim, but being so successful in the past, she's emotionally shocked by the process at the same time. It's one thing to know intellectually that babies are hard. It's another to actually live through it. And I love the fact that she didn't automatically bond with the baby, and that she struggled with her feelings in that. As I mentioned above, I hate the typical "romance." I also hate the typical "happily ever after" that a baby changes everything right away and the world is perfect. I never saw that as her failure, I saw it as far more truthful than the bulk of the crap out there in the entertainment industry. (I actually think the eventual bonding was a sign of her success, not a failure.) But then Cuddy's always been in a hard position with fandom. If she shuts House down, she's a bitch who doesn't appreciate his unique genius. If she lets him have his way, she's a pushover. Just consider the scene in "Alone" when she unplugged his guitar. I saw both cheers and cries of "that bitch" for her action.

*Now I can’t stop wondering if this thread is really the right place for my post…* Sigh. Y'all please stop with this - you're freaking me out! Everyone is acting like we're going to swing a machete at you and when have we ever done that? Just use some common sense: If you are discussing Season 5 in general, then fine, you're in the right place. (And I really hope that being bored by their ‘dance” does not count as bitterness… Wink ) HOW DARE YOU BRING THIS BITTERNESS HERE! ::swings machete at you:: Just kidding. :wink: No, it's not bitterness - you're explaining rather eloquently why you're not down with the "dance" Fair enough. What I’m having a really hard time to understand – and I’d love to be enlightened – is the reason that they needed to trash Cuddy’s character so much to make this whole arc. It’s a personal opinion, but angst and coy do not become her. This is by far my main complaint about this season, at least until now. I'm definitely with you on this. I love strong Cuddy and I'm very sad that she seems to be going to mush before our very eyes. What made her sexy (in my eyes) was her ability to kick ass and take names. I'm just not seeing the best of her this season and yes, it seems like they've "dumbed her down" in a sense in order for her to have a romance with House. I would have much rather seen a meeting of equals in this relationship. Instead of being exciting or titillated by the two of them, I kinda feel as if this arc is dragging the season down a bit. I'd prefer more medicine and less with the romance over all (Foreteen included). I actually think these people are interesting enough without trying to force relationships, but hey, that's just my two cents. However, that said, I'd like to see more of how the Chase/Cameron relationship is going. I've always had somewhat of a problem with the inconsistent writing of the women on this show (especially when it comes to romance).

Unsurprisingly, I completely agree with namaste and boffle in their characterizations of the major themes of this season. The relationship between House and Cuddy is not designed as a conventionally romantic one and never has been. Thank goodness; cozy and tradtional are not my cup of tea. From season one we have been given frequent reminders that both House and Cuddy are extreme individuals whose talents and shortcomings are outsized, deeply layered, often contradictory, and difficult to categorize. I don't believe that season five represents a radical departure from what we thought we understood about House or Cuddy (or Wilson for that matter) in previous seasons. Rather, I see the process as one of peeling back layers from their characters to reveal new information that in retrospect informs our earlier opinions. If I only knew Cuddy from season one I might have thought that she was a rather one-dimensional "kickass administrator." If she had continued through five seasons as this flat, uninteresting cliche locked in an eternal battle with the unruly House the characterization would have been a failure, in my opinion. But now I can see that beyond her high-level bureaucratic skills Cuddy is also a woman severely conflicted about her life direction, resolutely committed to House as a colleague and as a personal friend, dedicated to the hospital's mission, and in search of meaning that derives from connections outside of the workplace. Like House, she is desperate, needy, highly gifted at her job and miserable in her personal life. I don't feel at all that Cuddy is less strong. I find her immensely more believable and interesting than in past seasons. In this way, I think that TPTB have indeed "equalized" Cuddy for House this season, making her a character with more layers, difficulties, contradictions, and yes even unpleasant aspects than we previously suspected. So this season's careful presentation of the stepping forwards and backwards in House and Cuddy's relationship makes perfect sense to me given the limitations of their personalities and the few things we have learned about their personal histories. I am not at all sure where these two are going to go next and I relish that uncertainty.

Well, we never have seen how House pursued Stacy or how he acted in the early days of their relationship. I think we saw enough to get a feel for how House acts when he's pursuing someone. Their first date went to badly that she never wanted to see him again and yet within a week she had agreed to move in with him. That sounds like a House who is decisive, who is smart enough to know what will work and carries through on it. We saw him in season 2, when he wanted Stacy to acknowledge that he was still #1 with her. He got the information he needed (broke into her therapist's files) targeted her vulnerabilities (problems in her relationship with Mark) and set siege, first with saving her from Steve and then in Baltimore. Even after the infarction, House is a man who, when he wants something, goes after it no holds barred. We've also seem him when he's being truly romantic (the prescription for the heart) and when he's being uncomfortable with the rules of the game between men and women (the tie-tying scene in Love Hurts). None of this fits his current behaviour with Cuddy except possibly his retreat from her doorstep in The Itch. It can also be argued that Cuddy didn't actually have feelings for Lube Guy and was putting on an act in order to attract him. She was about to have sex with him so she must have liked him well enough for that, and she seemed disappointed when he told her not to call him unless she got her feelings in order. Cuddy dresses like a woman who is confident in her sexuality (it drives a psychologist friend of mine crazy because she says Cuddy would be getting hit on by patients all the time dressed like that), and she acts like she is too. She's in her forties, we assume she is comfortable with male friends from her gold and tennis arrangements. Acting like a shy virgin around House because she likes him and can't come out and say so doesn't make sense, especially since she's already had sex with him in the past. Perhaps an unspoken truce of sorts (for the time)... Also, if House really wanted to put her down professionally, there are much easier ways to do it. And he does, all the time. He merely mocked her with the old team but with the new candidates, he was actively encouragingly them to disregard her authority. The thong challenge was very disrespectful, considering they were at least three steps below her in the hierarchy. It's one thing for House himself to mock her but another to teach his employees to. For me, it's like ethnic jokes or wife jokes, it's okay for me to make jokes about my own ethnic group or my family but not okay to encourage strangers to. It seems to me that if House had tender feelings for Cuddy, he would want to protect her from being an object of derision by others, not encourage them to put her down too, especially given how possessive House is about things he considers his. I don't see why House would need a truce at that time. I thought the reason he was messing with her office was to stall to get the desk there. But then, as I've said before, I hate traditional romances. I find them trite and cliched. Give me fumbling, disastrous, needy and desperate any day. For me, this is the real crux of the problem with most of the show these past two seasons not just in the way the House/Cuddy relationship is being written. I think there is a difference between something unexpected happening so that you say "Ah, yes, of course that makes sense given who these characters are", which produces in me a deep satisfaction, and moments that seem like they're coming out of nowhere just to do something unexpected and shocking. It seems like lately the show is sacrificing logic and reason for dramatic moments. Let's take Thirteen's brain tumor for example. The drug trial has been going on for some weeks, and has been going on at other places too given what Foreman said in the episode. No one has had a brain tumor, otherwise either the research would already have been shut down or at worst the researchers told to watch out for it. But now, a mere couple of days after Thirteen first goes on the real drug, she develops a brain tumor. And not an ordinary brain tumor but one so fast growing that it blinds her by mid-episode, and then is cured by the end of the episode. I don't watch Private Practice but I was flipping channels and came across a character saying "It can't be a brain tumor, it's growing too fast". Yes. As has been pointed out on House a few times, no brain tumor grows this fast. No brain tumor heals this quickly, even Foreman's biopsy in season 2 took weeks to heal. And no hair grows back this quickly and this perfectly even on Thirteen's head. It's not the plot that was ridiculous, Foreman switching drugs to save Thirteen, but the way it was executed. Making something unexpected is not the same thing as making it good. We've seen the show do unexpected and good -- in season one, when many people were expecting House/Cameron to be "Young ingénue doctor falling in love with gruff, older mentor; her sweet gentle nature bringing him to a closer, fuller understanding of his wounded heart" as Wilson mocked, it turned out instead to be about House's own inability to have a relationship because of Stacy and his past history with her. Also in season one when it turned out that the mastermind behind Detox was Wilson, not Cuddy. In season three when Wilson walked out on an unconscious overdosing House. I think there are many things this season I find surprising but I find them surprising in how little they seem to fit the fabric of the show as it was presented over the first three seasons. And I love the fact that she didn't automatically bond with the baby, and that she struggled with her feelings in that. I think it's consistent with the super-achiever Cuddy who accomplished whatever she wanted at an early age and I liked it, although I would have liked her to have kicked House on her way out for his lack of support. But it made her actions in The Greater Good even more WTH? because it seemed like she learned nothing from her struggles bonding, her expectations of herself and those around her were just as unrealistic as before, and she projected all her own issues on to House instead. She used him as her Bobo doll, not a healthy thing to do either for herself or her relationship with him. She was a smart, realistic woman who knew what to expect from House and how to handle him. Somehow her need for emotional contact, where with a baby or a relationship with House has made her more neurotic about some things and lost her a realistic perspective on House. In the end, Wilson has to tell her that she was physically hurting House with her revenge, she couldn't even see it for herself.

She was a smart, realistic woman who knew what to expect from House and how to handle him. Somehow her need for emotional contact, where with a baby or a relationship with House has made her more neurotic about some things and lost her a realistic perspective on House. In the end, Wilson has to tell her that she was physically hurting House with her revenge, she couldn't even see it for herself. Yeah, I have to agree with this. I did love how she didn't bond with the baby at first - I thought that was fantastic and realistic, but her pranking really turned me off and somewhere along the course of the show, for me, Cuddy has lost her zing.

Their first date went to badly that she never wanted to see him again and yet within a week she had agreed to move in with him. That sounds like a House who is decisive, who is smart enough to know what will work and carries through on it. We have no information in canon about how House and Stacy ended up moving in together after their first disasterous date. From what we do know of Stacy's aggressive personal style, I find it equally believable that it was she who made the decisive moves, not House. But as I say, we just do not know, and I don't think we ever will. Cuddy dresses like a woman who is confident in her sexuality (it drives a psychologist friend of mine crazy because she says Cuddy would be getting hit on by patients all the time dressed like that), and she acts like she is too. She's in her forties, we assume she is comfortable with male friends from her gold and tennis arrangements. Acting like a shy virgin around House because she likes him and can't come out and say so doesn't make sense, especially since she's already had sex with him in the past. I think it is equally plausible to interpret Cuddy's extreme dress style as an expression of her lack of confidence about herself and her attractiveness. In fact, I think that she dresses the way she does because she can -- she is in a position of power and control and influence and can demonstrate that by dressing to please herself and stun onlookers. I think that what little we know of Cuddy's adolescence suggests that she had a cramped and largely unsuccessful transition to adulthood. She told the dying teenage mother in "Joy to the World" that she had always been a failure in relationships. She told House in "Daddy's Boy" that she had been lying to her mother since she was a child. Her curt replies to Detective Lucas's inquiries about whether she had a mother and a father did not suggest a warm relationship there. Her many unsuccessful attempts at finding dates online apparently occurred before the jealous House interferred in "Insensitive." So I do not make the automatic assumption that Cuddy is all that comfortable around male friends; we have scant to no evidence for that. Likewise, we have no information at all about the quality or nature of Cuddy's previous sexual encounter with House. We do not know how it began or how it ended. So the fact that they were once intimate does not mean that she would not have extreme anxieties about the prospect of getting together with him again. The passage of time, the changes to their physical and professional selves, their altered status relationship, and new expectations about what the future could hold for them -- all of this would easily make both House and Cuddy hesitant about moving forward with a new stage in their relationship. Their unease and shyness seem the most normal thing about this present passage in their lives.

What I’m having a really hard time to understand – and I’d love to be enlightened – is the reason that they needed to trash Cuddy’s character so much to make this whole arc. ITA that they have severly damaged her character. I won't say there's no hope for her until this thing (finally) plays itself out but this arc is not doing her any favors. Personally, I think it's because they're terrified to change House in any way (and I'm terrified to see him change in any way) so Cuddy has to be the one acting differently all the time, reaching out to him in (embarrasingly) obvious ways, then turning and getting p*ssy enough to feel justified in physically harming him. It's either Cuddy as she was, wouldn't fit with House, or she would fit too well with him so they had to change her so they could play out their "disaster."

I don't think House has changed but they have always let us see new aspects of his personality. A major one this year was that he's not as much of a loner as he wants people to think (and he'd be okay with Wilson coming back because he's attracted to the bright shine of House's neediness.). He doesn't feel guilt as far as his job is concerned, but his mother can make him feel guilty and he felt guilty about how Stacy felt when he read her psych file. So he can feel it -- it's just a question of whether he considers Cuddy having a baby being a work or a personal issue. We always knew he didn't like to do paperwork. Foreman got him caught up in Season 2 when he became the temporary department head. But it wasn't until Season 4 that we learned that, in part, it's a test to see which team member would break down and clear up the mess. There are ways to show different sides to House without assassinating a different character in the process. They've done it before but this time they're taking the easy way out.

To me, Cuddy has always had her hardest struggles when her emotions got in the way of logic. That was true in the first season with Vogler -- $150 million v. House -- but in that case, fandom was, of course, on House's side so we saw her decision as the logical one, rather than the illogical one because we were rooting for House. The same judgment issues came into play in "Humpty Dumpty" and "Meaning" and "Fetal Position," and pretty much straight on through. I think that in the fifth season, we're just seeing those emotional v. logical judgment issues being played out much more strongly because of the baby. Cuddy's battle to balance the logical demands of her job and her emotional ties are much more front and center now. They're her Achilles Heel, and it's ugly to get those exposed. Doesn't mean those flaws are new, however. Just as Wilson is more screwed up than he appears to be on the surface, so is Cuddy. She's had to be cutthroat to succeed at her level as quickly as she did. Yet, as she said in "Joy To The World," she's now at a position where she's looking back and regretting some of that. As blacktop said above, we're just getting more exposure to that issue with her that was always there.

My sister (we've been watching the show since the first season) just told me that she's dropped the idea of House and Cuddy together because they've made Cuddy too desperate for her liking. So maybe that's a part of why she seems so off...we're supposed to see how badly this relationship would be for Cuddy?

I never had any problem with the unrealistic way the show portrays medicine, patients, or even the shortcuts they used to justify some plot points among the main characters. C&C have unrealistic positions, yes, but they are still very close to the characters I used to know. Foreman being allowed to run a trial with his girlfriend is unethical, maybe unrealistic too, but quite true to the character we met in the first season. His arrogance didn’t come from nowhere. Wilson’s change of heart was perfectly IC to me – they could have used a little more time to explain his behaviour better, yes, but I had no problems with his reasons and his actions after his return – I had a lot of problems with his screen time, but that’s not the point… I also have no problems with the absurd, almost unbelievable way Cuddy got that baby. It was unrealistic, but I could live with that, if it servers their story… But if it serves their story to “dumb Cuddy down” to make her somehow acceptable as a “love interest” – which I’m still not sure is actually the point, by the way - than I have a problem with that. Because for me it means that Cuddy is not a character anymore, she is being reduced to a plot device. As someone said above there are a lot of ways to show the different sides of House without completely destroying another character in the process. They’ve done it very well in the early seasons. They could have done it with this arc too. I honestly don’t see any “natural” progression for their relationship, I only see a forced story that keeps going on and on in circles and seems to drag the show with it. Yes, I have to accept it, in fact I already did. But I do not have to like it.

Namaste, I agree with nearly everything you said about Cuddy's baby and her lack of control over House, but I don't think either of those things are why people feel that Cuddy's character has been "trashed." She never had control over House. She'd have maybe 1 success out of every 10 attempts even in the first season. Perhaps there was more of the illusion of control in the earlier seasons, and the old team certainly viewed her as an authority figure because they all three went to her on occasion when they were unable to stop House from doing something they felt was not in the best interests of the patient. In the last two seasons, the new team hasn't shown much respect for her at all, and it's probably because House has set that example and encouraged them to follow it. By participating in the Thong Challenge, Cuddy didn't do herself any favors. I never saw her issues with trying to cope with the baby's arrival as demeaning to her status as a high powered successful woman. Instead, I saw this as someone who's always been successful being forced into a situation in which she has little control, and she's struggling with that. I agree that her struggles to bond with her baby and cope with the demands of motherhood and a high-powered job are very realistic, and I guess I'm one of the few who seems to be enjoying seeing Cuddy deal with a baby. My ONLY complaint would be the operating room scene with the screaming baby, and I blame Kutner for allowing that to continue as much as I blame Cuddy. But I don't see any of this as trashing her character. In Season 4, I thought the Thong Challenge undermined her authority, as did the fact that she ordered House to stop the Survivor game, and he ignored it. In both those cases, House helped undermine her authority. Now in Season 5, she is undermining her OWN authority, and for personal reasons. I DO think her behavior in "Let Them Eat Cake" and "Greater Good" trashed her character. In my opinion, she made herself look ridiculous as administrator for sashaying all over House's office, setting off stink bombs, and asking to be kissed in the middle of his office. Nearly all of her irrational behavior was witnessed by the team, and I don't see how they could drawn any other conclusion but that Cuddy had the hots for House. She compounded that horrible mistake in judgment by all the cruel pranks in the last episode - AGAIN in full view of everyone else. Her personal problems with House should have been kept private, not dragged out for the hospital to witness. Don't get me wrong, I think House's behavior has been equally bad - if not worse - but SHE is the authority figure. She should have dealt with it in other ways that didn't involve completely losing her own dignity. I've loved the original Super Six characters most of the time, in spite of the fact that all six have horrified me on occasion. So, I'll eventually forgive Cuddy for parts of Season 5, as I forgave Cameron for the horrid Sexcapades, Chase for Vogler, Wilson for the "humility" disaster, Foreman for the magazine article rip-off, and House for any number of things. So, as Inigo Montoya would say, "Let me sum up." I think Cuddy has trashed her own character in Season 5, but not because of the baby or her lack of control over House. I hope this is not too disjointed. We're having some very fierce winds right now, and I'm trying to rush before we lose our power.