With "Joy," House Offers Up An Episode That Will Thrill Some Fans, While Disappointing Others (Major Spoilers)

My roommate is an avid watcher of house. For me it's a "sometimes" show. I don't have to watch it that often to understand what is going on. Watching the show this week my roommate and I must have sounded clairvoyant because we kept trading predictions back and forth. "The kid will live," "They're going to kiss." I know that most TV is predictable, but I don't feel like I even need to watch the show even casually anymore. 

I think that the kiss was the culmination of the sexual tension that has always existed between House and Cuddy, probably because she wa san emotional wreck, she gave in to it and House knew it was a time he could get away with it.  Ass?  Yes.  Smart?  Yes.

Bones got better with Angela and Hodgins together, though they are secondary actors.  Numb3rs?

sorry for being late to the show. for some reason when i loaded this article yesterday i wasnt able to see or add any comments.

regarding the tension which led to the kiss. it became clear to me early on that house was somehow threatened by cuddy's choice to adopt. it almost seemed like he felt she was rushing things. "things" being whatever relationship house thought was developing or was at least possible.

house is living in a state of stasis. thats often what happens after an injury like his, and is compounded by his reliance on painkillers. he has been unable to move on with his life. in a sense, he doesnt see time passing by like other people do.

it has been suggested in the past that sometime in the backstory, perhaps when cuddy and house were at the same university at some point, the two had had some kind of romantic relationship. the most important line of the show was in the last scene when cuddy asked house, "why do you always have to negate everything?" and he said, "i dont know," just before they kissed. it's obvious that something has been left unsaid in their relationship for the period of time covered by the series, and house's habit of criticizing cuddy in sexual ways (he criticizes everyone, but exactly how he does it is important) makes it seem more than possible that he's been secretly waiting or hoping for a chance to either rekindle or begin a closer relationship with her.

it's only a theory, but, as house says, it fits. and, like i said, that was my first impression after seeing house's reaction to cuddy's quickly impending adoption, and, believing that, the tension in the episode worked very well right up through the last scene. as far as the patients, the mystery was rather dull, the illness they had (after looking it up on wikipedia) doesnt seem to match their odd and conveniently reliable symptoms, and since the father and daughter were so unhumanly unemotional, the audience wasnt given a chance to empathize with them. but they did provide the thematic influence for showing house that living in that static condition, with the implication that it is associated with a lack of expressing or even feeling any emotion, can result in a sudden loss of time.

think about the cold open - the viewer was given a look at the actual experience of the father, who was losing huge chunks of time without knowing it. in a sense, this provided some insight into the way house has gone through life for the past 4 years. the drug use of the father, who was using cocaine because his sleep patterns were so @!$%#ed up (a good reason, but not a good excuse), can be compared to house's drug use - justifiable but still problematic. and it's important to notice, finally - the way that house dealt with the patients.

anyone watching the show from the first minute could see that the daughter seemed to be, like her father (the first patient), unexpressive and cold. something was clearly wrong with both of them. house rarely does patient histories, but he often tries to analyze the behavior of the patient and his or her available friends and family for clues about the patient. when the daughter began showing similar symptoms, halfway through the episode, house merely added her to the file. but it wasnt until 45 minutes in that he actually pulled himself away from cuddy's own distraction

so cuddy's interest in the unborn baby was treated by house as a distraction. but it was actually house who was so distracted (therefore: interested in, not just being an @!$%# to, cuddy) by the mother and her unborn child, and the time cuddy spent with them, that he took so long to diagnose the father and daughter correctly. normally, house would have taken one look at the daugher, made the connection, and the mystery would have been over. so i dont think it was a mistake that the mystery was boring. it was supposed to be boring - it was supposed to be simple. but house's failure to treat it as such (notice that foreman wasnt present in all the differentials - foreman is perhaps the smartest person on the show, and he usually fills in any blanks in house's diagnoses) demonstrated that he was off his game.

so he wasnt just being an @!$%#. he was trying to regain control of the relationship he thought he had control over, and, through the thematic parallels between house and the father, we see that house grew into the realization that parts of his life were flying by without his noticing, that he has actually lost certain opportunities, and that he was trying to do something about it. of course he relies on insults and attacks at first - thats simply the way he's used to controlling things. it wasnt until those werent working anymore, combined with his realization about the patients, that he discovered what he had to do, or wanted to do, anyway, and it's possible that he didnt even realize his feelings until the situation of the father and daughter jolted him awake.