House Review: This is Not a Hallucination

Powerful. Stunning. Emotional. Intense. Captivating…. I’m going to run out of adjectives soon to describe the season 6 finale of House. The importance of this episode is apparent right away with the simple fact that the typical House opening credits are gone. We’re in for an emotional journey, guys!

Things start off really quickly with some rushed, bloody shots of House sitting in his apartment. We know nothing about how he got so bloody or what he’s doing there, so we go back eight hours in time… House arrives at Princeton Plainsboro and hands Cuddy a book her great-grandfather wrote. It’s supposed to be a housewarming gift for Cuddy and Lucas since they’re moving in together.

Cuddy graciously accepts it, but she’s got something else pressing on her mind right now. Something far more important has happened: a crane has collapsed in downtown Trenton, and numerous people are either trapped or unaccounted for.

The team arrives on the scene right away, and as soon as he gets there, House spots something severely wrong with the crane operator. The operator thinks he fell asleep, and that’s what led to the crane collapsing. But when he admits to drinking oodles of caffeine, House realizes the man must’ve passed out from a neurological disorder, not fallen asleep. He sends him right off to the ER. The crane operator’s medical mystery sits mostly in the background for the rest of the episode, but works as an interesting device to check in on what’s going on at the hospital while House is away.

While House loafs about and the chaos unfolds around him, he hears someone tapping for help. He crawls under the concrete and into an underground parking garage and finds a woman, Hannah, whose leg is bring crushed by a big slab of concrete. The paramedics are trying to find a way to save her, but it looks likely they’ll have to amputate her leg. Hannah, who has become very attached to House, refuses to let them do it. House promises her they won’t amputate.

After a couple of hours, a paramedic returns with good news that they should be able to lift the concrete and save Hannah. But as they’re lifting the beam, it becomes too unstable and collapses again, only worsening Hannah’s condition.

This is when Cuddy and House really come head to head, and Cuddy teaches House a lesson in tough love. She wants to amputate Hannah’s leg, but House refuses to let her do it claiming “he knows what a leg is worth.” Cuddy snaps and reminds him that keeping his leg all those years ago only caused him problems. She announces that she and Lucas are engaged, and that everyone around House has been able to move on in their lives but him. “Keeping your leg really helped you,” she sarcastically tells him.

Shortly after their conversation, House returns to Hannah’s side and gives her the dreaded news that her leg should be amputated. He tells her his own story about his bum leg and convinces Hannah to let him amputate hers. She agrees, and this is the part where I turn away out of squeamishness!

Everything seems like it might be okay now. Hannah is being transported to the hospital with her husband by her side. But during the ambulance ride, she dies from a fat embolism brought about by the amputation. HEARTBREAKING!!!!!

House is clearly devastated, and Foreman tries to comfort him. But House snaps at him: “I did everything right. She died anyways. Why should that make me feel any better?” He returns to his apartment, throws his mirror off the bathroom wall… and there’s his private stash of “emergency” vicodin in a hole in the wall.

As House sits there contemplating whether to let the drug rule his life again, who should walk in but Cuddy. Despite their very big blow up earlier in the episode, Cuddy returns to tells House she broke it off with Lucas and utters three very important words: I love you.

Say what?!

She explains her feelings to House, and the only thing he can really think of is whether or not this is a hallucination. They kiss (for real!), House drops the vicodin out of his hand, and he no longer has to worry about any hallucinations. This is the real deal.

The season finale also left us with a small yet significant cliffhanger involving Thirteen. At the end of the episode, she leaves a letter on House’s desk asking for time off. When Taub asks if she’s OK, she replies with “obviously not.” Uh – oh….could it be something to do with her Huntington’s disease?

House has come full circle from last season’s finale, and the possibilities this finale left us with for next season is exciting! Kudos to the team for an overall fantastic season six. Until next time…

Want another opinions?  Read Help Me by Cameron Cubbison here.  

Season 6, Episode 21: Help Me (originally aired May 17, 2010)

For more on House, click here.

Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.