As FOX closed the door and turned the key on its very long-running and very profitable series “House” and I watched as the two doomed doctors rode off into the sunset, the only thing that comes to mind is “phooey” and “why?”
How does a nearly crippled, pill-popping, higher-than-a-kite doctor who falls through a floor, inhales smoke from a burning warehouse filled with toxic fumes for an hour, wind up surviving and a escaping the blaze as the building collapses around his head, by sneaking out the back door and then miraculously switching medical records with the real dead guy only to run away with his best bud Dr. Wilson?
Through the magic of special effects and a very weird staff of writers, that’s how.
I confess I am a lapsed “House” fan — I stopped watching after Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) left the show — but I decided to tune in to the series finale, sacrificing a night of “Eureka.”
What a waste of a sacrifice.
I would have enjoyed it more had Dr. Gregory House really died. All this slight of hand, plot twisting, mumbo-jumbo was just too much for me to swallow and an insult to every “House” fan out there.
I was always impressed with the show’s honesty through the many years that I was a fan. Week after week, patients died, doctors were flawed, mistakes were made, people hurt. It was real, no sugar coating, no apology for human frailties, and even though it seemed that cures were (drum roll please) pulled out of a hat, each show ended realistically within the boundaries of the circumstances.
But this? Come on now. There is no way House could have survived. No one, in fact, could have survived, not even Superman (but that was a different show).
House, high on pills and breathing toxic smoke for the entire show, except for the times when, through the clever use of back-and-forth poop, he was in the hospital caring for the dying ex-stockbroker and heroin junkie who ended up dead, falls through the flaming floor down at least two stories onto his bad leg, only to be knocked senseless and lie in a smoke-filled room, to then arise like the phoenix from the ashes, walk to the front door, appear to Drs. Wilson and Foreman, have the upper floor collapse around him in a blazing ball of glory and escape through the back door. I couldn’t breathe and I was on the other side of the tube.
Can we all say “Oksie doksie, rapskie upskie?”
The end of “House” certainly beat out the fade to black “Sopranos” when it comes to taking the cheesy way out, by at least a bottle or two of Vicodin.
Not for Nuthin, but I wish I’d downed a pill or two and not sacrificed Sheriff Jack and crew for this.
Joanna DelBuono writes about national issues — and television — every Wednesday on BrooklynDaily.com. E-mail her at jdelbuono@cnglocal.com.
