“We just removed a screw from a guy’s lung—the weird thing is, he didn’t get better. Any idea what that means?”
In a normal episode of House M.D., we might just take that question seriously. Last Monday, however, it was a throwaway sidebar to the real case at hand: Wilson’s is-it-or-isn’t-it cancer patient.
Here’s the medical mystery show we should be watching: Dr. James Wilson is kind, nicknamed “Jim” by his friends (House excluded, of course), flosses his teeth regularly, and has wonderful bedside manner and a pretty, cheerful assistant with none of the bizarre medical/personal/psychological dysfunctions of House and his team.
It’s the show we should be watching, yes, but hardly one we want.
Sure, Wilson has “House moments,” as he himself calls them—his eyes glaze over briefly and a lightbulb flicks on overhead as the good doctor realizes that his elderly patient neglecting to brag about his grandkids means that his cancer’s returned. That’s a pretty astute observation.
Not to mention, Wilson also has the requisite arguing-with-Cuddy-about-a-dangerous-procedure scene in which he makes outlandish, sarcastic remarks. Example (on giving a lobe of his liver to a dying patient): “Until I run out of excess organs, why shouldn’t I do everything I can to help them?” Their argument even pivots on a typically House-like issue: whether “caring” is a strength or a weakness.
So what’s the problem?
Maybe it’s the fact that, however much the majority of viewers would personally want a doctor as thoughtful and empathetic as James Wilson, watching his ethical dilemmas play out on television is mawkish to the point of inducing nausea. Case in point: when a supposed friend cheats him out of half a liver, Wilson admits to being “disappointed”—characteristically, and pretty accurately, House replied: “Disappointment is anger for wimps.”
As an episode, “Wilson” is fantastic, the self-reference at times absolutely hilarious:
Brief scenes with House’s team randomly running across the screen shouting “he’s bleeding out his eyes” or “we can’t stop the oozing!”—while Wilson tries to treat his own patient in a much quieter, gentler, more politick way—are some of the highlights of the episode, and also highlight from a new perspective just how ridiculous House can be at times. The funny thing is, the suspension of disbelief just doesn’t seem to snap when it’s House’s eyes we’re looking through.
Maybe it’s because they’re so dazzlingly blue.
So while “Wilson” as a one-time break from routine is welcome, the specter of Wilson M.D. is still a little chilling. That’s a different show altogether—one in which a well-meaning, compassionate, upstanding citizen and staunch defender of the Hippocratic Oath battles disease with the help of an eccentric best friend who knows exactly how to bully a sweet girl out of her dead brother’s decomposing organs. It would be comforting show, perhaps, because the good guy’s good, has ethical scruples with everything, and wins in the end, but, like it’s title character, Wilson would be utterly conventional.
Of course, there may be hope yet—in the final two minutes (spoiler alert) Wilson does cheat Cuddy out of the apartment she wanted for herself and her new boyfriend. And that smile of his in the final two seconds is sinisterly House-like.
Still, House is House, and Wilson is Wilson. Or in our favorite antisocial diagnostic genius’s words, ultimately:
“I’m me, you’re you.”
This holiday season, let’s give thanks for that.
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Isabela Morales is a History and American Studies student who rabidly reviews indie science fiction at http://thescattering.wordpress.com/