After a disappointing season, the season finale was a refreshing change of pace akin to the season premiere. Hugh Laurie, again, had a winning performance and in certain points the episode felt as heartfelt as The Pacific did last night.
House finds a woman, Hanna, trapped under the rubble. Her leg, unfortunately, is pinned and she is unable to be pulled out. That leaves few options, one of which is amputation. The parallel between her and House is stark and whether it is because she likes jerks or House was instilling confidence in her, she wants him to stay. The writing was a little too obvious but I didn't detract from the episode overall.
House insists against amputation despite Cuddy and others' warning. Much like his decision all the way back, House has a stubbornness against taking away of limbs and Cuddy blows up at him, telling him everything he has lost because he kept his leg. This shakes him back into reality and he informs Hannah that he'll have to amputate. The amputation goes fine until they start traveling in the ambulance. Due to something House couldn't have prevent, she dies, leaving her husband and House sitting there, stunned and crushed by what happened.
And the ending everyone will be talking about. House goes to his bathroom, totally wrecked by the events of the day. He smashes the mirror to reveal Vicodin, takes two pills, and before swallowing any, Cuddy shows up. Like in a fanfic, Cuddy expresses her love for House and kisses him. Yeah, so maybe it's on the indulgent shipper side, but it had to happen eventually.
I would have preferred (and I did think this would happen) that House take the Vicodin and descend into the furthest depths in the seventh season. Hugh Laurie does those scenes perfectly and it would be interesting to see exactly how far the show could go (On premium cable there's no doubt the show would go this way.). It's not my show and the ending wasn't too terrible, so I'll live. The rest of the episode certainly made up for any misgivings at the end.
The medical case was largely a distraction and by the end, I stopped paying attention to it. I can't think of a good reason why there had to be a case other than that the producers didn't want to have the supporting cast excluded out of both the season premiere and season finale. There was, however, a small hint at Thirteen's Huntington's disease which was probably play a large role in the next season.
The Huddy angle for next season isn't that appealing to me, but if the writers can get the medical mysteries in order as they once were, we can expect good episodes to come. If not, it'll be another drag until the end.
Score: 9.3/10
