Review: The last episode of House

Summary:

After eight years and 176 episodes of being everyone's second favourite TV doctor, Hugh Laurie signed off last night. Last week he was told that he was heading back to prison for six months and would almost certainly never see his terminally-ill best friend again. Could he summon the strength to finally escape his melancholy and live for Wilson? And more importantly, did the writers get this long-awaited climax right?

Highlight:

After listening to a host of his colleagues eulogise House as flawed, but essentially a top bloke, it was hilarious to hear Wilson rip into him. "House was an ass!" he shouted, before explaining that he never cared about anyone other than himself. A fine moment of comedy.

Lowlight:

Whether you loved or hated this finale, there's one thing we can all agree on. Cuddy's absence was a mjor disappointment. House may have pushed her to the very limit, but we think she would have wanted to be at his funeral.

Full Review:

Religion, politics and Marmite aside, there's nothing that divides people quite like American TV series finales. The more popular the show, the greater the pressure to end things with a bang and there haven't been many dramas that have been as consistently excellent as House in the last decade. Yet not even Hugh Laurie's mercurial, but

terminally grumpy diagnostician will be able to please his entire army of fans with his final chapter.

House didn't quite ride off into the sunset with Wilson at the end of Everybody Dies, but this was as close to a fairytale ending as TV's most complex character could come without dishonouring what has been a bewitchingly stormy drama.

It won't go down as the finest crescendo in TV history, yet it will definitely please more people than the ambiguous Sopranos finale and the anticlimactic Lost climax which had fans rabidly threatening to torch the internet.

The end of an era

It was functional rather than spectacular and aside from the disappointing absence of Cuddy (apparently Lisa Edelstein resisted House's funeral in a way her on-screen persona probably wouldn't have), the only accusation that could be laid at its door was that it burned slower than the building which House found himself hallucinating in.

After a thoroughly enjoyable behind the scenes hour-long special, last night we found Hugh Laurie coping with the news that he was returning to jail and subsequently missing the final months of his BF's life, after Wilson failed to shake off an aggressive (but physically unobtrusive) form of cancer. As a man defined by self-destruction, it was no surprise to see him retreat to a grotty squat to end his life doing drugs with a heroin addict whom he failed to save.

Burning down the house

There was some elementary symbolism to be found in the fact that this episode centred around a house burning to the ground (you see?), but more layers were added by the stream of old friends and colleagues who appear to help the misanthropic medic work through his issues. He analyses and evades himself for a while, but in the end

he's faced with one decision; does he want to commit one last selfish act and die or give something back to his best friend? It was all very House, yet some may have been hoping for a bit more than the usual inner-wrangling. As such, while it was a satisfying finale it was also understated.

Wilson's mid-funeral tirade against his presumed dead pal may have grabbed the attention, yet the most captivating scene was the one in which he forced House to realise that he couldn't go on using him as a detachable conscience. He may not have been able to keep a girlfriend, but despite his spikiness, no one has loved Wilson like this since Tom Hanks was in Castaway. The pair are two halves of one person.

However the real epiphany came in House's final guest-lead introspection with Cameron. For the first time in eight years and as many series, he told himself he could change. In many ways you wish the writers had been brave enough to end everything as Wilson smiled at an unseen text message in that funeral parlour, tantalising us with ambiguity, but it was difficult to deny the moody doctor his redemption after so many years of torture. House has finally left the building.