House - "Need to Know" reprise

I'm supposed to be working on a freelance copywriting project that's due Monday. I have an audiobook review I need to finish for Blogcritics before the publisher who gave me the review copy starts to get antsy. I should prepare for a (boring, work-related) interview I need to conduct Monday morning. The apartment could desperately use a cleaning and I need groceries. So what am I doing? Writing about House, of course.

Though I didn't love the last episode, "Need to Know," my faith in the writers and in the episode before that, "Failure to Communicate," has been restored after an exchange of comments on the Blogcritics version of that post. I could just tell you to go read the comments, but since I know you won't, I'll recap.

Carol and blue lucia gave me the key to what I'd missed – the Woody Allen quote at the end of FtC was supposed to be a turning point, while I took it as ironic.

From bluelu:

"You know what Woody Allen said about relationships? Irrational and crazy, but we go through it all because --" House finishes for her, "We need the curry."

She's telling him that she wants him anyway. She knows he isn't going to change, and she wants him anyway.

So in he walks at PPTH, buoyed by the knowledge that she knows what she's getting into and she wants to give it a shot. How much more heartbreaking, then, to discover that she only intended the curry to be a side dish? And in the end, he came to the conclusion that she might think now that she wants the curry, but sooner or later it would still take the roof of her mouth off, and she'd only leave him again.

Which makes sense, but I'm not used to the audience being several steps in front of House. I won't call it out of character, because his lack of self-awareness and his emotional screwedupness has been well established, and his romantic optimism has been briefly shown before (the corsage for Cameron last season, for example). It just didn't resonate with me, and still doesn't. But as I said:

I can still believe the "Failure to Communicate" patient story has strong ties to the House-Stacy story ... both ended on a seemingly optimistic note ("we need the curry" versus "she'll come back when she misses you") but both seem doomed for disappointment.

None of this makes me love "Need to Know" as much as I wanted to, but I think "Failure to Communicate" is mostly safe in my esteem.

So I'm no longer confused. Still a bit dissatisfied, but no longer believing the writers might have been experimenting with the Vicodin. I actually found "Need to Know" entertaining, I just didn't find it convincing.