the levels of repression in both house and wilson…yet they are opposite of one another. house routinely makes gay innuendos (whether sexual and/or romantic) towards wilson, yet wilson doesn’t take him serious at all.
and this constant rejection from wilson is both a buoy as well as a giant wall. house pushes their relationship time and time again. wilson refuses to let the nature of it change. house brings up a romantic getaway, wilson shoots him down. house sabotages wilson moving out, wilson doesn’t stay. house allows himself to be The Other Woman regardless of how bonnie or wilson’s other ex-wives feel. in a way, it boosts his ego and makes him feel special. he is allowed to have wilson in this way.
amber is an extension of house; she is house in a woman’s body. house can accept it because he has expressed before that if wilson were a woman, they would’ve been married already. so why can’t the same be true for wilson? let him find a woman version of house. house loves wilson so much that he goes into a risky surgery to try and save amber. this is his Place simply because wilson and him cannot escape the confines of compulsive heterosexuality.
and it is compulsive. wilson never feels good enough or secure enough in a relationship outside of his and house’s. he cheats, he lies, he manipulates. all because at his core, wilson’s insecurities render him into a selfish person. he has affairs and he prioritizes house over his wives, because he doesn’t feel like his own wants/needs are met by his wives. or that they should/deserve to be met. he doesn’t know how to communicate them!! he maybe even feels guilty for having them. because even to house, he communicates these desires in metaphors or pranks or whatever other indirect way he sees fit. but the difference between house and his wives is that wilson has no tangible, legal sense of obligation to house. if house doesn’t meet his expressed needs, fuck him!! they don’t owe anything to each other!! the rejection will sting less.
wilson chases women on such a compulsive level that it’s nearly a reaction to whatever house has done. it’s affair after affair. wilson moves in with his patient during the time house is on a ketamine treatment. house, his patient who seemingly no longer needs vicodin. no longer needs him. if wilson is no longer needed, he parasites to the next host. why? because he doesn’t know who he is on his own. why? because he has trouble expressing his own core needs as a person. and as a result, these core (repressed) needs seep out sideways.
so why threaten this sense of safety he gets with keeping house at a platonic level? if they were to entangle into a relationship, wilson would be wrapped under an Obligation Gauze. there is a fear he’d lose house because, historically, all of his relationships end in loss. because, historically, he cannot express his needs to his partners due to his fear of rejection.
and then wilson becomes terminal. and then death becomes bigger than an anxious fear of loss/rejection.
“i need you to tell me that you love me.”
wilson, my brother in christ. house cannot say those words to you because for all the years you’ve known him, you’ve denied him it. the only way house can tell you that he loves you is by burning his home down and faking his death. he is nothing without you. you know it as well as he does. these things remain unspoken because that is the way you’ve molded the relationship to be.
wilson has house on a leash. house runs as far out as possible until the leash yanks him back. when wilson finally trusts house enough to let him go off-leash, house is too conditioned to act as expected.
and this conditioning in house is not just wilson’s doing. it’s primarily house’s own doing. his own self-loathing chains him to wilson’s side. as an addict, yes, but also as a support system. house hates himself so viscerally that it affects every interpersonal relationship he has, including with wilson. but wilson never, ever leaves no matter how bad it gets.
also. who else other than wilson gives him a sense of bodily autonomy? not stacy, not cuddy, not his fellows. wilson doesn’t pity him. wilson enables him. wilson lies for him. house will selfishly keep wilson forever because wilson is all he reliably has.
so house can push and prod wilson into gay romantic/sexual innuendos, but when wilson yanks that leash, he’ll drop it. it’s a buoy for reality checking where he is with wilson. it’s a giant wall for enabling his self-hatred thought process that even his boy best friend has limitations to his love for him (or at least what is acceptable). addict line of thinking.
they both eat each other up like an ouroboros. where does wilson’s repression end and house’s begin?
i find it a very interesting choice that house md ends on enjoy yourself rather than you can’t always get what you want or maybe even the actual lyrical version of teardrop by massive attack.
enjoy yourself is the most optimistic of the songs and i’ve seen people complain that it kind of comes from nowhere and the actual meaning of the song especially considering that post-canon, wilson will die and house is dead figuratively (and will probably die literally with wilson), the song is not only a call to the viewer to live their lives to the fullest but asks house and wilson to enjoy the time they have left as they drive away from us, their stories are fundamentally over.
enjoy yourself is only referenced one other time in the show when hallucination amber sings it to house at a restaurant just before the hallucination finale of season 5. this presentation of enjoy yourself by “ghost” amber, someone who haunts house from his guilt over her death and near destruction of his relationship with wilson as a result is also a callback to her death in the first place. house is so scared by hallucination amber singing this song to him he begs wilson over the phone to pick him up, the exact request that killed amber. the optimistic song about living out your life to the fullest sung by the manifestation of his guilt, someone who died too soon also coupled with kutner dying 3 episodes prior to this, just makes the final use of this song so fascinating. the house writers obviously called back to this moment because it was house’s fear of death and change that made the initial scene scary. meanwhile house accepts wilson’s death and his death in the finale after healing and growing. this is why i think enjoy yourself is the perfect finale song. the house writers are telling us that they accept that their time is up and we should too, even though death is horrible and tragic and scary at the same time, everybody dies.
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