Dr House’s best friend – the staid and conscientious oncologist, Dr Wilson – has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He’s been given five months to live and he decides to spend them leading a meaningful life. But since Wilson's life till now has already been about giving, caring, and searching for the profound, he figures that the only way to infuse more meaning into his life is by stripping away that very meaning from it. He hence decides to embrace selfishness, indifference, and all things shallow. The insentient House is hardly moved by this change when Wilson tells him of it. He nonchalantly makes a pert remark and limps away. ‘Staring death in the face has changed my life is such a cliché’, says he. So Wilson buys a shiny new Corvette and they (he and House) take off on a road-trip to meet his childhood crush. Enroute, they stop over for lunch at a diner. Hardly is House done perusing the menu when Wilson - who’s trying to act uncharacteristically impulsive – decides to order the ‘big one’. This is an 80 ounce steak which costs 79 dollars. The catch is that you get it for free if you can finish it in an hour. Such is the aura of the ‘big one’ that all dining heads swerve towards Wilson when the waitress shouts ‘one big one’s up’. The next cut jumps to a scene where a crowd’s gathered around Wilson. It’s the usual potboiler stuff. Wilson’s looking done and exhausted, the crowd’s chanting his name, the timer’s running , and there’s still some steak left on the plate. But as expected, Wilson finishes the steak in time. It’s of course another matter that he right away pukes it out. House, ever the bastard, teases the cancer patient on chemo about how nice it must be to puke for old-fashioned reasons. And this is when Wilson comes up with these measured words; words which could well be the soliloquy that the whole episode was leading towards. ‘I'm glad I did it,' he says, ‘You see those people out there cheering for me? I was a hero. For one fleeting moment, for an incredibly stupid reason, for a bunch of morons who don’t matter to me; I was a hero. God, it felt good.’ God! I do wish these House guys weren’t so stark and cruel with their parables.
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October 2020
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