The second season ends quite wildly, and afterward, you’re not really sure what’s reality and what’s hallucination. That’s why I find the beginning of the third season so interesting, because you actually learn the true resolution here, even though there were hints before.
A jogging Dr. House, who would have ever thought?! But we actually see him at the beginning of the third season. I’m currently at the beginning of the third episode, and I noticed that House could be an allegory for depression. How did I come up with that? I’m not 100% sure, but it was this constant low, something that’s always there and never goes away, like a shadow. But then, right now in the first episode of the third season, this high, which is not uncommon with depression. But as high as you are, the fall can be just as deep, and that’s what we’re experiencing now. If I’m not mistaken, the thing with the police officer also happens in this season, since he stole a prescription from Wilson at the end of the second episode in the third season, and that’s one of the issues.
I also noticed, not so much with the cases House handles himself, but with the treatments in the clinic service, that there are always situations that show how patients act when it’s something harmless. Of course, you can’t know if it’s harmless, but I think of the boy with the red chest, which turned out to be just the color of the new sofa. It’s as if the series wants to show on one hand that you don’t have to accept everything from doctors, but on the other hand, it also shows that as a patient, you could make a bit more effort in many ways. It’s both praise and criticism for both parties, which is rare nowadays. It’s usually either for or against, but both sides are rarely brought into the picture.
It reminds me of Demolition Man, when at the end, they say that some should become a bit cleaner and others a bit dirtier. In other words, they should meet halfway, find a compromise. In a world that only knows extremes, that’s incredibly important, and maybe a series like House is also so important, not just back then. And who knows, maybe there was some foreshadowing for today’s times. But I’ll leave that to others who know more about such things.