Secret Santa (example: “House M.D.”)

So, on Boxing Day, you dusted off your hands and thought, “Thank God Christmas is over and done with,” I presume?

Au contraire, my friend. You’re not getting off the hook so easily.

Christmas is a twelve-day affair, you see. And if you think celebrating, singing, dancing, drinking and stuffing yourself with all sorts of goodies for just one single day in December is enough, you’re doing it wrong!

We have barely made it to half-time so far.

And if you’re a culturally literate person, you can see the signs of this everywhere:

From the fact that Shakespeare wrote a (weird and wonderful) play called ‘Twelfth Night’ that was most likely first staged on Epiphany (January 6th, which is, after all, what the Christmas season culminates in) to the fact that Johann Sebastian Bach literally composed cantatas for the Third (!) Day of Christmas (that’s December 27th for you musical heathens). And let’s not even go into the many Dutch and Flemish masters who, with their sharp wit and their even sharper pencils and paintbrushes, depicted the twelve-day-long revelry and feasting of Christmastide in their vivid genre paintings, showcasing the inversion of the social order and the tolerated disorder and chaos those often pagan-derived festivities of jolly debauchery and carousing turned into.

I’ll just give you one example here:

(Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

This is ‘The King drinks’ from the Museo del Prado (painted between 1650 and 1660) by the inimitable Flemish Baroque painter David Teniers the Younger.

This is what your twelve days between Christmas Eve and Epiphany Eve are supposed to look like, okay? Don’t let anyone ever tell you any of that old ‘contemplative time to reflect on the year’ sort of bollocks. If you’re not doing what’s in that picture right now, you’re doing it wrong.

Just telling you what tradition says here, alright? (Me, the total, complete, utter, absolute traditionalist that I am.)

Twelvetide is the time of year when all the social rules are suspended and merrymaking (and even licentious behaviour) are traditionally allowed. In short, it’s the most joyous time of the year.

Also…tag yourselves in, please!

Personally, I think being the Bean-King/Lord of Misrule would be a thrill. But you can, of course, decide for yourselves who you wanna be in that picture. Just…you know…don’t be the guy who’s so plastered he couldn’t find the loo anymore. I feel we all knew him during our university days, but he was pretty nasty, wasn’t he?

Sooo…Merrymaking. Fun. Carousing. Revelry. Tolerated disorder. Raucous partying.

Twelve days thereof. Off you go. (You can come back and read this later after you’ve done all that, okay?)

Traditionally, each and every one of those twelve days of Christmastide has its own specific designation: December 25th is Christmas Day, obviously. December 26th is Saint Stephen’s Day, commemorating the legendary death by stoning of the first Christian martyr, and if that somebody I was briefly involved with many, many moons ago was right, then people in Germany and Austria do celebrate the day by ‘stoning Stephen’ every year (which, as I was told, apparently translates as relentless heavy drinking, whereby each shot you consume represents another stone thrown at poor Stephen’s battered frame; I suppose I should have asked him why people don’t just get stoned instead of doing shots, but I didn’t think of that dumb pun back at the time).

Yesterday was December 29th, the fifth day of Christmastide, a.k.a. the Feast of Saint Thomas Becket. And if you don’t know who that is and what happened to him, perhaps just avoid Canterbury Cathedral this time of year, or at least beware of any knights coming in fours.

For the undaunted among you: There’s nothing quite like a sword stuck in your head to clear a migraine, I suppose:

(Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

This miniature is from the Carrow Psalter (c.1250), a mediaeval book of psalms originally from Carrow Abbey near Norwich, now kept at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. (Do you want to know something fascinating about this particular miniature? It was concealed and remained hidden, and thus forgotten, for many centuries. After King Henry VIII – yeah, that Henry! – had posthumously declared Thomas Becket a traitor in the 1500s, the page containing the image wasn’t torn out and destroyed; it was, in fact, concealed under another page that was glued on top of it…This is how this mediaeval masterpiece was thankfully preserved for posterity.)

So, beware any knights carrying swords during Christmastide. I can however promise that the post below will be far less bloody and gory…and much more fun.

After all, the whole Twelvetide season takes its general idea from the Roman Saturnalia and the Germanic Yuletide. So, let’s go a bit pagan together, shall we? Let’s have a good time; we all have to let our hair down from time to time, after all. (Just make sure the Wild Hunt doesn’t get you.)

That’s a long introduction, you think? A long way of saying, “So sorry your Christmas post is coming fashionably late again.” But listen: We’re not late. We’re just doing it right, okay? Twelve days of Christmas. And we’re right in the middle of it all.

And since I’m currently still on a fact-finding mission for a longer post about ‘Young Royals’ I want to write for you, I thought I’d throw a little something else your way, so you don’t get too bored around here this holiday season. So, there you go…

What’s Christmassy about the post below?

Well…

A lovely commenter had asked me (what feels like ages ago) if there were any Christmas movies that weren’t awful, and I’ll freely admit that the question had me stumped for a while because there’s a sizable number of them that are just objectively so horrible that you’d probably rather chew broken glass than park your derrière in front of a TV screen to relive the horror of watching them.

To be honest, I could have just answered ‘Die Hard’ and be done with it (and I’ll freely admit that the occasional ‘Die Hard’ marathon is something I do, in fact, enjoy during the pre-Christmas season). But A) this year I didn’t get around to it and B) that’s so unoriginal I can practically hear you yawn through the screen.

‘Young Royals’, as you all know, skips Christmas altogether for very good and solid subtextual reasons (we had discussed this before), so I couldn’t really write a Christmas post based on the show that I had launched this blog with.

Then there’s a long list of Christmas movies ranging from saccharine to near-emetic, and I really didn’t feel like writing about any of those.

I had even quickly binged Netflix’s Christmas-themed ‘Black Doves’ with Keira Knightley and Ben Wishaw, expecting an enjoyable blood-soaked romp of ridiculousness and fun, but then felt so underwhelmed by it that I decided it was nothing to write home about either. (You realize I just called this blog and you guys ‘home’, right?).

But then…oh, then…something popped up in my mind: Christmas episodes/Christmas specials in long-format TV shows are often surprisingly good, sometimes even excellent where their subtext is concerned.

When you’ve got a multi-season TV series that already excels in the writing department, chances are that it will include at least one (if not several, i.e. regular) Christmas-themed episodes to be broadcast during the Christmas season, and as a rule of thumb, these types of episodes will be well-written, too (at least if the rest of the show was up to snuff).

And of course, my brain instantly went to the show ‘House M.D.’ because this one does indeed have several seasons that include a Christmas episode, and suddenly I just knew without a shadow of a doubt which episode I wanted to write about.

If you’re now worried that this post isn’t for you because you’ve never watched a single ‘House M.D.’ episode in your life, you needn’t be afraid at all. I promise I’ll write this in an accessible and easy-to grasp way. So, whether you’re an avid ‘House M.D.’ fan or total abstainer, I hope we’re all going to learn something interesting here today.

So, pour yourself some mulled wine or (deep shudder from me here) a glass of eggnog. Bite off your poor gingerbread man’s head. Put another log on the fire. Light a bunch of candles. Find a comfy cushion on your sofa to– ah, no, that was the cat; try again. Put your ‘God rest ye merry, gentlemen’ record on the old gramophone or get your resident pianist to play it for you in the background (in case you haven’t got one of those, I’ll glibly add: come on, get on with it and marry one already, will ya? we don’t bite). In short, make yourselves comfortable because now…we’re going to talk about the whole Secret Santa thing.

Does your family do it?

Secret Santa?

Or are you one of the lucky ones who get spared the horror of having to worry each season that they might pick the slip of paper with their sister-in-law’s weirdo husband’s name out of the stocking and then be stuck with the prospect of having to find a not-too-cheap, not-too-expensive, not fancy yet meaningful gift for somebody who is essentially a more boring version of Pete Hornberger from ‘30 Rock’ and with whom they share neither a language nor a belief system and have never exchanged any more words with than just, “Soooo…how are things?” and “Ooookay, well, see you again next year, I suppose,” in the literal decades that they’ve known him?

So, do you guys do Secret Santa?

If you don’t know the anticipation, fear and horror that goes into this sorting-hat (or rather sorting-stocking) experience each year, then I envy you, dear reader. But if you do, in fact, know what that feels like, then you will probably get some sense of vicarious amusement and sadistic glee out of watching a scene in which this little ritual is presented on screen.

What scene?

Well, patience, dear reader, patience.

If you don’t know the show ‘House M.D.’, you’ve got a choice to make now:

You can either go and watch the entire episode: Episode 10 of season 4 of ‘House M.D.’, to be precise, which is, I think, your TV-format-typical 45 minutes long (or so). (And just so you know: That whole fourth season of ‘House M.D.’ is just brilliant. I can’t recommend it enough.)

Or…you can save yourself the trouble of spending this much time on a whole episode and trust me to faithfully summarize it for you (in a hopefully quirky and goofy way). In this case, you’ll just have to watch a compilation of all the funny bits from this episode.

And this compilation of funny bits you will find in one short youtube video that’s just 6.21 minutes long.

(I think that’s a good deal, dear reader, considering that the whole episode would have been much, much longer, don’t you agree? And those are really the most hilarious parts of it: the Secret Santa scenes!...Aaaand you get to skip the whole medical case of the episode with the potentially dying patient whom Doctor House and his team are trying to cure. Because House does actually do something pretty nasty with some breast milk in that episode that you might find a bit icky, and anyway, medical cases can be a tad depressing, right? So…just the Secret Santa bits. Just the fun stuff. I promise these excerpts are hilarious. Deal?)

If you don’t know anything about this show and have only vaguely heard about it on social media or something, quick reminder:

Gregory House (played by the one and only Hugh Laurie) is a genius doctor who diagnoses patients who present with very complicated and difficult-to-diagnose medical conditions. He is famously (and hilariously) rude, grumpy, obnoxious, checks every -phobia and -ism box on the list of political incorrectness and drives everyone nuts because he is an absolute arsehole. He is also brilliant.

The other people you will see in this short youtube video are members of his diagnostic team, i.e. his permanently exasperated fellows, who are constantly trying and usually failing to keep him in check.

And then…well, then…there’s the other important guy on this show: The good-looking, fluffy-haired doctor with that tie that looks like it’s permanently attached to his neck is James Wilson (played by Robert Sean Leonard, a.k.a. Neil Perry from ‘Dead Poets Society’).

Wilson is House’s colleague and more importantly: his best (and only) friend. As a physician, Wilson has a different specialty but works at the same hospital, and he just happens to be the polar opposite of House (for one, he is very polite, kind, selfless and knows how to behave). Wilson is also inexplicably (or not so inexplicably?) drawn to the miserable, lonely, rude dumpster-fire of a character that is Gregory House, which means he also tends to spend his days steeped in a permanent state of exasperation and despair. Their relationship is what the whole subtext of this show is all about.

So, here are just the funny bits from episode 10 of season 4 of ‘House M.D.’:

House is (unexpectedly) organizing a Secret Santa gift exchange for his fellows.

As I said, the video is just 6.21 seconds long. Settle in with your cup of tea, mulled wine or whatever (I, for one, am on my second glass of port over here):

Here you go. Enjoy!

Going forward, I’m going to assume that you’ve watched the video. Okay, let me walk you through it now:

So, the thing I’m just expecting you guys to pick up on by now is the fact that House and Wilson are sitting in front of one of those indoor artificial waterfall thingies in one of the scenes as they’re munching on their lunch, okay? You’ve all caught that one, right?

I mean, you’ve got the ‘water’ metaphor on display and the ‘food’ metaphor right next to it.

And yes, these two men are sitting exactly there and doing exactly…that. Eating. With a lot of water right next to them.

This is literally what the whole eight seasons of this show are all about: Textually, the relationship between House and Wilson is a very close friendship between two guys who basically are each other’s only friend, respectively.

Subtextually, it is a love story. It’s both romantic and sexual. The real deal. They are in love with each other, and the whole story is built around the fact that they’re not telling each other about the feelings each harbours for the other.

The water fountain in the hospital hallway tells you something about those very strong and very much alive feelings. The joint consumption of food doesn’t tell you anything about the consummation of those feelings because that’s not what’s happening between the two of them. It tells you about their hidden desires.

Should I perhaps mention that, throughout the entire show, House keeps stealing Wilson’s food, too? Metaphorical ‘food’, methinks. And it always happens in this very furtive, stealthy way.

Many of their subtextually weightier conversations also happen in the hospital cafeteria of all places, i.e. the place where food is consumed.

So…water…food. You all got that one instantly, I presume?

Now, here’s the other thing you’ve probably caught right away: At one point, House steals Wilson’s phone!

Oh, boy!

The ‘phone’ metaphor in action.

What does it mean if somebody steals your metaphorical ‘phone’?

Yeeeees, exactly. That’s what it means.

House stole Wilson’s…phone.

And interestingly, Wilson isn’t happy about it. He is really pissed off, as a matter of fact. (Oh, man. Somebody is a tad miffed because he’s having himself some feelings for his best friend that he doesn’t want to admit to and that aren’t technically allowed in a straight-buddies-type of friendship. Wilson is so annoyed!)

And he’s miffed that House put the gift box with the phone out on display for everyone to see. (Wilson is annoyed because he fears everyone at the hospital can see how gone he is for House. He is annoyed that it’s so obvious, i.e. ‘on display’.)

And House proceeds to just nonchalantly tell him that he doesn’t just want to hide Wilson’s love in a closet at home.

In a closet!

Clearly, the writer who wrote this episode had far too much fun with this one.

Wilson also doesn’t seem to know how his metaphorical ‘phone’ ended up with House in the first place. It just happened, without him consciously realizing it. (Understanding this, by the way, is very important if you ever plan on watching the entire show and really want to get what the final season is all about.)

Now, I should probably clarify something here in case you’ve never watched this show (or have watched it but didn’t consider its subtext at the time):

Throughout the show, we get a whole layer of very, very consistent subtext that House is, in fact, bisexual and that he is in love with his best friend Wilson. Like…deeply, madly, insanely in love. That he is denying himself this love. And yet…that it’s the most meaningful love he’s ever known and that the relationship he has got with Wilson is the most meaningful thing in his life.

This subtext is as clear as day. It’s always there. In each and every episode.

You also get quite a lot of subtext dealing with the fact that House believes his best friend James Wilson to be straight and that this belief is at least part of the reason why he doesn’t dare say anything to him about his feelings.

Now, this Christmas episode gives us something new:

We are clearly shown here that our assumptions that we, as viewers, might have arrived at at this point in the story are wrong, that Wilson isn’t perhaps as straight as we all (including House) have thought. Wilson might be a triple divorcé with scores of female conquests under his belt, but there’s something he is hiding, this Christmas episode tells us. This is pretty new information at this point and thus exciting news to us subtext aficionados, of course.

If somebody steals your heart…does that mean they have fallen in love with you?

Nuh-uh.

It means the opposite.

If you complain that somebody has stolen your heart, it usually means you have fallen in love with them, right? (It doesn’t necessarily have to mean it’s unrequited. It just doesn’t tell you anything about the other party’s feelings at all.) The fact that you’re complaining means that you don’t want this to be happening to you, perhaps for social-unacceptability reasons, but you can’t help yourself, and it just happened, anyway.

So, House being in love with Wilson is subtextually old hat at this point. As is the fact that House is bisexual. The show keeps hammering those two points home episode after episode.

It’s the fact that House stole Wilson’s metaphorical ‘phone’, too, that’s new and exciting here.

And the fact that Wilson complains about this is, of course, hilarious. Wilson obviously doesn’t want any of this to become common knowledge. That phone being on display on House’s desk like a war trophy is a big no-no to him. Wilson’s feelings for House have so far been a secret, and now the whole Secret Santa thing is going to ‘out’ him to the audience of the show (or at least to the slice of it that can read subtext).

There were, of course, earlier episodes that hinted at the fact that something was and still is going on with Wilson, but this one is much more in-depth on the Wilson front.

Did you notice the sly little joke here, too?

Remember that jokes and puns are often important. They are funny on the textual level, but often deeply meaningful on the subtextual level. So, something that makes you laugh should always make you sit up straight and go, “Mmmmm…hang on,” a second later.

On a superficial, textual level, House joking about the gift on his desk being either from Santa or Satan is just funny.

But in the subtext…oh, boy!

So, House doesn’t know if this gift of love (same-sex love!) is something holy and sacred…or if it’s depraved and comes straight from the devil.

There you go: The whole subtext of this entire show in a nutshell, i.e. in one little punny joke.

House is an atheist on this show. Very much explicitly so.

So explicitly in fact that, over the course of the story, you start to get the idea that there is something suspiciously in-your-face about his atheism. Because, yes, of course, the poor guy has a bad childhood backstory related to religion, and since the subtext pretty much screams at you that he is bisexual, yet only ever dares to do anything on the heterosexual side of the street, you quickly get that these two things are actually connected: House atheism is a bit performative. He is showing it off to other people nonstop, making a point about incessantly mocking and deriding their various faiths. His heterosexuality is (at least to an extent) performative, too. It’s not that he’s incapable of experiencing love and desire for women (he is, after all, bisexual); it’s just the ostentatious way in which he does this that’s suspicious. He likes parading around the many prostitutes he keeps hiring, for example. (And yes, it’s this very same episode that connects the concepts of prostitution and religion in a very creative way, too.)

It’s only in the subtext that you discover that House has doubts, that he isn’t by far as secure in his atheism as he lets on. And that, combined with the fact that he is denying himself that other forbidden ‘half’ of his sexual identity, is the stuff his nightmares are made of.

So, who does the stolen ‘phone’ come from? Santa or Satan?

Very, very clever joke once you really think about it, right?

Now, obviously we have to examine the three members of his team who actually end up giving House their Secret Santa gifts in this episode.

Three?

Yes. I hope you’ll forgive me if we focus on just the three.

Doctor Eric Foreman, the African-American doctor, who is a more senior team member of House’s diagnostic team, we will leave aside for today. That’s because he serves a bit of a different and more complicated function on this show. He used to be House’s fellow in seasons 1-3; he’s a remnant of the old era, so to speak. (The other three team members are new and showed up in season 4 for the first time.) At one point Foreman will even become House’s supervisor. Consequently, he’s the only one who doesn’t end up giving House a present in this episode.

So, no Foreman for you today, sorry.

We will instead focus on who the three Kings of Orient are, bearing gifts, traversing afar, field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star…

…okay, I’m joking (or am I?)…We will focus on the three team members who do actually end up giving House a gift and who are all three new this season since he has just recruited them into his team. These three are:

1. The mysterious, beautiful woman nicknamed Thirteen (played by Olivia Wilde).

2. Doctor Taub, the short, balding guy who is the victim of House’s incessant antisemitic jibes.

3. Doctor Kutner, the young guy of South Asian descent, who comes across as this somewhat overeager puppy in these scenes.

Now, I’m sure I’m telling you nothing new when I say that these three characters are all allegorical characters. That’s their function in the text.

Note that there are, indeed, three of them. And this is a Christmas episode.

That’s obviously no coincidence.

While the Bible (the New Testament, to be precise) doesn’t mention how many Magi appear at Jesus’s manger in the birth narrative of the Gospel of Matthew (and that only happens in the Gospel of Matthew, just so you know), the number three has just become attached to the story in the Christian tradition over time.

These three Magi (three wise men; later often linked to the concept of three Kings, as well) were always interpreted allegorically, too – although this interpretation varied over the centuries. Sometimes they were thought to represent the three ages of man; sometimes they were thought to represent the three known continents, etc. What all of these interpretations had in common was a holistic idea: The whole world, the entire planet, all mankind was thought to worship Jesus. The three Magi were just an allegorical personification of this idea.

Something similar is going on here: The three characters of Thirteen, Taub and Kutner also represent something holistic. Taken together they represent House’s sexual identity. They are allegorical characters. They are three parts that belong together.

And that’s why we get all three of them giving House gifts like the three Magi in that Christmas narrative from the Gospel of Matthew.

I think I must have mentioned it somewhere before that Thirteen represents House’s sexual orientation. This isn’t something you will ever find in any of the promotional material of this show, of course. There is no writers’ interview where anyone will admit to this ever, okay? This is something you can find out only by watching the whole thing and analyzing it carefully. But once you do, it becomes incredibly obvious.

It is only later on this show that we find out that Thirteen is, in fact, bisexual.

I.e. the character whose function in this story is to represent House’s sexuality is bisexual.

House’s sexual orientation is…bisexual!

She also literally states at one point that she doesn’t like to be categorized and that these things are complicated. So, this tells you something about the way House perceives his own sexuality, too: It is complicated for him; he isn’t a simple guy. It’s not a matter of fifty-fifty for him (which is more often than not just a dumb stereotype about bisexual people, anyway). And he doesn’t like his sexuality to be categorized.

And since House is really obsessed with trying to figure out his new team member Thirteen, we can confidently say that he doesn’t fully understand his own sexual orientation, that he’s still trying to figure it out.

Whenever he talks to her, questions her, interrogates her, he is, in fact, interrogating his own sexuality, which he doesn’t fully get…yet.

So, this is Thirteen.

She is aptly nicknamed Thirteen because House’s sexuality is difficult for him. It has brought him nothing but misfortune, pain and suffering so far. His bisexuality is his unlucky number, so to speak.

There is more to her, but I can’t dissect the whole show here, I hope you understand.

Note Thirteen’s exasperated facial expression when she picks that slip of paper with House’s name out of the stocking, and keep it in mind for later.

Now, let’s talk about Kutner for a moment (that’s our overeager-puppy type youngster, a proper geek and generally a good guy). What we don’t know about Kutner at this point is that he must already suffer from some really serious form of depression (this will have tragic consequences later on in the story).

Kutner, as you might have guessed watching the video above, is an allegorical character, as well. And I have to admit it took me a while to work out what he is actually all about. Once I did, though, everything clicked into place: Kutner represents that homosexual ‘half’ of House’s bisexual nature.

So, Thirteen represents House’s complex sexual orientation overall. But Kutner is specifically the part of House that’s into men.

Consequently, Taub, the more mature gentleman with the bald spot who gets every antisemitic stereotype in the playbook thrown at him by House (we will get back to this), represents the other ‘half’ of House’s sexuality: his heterosexual desires.

Taub is a plastic surgeon by trade. Get it? House’s heterosexuality is constantly, shall we say, polishing up its resume, beautifying the surface; it’s all about keeping up appearances; it’s not really, profoundly about what’s underneath the superficial, shallow, deceptively sparkling surface.

Taub is also a massive, massive philanderer. He is sleeping with scores and scores of women. That, too, shouldn’t surprise us, seeing as House has had multiple relationships with women and is on record for regularly sleeping with prostitutes, a fact that he pretty much shouts from the rooftops. (House’s heterosexual ‘side’ is very interested in promoting itself, you see.)

So, that’s Taub.

Interestingly, the guy representing House’s heterosexual ‘side’ is called Taub. The adjective ‘taub’ in German has two meanings: deaf and numb.

How very fitting for a character who allegorically represents House’s heterosexual ‘half’: This is the part of House that plays deaf-mute to his other desires – even where his desires come coupled with profound romantic feelings, like the feelings House harbours for his best friend of many years, James Wilson.

House’s heterosexual ‘side’ (as represented by Taub) just turns…well, not a blind eye but a deaf ear to this type of thing, and that’s it. You could also argue that it’s pretty numb, all things considered, i.e. House’s heterosexual woes don’t come with the same deep and acute pain that his homosexual love for Wilson is causing him. There’s a certain numbness in that area of the heart. Taub. Deaf and numb.

Neat.

Now, interestingly (and I have to admit that I have no earthly idea why), the writers of this show decided to give his counterpart Kutner a Germanic-sounding name, too: If you look up the etymology of Kutner, you will discover that this word is actually derived from a German occupational term: A ‘kuttner’ is somebody who makes or wears monks’ cloaks.

Nice. So, the character who represents House’s homosexual ‘side’ comes cloaked in the clothes of a monk, i.e. House’s homosexual urges have been relegated to the status of celibacy.

This is exactly what the subtext keeps telling us over and over and over again: House is very much promiscuous when it comes to women. He has many, many superficial and meaningless sexual relationships and hook-ups with women (or just straight-up pays for sex with them). He never engages in sex with men at all. Ever. Even though (or rather because!) this is where his feelings would be much more seriously affected. Because this is about his best friend Wilson, and that’s the big taboo here.

The word ‘kuttner’ also introduces the religious connection once again: A word like that is all about monks and monasteries, right? These are religious themes. And far from being the carefree, confident and well-adjusted atheist that House presents himself as, he is actually deeply conflicted when it comes to the topic of religion.

You could even add the fact that with a term like that, we get the idea of cloaking something, i.e. hiding it: House’s homosexual feelings are the ones that he manages to conceal rather successfully – at least on the surface-level of the text.

So, the heterosexual ‘side’ is called Taub (deaf/numb). The homosexual ‘side’ is basically a celibate monk, cloaked and concealed (kuttner). And overall, House’s sexual orientation is called Thirteen.

Wow, just wow!

(Why both Taub and Kutner have German names is something I don’t know. There might be some German connection in House’s backstory that I’m forgetting right now; it’s been a while since I watched the show, so forgive me for this lapse in memory, please. I’m sure there was something in his past that I just don’t remember right now.)

Now, what does House tell his best friend Wilson about the whole Secret Santa idea?

He is doing it because he wants to mess with his team. He isn’t doing this to bring them together; he is, in fact, sowing discord, disunity and strife.

This is exactly House’s core problem.

Look, all of these characters are essentially (subtextually) parts of House himself. And Wilson is even asking House if House is trying to ‘bring them together’. So, is House trying to bring the constituent parts of his sexuality together? Is he trying to live a fulfilled life where the different parts of him are at peace with one another? Does he strive for inner harmony and balance where his identity is concerned?

No! House’s emotional life is anything but in order. There is massive disunity among the various parts of House’s identity, a cacophony of different chirping voices in his head. Sowing discord amongst the various constituent parts of your personality is not exactly the hallmark of a healthy person. House is not okay. And he is doing it to himself, we are told here.

It’s so bad, in fact, that he and his best friend Wilson liken House’s state of mind to the situation in the Middle East. If it were peaceful, House says, he’d be capable of turning it into the mess it is right now.

That’s how not-at-peace-with-himself-and-his-own-sexuality House is right now!

The little girl playing table football/foosball in that one scene with House’s team members (she is the daughter of their current patient, by the way) even manages to work out the deeper reason for this whole mess:

House really wants a present; it’s sad, she says.

Yes, House’s situation is sad. He wants a present from his own sexuality, i.e. he wants love. He desperately, desperately wants and needs love.

And since he has no idea which part of his sexuality might be responsive (and is generally on the war path with all of them), he just makes sure they all pick his name from the Santa boot: He wants love so desperately, he sends out distress signals to all parts of his sexuality.

Perhaps one of them will give him what he needs?

Aaaaand then he goes and brags to his best friend Wilson about his plan. While sitting in front of an indoor waterfall and gobbling up food. You can’t make this up.

I mean…come on. House isn’t telling this to the (female) Dean of Medicine at his hospital, Doctor Lisa Cuddy (his other love interest on the show). He tells his plan specifically to Wilson. Because, believe it or not, Wilson is House’s great love. The one and only. The subtext is very, very clear on this throughout the show.

When Wilson asks incredulously, “You gave them all your name?” House replies in a (seemingly meaningless) throwaway line, “I figured I could get a few ties and sweaters out of this.”

Yeah. The little girl is right: House really, really wants that present (of love). It’s sad.

Ties and sweaters are inextricably linked to Wilson on this show. He is the character who we constantly see wearing one or the other (or both). They’re practically a part of his personality.

The metaphorical ‘present’ House wants…is Wilson (as represented by the ties and sweaters).

(Should we mention the fact that Wilson’s last present to one of the many wives he has already divorced at this point in the story was…a sweater? A sweater that he was notably incapable of picking out for her himself? He gave her the money, and she had to buy it for herself. Oh, man. Wilson was incapable of sharing himself with his wife. He couldn’t give himself to her. Spoiler alert: Because House keeps ruining Wilson’s marriages. Textually, because House is an arsehole who keeps making sure Wilson can’t stay married to any woman. Subtextually, because Wilson’s brain is completely occupied by House, and he can’t form any meaningful relationships with anyone else.)

So, House wants sweaters and ties. Ergo: House wants Wilson. And he throws all the constituent parts of his sexual identity the bait. Perhaps one of them will take it. Right?

What happens?

So, now here is where things get interesting.

For one, the whole gift-giving story is intertwined with the story of Wilson’s stolen phone. That’s already fascinating in and of itself, isn’t it?

So, House is (subconsciously) baiting the different parts of his sexuality into giving him metaphorical ‘presents’, and he puts Wilson’s metaphorical ‘present’ (his phone!) on his desk like a trophy.

Here’s another interesting fact: The one clearly most eager to give House a present is Kutner (House’s homosexual ‘half’).

This is exactly what the subtext of the entire show is telling us over and over and over again: House is desperately in love with his best friend Wilson; he wants to act on it, but he doesn’t dare say or do anything. House’s homosexual ‘side’, however, is all ready to go, so to speak.

Secret Santa, or so House literally tells us in this episode, is a contradiction in and of itself: The Santa part is about sharing. The Secret part is about withholding.

House really, really wants to tell Wilson he loves him. But he also really, really doesn’t want to tell Wilson. He wants to share the truth, but he also wants to withhold it. And it’s driving him nuts.

So, at least Kutner (House’s homosexual ‘side’) really wants to give House this metaphorical ‘present’, right? House’s homosexual urges are all ready to go.

You can see it instantly the moment Kutner fishes the piece of paper with House’s name on it out of the stocking. He is so happy. He wants to. He really, really does want to give House this ‘present’.

It’s notably Taub (!) who doesn’t want to participate in this game at all. He seems to think it’s lame and dumb.

Read: House’s heterosexual ‘side’ has left the conversation a long time ago. Taub keeps having affairs with women, but he isn’t really into giving House any ‘presents’. I.e. House is performatively sticking to heterosexuality, but that’s certainly not where his deep desires lie. Those are all where his best friend is: Wilson.

Well, and Thirteen (House’s overall sexual orientation, and please remember that the character of Thirteen is canonically bisexual on this show!)...well, Thirteen is exasperated when House first brings up the whole Secret Santa idea. I mean, why wouldn’t she be? How long has House been playing these games with his own sexuality? She is so, so done with him.

It’s her unnerved eye-roll here that gets the loudest, “Iiiiinteresting!” reaction from House. So, that’s how the writers pretty much shove the meaning of this scene in your faces, right? It’s Thirteen’s reaction that iiiiinteresting.

One of the things that we find out pretty quickly is that Kutner (House’s homosexual ‘side’) is pretty eager to give him his present. And not just that: He keeps bargaining. He wants the present to be ever more and more expensive. This metaphorical ‘present’ that his homosexual ‘side’ absolutely needs to give to House is apparently not just some meaningless fling; it just has to be this expensive, special gift, something very, very dear. A very dear love, indeed.

Note that Kutner’s argument to make the present more expensive (read: the love more meaningful than just a fling) is with Thirteen of all people in that scene as they walk into the hospital.

House’s homosexual ‘side’ is arguing with House’s overall sexuality. The homosexual ‘side’ is really pushing for this deeply meaningful, profound and dear…‘present’. (And he keeps pushing for this later on, as well.)

Neat.

We never hear anything of the kind from Taub. House’s heterosexual ‘side’ is really just phoning it in at this point, isn’t it? Like…the guy is the definition of low enthusiasm in these scenes, right?

We will get back to this conversation between Kutner and Thirteen in the hospital hallway because Kutner bargaining, wanting to spend more and more money on House’s present is actually intertwined with him talking about the keys to their current patient’s home, and that’s important.

For now, let me just mention that, when Kutner keeps pushing for being allowed to spend more money, Thirteen asks Kutner in exasperation, “Who are you so anxious to please?”

Kutner replies, “Not you!”

Yeah, Kutner, a.k.a. House’s homosexual desires aren’t all that interested in pleasing Thirteen (House’s overall sexual orientation). House’s overall sexual orientation is just the definition of deep exhaustion and exasperation at this point. Of course, it is. But House’s same-sex urges and desires are still going strong. And they want to give House something meaningful, something real, something deep and dear.

Then we pretty much get a recapitulation of House’s permanent emotional state on this show: After the little girl (her name is Jane, by the way) has found out the deeper meaning of House’s Secret Santa idea (he just really, really wants a metaphorical ‘present’; House needs love; it’s sad!), so after Jane has psychoanalyzed House and worked it all out, and after Thirteen (House’s overall sexual identity) has called him pathetic (whoa!), the constituent parts of House’s sexuality decide they’re going to go on strike. He might want and need love, but they’re not going to give it to him.

This is the House we’ve known for three and a half seasons now: The emotionally detached cynic who is just soooo above all this emotional crap, above all these stupid feelings that stupid people stupidly experience, above all the lovey-dovey stuff that’s just an illusion, anyway. It’s all so beneath him. And he’s so over that. Spoiler alert: He’s not. He just pretends it’s all dumb by mocking other people’s experiences, emotional woes and love lives. He pretends he doesn’t need love. That’s literally what this is here: His sexual orientation, all parts of it are on strike.

Well, and did you notice how reluctantly Kutner (House’s homosexual ‘side’) agrees to this strike?

Yeah…how about that?

House has feelings for Wilson. Very strong ones. And he’s had them for a long, long time. For years actually. (Wilson and House have known each other for years when the show kicks off in episode one season one.) House has harboured and yet denied himself these feelings for all these long years. His homosexual ‘side’ does so reluctantly, it goes along with the strike, but actually…it just really wants to give him this ‘gift’.

And that’s the whole point of the scene in which we get Wilson’s heart on a platter…uhm…I meant Wilson’s phone on House’s desk: Who’s the first one to notice that gift box on House’s desk? Kutner!

Kutner (House’s homosexual ‘side’) has picked up on…something. House’s homosexual ‘half’ has picked up on the fact that there’s something going on with Wilson’s heart (hint, hint…that Wilson has lost his heart to House).

Don’t you just love the fact that, just as with Kutner wanting to give House a very expensive gift (a dear love, not just a fling!), we’ve got the same theme here again: Wilson’s metaphorical ‘phone’, we are specifically told here, is a very, very expensive thing!

House is even mocking the idea that anybody would think this phone cost just 25 bucks. The writer of this episode is specifically drawing our attention to it: This phone is expensive.

It’s Taub who actually makes the right guess, “The phone could be from Wilson.”

Oh, yeah. The heterosexual ‘side’ of House is starting to notice that there’s something going on. Otherwise Taub is pretty quiet throughout the episode, so here at least he speaketh…House’s heterosexual ‘half’ doesn’t have a lot to say, but it knows when it’s been beaten. Resignation is what this is called.

Well, and then the big strike-breaker moment arrives: Kutner goes back on the deal he made with the other team members; he breaks his promise and gives House a gift.

Oh, this is glorious.

Kutner, i.e. House’s homosexual ‘side’, gives him a gift even though he is not supposed to!

Nice recapitulation of the status quo, just as I said: After years of pretending to be emotionally aloof, a cynical arsehole pretending to be thoroughly uninterested in love and emotions, after years of being emotionally on strike, something inside of House (a.k.a. his homosexual desires) just snaps and informs him that he is in love with Wilson. That’s the gift. The gift-giver (Kutner) goes back on the deal he made with House’s heterosexual ‘side’ (Taub) and House’s overall sexual orientation (Thirteen), i.e. with the way House handles love and emotions in general…and just gives House this great ‘gift’.

Kutner isn’t supposed to. But he does it anyway.

And the gift is really, really expensive. It is a watch, as we find out later on.

Watches go tick-tock, tick-tock. (In case you didn’t know.) They tell the time and thus they essentially count down the time to some future event that is still unknown to us. Something will eventually have to go kaboom between House and Wilson. And there is the countdown now. (If you know the ending of this show, you know that this will happen entirely in the subtext, never in the text, but yes, it will happen in this way. And it goes completely over the head of most of this show’s audience.)

As Kutner gives House the gift, by the way, and after House tells him he’s not supposed to, Kutner specifically ties his act of gift-giving to the fact that House has already been given a gift box (the one with Wilson’s phone in it). I.e. Kutner (House’s homosexual ‘side’) specifically ties these two things together: Kutner is allowed to go back on the deal he made with the other team members (other parts of House’s sexuality) because House already got Wilson’s metaphorical ‘phone’. Nice how all of this fits together, no?

And would you please look at House’s grin after he receives that present (the gift of love) from Kutner? Oh, man…

Let’s quickly mention the two other presents here, too: Taub gives House what we later find out is a second edition of Conan Doyle. And Thirteen gives him an LP record.

Anybody who has watched ‘House M.D.’ ever knows that this show is essentially a modern retelling of the Sherlock Holmes stories in a medical setting. Second edition of Conan Doyle, indeed!

So, why is it specifically Taub (House’s heterosexual ‘side’) who’s giving House this book?

You do realize, of course, that the Sherlock Holmes stories could never come right out and say that there was a romance going on between the titular character and his trusted friend Doctor John Watson (the character who served as inspiration for Doctor James Wilson on the show), right? These stories were set in Victorian times. In them, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson appear to be essentially closeted, at least to us, modern-day readers.

That’s Taub’s ‘gift’:

House is told, “You’re the second edition of this closeted, Victorian Sherlock Holmes. You gotta live with your sexuality the way people did in Victorian times. Good luck to you, sir.”

Well, and what does Thirteen get House?

An LP.

Music!

Oh, ‘music’ metaphor, how do we love thee!

House’s sexuality gives House…music. Love.

We are also told it’s a vintage LP.

This is an old love. A very, very old one.

House has loved Wilson since…forever. They have known each other for so many years. They have been friends for so, so long. Old (and as of yet) unfulfilled love is the best and the strongest. Everyone knows that, right?

You could even argue that this is specifically an LP. You know…not just any record. It’s long play, don’t you know. The longest of long plays actually, if you consider the slow-burn that is House and Wilson’s relationship over those eight seasons.

Three Christmas presents. And no, they’re not gold, frankincense and myrrh. But they come from three allegorical characters, too, and they’re deeply meaningful, as well.

By the way, did you notice how, towards the end of the video, when all is already said and done, Kutner asks Thirteen specifically, “You guys mad at me?”

And Thirteen replies, “No, you had no choice.”

Oh, man. House’s sexuality (Thirteen) believes House’s homosexual ‘side’ (Kutner) had no choice. House has no choice but to love and desire Wilson. He can’t do anything about it. He’s helpless.

Kutner then clarifies that it was they (Thirteen and Taub) who had no choice once he made his choice. Words fail me at this point, dear reader. It’s all so, so clear here.

All of this subtext is crammed into just under six and a half minutes of screen time. I feel we should send Pamela Davis, who is the writer of this episode, a gigantic gift basket or something because she wrote this beautiful subtext into these seemingly meaningless and funny side banter scenes, and nobody, absolutely nobody gets it. Ever. It’s really driving me nuts. Imagine this poor writer’s despair: You write all of this beautiful and meaningful and clever and important and brilliantly interwoven subtext, and all people ever talk about is that House was a funny arsehole when he gave all of them his name for Secret Santa.

This 6.21 minute video on youtube has a whopping 2.8 million views. How many of these viewers do you think get what this whole Secret Santa storyline is all about? How many people appreciate how clever the writing here is?

It’s sad to think about.

Go rewatch this little video if you want, and do so with the decoder ring in mind that I’ve just given you: Thirteen = House’s sexual orientation, Taub = House’s heterosexual ‘side’, Kutner = House’s homosexual ‘side’...and then there are, of course, all the brilliant little metaphors to admire here…

Rewatch it and marvel at the writing.

And if you’ve got a ‘House M.D.’ fan in your family or amongst your friends who you’re seeing this Christmas season, feel free to send them to this blog, so they can read about this; I will specifically not lock this post. (Especially, if the ‘House M.D.’ fan in question has a soft spot for House and Wilson together, thinks that we never got this relationship out of the show, is disappointed and assumes all of that was just wishful thinking unsupported by the writing. Send them here and give them the little present of wish fulfilment this Christmas.)

I would tell you a funny story about the last Christmas season and somebody in my extended family, and how I pulled the veil from his eyes where ‘House M.D.’ is concerned, but I’m afraid I would just bore you, dear reader, so I’ll skip that.

The scene ends with the infamous moose-on-a-Jew moment, by the way. (That one is not in the youtube video I’ve linked you to, so I’m sending you a separate link to another one, just in case you want to see it.)

It’s in another season’s Christmas episode, I believe, that Wilson invites House over for Christmas dinner, and House replies nonplussed, “You’re Jewish,” which has Wilson nonchalantly shrugging, “What do you care? It’s food; it’s people.”

I remember first watching the famous moose-on-a-Jew moment in this episode here and thinking with a grin, ‘Oh, look, it’s me!’ For the longest time I thought this described me quite well, actually.

No, I’m not Jewish. Nor am I a medical doctor. And I’m not by far as polite and kind as Doctor Wilson is either. Also, I’m pretty sure that the hat which was shoved on my poor unsuspecting head on Christmas Eve as I was playing the piano was actually a reindeer hat, not a moose one like the headgear Wilson is sporting there.

But I just generally vibed with the whole idea of it: Not being Christian. Being from a minority. But still saying, “It’s food; it’s people. Who cares?” Doing the whole holiday maxxing thing. Celebrating whatever holidays there are, whenever they come and whatever they might be all about. Making hay when the sun shines.

Being around the people you love. Stuffing yourself with delicious food, drinking good wine, telling stories, having a laugh, getting goofy presents. Enjoying the smell of a freshly chopped-down Christmas tree and the sight of twinkling lights everywhere and delighting in your better half yelling at you, “Keep your paws out of the cookie jar, you idiot!”

Oh, and getting some writing on your blog done while everyone else is in church…or so you think…because then you do actually get tasked with babysitting a gazillion children who will all want piggyback rides for what feels like hours on end, in which case, your back will be screwed forever and this post won’t get posted until after Christmas Day. (See, at least I’ve got both the cutest and most painful excuse for my tardiness this time.)

So, moose-on-a-Jew, hey, that’s me! (Without a moose and without a Jew, but you know…in spirit.) That’s what I thought about this cute little moment in this Christmas episode back when I first watched it. I agreed with Wilson’s general attitude here. With him just being cheerful, no matter what, no matter what holiday, no matter who you are yourself. Just be jolly. Just be with the people you love.

It was only later, once I had examined the subtext a bit more closely, that I realized what this scene actually meant, and that’s when I thought, ‘Oh…oh!...Well, this doesn’t really describe me at all, does it?’ Weird how that sometimes goes.

To explain properly what the moose-on-a-Jew moment is actually all about, I need to tell you about the general subtext of this episode, and for this we need to look at how the medical case they’re solving in it is interwoven with the Secret Santa scenes and House’s and Wilson’s relationship in general.

So, yeah, we need to understand what patient they are actually treating in this episode. The only question is: Do you want to hear about this?

Hmm…

I had actually promised you not to write about the medical case at all, hadn’t I? I had said above that it contains a weird breast milk scene.

But then, on the other hand, this post is already coming a bit late, so I might as well give you a more rounded-out overview of this Christmas episode.

But just know: If you want to skip the whole summary of this medical case, then jump straight ahead to the sentence ‘let’s end this on a few classics’, okay?

So, the medical case…

The medical puzzle in this Christmas episode is centred around a woman and her daughter. (You’ve actually briefly seen the daughter, Jane, in the little video above when she was playing foosball with House’s team in the common room and worked out that House just wanted a present, i.e. love, and then commented that this was ‘sad’.)

Their medical conundrum is first introduced in the cold open of this episode: Jane is climbing an indoor rock-climbing wall, with her mother Maggie (played by Janel Moloney, who will probably always be best-known for her role as Donna Moss on ‘The West Wing’) watching and belaying her, holding her safety rope. The girl slips and falls. No worries; nothing too bad happens; Jane just breaks her arm. (That’s why her arm is in a sling in that brief foosball scene in the video.) In a surprise twist, however, it’s actually her mother who’s got the medical problem here: She can’t hold on to the rope anymore, as her hands are suddenly paralyzed. (That’s the reason why her daughter fell in the first place.)

We are thus given one of those clever ‘House M.D.’ cold open scenes where we don’t know at first who the patient is going to be. We watch them both, Maggie and her daughter Jane, assume that it’s going to be Jane (because she fell) but then discover that it’s actually Maggie who’s going to present House and his team with the medical puzzle of the week.

And this she does! Throughout the episode, she circles through a whole bunch of different, serious and ever-escalating symptoms that all point to something that takes House an entire episode to work out. (And of course, all of these symptoms are subtextually important; I just don’t have the time here to take them all apart.)

What’s interesting about the case of Maggie and her daughter, though, is the following highly unusual detail: Maggie claims she never lies to Jane. Not even about the small stuff. Not even about the sex stuff. No white lies. No fairy tales. Nothing.

If you’ve ever interacted with basically any child ever, you know that we, as adults, lie to them all the time, and that’s normal (and healthy, one might add). It’s not even just in the proverbial cases of TMI; often it’ll be a case of ‘this piece of info is coming too early for a child this age’. It’s not just about telling your kid that Santa has brought the presents you have so lovingly wrapped yourself. There are ages where children aren’t yet prepared for conversations about death, sex, violence, etc. They are supposed to grow up in an environment where they can always feel safe, after all. And if this involves you telling a kid that, “Yes, of course, nap time means I’m going to remain lying right next to you for the entire hour you’re sleeping; you can fall asleep safely now and don’t have to worry about any nightmares,” only to then slip out of the room the moment the child has conked out and is snoring, then so be it. It’s a little white lie, and that’s normal.

So, this mother and her daughter are a highly unusual case: Maggie’s own mother apparently died of cancer and lied to Maggie about it, in order not to frighten her. So, Maggie has sworn to herself never to lie to her child and to always be truthful. She tells her daughter everything…or so she claims.

Because, as you can probably guess, a big chunk of this episode is centred around the fact that there is actually one single, crucial piece of information that Maggie is, in fact, withholding from her daughter, but more about that in a second.

There’s also the fact that Maggie unfortunately carries a genetic mutation that substantially heightens her risk of dying of a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer (think Angelina Jolie). That’s the reason why Maggie had a double mastectomy in the past, notably without any reconstructive surgery afterwards, i.e. this woman just lives with her scarred chest because she apparently regards breast reconstruction as a form of lying, too.

Maggie also tells her daughter Jane everything there is to know about her many sexual partners. (There is a moment in the episode that, I’m guessing, everyone watching it finds extremely weird because it’s the type of information that just doesn’t belong in the hands and minds of children: Little Jane knows what sexual position her mother prefers with her various boyfriends and hookups. This is one of the two nope-just-nope moments in this episode. The other one is the breast milk one, I think. But your mileage may vary on that one.)

At the end of the episode, House performs what he calls a Christmas miracle. And if you were worried earlier on, while watching the youtube video, that the patient, Maggie, would die at the end of the episode (because that was what the video insinuated), worry not; everything turns out well, and it’s at least implied that Maggie will survive the ordeal and be in good health again in the foreseeable future.

I’m going to spoil the ending of the episode now, so…just so you know…if you still want to watch the whole episode first, this would be the moment where you should stop reading and come back to this post later. If you don’t want to watch it, though, read on:

What House finds out is that Maggie does indeed have breast cancer. “How is that possible?” you ask. “Hadn’t she had a double mastectomy in the past?”

That’s right. And House explains what is going on with Maggie: As an embryo develops breast tissue can actually be found all over said embryo’s body. In a later gestational stage, the breast tissue recedes to the general chest area. But sometimes little remnants of breast tissue can remain behind in other parts of the body where they usually stay hidden and are never detected. Unless…well, unless an individual develops breast cancer.

Maggie, as House demonstrates in a very impressive and, uhm, memorable way, has some residual breast tissue in her leg (!). And it’s this little bit of breast tissue in the hollow of her knee that has developed breast cancer, which is obviously treatable. The episode implies that, once the cancerous tissue is removed, Maggie will be fine.

Now, what on earth has this convoluted case got to do with House and Wilson, you ask.

Well, here’s the first thing: The episode is very cleverly written in a way where you could at least theoretically read the mother, Maggie, as both – a mirror character for House and for Wilson.

(Because yes, of course, both Maggie and her daughter Jane are mirror characters. And if you don’t know what a mirror character is, let me quickly summarize it thusly: A mirror character is usually a minor side character who shares outward similarities – looks, hobbies, attributes, etc. – with one of the main protagonists of the story. The mirror character him- or herself is not really what’s important for the story. The mirror character’s sole function in the text is to tell you, the viewer or reader of said story, things about the main protagonist.)

So, Maggie could be a mirror character for both House or Wilson. And her daughter Jane could be both, too. It’s really cleverly written in this way.

It is, however, more likely that we’re supposed to read the mother, Maggie, as a mirror for Wilson and her daughter Jane as a mirror character for House.

The main reason is the following one: This whole episode is centred around Maggie’s mysterious illness and the fact that this medical case just has to be solved with some urgency.

Well, and then this episode features, as I have already told you above, substantial subtext telling us something new and fascinating about Wilson, something we didn’t expect, something quite surprising: that this ostensibly straight man is, in fact, in love with his best friend Doctor Gregory House.

House’s bisexuality is old hat at this point in the story (at least where the subtext is concerned). If we’ve followed along the chain of subtextual information we’ve been fed from episode one season one onwards, we know all about House’s woes. We know he likes both men and women and yet strictly denies himself anything in the male department. We know he has been in love with his best friend Wilson for ages but never acts on it…

This information about Wilson here, however, is new.

And this is the point where we get a new patient with a mysterious ‘illness’ that House just urgently needs to diagnose…

You can see the parallel between the text and the subtext, right?

The patient (Maggie) acts as a mirror for Wilson; something is going on with her (just like something is going on with Wilson), and House has to find the right diagnosis (read: find out what is going on with his best friend Wilson).

There’s also the fact that we get Maggie’s daughter Jane rock-climbing and Maggie herself holding the rope for her in the cold open of the episode.

This fits the general character constellation where Jane, the teenager up on the rock-climbing wall, is House and Maggie, the mother, is Wilson. Precisely because in episode after episode, season after season, we have seen Wilson act as the more mature man. House is actually quite childish and emotionally immature. Wilson usually acts as House’s anchor, he provides him with stability whenever House just loses himself in a dark cloud of depression and drugs again. Wilson is always there for him. Wilson is holding the safety rope for him, so to speak…

…just like that mother belaying her rock-climbing daughter, holding the rope for her, keeping her anchored and safe.

The cold open actually contains a tiny hint, too: As Jane is climbing that wall, her leg keeps cramping. Just a tiny hint, sure, but still…Jane is most likely mirroring House here, the man with the infamous leg and all that.

But then, something happens to Maggie, the mother, and she can’t feel her hands anymore. Her hands are paralyzed, and that’s when she can’t hold the rope anymore. Her daughter Jane slips and falls.

In fictional stories, falling is often (but not always) a metaphor for falling in love.

Jane (read: House) fell in love. And her mother Maggie (read: Wilson) couldn’t prevent that from happening; her hands were paralyzed (read: Wilson felt helpless and powerless).

The usual ropes and harnesses were thus ineffective (the usual rules and regulations that applied to their friendship failed), and Jane (House) tumbled down head first (fell in love).

But these rules that characterize any bro-type friendship failed for one particular reason; there is, after all, a reason why Maggie’s hands were suddenly paralyzed (i.e. why Wilson suddenly felt powerless). And that particular reason is so far unknown. We know one symptom, Maggie’s paralyzed hands (Wilson’s powerlessness), but we don’t know what caused it and why Maggie couldn’t hold the rope anymore (why Wilson couldn’t hold House safely at arm’s length anymore, keeping him emotionally at a distance as just this dude-bro friend).

And now we get the whole medical case: Why is it that Maggie’s hands were paralyzed? (I.e. what exactly is going on with Wilson?)

See, how brilliantly the little funny Secret Santa scenes with Wilson’s phone and House stealing it connect to the medical case here? This episode really has some top-notch writing!

Another element strongly suggesting that the patient represents Wilson and her daughter Jane represents House is the whole weird story about Maggie never lying to her kid.

In a scene early on in the episode, we get House arguing with Wilson about whether this is okay or not. House, unsurprisingly, argues that not lying is not normal, that always telling the truth is weird and wrong, that a little white lie here and there is important to keep civilization afloat. Wilson might not vocally defend Maggie and her truth-telling strategy, but it is implied in this scene that he agrees with her, i.e. Wilson literally takes Maggie’s position.

Translation: House has been lying about his sexuality for decades; it doesn’t feel weird to him not to be telling the truth. It’s quite the opposite: If House suddenly were to tell the truth, his reality, his whole rigorously maintained identity, his carefully cultivated straight persona would come tumbling down. He is used to lying.

Wilson, on the other hand, it is at least implied here, defends Maggie and her absolute truth-telling approach to life…

…except…

…well, of course, it turns out, at the end of the episode, that Maggie hasn’t actually been telling the truth about everything. She has been brutally honest about a lot of things, even about her love life and her multiple lovers (the same way Wilson can’t exactly lie about the fact that he’s a triple divorcé who keeps trying and failing at the relationship game with his various girlfriends). So, Maggie has been truthful, and her love life is a thing of record. But there is this one thing, the one and only thing nobody knows about, the thing we only find out at the very end of the story. It’s that one crucial piece of information she is withholding from her daughter. (Just like there is this one thing in Wilson’s life, ahem, the one and only thing that nobody knows about him: He’s in love with his best friend, but being, like, 99.9 % straight or something makes it very hard for him to talk about that. Just like it’s hard for a 99.9 % truthful Maggie to talk about that one big, fat lie in her life.)

Note that this little scene is specifically set at the hospital cafeteria again. (Of course, it is. It’s where people consume metaphorical ‘food’, after all.)

Note also that it ends with Wilson saying, “When you care about someone…” And House interrupting him, “...you lie to them.”

Yeah, they care about each other. And they both keep lying to each other, too.

Then (and I think every last viewer watching this episode, straight or not, has caught the next two lines) House first adds, “You pretend that their constant, ponderous musings are interesting…”

Well, you just know that this is House talking about himself. He is the one on this show who is constantly pondering something and ranting about it to Wilson. And he thinks Wilson is just pretending when he is listening. He thinks Wilson doesn’t find him interesting anymore. (Awww. My poor heart!) When in reality House is probably the most interesting person in Wilson’s life. House is scared that Wilson will just lose interest. Because to House, it seems that that’s the only reason anyone would ever like to hang out with him: He’s a genius; he’s brilliant. He’s interesting. Ergo: The only reason why Wilson wants to spend time with him is because he finds the things House has to say interesting. And if Wilson loses interest in those things, if House isn’t as original anymore as he once was, then Wilson will leave him. That’s House’s reasoning. Poor House.

Then House adds, “You tell them that they’re not losing their boyish good looks…” as he literally stares at Wilson’s hair.

Like…that’s literally like a boy in the schoolyard playground pulling on some girl’s ponytails because he finds her attractive. Passive-aggressive way of dealing with attraction and all that. (Also…awww! House thinks of Wilson in terms of ‘boyish good looks’! I get it, House, I totally get it. My heart flips for the polite, kind, quiet and intelligent type with good hair and nice cheekbones, too.)

So, what House is saying here is essentially, “I’m scared that one day you won’t find the things I have to say interesting anymore…because that’s clearly the only reason you hang out with me. Also…God, you’re so handsome! But I can’t exactly tell you that, so I’m going to offend you instead.”

House just packages all of that in a dumb and offensive joke.

Then Wilson says, “I stand corrected.” I.e. Wilson basically takes back his earlier statement that not lying and always telling the truth (like Maggie does) is a good idea. He corrects himself here.

Then Wilson tells House, “It’s been a real pleasure chatting with you.” This is irony. After correcting his earlier defence of truthfulness, Wilson is now lying.

The implication here is the same: Like Maggie, Wilson tells the truth 99.9 percent of the time…until he doesn’t.

There’s another hint in the text that we’re supposed to read Maggie as Wilson and her daughter Jane as House, though:

Remember that conversation Kutner and Thirteen were having in the hospital hallway as Kutner argued in favour of an ever-more-expensive Secret Santa gift (for House)?

Kutner was saying something about a key there, too, wasn’t he?

This is one of the more ridiculous plot points of this show: You see, Doctor House routinely forces his team to break into the homes of his patients. That’s actually part of the job description: You join his team, you’ve gotta learn how to jimmy a lock.

House is convinced that everybody lies and that his patients will never tell him the truth about whatever drugs they might have taken or whatever toxins might be hidden in their homes. So, he just breaks into their homes and checks for himself. Or rather he has his team do it for him. (Fiction, as you can clearly see here, is not reality. Because, in real life, no doctor would ever consider doing such a thing…I hope.)

In short, House’s team burgling the homes of his poor unsuspecting patients while they’re in hospital is a routine plotline on this show.

But suddenly something unusual happens: The patient House is treating in this episode (Maggie) never lies. She is so truthful, in fact, that Kutner doesn’t have to break into her home and can just ask her for her key.

Thirteen argues that the key is proof Maggie doesn’t have anything to hide. Kutner however says that the key is proof he didn’t do exactly what House told him to do (break into her home).

Ooh, you can see how this is great, right?

Maggie serves as a mirror for Wilson. Maggie just hands over her keys to Kutner (House’s homosexual ‘side’), and Kutner doesn’t even have to break in. That’s how open she (Wilson) is to Kutner (House’s homosexual urges and desires). All Kutner has to do is ask for her key.

Oh, man.

Thirteen (House’s overall sexual orientation) argues that the key is proof Maggie (Wilson) doesn’t have anything to hide in the first place; Wilson is totally truthful about his entirely, absolutely, completely straighter-than-straight heterosexual orientation. Yep.

Kutner doesn’t seem to agree with this idea. The only thing the key proves, he argues, is that he (House’s homosexual ‘side’) isn’t doing as he is told. House’s homosexual urges and desires aren’t doing as they’re told. And Wilson is actually open to an, ahem, intrusion by House’s homosexual ‘side’.

All House has to do (literally) is ask, and he will be given the key to Wilson…by Wilson himself.

Oof.

Thirteen (House’s overall sexual orientation) is the sceptical one here. She (read: House’s sexuality) doesn’t think the key means Wilson is open to anything; she just thinks the key means Wilson hasn’t got anything to hide and is really as boringly straight as he claims. And she doesn’t think a super-expensive ‘present’ by Kutner (House’s homosexual ‘side’) for House makes any sense. So, no investing in a great love story. It’s not worth it.

So, this whole hallway conversation between none other than Thirteen and Kutner intertwines this topic of Maggie’s keys with the topic of Kutner wanting to buy a much more expensive Secret Santa gift (for House).

This is some seriously brilliant subtext right there. Did you just see how the writer linked these two themes here?

I can’t retell the whole episode now, obviously. (Go watch it if you’re interested; it’s really worth it.) But suffice it to say that all of Maggie’s symptoms are interesting and subtextually relevant. And if you decide to give this episode a try, keep an eye on the three fellows, Thirteen, Taub and Kutner, and pay attention to who finds out what and who presents what hypothesis about the patient. It’s really fascinating to keep track of these things.

The key element in this episode is the (past) double mastectomy which Maggie underwent voluntarily to stop any risk of a future, potential breast cancer from ever becoming a possibility.

Think of what this means, for a second: For a lot of people, breasts are the definition of female beauty and, well, physical femininity.

Now, you could, of course, argue that femininity and homosexuality are two entirely different things, and you would be absolutely right about that, dear reader.

Just because a man is capable of experiencing same-sex love and desire doesn’t mean he has to be a very feminine guy. He can be, of course. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! But not all gay or bisexual men are feminine by definition.

But then, this is subtext. A writer has to find some way to communicate an idea to you, the viewer. And that idea often comes packaged in a sort of subtextual shorthand that we all understand.

Not all gay people are left-handed, but when you try to come up with a metaphor and are therefore looking for a good analogy, you might decide to write a story about a lefty being discriminated against by a right-handed majority, which even tries to ‘re-educate’ said lefty and change his or her innate ‘handedness’ – to no avail. The handedness would, of course, be a metaphor here, and the whole story would be a parable about homosexuality. Get it?

Writers just routinely use one thing to stand in for another in order to employ symbolism effectively and in such a way that anyone who has eyes to see can understand it.

So, here in this story we get femininity (breast tissue) as a stand-in for homosexual desire.

Maggie (Wilson) cut it out. All of it.

…or so she thinks. (Or so Wilson thinks.)

Maggie got rid of it not because there was something there, but because this breast tissue was ‘dangerous’ and ‘risky’ to her. She didn’t want to have to deal with something so incredibly destructive and potentially horrible.

This tells us a lot about Wilson. (Because remember: Maggie is just a mirror character. In the script, she doesn’t exist as a character in her own right. Her sole function is to tell us things about one of the main protagonists – in this episode, probably Wilson.)

Wilson got rid of every last bit of this…something, this something he perceived as too feminine, too soft, too gentle, too vulnerable about himself. He didn’t want it. It was too risky. It could have undermined his whole identity.

There was something there, just underneath the surface of this well-put-together, well-adjusted, seemingly totally straight guy whom the girls all kept chasing. Something dangerous and unexpected. Something perilous to his self-perception as a heterosexual male. Something that had at least the potential to respond to another man, to the sound of a male voice, to a man’s laugh, to the sparkle in his blue eyes…

And Wilson cut it out. This thing. This risky, dangerous, destructive, soft, vulnerable, seemingly feminine thing. He got rid of it. Completely. (Or so he thought.)

There’s another interesting detail in the subtext here, too: Remember how Maggie has told her daughter about the sex stuff…about her favourite position in bed?

As it turns out, Maggie likes to lie on her stomach during sex, facing away from her lover du jour, so he can’t see the scars on her chest.

I don’t think the subtext about Wilson is literally about the position described here. I think this is actually truly heartbreaking: Wilson hides this other side of himself; he hides the scars his ripping out of this ‘soft, feminine thing’ has left on him. And never does he hide those ‘scars’ more strenuously than during his sexual encounters with women. Never does he hide them more than when he has to bare himself, his body and soul, in front of another human being and just be himself…which he obviously can’t.

It’s only towards the end of the episode, after many a trial and error, that House finally works it all out, puts it all together and is able to perform his ‘Christmas miracle’, as he puts it, literally breaking into song:

House tells us that initially, in an embryo, breast tissue isn’t just located in the chest area. It’s everywhere, plastered all over the embryo’s body.

Read: When you’re born, your sexual orientation is already there. And it’s everywhere. Not just in one designated area. A bisexual person isn’t just bisexual with one half of their personality, after all. They’re bisexual ‘all over’, so to speak. Their brain, their personality, their personhood is a chequerboard of one and the other. It’s here; it’s there…it’s everywhere.

Wilson’s more ‘feminine’ side, this softer side that had the potential to feel same-sex love and desire, was everywhere.

When Wilson thought he cut ‘that thing’ out, he only thought he had got rid of it. (This probably happened when he was younger. He was scared it could become ‘dangerous’, it would metastasize and become a ‘risk’ to his straight persona.)

In reality, there was still breast tissue left in Maggie. It was where it had always been (she just didn’t know it); it was in the hollow of her knee, i.e. in her leg.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, then I don’t need to tell you about the ‘leg’ metaphor. But just to make sure you know what I’m talking about here: In fiction, legs are very often (but not exclusively) used as metaphors for sexuality more broadly or the phallus more specifically.

The metaphorical ‘breast tissue’ (i.e. that softer side that Wilson had thought he had cut out entirely) had accumulated in Maggie’s leg (ahem…we can say in Wilson’s sexuality or be frank and just say penis), i.e. Wilson is physically reacting to another man in exactly that forbidden way that he had thought he had completely cut out; Wilson is attracted to that guy.

Well, and this is the part where everyone who’s ever watched this episode usually goes, “Ewwww!” (You have been warned. But hey, at least you don’t have to watch it.)

Because at this point, House takes a syringe, gets some breast milk out of the breast tissue that’s hidden in Maggie’s leg and then proceeds to just spray said breast milk (straight out of the syringe) into Jane’s mouth!

And that’s how he proves his theory: It is indeed breast milk.

Do I need to point out the whole Maggie=Wilson, Jane=House, leg=penis thing again? Do we need to talk about the, ahem, white fluid that comes out of Maggie’s, uhm, ‘leg’ and is then sprayed straight into Jane’s mouth?

Yeaaaaah. Really.

They really did that.

Keep in mind that House could have easily taken a sample of that breast milk to have it chemically tested, instead of randomly giving it to Jane. But he does, in fact, give it to Jane, and it’s specifically in the mouth that he squirts it.

(And let’s not even talk about the fact that he could have found that hidden deposit of breast tissue in virtually any other body part of Maggie’s. The crook of her arm, say. But no, it had to be the leg!)

So, we get this very random behaviour for no textual reason whatsoever.

That’s because the subtext is sexually loaded like whoa, and the writers didn’t want to disclose that, but it’s still clearly there.

Jane, by the way, pretty much goes, “Ew!” the moment her mother’s breast milk ends up on her lips, which gives you at least one of the reasons why Wilson doesn’t allow himself to say anything or act on his feelings for his best friend: He’s scared House would go, “Ew!” at the suggestion that they enact exactly what the show so cleverly hides in the subtext here and what I have just disclosed to you.

By the way, House also tells Jane that she’s had ‘it’ (breast milk) before. Jane is House, remember?

Tells you something about House’s sexual past right there, doesn’t it? He’s done that at least once before. He’s given some guy a blowjob.

House might say that everybody lies, but please remember that the subtext, dear friends, never lies. Ever.

Anyway…

If, after decoding the sexual subtext of ‘Young Royals’, you ever thought, “Now I’ve seen it all!”...Nope, you haven’t! You really, really haven’t.

Here’s a show that uses breast milk as a metaphor for sperm.

You’re welcome. Now you’ve seen it all!

Although…uhm…well, let’s just say this show has a lot of other brilliant sexual subtext, too, okay?

So, what’s that big capital-letter Secret™ Maggie is keeping from her daughter, then? If Maggie has sworn to herself never to lie to her daughter (not even about her boyfriends and hookups), what is that one big exception, that one big thing she has been withholding from her?

Maggie, the woman who pretends to be truthful 100 percent of the time, has actually kept one crucial detail from her daughter:

It’s the fact that Jane is not her daughter at all.

What Jane doesn’t know and hasn’t even worked out at this point is the fact that she is adopted.

Jane is House, remember?

House, too, has a similar backstory with his father, who wasn’t really his biological father either (a fact that House, who was obviously a very precocious and bright kid, textually, i.e. canonically worked out on his own).

But I don’t even think that’s the main point here. The main point is: Maggie pretends that she and Jane have a type of relationship with each other (biological mother-daughter relationship) that they simply don’t have. Theirs is a different relationship (adoptive mother-adopted daughter relationship).

This is what’s actually going on here: Wilson is playing a part. He is pretending that what is going on between him and House is a certain type of relationship (friendship) when in reality it has been a different relationship from its very inception (love).

Maggie and Jane have had a different relationship right from the start.

Wilson and House, too, have had a different relationship right from the moment they met.

The reason why this hasn’t really come out yet…is Wilson. The 100 percent (or rather 99.9 percent) honest, genuine, polite, well-adjusted, well-behaved, totally straight guy who keeps marrying woman after woman and whose marriages all keep inevitably failing. (These marriages keep failing because of House. Textually! It’s just that the subtext suggests this isn’t just because House keeps getting on the nerves of Wilson’s many wives; it’s because Wilson is actually in love with his best friend.) Wilson is keeping something from House. One tiny and yet crucial detail.

Wanna know what the medical puzzle of Maggie and her daughter culminates in at the very end of the episode?

Maggie tells Jane, “I love you.”

This is what the whole episode was all about, and it’s also the best subtextual evidence on this show you will ever get that…

…Wilson loves House.

And do you want to know how Jane (House) reacts to this declaration of love, too?

Maggie (Wilson) says, “I love you.” And Jane (House) replies, “I know.”

Because this is what this whole episode was all about: House working it out, House trying to understand what’s going on with Wilson.

House knows.

He knows now.

He knows Wilson is in love with him.

(Please send Pamela Davis that big, big gift basket, okay?)

Can you read this whole story the other way around, too, with Maggie mirroring House and Jane mirroring Wilson? Totally. No problem. They are both doing it to each other, after all.

And now remember what I told you when I said that the cold open of this episode gives us Jane rock-climbing and Maggie holding the rope: We don’t immediately know who is going to be the patient in this episode. We think it might be Jane when she slips and falls. It’s only afterwards that we find out it’s Maggie who’s got the problem. It’s her case we’re going to be focusing on in this episode. The cold open pulls this very deliberate switcheroo on us.

That’s no coincidence. And it’s not just smoke and mirrors.

This is the writer’s sly way of telling us that House and Wilson are, in a sense, interchangeable here: They both fell in love with their best friend. They both have a carefully cultivated straight persona with many, many, many heterosexual encounters to show for. They both keep something hidden from the world, themselves and their best friend.

The cold open is presented in this way because we’re dealing with one of those cases where it’s very much mutual and their problem is exactly the same. The mirrors are, in a sense, interchangeable.

And this is the point where I should probably tell you that Maggie and Jane’s surname is…Archer.

As in the blind archer, i.e. Cupid.

Both Wilson and House are the archer and the unwilling ‘victim’ that was unwittingly hit by an arrow.

And that in an episode entitled ‘It’s a Wonderful Lie’, a reference to that other famous Christmas movie ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ (oh, dang, I could have written about that one; oh, well…somehow I suspect you’re not angry with me for getting this ‘House M.D.’ Christmas episode instead.)

In case you now go, “Well, how is this exactly a Christmassy thing, tvmicroscope? Isn’t it all pretty sad? After all, House orders his team to surgically remove the offending breast tissue from Maggie’s leg and give her chemotherapy afterwards, just to nuke that thing. All the potential, the ambiguity of Wilson and House’s relationship gets cut out and removed, so that only an A-OK straight dude-bro relationship remains in the end,” in case you complain that this is a pretty dreary ending to what is supposed to be a cheerful, jolly Christmas post, let me point something out:

The show ‘House M.D.’ might be ridiculous from time to time, and it’s certainly not lacking in any ludicrous and/or stupid plotlines (God no! there’s a lot of crap to be found on this show), but the whole story, from beginning to end, is entirely about House and Wilson’s relationship.

It literally starts, in the very first episode (episode one of season one), with the subtextual question, “Who are we to each other?”

And the very last episode of the show (episode 22 of the final season, i.e. season eight), resoundingly answers that question: These two men are the love of each other’s life.

Of all the shows that I have ever watched, ‘House M.D.’ undoubtedly is the one show where the subtext diverges from its own text further than on any other show.

If you’ve watched it all, then you know that it ends in a (textual) tragedy. This is quite fascinating because barely anybody seems to get that subtextually (!) it ends in an absolute triumph and the fulfilment and consummation of that hidden relationship.

The show never pulls that hidden love story out of the subtext, but subtextually these two characters are implied to become an item at the end of the story…in very strong subtextual terms.

I would need another twenty blog posts in order to explain this, but suffice it to say that dying…isn’t actually dying on this show. Death is a metaphor. Just like everything else.

Hence something that is a tragedy in the text becomes a subtextual happy ending.

The final episode of this show is entitled ‘Everybody dies’ (which doesn’t just incidentally rhyme with House’s heraldic motto ‘everybody lies’; it’s subtextually the opposite of it, too).

It’s something most viewers never realize, but it’s as plain as that nose on House’s face that he keeps shoving in Wilson’s business: These two become a thing at the end. The thing. Each other’s everything. Which is what the show has been asking of them since episode one of season one.

Now, I get that this would be a bit of an ostentatious ending for today’s Christmas post.

You came here for a good laugh, after all. And here I keep throwing the tearjerker-tissue moments at you.

So, by all means, let’s end this on a few classics. Three classics, to be precise. (In keeping with our three-kings-three-gifts theme today.)

First, since we’ve started this little Christmas post by looking at a Secret Santa scene, let’s take a look at what happens when House gets a Christmas gift from somebody else:

Take a look at this very brief scene here, please.

This scene is a thing of beauty, of course. We get two other references to Sherlock Holmes here. And yet, while everyone who has ever watched this scene immediately picks up on the fact that Joseph Bell, the real-life 19^th-century surgeon, was the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes creation and that Irene Adler is a character in the Sherlock Holmes stories who is described as ‘the one’, the one woman Sherlock Holmes felt a connection with, so, while everyone gets these two little references…nobody ever seems to get the actual point of this scene:

Wilson first builds up the (totally fictional) story of Irene Adler (a woman he has just made up out of thin air) and then…when he bursts Taub’s and Kutner’s bubble, it turns out that he (Wilson) is the one who actually gave House the present.

Wilson literally puts himself in Irene Adler’s place here.

He makes up a mirror character for himself!

And the writers tell us a lot here (or rather Wilson tells us what he wants to be true):

That House fell for Irene (i.e. that House fell for Wilson). That she (read: Wilson) was the one who got away. That it happened at Christmas (because, in fiction, the Christmas season is usually just fraught with subtextual love stories)...and that Wilson had never seen House so obsessed with anybody else before (oh, yeah, here you get Wilson’s desires, loud and clear: He wants House to be obsessed with him…and in all honesty, House is! He really, really is.)

And if there’s one moment that made my heart skip a beat on my first watch (because, hey, I’m a total sap in case you didn’t notice), it was the fact that the note attached to the present textually, i.e. canonically reads, ‘Greg, made me think of you.’

Obviously, the scene first plays with the idea that this note was written by Irene Adler. But it wasn’t. Irene isn’t real in this fictional universe. She is literally a mirror character Wilson made up on the spot – to screw with Taub and Kutner. (It’s just that she is implied to be a mirror character for him, Wilson, instead.)

The present, the incredibly rare and unusual book, is from Wilson. The note is from Wilson, too. Wilson literally tells us he wrote the note himself.

Now, if you’ve watched this show, then you know that for eight very, very, very long seasons Wilson calls House by his surname only: House…and that House calls Wilson Wilson.

This is in keeping with your typical ‘guy speak’. I’m sorry, but it is what it is.

Guys often call their male buddies by their surnames. That’s a fact of life. (And sometimes they even call the guy they are married to by his surname, just to mess with him. It’s only when they call him by his first and last name that he knows he’s in trouble…and vice versa.)

So, to Wilson, House is always…House. That’s all he ever calls him.

Except here, it seems, in a moment where Wilson (however cleverly hidden) talks about his desires to be desired by House, to have House obsess over him, to have House fall for him deeply. It’s a strangely intimate moment, even though it’s hidden in the subtext.

And apparently, Wilson calls House ‘Greg’ in this specific context. And straight-up tells him he was thinking of him…

Note that it’s specifically Taub and Kutner standing there in Wilson’s office interrogating him. We have already identified Taub as an allegorical character representing House’s heterosexual ‘side’, and Kutner as his allegorical counterpart representing House’s homosexual ‘side’.

So, the two ‘halves’ of House’s sexuality are interrogating Wilson. Niiiiice.

And it’s specifically Kutner (House’s homosexual ‘half’) who has picked up on Wilson’s note, the note attached to the present, ‘Greg, made me think of you.’

And it’s specifically Taub (House’s heterosexual ‘side’) who steps up closer to Wilson’s desk when Wilson starts spinning his yarn about what turns out to be a fictional woman House was allegedly obsessed with.

Should we mention the fact that it’s Kutner’s pager (or phone?) that goes off just as Wilson says the words, “It’s possible a secret admirer gave House the same book I gave him last Christmas…” I’m going to assume all pagers and phones fall into the same ‘phone’ metaphor category here. Right?

And it’s specifically Kutner’s pager/phone that reacts at this point…

This whole scene is just brilliant.

Then we get House and Wilson in the cafeteria (of all places!) and House steals Wilson’s food. Again. (‘Food’ metaphor, it’s nice to see you, dear friend.)

And what is this whole little scene actually all about?

House had this present, this incredibly precious and rare present, for a whole year and didn’t even care to open it!

Read: House has had Wilson’s love for a very, very long time. He just hasn’t opened the present yet. He doesn’t know what’s inside. He just doesn’t get it…yet.

Well, but since in this scene, House tells us that he eventually did open it, we know that this foreshadows at least the subtextual ending of the show: House will open Wilson’s ‘present’…eventually.

And yes, now we can talk about the thing everyone always mentions about this scene: House asking, “Have you checked the prices for firemen strippers recently,” and Wilson deadpanning (completely unfazed), “Yes.”

That little exchange is the icing on the cake, of course.

If they had wanted to keep this at least a little ambiguous, the writers could have had House say ‘firefighter strippers’. Firefighters are, at least in theory, gender neutral. Theoretically, there ought to be at least a few female firefighters here and there, albeit not that many.

But ‘firemen strippers’ is really completely unambiguous. This means men. Nothing else.

House is really joking that the whole publicly-fawning-over-Wilson’s-present thing is a redirection technique employed to avoid compulsively looking at the way well-muscled men strip. And Wilson is really completely unfazed by this and knows exactly what the naked men part is all about.

Everyone caught this little exchange, I think.

But still, isn’t this detail much more delightful and delicious once you know about the rest of the subtext in this scene?

I’d always recommend deciphering the structural subtext (mirror characters, metaphors, etc.) first and only then looking at the details that might potentially support the subtext (jokes, props, song lyrics, etc.).

Also, note how House is literally equating gift-giving with having sex during their conversation in the cafeteria. (He literally discloses the metaphor when he talks about ‘Mrs Moron’.) Ergo: Wilson’s gift that remained unopened for so long is, in fact, a silent offer to have sex. Ka-ching!

Okay, I’ve promised you three classics. This was the first one. Here comes the second scene. And this is really one of the more hilarious classics:

Wilson on speed.

Please do yourself a favour and watch it…now.

House does something very unethical (and totally in character) and doses Wilson’s coffee with amphetamines, i.e. he drugs Wilson!

While everyone who’s ever watched this scene has probably laughed out loud at the chaos that ensues once House manages to drug Wilson, I hope you, dear reader, picked up on something else here, as well:

Wilson is desperately trying to stick a label on a medical file and can’t seem to be able to get it straight. Foreman sees this and comments, “Pretty sure the label is straight.”

You do get this, right?

Right?

It’s such a clever and yet obvious joke.

Wilson has a label. Many people have a label. (Wilhelm on ‘Young Royals’ doesn’t have a label; he is unlabelled. Most people do have a label, though. Get it?)

You just have to read the sentence with a tiny bit of a different inflection:

I’m pretty sure the label is…‘straight’.

Well, and here comes the kicker: The label is obviously not straight in that scene. You can see that with your own eyes. This supposedly straight label isn’t even sticking properly. Oh, boy.

Wilson, the triple divorcé, Mr Nice-Polite-Tall-Dark-Handsome-Guy that all the women at the hospital are swooning over, cannot seem to get his own label to straighten out. It’s just not working anymore. He keeps failing again and again and again. He is completely desperate. But it just won’t stick the way it’s supposed to: in a straight way.

And who is to blame for this?

It’s literally in the video!

House!

House ‘doses’ Wilson, i.e. House has an effect on Wilson. What House does to Wilson causes Wilson to be all jittery-fluttery-heartackey. Right?

House is the reason why all of a sudden Wilson, who has never had this kind of problem before, can’t seem to get his label straight anymore.

And all of this label-straightening-and-failing-at-it thing is happening, as Wilson is literally talking to Foreman about symbolism. I mean…this is too much for my subtext-loving heart. Really.

So, House giving Wilson a jittery-fluttery-butterfly-in-the-stomach kinda feeling makes it impossible for Wilson to keep his label ‘straight’ anymore. And the same jittery-heart-poundy feeling is responsible for Wilson being unable to touch breasts anymore in the way he’s actually supposed to touch them.

Textually, this is presented as a medical situation (a breast exam), but subtextually this is obviously about all-heterosexual-heartthrob-Wilson suddenly being unable to touch the ladies in his private life in the way they’re supposed to be touched. It’s that thing, that certain something that House has given him, that makes that suddenly impossible for Wilson.

Wilson tries to overcompensate by flirting with a female patient (again this codes for the women in his private life)…in a really bad and obnoxious way (he literally winks at her). He is desperately overcompensating here. And it’s again that jittery-fluttery thing that House has given him that makes him do that. (This seems to be pretty solid evidence for the fact that not only was House the reason for Wilson’s three marriages failing, but House was also the reason why the marriages happened in the first place: Wilson was overcompensating, desperately flirting with women to get over that strange, strange feeling House was giving him.)

And then Wilson’s heart is so affected by that ‘thing’ House has given him that it’s racing like crazy. Wilson’s heart almost gives out because of House.

Yeah.

Brilliant subtext.

The whole thing has a more serious meaning, too: Wilson as we find out then is, in fact, depressed. (What do you want to bet that his depression has something to do with the fact that his marriages keep failing because he has feelings for his best friend that he cannot express? Poor Wilson. He even literally tells us as much. He says, “It’s personal.” And he points at House and explicitly says, “This is why I take them,” meaning the antidepressants.)

Anyway…so here comes the third classic, just to round out the picture. And this one isn’t so much about subtext; it’s straight-up text.

But I have to admit that I mainly chose it because House plays the piano in it.

And what would a Christmas post like this post here today be without ‘Silent Night’?

So, please accept a video clip of Doctor House playing ‘Silent Night’ for you. (Hugh Laurie plays the piano himself on this show, by the way. And in case you don’t know it, Hugh Laurie has two jazz piano albums to his name. He isn’t exactly a formidable, world-class jazz pianist; you can actually hear that his technique isn’t always on point and that he’s largely self-taught. But that doesn’t take away from the charm and authenticity of his music; both albums radiate a great joy and love for music, and did I mention that he sings, too? So, yeah, they’re good clean fun.)

This time Wilson and House are, in fact, spending Christmas Eve together, eating takeaway in the best possible Christmas-traditiony way a Jew and an atheist can. Laughing and being jolly.

Well, and as for the text…Wilson literally tells us that he’d rather spend time with House than with his wife (it’s an earlier season, so he is still married to one of the women who will later become his ex-wife; the marriage is at this point already failing). Wilson lies to her in order to spend Christmas Eve with the friend who means so much more to him.

So, here we go:

‘Silent Night’ by Hugh Laurie. Or rather Doctor Gregory House.

This should probably lead us to our final ruminations:

Why are all of these actually Christmas episodes?

Why is the episode we discussed today, the one about Maggie and Jane and the breast milk and the Secret Santa thing with Taub, Kutner and Thirteen bringing House their three presents…why is that one set specifically at this time of year?

Why Christmas?

Christmas episodes are very, very often about love. And that’s literally written into this holiday, of course.

After all, Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the one they believe is the Messiah who was born to save mankind.

So, the idea of birth, of something new being born, being brought into this world, this idea is always resonating with us, deep down, when we are confronted with a Christmas-themed story – whether we are Christians ourselves or not doesn’t really matter in this context because this is something that happens on a subconscious level just through cultural exposure alone.

A new thing comes. A good thing. It’s being born. It’s being brought into this world. And this new thing has the potential to change everything, to save everyone, to deliver people from pain, to take away their suffering…

…that’s the melody that’s playing at the back of our minds (unbeknownst to us, of course).

A romantic relationship between House and Wilson would indeed end a lot of suffering; it would mark a new dawn, a new era. Alas, these two are really making us wait when it comes to this.

And even when they finally get there…it’s only in the subtext (in the show’s final season). Textually, virtually every viewer who has ever watched this show will think it’s a tragedy or that the show’s ending is at least bittersweet. (Pssst. You’ve heard it here first: It’s neither a tragedy nor does it have a bittersweet ending. That’s just the text. The subtext of this show diverges from the text quite dramatically because death is a metaphor on this show. Pass it on.)

So, what is it about that moose-on-a-Jew moment? What has this got to do with Christmas? (I did promise you we would get there eventually, didn’t I?)

Is it really just a carefree let’s-celebrate-whatever-holiday-there-is moment? Is this about casually embracing anything where there’s food and people and laughter and joy, no matter who or what you are? In short, is this about tvmicroscope’s favourite approach to virtually any holiday ever?

I did think so for quite a while, but I don’t anymore. It took me a while to decipher this subtext but once I did…so much on this show suddenly started to make sense and just clicked into place.

You see, James Wilson, on this show, is Jewish.

Why?

Doctor Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories isn’t. So, that’s your first hint that the screenwriters specifically created a certain background for this character, James Wilson, when they came up with him. This is clearly deliberate.

I think that Judaism acts as a metaphor on this show. It’s a marker. And it marks characters out as…straight.

Being Jewish acts as this big, bold arrow pointing towards the word heterosexual.

Look…Lisa Cuddy, who is not only House’s boss at the hospital but also his other perennial love interest on this show, is Jewish. That’s because she is his straight love interest.

House is bisexual. He is drawn to women, too. And Cuddy is a woman. Subtextually, her Jewishness is the way we are being told that she is the love interest for that side of House.

Taub is Jewish, too. Because Taub is an allegorical representation of House’s heterosexual ‘side’.

When House is dating Cuddy in one of the later seasons, the writers specifically highlight the fact that Cuddy’s mother wants House to convert to Judaism. Subtextual translation: Only a truly, fully heterosexual man is allowed to date my daughter.

Being Jewish is clearly a metaphor here.

So, here comes the interesting question: Why is Wilson Jewish, then?

Wilson is House’s same-sex love interest. At first glance, this doesn’t seem to make any sense. What happened to our nice and well-established pattern above?

Why did the writers decide to make him Jewish, too? And why, oh, why is House constantly going on and on and on about Wilson’s Jewishness?

It’s because Wilson is that (seemingly) straight man. He’s the heterosexual dude-bro friend that House has.

But (and here comes the kicker) Wilson himself keeps subtly signalling to House that he’s actually more flexible on the whole Jewishness angle than House might expect. Do you understand what that means?

Lisa Cuddy unflinchingly has a bat mitzvah for her daughter. Her Judaism matters to her. It’s real. It’s authentic. Her mother wants House to convert to Judaism.

Wilson is different. Wilson keeps mumbling something vague about the whole thing that sounds pretty ambiguous. And that ambiguity involves things like…actually not being disinclined to celebrate Christmas from time to time, a.k.a. do that other thing that’s not really a Jewish thing at all. (You understand?)

Wilson would be perfectly fine with hanging up his dreidel on a Christmas tree, he tells us on one such occasion (read: Wilson would be perfectly fine with literally suspending his heterosexuality for a bit…for the other thing, the thing involving a tree trunk. Hee…).

The thing that actually matters to Wilson is what he tells us in the scene above: “It’s food. It’s people.”

It’s the people who count. (I.e. the person!)

Read: When Wilson is with the right person, his Jewishness (i.e. his heterosexuality) wouldn’t matter all that much. People count. Labels don’t.

What counts to Wilson is the, ahem, food. And you all know about the ‘food’ metaphor, right?

Wilson is much more flexible on the whole thing than House suspects. And House should stop pestering him about being Jewish because actually…Wilson would suspend all of that…for House. (This is literally what he keeps telling House over and over and over again.) Wilson’s Jewishness is subject to their negotiations (if only House would negotiate, i.e. talk to him!), and Wilson is more than willing to leave that label by the wayside and just do whatever feels right. With the right people. And food.

Dear reader, I feel this is a good point to leave you to your own musings. Don’t spend these holidays polishing a label you think defines you. Spend it with the people you love because that’s much more important. Spend it specifically with the one person you love. And with food (I say with a cheeky grin). Be merry for another six days at least. In fact, be merry throughout the whole new year of 2025, which, I hope, will be a good one, a happy one, a blessed one for you and your loved ones.

Now, pour yourself another glass, listen to some more music, enjoy sleeping in (unless a gaggle of children storm your bedroom every morning and use your bed and yourself as a trampoline). And whatever holiday you do or don’t celebrate, celebrate life first and foremost. Celebrate love.

Just…you know…don’t get a sword stuck in your head while you’re at it.

~fin~