I don't know if I'll post this anywhere, 'cause I don't know if there's anywhere it really belongs. It's about House/Cuddy, but fans of the pairing probably won't like it much.

I decided to watch all of Doris Egan's episodes (because all but one or two are my absolute favorite episodes of the series), the first of which is "Failure to Communicate." And I noticed there were some parallels to "Both Sides Now." (And kind of interesting in contrast to this meta I wrote.) Since I write essays compulsively, here I am.



The central theme to "Failure to Communicate" is right in its name. The patient suffers from aphasia and dysgraphia - his speech is a seemingly senseless jumble of words and he can't even write down what he's trying to communicate. House's team is unable to work together and can not contact him at one point in the episode. The patient's diagnosis was originally missed because his blood was tested with a computer rather than human eyes.

Along with the communication failure comes illusions and doomed relationships. The patient participated in thrill-seeking behavior and used recreational drugs, but attempts to suppress that part of himself in order to make his wife happy. He inevitably slid back, and then had to resort to lying to her to keep up the illusion of a happy marriage. And he nearly destroys himself in trying to be what his wife wants him to be by getting an experimental surgery that winds up not working.

And of course, it's all actually about House and Stacy:

House: "Two people who weren't meant to be together. Maybe they’ll get a happy ending just because they both want it so much."
Stacy: "Yeah, that's usually the way it works."
House: "He loved her enough to convince himself he could change."
Stacy: "But he couldn't, could he?"

"Both Sides Now" revisits communication failure - the patient's two hemispheres of his brain aren't communicating and one behaves particularly strangely. Chase and Cameron's last road bump on the way to their wedding is in not talking about why Cameron actually wants to keep her dead husband's sperm. House and Cuddy butt heads while each of them are actually talking about entirely different things. And, of course, House is hallucinating.

And again, illusions and doomed relationships come up. House's hallucinated happy world in which he's involved with Cuddy suggests he's in love with her, but the actual exploration of this hallucination suggests otherwise. In his hallucination, Cuddy is not Cuddy. He essentially erases Rachel - here, Cuddy overlooks his shitty remark about her child, and completely forgets about her (and the babysitter) so she can be with House and take care of him.

In the real world, Cuddy walked away after House's remark, and was still so angry the next day that she pulled House aside and told him they are boss and employee only. In reality, Cuddy draws the line at her child - House can insult Cuddy all he wants, but she considers it absolutely unacceptable to speak of her daughter the way he did. Her daughter comes first and Rachel is now a fundamental part of who Cuddy is. Rachel is never factored into any of House's decisions or fantasies. He wants someone in a Cuddy-shaped package, but not Cuddy herself.

This mirrors Cuddy's behavior in "The Softer Side" and much of the season, where she prefers House when he's not really House. What they actually want from each other is the convenience such a relationship presents. They wouldn't have to meet someone new, date, build up a relationship from scratch. It'd be so easy.

Except, well, it wouldn't be, because such a relationship between them is fundamentally flawed and would be doomed from the beginning. There are aspects of each other they can perhaps tolerate as boss and employee or two friends, but not in a romantic relationship that exists outside fantasies.

...But, but, they can try to change!

Stacy: "Our relationship is a like an addiction. It's like--"
House: "Really good drugs?"

And Cuddy is Vicodin? House's drugs may keep him functional and out of pain, but it's going to destroy him (particularly his liver) eventually. A relationship with Cuddy wouldn't necessarily lead to the same physical destruction as the "Failure to Communicate" patient, but it would require House to change so much he'd destroy who he really is. House and Cuddy's dance this season wasn't actually about their relationship.

It was about their longing for a relationship.