Spoilers ahead. You've been warned.

I'd be really mad about how things ended up in this finale if I were still a diehard House fan, but I simply can't get caught up in the ups and downs of this season anymore. However, I will give them credit for staying consistent until the bitter end. What's amusing is that the commercials touted a surprise twist and that House would never be the same again. And then the episode ended exactly the way it had to - with House (Hugh Laurie) violently lashing out at the people who care about him and avoiding the repercussions, especially Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), who we now know will not be returning next season. Whereas last season's finale gave us hope, this one only served to remind us that the guy can't change.

The patient of the week was an artist (Shohreh Aghdashloo from 24) willing to die for the her art. Against her wishes, her assistant/ex-lover prevented her from being burned alive during one of her performance pieces. She fainted at the scene and was rushed to the hospital. (At the time, she believed she had a terminal brain tumor, so dying in her studio was preferable to a hospital bed.) Under the guise of a "final art piece", she filmed House and his team as they struggled to diagnose her, until House realized it was all a game. She'd purposely omitted her previous diagnosis and misled the doctors with false symptoms, which intrigued House and drove him to discover the brain tumor, and then her actual illness, which was treatable. I wanted to like this story arc more than I did. Aghdashloo was very convincing as an externally stoic/internally frightened patient, but the arc turned a bit gimmicky once she decided to make it a "game". We've seen hundreds of episodes, and in House's mind, accurate diagnoses are all a game to him, so this was nothing new.

However, he did have a discussion with the patient that contained the only revealing nugget in the whole episode, and possibly the season. After she changed her mind and accepted a treatment that could possibly damage her future as an artist, yet would also reconnect her with her ex-lover, House yelled, "You don't have to depend on people who are just going to let you down in the end!" In that scene, we finally got to the heart of House's hurt and fear. Too bad he refused to have that same discussion with Cuddy.

While revealing, I think it's a bit of sour grapes for House to feel like Cuddy (or Wilson for that matter) has ever let him down, considering both colleagues still talk to him after what he's put them through. In that respect, I don't think this powerful monologue had the intended effect. Or it just proved how completely paranoid and unobservant he is.

Which leads us to the climax, in which House crashed a dinner date that Cuddy was having at her house, as in, literally crashed through her dining room picture window at top speed. (Why was House driving if Wilson stopped by to pick him up? Why am I asking irrelevant questions?) So now, along with prescription drug abuse and felony drug theft, we can also add domestic abuse and attempted murder to his rap sheet. House has always been able to defend his shortcomings because his ability to save lives trumps everything and his major crimes were usually directed at himself. This time he went too far and my suspension of disbelief to accept him as a protagonist has run its course. The producers seem to disagree: House went out a winner, relaxing on the beach under a bright sunny sky, safe from the police and safe in the knowledge that Cuddy won't be returning as the head of the hospital next year. Enjoy Season 8, House fans. I won't be joining you.

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