Since tonight brought us the season finale of House, and since I blogged this show weekly in the first half of the season, I thought it would be only fitting to give you my thoughts on how it all ended and on how the season stacked up as a whole, especially compared to the other seasons.

When I blogged the show last year, I often talked about how the show was getting back on track after two years of relative mediocrity, and how after the questionable decision to remove the old team, the writers were finally finding ways to implement these new characters. I don't take any of that back. It's certainly true. The first half of season five was absolutely outstanding, and really got away from what made the third and fourth seasons mediocre and back to what made the first two seasons great. By 'first half,' I'm referring to everything that aired before December (eleven episodes), and by "what made the first two seasons great," I'm talking about interesting, mind-bending medical mysteries that serve as mirrors to the characters.

And that's what these first eleven episodes did well-they focused it on the characters, and let the medicine be a simple metaphor for what was going on inside the doctors. House himself has always been a well-established character, and continued to be one. The new team, on the other hand, was severely underdeveloped going into the fifth season. Of these three characters, Thirteen was given lots of attention during the first half of the year, and her character actually became pretty deep and interesting. Taub was developed, and turned out to be even more boring than he was when he was a blank slate. Kutner? They never did a damn thing with him. But as for Thirteen, anyway, she had some cool storylines in the first half of the season, especially in the episode Lucky Thirteen.

But the absolute best part of these first eleven episodes was private investigator Lucas Douglas, played by Michael Weston, whom House hired to spy on his team. Lucas and House had an instant chemistry that really made the series better. He disappeared suddenly and without warning; he was in a few great episodes, and then never appeared again, one of season five's flaws. I hope they get Lucas back onto the show at some point, because he was a very fun character.

For these first eleven episodes, I'd say the best two were the Wilson/House road trip that was Birthmarks (great, great character episode) and the very exciting Last Resort, where a man took House and some other doctors hostage. The worst episode from this period was undoubtedly Joy, a Cuddy-centric episode that flat out sucked, where no two plot threads meshed together well. Despite that blemish, the first half of the season was gold.

The second half of the season? Not so much.

But before I get to specific complaints, let me preface it with this. In late December, I broke my ankle, and was confined to the couch for a long, long time. During this time, I broke out the DVDs and watched (among other things) the first season of House, and noticed that even though season five had been good up to this point, it just didn't compare with the show's inaugural outing. The medicine wasn't any cooler in the first season. The writing wasn't better. What was it that made it so superior? Then it hit me: the characters. The dynamic of House and his team made the show dynamite, and by 'team,' I mean Foreman, Chase and Cameron. They were a great set of characters, and the chemistry on display in House's office was always on fire.

When season five returned to TV, I just found it flat and dull, and the main reason was the lack of the original team. Foreman was still on the team, but his character doesn't work at all without his original teammates. Chase and Cameron were barely on the show, and when they were, it felt like a forced cameo where they would do things out of character. I've tried really hard for the last two years to like the new team, but I inevitably came to the conclusion that they just suck as characters. Taub is boring, Kutner never did a damn thing, and no matter how much they developed Thirteen, she didn't stack up to a single member of the old team. The dynamic that made House so good in its first few years disappeared when Foreman, Chase and Cameron all quit at the end of year 3. It was the worst decision they've ever made.

I thought I'd get that out of the way now because it really does paint my whole perception of the fifth season. There's some great stuff throughout the year, but while I can like it, the way the cast has been broken up stops me from loving it, and it always will. From here on out in this review, I'll try not to complain about it again.

Anyway, when House returned in January for its second half of the season, it seemed like they were out of gas from the great first half. The first four episodes were either dull, lifeless, or stupid, and sometimes all three. The episode The Greater Good, the show's 100 th episode, was just a mess, which was sad for such a landmark event (Chase and Cameron weren't in it at all!). But then the show got back on track with the terrific outing The Softer Side, where House uses very hard drugs to fight his pain, and things just got better from there. The Social Contract and Here Kitty were fun outings as well. Then came Locked In, an episode told from the patient's point of view...mostly. This was a mostly fascinating episode, but when they broke out of Mos Def's POV to show the team doing team-stuff, it just felt boring, lifeless, and formulaic. Overall, though, a great hour of TV.

Then there was Simple Explanation, an episode that, while not the worst of the season, was easily one of the most insulting hours of TV I've ever watched. This is the one where Kutner killed himself; we didn't see it happen, we didn't find out why it happened. We were simply asked to accept it because in real life, that's usually the case with suicide. Alright, that's fair...were this a different show. House is not a show grounded in reality. It never has been. E.R. was a realistic show (for the first eight seasons or so), but House often ventures into ridiculous or unbelievable territory for the sake of entertainment.

And that's what it is; entertainment. And in entertainment, things need to have a reason; they need to have meaning. Kutner's death was thrown in there for the simple purpose of making a "Very Special Episode." You know, the kind where everyone is sad and dealing with heartbreak and it ends with a PSA about suicide. Insulting is the only word I can use to describe this episode. In the episode immediately following this, they barely mentioned Kutner, and during the differential diagnosis scenes, I didn't even notice he was gone. That's how bland and underdeveloped a character he was.

But after that dip in quality, the last four episodes proved to be pretty spectacular, especially when taken as a whole. Saviors, a curiously optimistic episode, was excellent, especially because it centered on Chase and Cameron. At the end of the episode, though, something very strange happened. House started seeing the series' single most annoying character, Amber Volakis, a.k.a. Cuththroat B****, who died in season four.

But here's the curious part: Anne Dudek wasn't playing Amber in this story arc. She was playing House, because she was his hallucination manifested to deal with stress. House Divided, the episode immediately following Saviors, centered on this idea. I hated this episode. With a passion. Mostly because House accepted that he was hallucinating and didn't seem to care; if House was that smart a person, he'd be freaked out. I can forgive this episode, though, because it set up Under My Skin, a phenomenal hour where Amber was much better utilized. House finally had to confront his dangerous Vicodin addiction in this episode, which was cool; he also hooked up with Cuddy.

This brings us to tonight, the finale, Both Sides Now. I think it might have been the best damn episode of the season. For this hour, the show returned to its roots. They were trying to solve a crazy medical mystery, House messed with Cuddy, and he helped a clinic patient (Carl Reiner in a brilliant guest role). But it didn't really feel like a season finale until the last ten minutes, where we found out that House had truly gone insane. The ending of Under My Skin, where Cuddy helped him detox Vicodin before they slept together, was all a hallucination. In truth, House spent the night popping pills. This was a great sequence, capped off by the best use of Amber in the show's history. It finally ended with House realizing that he had a truly serious problem, and decided to enter a mental facility.

So, how does season five stack up as a whole? Very well. There were some weak moments here and there, but overall it was quite strong. It did, however, have a few key problems. First and foremost, the new team continued to suck as characters, and when Chase and Cameron became more prominent later on, it just proved how bad a decision it was to make the new team. I can't help but imagine how cool the season five stories would have been with the original team in their original spot on the show. Second, House relied on its formula far too much this year, and the formula is starting to show signs of aging. It's just sort of boring at this point to see the same thing happen so much: House is wrong, House is right, House is wrong, House is right, characters talk about other characters and their flaws, and boom the episode is done. Finally, nothing had a lasting effect. Kutner's death was forgotten, they ignored Thirteen's Huntington's disease in the season's last half, and more. This has always been a problem with the show; the only permanent change was the team, and no one wanted that to happen.

However, there were some great story arcs this year that made up for all of that. I love where they went with Chase and Cameron, even though this should have happened with them on House's staff. Their wedding at the end of the season was a fun thing to have happen, and the stuff that came before it was cool as well.

But the show's biggest draw, and at this point one of the only, is Hugh Laurie, and the writer's haven't lost sight of what to do with him yet. House went on a crazy journey at the end, and his ultimate realization that he had a problem was incredibly powerful, considering who this character is. In fact, those final moments could have been a series finale. Chase and Cameron get their dream wedding; the whole cast is there, happy and oblivious to House's struggle. Only Wilson goes to help him, but doesn't walk into the mental hospital with him; he's only there to say goodbye. The show could end right there, with everyone else happy and House finally, definitively isolated within his own mind, which is what he always seemed to want.

But we don't want it to end that way, and there's another season coming. To be honest, I'm scared that the writers are just going to mess this opportunity up big time. Season six, for the first large block of episodes, should have no patients or medical mysteries. Not one. Zilch. It should be all about House finding himself in the mental hospital and learning what really matters. But undoubtedly, they'll breeze through this plot thread in one or two episodes before hitting the reset button, and by episode three, we'll be back to him at Plainsboro cracking cases yet again. Because that's what this show does; they did it in season three, when House's leg had healed from an experimental treatment. By episode three, they were done with it and never mentioned it again. It's frustrating, and it makes this show hard to stick by.

So overall, season five was a good year; in fact, I'd call it the best since the second. But House has become one of my least favorite shows I watch, primarily because of the Exodus of the original team. Still, as the last four episodes proved, there are still places to go. Hugh Laurie is just an amazing actor, and the character is fascinating, so I'm not ready to give up on it yet. But if they hit the reset button again next year, it will prove that they've given up on us.

And if that's the case, I'll just pretend that this year's finale was the series finale. Bleak? Yes, but incredibly fitting for a dark, ironic show.

Season Rating: B