I rewatched all of House over the last few months and the finale hit me like a ton of bricks (I didn't remember anything of the last season), and basically I've been sitting on this Santa's-rucksack of emotions and disappointments I need to spill, so spill I shall. House is my favorite TV series of all time, after all.

If I had to describe the finale in one sentence, it would be as so: "A fine ending for a fine series, but House was a great series and deserved a much better finale." The real problem I have with the ending is that it doesn't resolve a single damn thing; it does a great job of offering a 'happy' ending, but as soon as the screen fades to black you realize how it felt like nothing actually ended. Though to elaborate on that, you need to look back on Season 8 overall.

Season 8 is regarded as the weakest season of the entire series, though nobody can quite agree on why. A lot of people point to Park and blame her for being annoying, but personally I actually really liked her; the problem with her, and everyone else that season, is that they had no conflicts whatsoever. The entire series relied upon House's interactions with everyone else, primarily focused on him picking at their weak spots; Chase's whoring out, Foreman's lack of emotions, Cameron's overemotions, Kutner's goofishness, Taub's infidelity, Thirteen's secrecy; all of the teams before were flawed in relevant ways, even Wilson and Cuddy were his targets at various points. But in Season 8, none of the team have any relevant dilemmas. Adams's only conflict is over her divorce, which is concluded by the time she's actually on the team. Taub has some arbitrary conflict with his exes, but the show even forgets about that for all but one episode. Park had a few dilemmas that could have been explored; the show pokes around with the idea of exploring her relationship status, but never commits to it.

Season 8 is boring because none of the characters have arcs. This inherently isn't a problem, but it does feel like the authors aren't quite so proficient at writing stories like that; Chase is the only one who manages to be a great character without having any real conflicts. (Incidentally, Park isn't written so well, just like Masters and Cameron before her; another character type the writers couldn't seem to master). This carries over into the finale, and the lack of resolution: without any conflicts to resolve, it's only natural that the ending lacks resolution. The only character with a satisfying conclusion is Chase, but they had to arbitrarily dig up a conflict from Season 1 at the last second to do it. Taub gets a 2 second clip providing "resolution" to his "conflict" with his exes, which everyone (the show included) thought was resolved episodes ago, so that just raises more questions than answers. Foreman gets a similar conclusion, where nothing is resolved but he gets a passing mention. Park and Adams don't even get an attempt at a resolution, apparently nothing changes for them when House is declared dead.

There's also all the plotpoints the finale "forgets" about. There was a huge dramatic moment shortly before the finale where House declares his mother interesting and needs a new guess to who his father is, and that's never acknowledged at any point afterwards. I mentioned Park's romance with some guy, that's also forgotten. And no discussion of the finale would be complete without mentioning Cuddy's complete absence from it: even a passing mention of her existence would have made it less obvious she wasn't there. It almost feels like they expected her to show up while they were filming; House could have easily asked if she would show up, before being reminded he was in a burning building.

Perhaps the most perplexing thing to me about the ending was House's own complete lack of resolution. The show dedicates an entire hour to him deciding he can change... and then we see no evidence whatsoever that anything's changed. He fakes his death, which was obviously his plan from the start. He also decides to hang out with Wilson until he dies... which was, again, already his plan. We see literally no evidence that anything's changed, even though that's supposed to be the takeaway of the whole finale. The least they could have done was shown them with Dominika at the end; showing that he had made up with her would have been a perfect display of his change. Of course, that might undermine the whole "Hilson" theme of the ending, which is the one thing the finale did flawlessly... but given how hollow the finale already felt, I still say it would have been an improvement just to see her face there.

I think that's everything I wanted to say? I hope so. I feel better now.