House

Ok, so who's mentally prepared for the powerfully moving conclusion of the House season finale? All I know is tonight, just as it did last week, did not disappoint.

Tonight's episode starts where we left off last week where Dr. House finally pieced his subconscious flashes and memories together only to realize that the mystery patient that needed saving after the bus crash was actually Amber.

Now at her bedside, Wilson pretends he's Amber's husband in order to have her moved to Princeton-Plainsborough where they can diagnose what kind of condition was trigged from the trauma of the bus accident. That's when Wilson comes up with the plan to put her through protective hypothermia to save her brain to buy House more time.

While the team is searching for clues, House dozes off only to have Amber, sporting a red powersuit, make an appearance in his dream to help him remember. She offers him a glass of Sherry (turns out the bar they went to was called Sherry's) and begins leading House to believe the two had a thing for each other. But while seducing House, she also suggests "electricity" be used to help House remember. But the idea of shooting volts through an already damaged head doesn't go over well with Cuddy.

As Amber is getting worst, Wilson wants her body temp dropped even lower than it already is to prolong any further damage to her organs. Now normally, when House comes up with diagnosis, he just runs with the treatment, even if it is risky. But Wilson keeps getting House to agree to icing her body even more. Now in the midst of another dream, a very frozen Amber shows House a rash on her lower back. When he awakes to find there really is a rash on the small of Amber's back, the only question on everyone's mind is how did he know it was all they way down there?

Then the irony comes into play. House gives 13 a mini-lecture (in the bathroom, mind you) to get it together and not let the fact that she knows the patient get in the way of her ability to treat her. Too bad House is letting the fact that he's best friends with desperate Wilson completely inhibit his better judgment.

Foreman finally makes the call to go above House and Wilson's heads to Cuddy fearing they will ultimately kill Amber. House ends up making the final call to warm her body back up to see if she is responding to a treatment (a risky thing to do should the treatment not be working). But Wilson appeals to House one last time, asking him to go through with the shock treatment to restore his memory so it can be definitely determined what is wrong with Amber. Basically what Wilson asked House to do was risk his life in order to save Amber's. House agrees.

The electric treatment, conducted by Chase, ends up working and we are brought back to the scene of the bar. House had gotten so drunk, he called Wilson for a ride home after the bartender confiscated his keys. Amber, instead, picks up the phone call and comes to House's aid. But House, being the stubborn man that he is, sneaks on to the bus while Amber settles his tab. Amber follows, but now comes the moment of truth. House watches as Amber's sneezing prompts her to take a prescription drug to ward off the symptoms of the flu. That's when House has his light bulb moment. It was the drug Amber was taking that was killing her because the bus accident destroyed her kidneys making her body unable to clear the drug out of the system.

Normally, this is where a life is saved and a family rejoices. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Turns out the drug Amber had been taking can not be moved out of her body with dialysis. Sadly, there is nothing more that can be done to save her. House, visibly distraught, sheds a tear right before having a seizure which lands him in a coma.

Foreman explains to the team what has happened to House and how he was unfortunately right about Amber. Wilson makes the tough decision to wean Amber off the anesthesia to bring her back to consciousness so the two could say their goodbyes. The couple shares their "I love you's," and in one of the most touching scenes I've ever scene on this show, Wilson and Amber, lying side-by-side on her hospital bed, share one final kiss before he turns off her bypass machines and she dies in his arms. Yup, I'm officially tearing up as I type this.

Meanwhile, House is back in his own head, but we can't help but wonder, is this white bus with the now-dead Amber sitting next to him Heaven? Amber tells him it's not his time and he must "get off the bus," but House doesn't want to go. "It doesn't hurt here," he says. He can't face the reality of going back to have Wilson, his best friend, never be able to forgive him.

On a side note, towards the ending sequence, we learn that 13, who refused to get tested for the deadly Huntington's disease, finally "stopped prolonging" things (just as Wilson had with Amber) and took a blood test. The result? Positive!

House ultimately returns back to the land of the living only to see Wilson at the door. But as he feared, Wilson can't bring himself to face House after everything that just happened. It's just as Amber said before House expressed not wanting to have his best friend hate him – "You can't always get what you want."

Talk about an emotional season closer! As much as she drove me nuts in episodes past, I was so sad when Amber died. I actually was shocked they killed her off, to be perfectly honest. But both her and Wilson's performances at the end were so powerful, it actually got me choked up a bit as well. I'm curious what next season will bring now that the dynamic will be changed between Wilson and House. Then there's the age-old question of what will happen to Team Old vs. Team New.

What was your take on tonight's episode? Were you taken aback to learn that there was nothing that could be done for Amber? Do you wish the writers chose not to kill her off? Did you find the ending of the episode as moving as I did? What do you think lies in store for the future when it comes to House and Wilson's relationship? Think the writers will keep trying to incorporate the two sets of teams, or just come to a decision once and for all as to who will report to House? Let it all out below!

And be sure to watch full episodes and clips of House with our Online Video Guide!

Welcome to part one of the shocking season finale of House. I have to say, tonight's episode was a-mazing. It doesn't follow the conventional format that we're used to with House and his team focusing their energies on diagnosing a patient's puzzling ailment. Instead, it focuses on House, himself, and a crazy adventure through his mind.

Tonight's episode starts out with a very disoriented and confused House at a strip joint getting a lap dance—except he can't figure out how he got there! After ruling out that a drunken stupor was the cause, he stumbles upon some blood and realizes he has retrograde amnesia from a concussion. He leaves the bar to see chaos around an overturned bus he was a passenger on, but the real mystery begins when House has a flashback. And all he can remember is he noticed a key symptom in one of those passengers before it overturned, and that person will die if he can't remember who or what it was. "Someone is going to die unless I find them."

Struggling to remember, Kutner suggests House try medical hypnosis, and it turns out that Chase was trained in this field. It actually works, and House begins to piece together where he was between the time he left work at 5 pm and the bus crash. He sees the bartender who took his keys because he was so wasted, but oddly enough, he bumps into Amber there as well. But Chase gets House back on track and he remembers an emo kid picking his nose. Immediately, House storms off proclaiming this kid has a brain tumor, but shortly after he realizes the kid is fine, the bus driver loses feeling in his feet and House's "who" is determined. Now all he needs to do to diagnosis the patient is figure out "what" symptom he saw in this man before the crash.

House tries a new technique of smelling the passengers clothing to try to spark some spontaneous recovery of memories. One box of clothes and four Vicodins later, House has a hallucination where he argues with the bus driver about his symptoms, but then notices a mysterious woman on the bus as well — except, she wasn't a passenger. Weird.

Next up on the list of memory-retrieving techniques is sensory deprivation. This one definitely brought House back into his own mind, but instead of a memory, he has a fantasy of Cuddy pole dancing on the bus in a school girl outfit while simultaneously trying to help him remember the symptom. After she leaves (right before taking it all off), House sees the mystery woman yet again, only this time she refers to herself as "the answer."

Back in reality, House is awoken by his team, but his concussion has left him in pretty bad shape — so bad that he passes out and Cuddy sends him home not only with an on-duty nurse, but a security guard to make sure he doesn't try to do anything but relax. Ultimately, he returns to the patient who is doing even worse than when he left. House has his light bulb moment, but has to act fast. He locks himself in the room with only the patient and 13, leaving the rest of the team and Cuddy to look in from the outside. He tries to explain it's an air bubble from dental work that's the root of the problem, but Cuddy can't let him treat the bus driver for something unconfirmed (btw, Cuddy finally reveals that 13's real name is Dr. Hadly). 13/Hadly has to make a split-second decision on whether to trust House and do as he says by sticking a syringe into the bus driver's heart, or let the others back in. She goes with House's diagnosis and saves the patient. The mystery is over and solved...or is it?

Back at House's place, Cuddy crashes on the couch to keep an eye on him, but House falls asleep only to dream of the mystery woman who gives him more clues. House awakes to realize it's not over yet. He saved the wrong person!

House's last effort to remember involved a reenactment on a bus with staff members each wearing pictures of the passengers around their neck. The self-medicating doc has also been popping endless amounts of Alzheimer medication to speed the process along, as well. And back to the scene of the bus his memory goes. Again, there sits the mystery woman. She keeps asking House to answer what her necklace is made of, and it all comes back to him once he realizes it's made of amber. Amber was on bus! Amber is the one he has to save! Amber is the one who's dying!

I can't even begin to tell you how much I enjoyed this episode. The freaky black and white flashbacks, Hugh Laurie's stellar performance, the shocking ending — all of it really made for a transfixing hour of television. I was so wrapped up in the mystery that I almost forgot I was watching an episode of House. Kudos to the writers for portraying the inner workings of Gregory House's mind and how his subconscious would look if we were ever allowed to peek in. It's everything I imagined: brilliant, snarky, confusing — even dirty! They did an amazing job at leaving us with the cliffhanger of all cliffhangers as we wait to see what will happen to Amber.

What was your take on the episode? Were you happy with how the writers broke out of the formulaic format? Do you think it was an accurate portrayal of what House's subconscious would look like? Did you like the way "flashes" were illustrated with House literally in his own mind? Why do you think Amber was on the bus with House in the first place? Any theories on what will happen next week? Let's hear it!

And don't forget to watch full episodes and clips with our Online Video Guide!

Tonight's episode didn't follow the normal House format where Patient X mysteriously falls ill and is brought into Princeton-Plainsboro under House's care. Instead, the featured patient arrived by town car as opposed to an ambulance – and House was the chauffeur! Turns out the good doc was worried his favorite daytime soap star, Evan Greer (guest star Jason Lewis, better known as SATC's Smith to millions of women across the world), had been suffering from a brain tumor and took it upon himself to kidnap the celeb to run some tests. How he was able to determine anything based on this guy's acting is beyond us, but this is House we're talking about here, is it not?

Whatever you do, don't assume House went out of his way to save a man's life. Oh no, because if that were the case, that would have involved some form of caring. All he was concerned about was if Evan were to die, then so would his favorite actor Broc — and he just couldn't have that. Evan agrees to one vision test, but when everything looked fine and he refused an MRI, House took matters into his own hands yet again and drugged the actor to run the exam.

Normally House's antics do nothing more than get the staff bickering and Cuddy clip-clopping down hallways at light speed, but this week the pressure was on because an inspector had arrived to the hospital for its annual review. Needless to say, this guy wasn't the type to let so much as a faulty water fountain slip by his radar, let alone House's insane methods of practice. Cuddy places his team in charge of playing damage control to keep House out of trouble, and Cameron in charged with the task of getting House's back-logged patient charts situated.

As always, House was right about an ailing Evan, which became clear after his feet suddenly went numb. Good thing, because House was chomping at the bit to hit up the actor's set and dressing room for any clues into the mystery as well as sitting his team down for a soap viewing party for "diagnostic purposes." His theory that B-6 toxicity due to one too many sunflower seeds (mental note: stick to almonds) was to be blamed proved false after porn put the patient into cardiac arrest.

Meanwhile, on the Wilson-Amber front (or Wilber, if you will), the two were out shopping for a decent mattress and Amber put Wilson to the ultimate relationship test — all unbeknownst to him, of course. His task: to purchase either the mattress he wanted, or the one she wanted. Either way, her poverty sob story to haggle the salesman down $500 was impressive none the less.

Back at the hospital, House is ready to break every rule in the book (including eating stolen food in the morgue), but actually got Cuddy to agree to give him the big-screen plasma TV from the lounge in order to get House to play nice with the uber-anal inspector.

Once Cameron finished her assigned paperwork mission, she and House shared a semi-heartfelt moment where she admitted to missing her old job, the puzzling cases and all that other good stuff — but she makes it crystal clear that one thing she doesn't miss is House. Ouch!

To continue on with the mattress drama, Amber came home to find that Wilson had purchased the mattress she originally wanted and was pretty pissed off Wilson wussed out. Apparently, she didn't want him to buy what she wanted and ultimately resent her like with all his exes. So, Wilson not only got the bed he wanted, but got the waterbed he had always wanted. Of course, he hated it and back to the store it went. Honestly, her "testing Wilson with wasn't exactly a positive move either. God forbid they try communicating their concerns prior to calling the moving truck three times.

As for the patient, Grave's disease was out of the running and House was 99.9 percent sure Evan was allergic to chrysanthemums. He was so sure that he was willing to risk the patients' life by giving him steroids (not out of the norm), but also risk his job as well as Cuddy's because if the inspector got wind of this lack of protocol, it'd be all over for both of them (not to mention the hospital's credibility). In a slight turn of events, all tests came out negative for floral allergies, meaning House was wrong. I was concerned bad things were about to happen for a split second, but by some miracle House's decision was right, even if it was for the wrong reasons. The steroids worked because Evan did have an allergy, but not to flowers. Instead, it was tonic water. Even though the patient lived and was treated, the hospital was still fined $200K for House's reckless actions.

I wasn't exactly blown away by this episode, but it did have its moments. Cameron's role tonight felt more fitting than usual, and it was refreshing to see her tossing out diagnostic theories for the nostalgia factor. Amber and Wilson didn't do it for me because it's usually the interaction between House and C.B. that really make for good television. These two just don't seem believable as a couple to me, so these lover's quarrels are a bit hard to swallow. The whole side story with the actor not being satisfied in his job and chatting with everyone about it started to annoy me a bit. I feel it was as though they were overemphasizing that that Cameron isn't happy (nor some other staff members). I think we're bright enough to pick that up on our own without it being crammed down our throats. And lastly, Cuddy. How she lets him run the show, even the one time she asks him to behave, is beyond me. She must really be more in love with him than I thought!

What was your take on tonight's episode? Were you a fan of Jason Lewis' performance? Were you glad to see Cameron "back in action," so to speak? What do you think of Wilson and Amber's little tiff? Do you think Cuddy will ever lay down the law with House? We want to know!

And be sure to check out clips and full episodes of House with our Online Video Guide now!

Hey all! Thought I'd introduce myself before jumping in to the goodness that is House. My name is Gina, and I'll be taking over for Nina/Erin on the remaining four episodes of the season. Ok, good. Now that we've gotten those introductions out of the way, let's talk shop!

So as most of you may remember (or may not considering it was almost three months ago), we left off in February with the big news being that sweet, innocent Wilson was secretly dating Cutthroat Bitch/Amber. When we stopped to think about the situation, she is, after all, House in a woman's body, so it explained a lot as far as Wilson's interest. But her motives are still a bit unclear (we hate to jump to the obvious, so we'll wait and see if she truly has softened up a bit).

Now, tonight's episode. We have to note how fitting it was in the first few minutes, the location where the patient falls ill just so happens to be a picket line. Well played, House writers, well played indeed.

The episode begins when this particular patient piques House's interest when he stumbles across him in the ER while hiding from Cuddy. Why? Because this man in ridiculously nice. Clearly House can't accept that this is just the way the man is, so he rallies the troops and off they go find out what exactly what horrid disease could possibly be causing this "niceness" symptom (even though the team isn't buying it).

Meanwhile, as his minions are off running tests, House hits up the bowling alley with Chase — a fill-in for his usual partner, Wilson, who's now off with C.B. somewhere. The whole scene seemed a little forced in trying to work Chase into the script, but either way, their conversation served as the catalyst for what would become the House-C.B. face-off for quality Wilson time.

House demands "joint-custody" of Wilson with C.B. but they can't settle upon the terms of the agreement. So who resides as judge in this custody battle? Cuddy, of course! But she strikes up some terms of her own when she says she'll only make the call if House finally gets performance reviews of his team done — but ultimately, everyone gets what they want out of this new "contract."

Meanwhile, House and Co. continues to try to get to the bottom of what's ailing Mr. Nice Guy, but to no avail. But wait, they finally make some progress when the patient tests positive for syphilis which could explain his disgustingly happy persona. Kutner has an interesting rationale about the situation: In order for someone to be suffering from a disease that causes niceness, there must also be one causing jerkiness, aka House. Then there it is — the light bulb moment! Could House also be suffering from syphilis? Turns out there's a vial of House's blood that proves Kutner correct. House is genuinely speechless when confronted by his team about his little STD. But more to come on this.

Prior to the team's discovery, House's man-date starts off on the wrong foot when C.B. drops Wilson off 16 minutes late. But he gets back at her by getting Wilson liquored up on dirty martinis so that he won't be able to ... ahem ... perform for her when he gets home. Needless to say, she's less than thrilled about it.

Now, back to the syph. So House finally reveals to Wilson his personal secret — but it's not what you think. Turns out he switched his blood so the tests would be positive and he's started acting nicer to his team because they think he's taking penicillin to treat it. Love how he messes with them so! But Wilson isn't able to keep the secret quiet and winds up telling C.B. — and let's just say that after dropping Wilson off wasted, she isn't into playing along and squeals to the team.

Things aren't all that bad because House's little ploy sparks light bulb moment number two in Kutner for the evening, and this time he manages to figure out that the patient is suffering from a disease that tests positive for syphilis, Shagas disease. The disease causes brain swelling which is what has altered his personality. The patient is treated and will be fine ... gold star for Kutner.

But it's not over just yet. Judge Cuddy has deemed both parties in the custody battle in breach of the terms of agreement. Punishment? Both House and C.B. are faced with adult diaper duty.

So that wraps up this returning episode. All in all, I thought it was pretty good. They actually had me going for a minute that maybe, just maybe, House's jerkiness was all because of a disease. And I'm not going to lie, the thought of House getting cured of his bitter sarcasm made me shudder a little. The only thing about this episode that I wasn't big on was the fact that I felt they were really forcing Chase and Cameron into the script more so than organically writing them in. As far as the custody battle for Wilson, I'm loving the showdown and want more!

What was your take? Do you think the episode delivered after all that time off? Did you believe that House's heartlessness was symptom of syphilis? Or did you know from the get-go that there was no way? Do you feel C.B. is using Wilson to drive House nuts? Let us know!

Get previous recaps of the season here.

And don't forget to watch more House videos in our Online Video Guide.