Season 5

Season 5: 2008-2009

Early reports show House as being renewed by Fox, along with several other shows. Hollywood Reporter

FOX Broadcasting Company stated in this Network Prime Time Schedule [1], that House would premiere it's 5th Season at 8:00 P.M. EST on September 2nd, 2008.

Mid-Season, House and American Idol switched around spots on the prime time schedule, leaving House to show new episodes at the same time on Mondays, rather than Tuesdays.

Amazon.com currently lists the release date of the season five DVD set as August 25, 2009.

Episodes

Episode Name (original air date)

1. Dying Changes Everything (September 16, 2008)
2. Not Cancer (September 23, 2008)
3. Adverse Events (September 30, 2008)
4. Birthmarks (October 14, 2008)
5. Lucky Thirteen (October 21, 2008)
6. Joy (October 28, 2008)
7. The Itch (November 11, 2008)
8. Emancipation (November 18, 2008)
9. Last Resort (November 25, 2008)
10. Let Them Eat Cake (December 2, 2008)
11. Joy to the World (December 9, 2008)
12. Painless (January 19, 2009)
13. Big Baby (January 26, 2009)
14. The Greater Good (February 2, 2009)
15. Unfaithful (February 16, 2009)
16. The Softer Side (February 23, 2009)
17. The Social Contract (March 9, 2009)
18. Here Kitty (March 16, 2009)
19. Locked In (March 30, 2009)
20. Simple Explanation (April 06, 2009)
21. Saviors (April 13, 2009)
22. House Divided (April 27, 2009)
23. Under My Skin (May 04, 2009)
24. Both Sides Now (May 11, 2009)

Overview

Wilson slowly starts to recover from Amber's untimely death, but starts to reevaluate his life and begins to contemplate resigning from his post at the hospital. House's original regret over his role in Amber's death seems to have worn off as instead of being supportive, he merely tries to convince Wilson that he is overreacting to the situation. Wilson does quit, only to return once he realizes he has as much fun with House as he did with Amber. However, later in the season, he has to come to terms with another loss - his homeless brother Danny reappears in his life when he is found in New York City. Wilson finds that Danny is now a stranger to him and that the initial incident that led to his disappearance has shaped his behavior in ways only House seems to fully comprehend.

Thirteen has to confront the reality, forced upon her by Amber's death at an early age, that she too is facing a lifetime with a devastating illness. Her behavior quickly starts to deteriorate and she is fired and then re-hired. However, she soon returns to her undisciplined ways. As a result, Foreman begins first to get concerned about her behavior, then starts to feel protective. It soon blooms into a romance, but House feels it is affecting their medical judgment and tries to make them break up.

Cuddy tries to adopt, but after House tries to convince her not to, the adoption falls through anyway. When House tries to show his condolences and Cuddy snaps at him for changing his tune, they embrace and kiss. Wilson realizes that the two are very attracted to each other and attempts to make them confront their feelings. We soon begin to realize that although they are both reluctant to begin a romantic relationship, both want the other to be more involved in their lives.

Cuddy finds another girl to adopt, Rachel. Feeling overwhelmed by both her hospital responsibilities and the demands of a new child, she accepts Wilson's suggestion that she hand over some of her hospital duties to a deputy. To handle the almost full time job of supervising House, she turns to Cameron, who is incredibly adept at handling her old boss, but soon realizes she isn't up to the challenge on a constant basis. Cuddy returns to cover all her duties and starts to make House's life as miserable as possible for keeping her away from her child, including posting signs on the elevator that it is scheduled for maintenance (which it's not) and setting up a trip wire in the doorway or part of his office.

House comes to work in a good mood, setting everybody off. Wilson and Foreman conclude that House is taking heroin. Wilson takes House out to dinner and buys him a couple drinks, and after House drinks them, he finds him puking it up out back by a dumpster, it's there that House tells Wilson he is taking Methadone. His leg doesn't hurt anymore. In the end he ends up stopping it because it could have cost a patient his life. Kutner commits suicide and the whole team is saddened by his loss. House believed it was murder until he looked through a bunch of photos and found one showing Kutner with a blank expression; a contrast to the smile he wore in the other photos.

Not long after Kutner's suicide, House develops severe insomnia and begins to hallucinate, seeing visions of Amber. These visions are extremely vivid and House carries out actual conversations with Amber to the point where he uses a Bluetooth Headset while at the Hospital so it does not appear he's talking to himself. The hallucinations were eventually revealed to a side effect of House's continual vicodin abuse. House eventually confessed this to Cuddy who helped him through the painful detox process; as House recovered to the two started to kiss in House's apartment, it was implied that they made love afterwards. The encounter, however, was eventually revealed to be an elaborate hallucination on House's part. It is implied to be another side-effect of House's prolonged Vicodin abuse. As House realizes this, he hallucinates the ghosts of both Amber and Kutner.

Chase proposed to Cameron. Shortly thereafter, House takes over the planning of Chase's bachelor party, hiring a stripper and hosting it at Wilson's apartment. While at the bachelor party, Chase does a body shot off of Karmel(a stripper who was also at Wilson's first bachelor party, some ten years earlier). The stripper had used strawberry body butter, and as a result of his strawberry allergy, Chase went into an anaphylactic shock. After Chase recovered, he and Cameron continued with their wedding plans. Cameron revealed that she was keeping a frozen sample of her deceased first husband's sperm incase she never found a new person but still wanted to have children.

The season ends with alternating shots of Cuddy, Foreman, Taub and Thirteen enjoying Cameron and Chase's wedding and Wilson driving House to a sanitorium which House willingly enters.