I must admit I have had a fascination with House over the last years and it has been generally superb. In this series 8 I felt that the team were not engaging, I did not care about the characters apart from House himself. Most of the fun of House was watching other character's reactions to the antics of House himself. But with his present team, I did not care whether they were shocked or not. And therein the magic went away. But House himself is iconic. Any episode where the plot did not focus on him was dull. There was no tension between Foreman and House, like there was with Cuddy, bad acting by foreman - no presence. Chase was indifferent and too old to be an acolyte, so was the short guy and the Chinese girl, who was actually pretty irritating and not in a love to hate her kind of way, but in a bad acting, no chemistry, kind of way. The short whiney doctor was tedious. It's a shame about series 8, but it was worth watching for the occasional moment of ingenious dialogue and crazy antics, all of them involving the lead character. The tension was gone though compared to previous years. In previous years there was the odd duff episode, but in this series there was the odd good episode in relative mediocrity. All in all though, seasons 1 to 6 were really entertaining, with the original team being the best, in terms of chemistry. For the finale, it was a failed attempt, with the presence of previous cast members reminding us that the show was well past its hey day. The best finale was the one with the bus, that was superb. And the finale of the first series, where House rips open a patient with a saw, - seeing the reaction of his team - priceless. There was nothing much here that moved me, intellectually or emotionally.
