I love every cane-wielding hour of Hugh Laurie’s House, to the point where I would choose a new Monday night episode over going out with my friends, assuming that I had any. 

Despite my sofa-denting level of devotion even I can admit that the sixteen stories Fox has served this season have been a bit…predictable. There’s still plenty of drama, sarcasm and the occasional geyser of human blood rushing through the halls of the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital but it’s also gotten a bit formulaic, like an M.D. version of Mad Libs where instead of pronouns and places, you drop in the names of diseases and the end result always reads like this:

--The patient arrives at Princeton-Plainsboro after collapsing, thrashing, or being accessorized with a number of ambulance-only accessories.

--Now swaddled in the finest hospital couture, the patient receives an initial diagnosis—which used to be lupus but has now been upgraded to amyloidosis—and shows signs of recovery.

--Let’s give a warm welcome to additional unrelated symptoms!  The patient receives treatment that doesn’t work, causing House’s team to exchange a number of concerned glances before a commercial break.

--Four Fringe promos later, we’re back and repeating the above step as necessary before the patient begins convulsing, frothing, and possibly soiling the linens by bleeding from the ass.

--The patient starts loading their belonging’s into Death’s U-Haul…but WAIT! An offhand, seemingly unrelated comment makes House stop and slowly tilt his head upward as though he’s trying to catch a glimpse of the animated lightbulb before realizing he’s missed something important.

---Finally the patient is cured and will be so relieved that they won’t even sue the hospital for the unnecessary tests, botched diagnosis and the fact that during their stay their legs were sawed off, the top of their head was removed and/or their liver was detonated. 

I don’t for a second think that the show will flatline completely - but I do have a few supercharged suggestions that could shock the show back to life. I also promise that’s my last medical metaphor. 

House and Cuddy, K-I-S-S-I-N-G

In this season’s one lonely OMG! moment, House and hospital administrator Dr. Lisa Cuddy finally mashed faces and—although they’ve largely ignored it since—the producers have hinted that they’ll pursue the relationship further in the remaining episodes. I’m not looking forward to their sure-to-be-awkward coupling as much as I am to the inevitable fallout afterwards.  If House is involved, it can’t end any way other than poorly…and that makes for good television.

Stop the Other Doctor-on-Doctor Hookups

 It started with Cameron and Chase, spread to Wilson and Amber the Cutthroat Bitch (R.I.P.) and the latest to share a set of sheets are Thirteen and Foreman, which is as confusing as it is boring.  An entire episode revolved around Thirteen the Bisexual Wildchild and her love of loose women and party drugs but now she’s supposed to dig Dr. Foreman, who has more ties than facial expressions and shows fewer emotions than most oven mitts? I’m not buying it and combining two of the least compelling characters in one bed doesn’t make them any more entertaining.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes for House

 Over the course of several seasons, House has had multiple overdoses, been thrown in jail, held hostage, lost the father who wasn’t really his father, kind-of killed his best friend’s girl, almost died several times and has been fired more times than the entire cast of The Apprentice, yet he’s limped through all of it and emerged on the other side EXACTLY THE SAME.

It wouldn’t be realistic to expect him to click his sneakered heels together but shouldn’t all that shit affect him somehow?  He’s always going to be caustic enough to corrode metal but he has also given an occasional glance or gesture indicating that he does feel, that he does care.  It would be nice to get another few nuggets like that sprinkled in with all the self-destruction. 

Boot Cuddy’s Baby

 No, not literally but the storyline needs to be given a warm bottle and tucked in for a bit.  Cuddy’s empty ovaries have co-starred in several seasons as she attempted in vitro treatments and multiple attempts to adopt, eventually finding an acceptable infant only to have it yanked from her power-suited arms at the last second. When she finally scored a baby, this piece of the plot somehow became less compelling than the struggle that preceded it. 

Cuddy would seem to agree because as soon as she had a squealing bald roommate, she no longer wanted it.  Since then The Baby has served zero purpose except offering a possible explanation why Cuddy trimmed her bangs into an easy-to-care-for but no less unfortunate style last seen on the late Freddie Mercury. 

Give Dr. Wilson Something to Do. Anything, Really

 Robert Sean Leonard is an incredibly gifted actor in a show that’s double-stuffed with them, but you wouldn’t know it from his participation in the past few episodes.  He was brilliant in last season’s two-part finale, in which he lost both his girlfriend and his best friend—House—who was indirectly responsible for her death. 

Since they reconciled as BFFs, his emotional range has been boxed up and placed on a shelf beside the Vertigo poster in his office and his onscreen abilities have been reduced to shoving his hands deep into his pants pockets and nodding a lot.  I’d like the chance to see what else is going on in his world, if only we could yank the cameras out of Cuddy’s nursery or the snoozefest in Thirteen’s Foreman-infested bed. 

Obviously, these are the things I’d like to see happen but whether they do or not won’t impact whether I’ll keep watching the show. I still sing along with my favorite songs even though I know the words and I’ll still be stapled to the sofa every Monday night, even though I’ll know that the patient’s not going to die about forty minutes before the doctors do.