Maps and Mirrors

I haven't really liked having Bones and House on the same night anyway, and tonight confirms that it just wasn't a good idea. I am wrecked. I should at least want to talk about them a little bit (especially because Bones, whoah), but I just can't frame a decent sentence about them.

Wrecked.

So, here's the thing: when I was watching Xena I was not the least bit involved in fandom, and certainly not online fandom (which obviously wasn't at the levels it is now, but it did exist). And I'm curious about something.

See, since this period predated my introduction to online fandom, it also predated my introduction to slash. I understood that the show was absolutely playing up the idea of a Xena/Gabrielle pairing; I saw Lucy Lawless talking about it more than once on this or that talk show. But while I understood it as fan service, I thought it was for the show's gay fans, because Lucy would talk about the show having a large gay fanbase and that there were 'Xena nights' at gay bars and such. At that time I didn't understand the, ah, complexities.

Now I get to see House doing what ever it is that it's doing, and I get to watch the crowd go wild, so to speak. I never got to see that with Xena, and I'm wondering, how much were people actually reacting to it? Did Usenet explode after the post-wedding kiss, or one of their shared bath scenes?

For that matter, how many of you think that's what House is actually doing? Does this mean we'll get to see House and Wilson kiss in the series finale one day?

Last night's House made me extremely happy for reasons that have nothing to do with Wilson or any screaming subtext. It has added to many things percolating in my brain.

Life has not done much to reassure me about its attitudes towards women, but the rest of it is still so gosh darn cute I'm going to keep giving it rope. And while I'm fairly positive that actress wasn't actually Christina Hendricks, I still took one look at that hair and went, "OMG, it's YoSafBridg!"

Some people have called Life a modern day Count of Monte Cristo, and while the parallels are certainly there, Charlie seems to have largely already learned the lessons that Edmond Dantes needed to. Though we are given cause to wonder at times.

House continues to be awesome. Apparently the whole James Wilson, Boy Wonder Oncologist, was always just a clever disguise for James Wilson, Evil Genius. Hee hee. In some ways this was the first show where I didn't just pick up on the subtext but felt hit over the head with it. Now I've gone from, "Just do him already!" to "If you're not doing him you're an idiot!" Also, I need a Survivor: M.D. icon. I love that penguingirl84 came up with that before we saw the bit in the previews.