HouseSimple Explanation
Original Air Date: Apr 6, 2009
Patricia Morris Buckley — Associate Staff Writer
pmb@thetwocentscorp.com
House has never had a full-out shocker, so last night’s episode left me wobbly in the knees. After all the rumors about a member of House’s team dying, it turns out to be Kutner. And he killed himself!
Huh?
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[photo: FOX]
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House has never had a full-out shocker, so last night’s episode left me wobbly in the knees. After all the rumors about a member of House’s team dying, it turns out to be Kutner. And he killed himself!
ReplyDeleteHuh?
Well, that’s exactly how House feels. He’s mad, he’d frustrated and he won’t allow himself to grieve. As David Shore, the show’s executive producer, said “The suicide was essential to [the story]. The lack of reason behind it -- the lack of answers -- was what I responded to and is what I got excited about. House, the man of answers, doesn't have an answer about this guy who he has worked with for two years.”
OK, but it still feels awkward to me. After House and Wilson, Kutner is my favorite character. He’s always in a good mood. And now we’re supposed to believe that he was depressed — way depressed— inside. It still feels so abrupt! (If you feel the same, visit the memorial Fox has constructed on its website.)
The episode starts with a typical twist where the person you expect to end up as House’s patient doesn’t. Eddie is a middle-aged man dying of heart failure and lung cancer. He is saying his goodbyes to his wife Charlotte when she suddenly can’t breathe. Eddie suddenly is well enough to call for help.
And so starts a ping-pong match: She gets worse, he gets better. He gets worse, she gets better. What is going on here? Turns out Charlotte has been faking some of her symptoms because she sees how much better her hubby is. But some of her symptoms are real, including a failing liver. House gets Cameron to ask Eddie (without Charlotte’s knowledge) to donate his liver to her. Of course, it means he’ll die on the table. He agrees.
But then Cameron, proving why she was on House’s team for so long, discovers that Eddie doesn’t have lung cancer. In fact, his condition is treatable. Then we learn that Charlotte is dying because she lied about a trip to Hawaii and went to Rio instead with a lover. And in Rio she contracted a nasty bug that indeed, will kill her for good.
Quite frankly, the case is nowhere near as intriguing as how all the hospital staff is taking Kutner’s suicide. Taub, who once tried to off himself as well, refuses to feel sympathy for Kutner. Foreman wants to be alone to digest the news, cutting a confused Thirteen out of the equation.
Then there’s House. He starts to blame everyone — the team, Kutner’s adoptive parents and perhaps even a murderer. After much nudging by Cuddy, Wilson tries to help him make sense of the tragedy by saying House can’t take it because Kutner was so much like House. But House retorts: “If he thought like me, he'd know that living in misery sucks marginally less than dying in it.”
In the end, Taub breaks down after refusing to attend the funeral, Foreman reaches out to Thirteen and House finally admits it’s suicide. From the look of the previews, the story of healing continues to next week.
So you want to know why Kal Penner, AKA Kutner, actually got killed off? Seems he helped get Obama elected Prez and is now taking a job with the new administration. He’ll be an associate director in the Office of Public Liaison. His role will be to connect Obama with the Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities, as well as arts groups.
Are you going to miss Kutner? Who could you see moving into that spot? Aren’t you glad it wasn’t Wilson? Or perhaps there’s someone else you’d rather see get the axe?...
I didn't even recognize Meat Loaf as Eddie!
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