God-Why-Am-I-Still-Watching-this-Crap. (It's also your fault that I started watching Heroes. It's *my* fault that I hung on after the second season).

So, House, what the hell happened?

After three successful seasons, the writers decided that some retooling was necessary to keep the show fresh. So, at the end of the third season, House's team was fired and/or quit. Chase, Cameron, Foreman, meet the door. This set up a fantastic bit of Houseness to start the fourth season, with him creating a Survivor-esque job interview process. Good stuff, right? Well, for some reason, the fired team members all kept their acting gigs on the show. We got to follow Foreman at a new position for a while, while Chase and Cameron stayed at Princeton Plainsboro in different career roles. In retrospect, this was a stupid idea.

The Foreman plot simply ended up with him being back on House's team. He was supposed to be House's supervisor, but of course, that idea got lost and now he's just House's target for ethnic humor. Cameron and Chase show up sometimes. Occasionally, there is some glimmer of hope that they'll get a storyline, but in the end, it never pans out.

I want to discuss three things. First, the new team. Second, the reluctance of the show to keep storylines going for more than a few episodes. Finally, Kutner's suicide.

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From: Jesse
To: Jim
Subject: An A+ character in a B show

I think its a mistake to blame the decline in quality in House on this story line or that story line. Instead, I think your initial observation is on the money - its a formulaic procedural, and it is inherently difficult to keep that kind of show fresh. The model for American television is that hit shows will continue to be made as long as it is profitable. The result is that shows must churn through plotlines, soap-opera style, without any real end game. At the same time, shows basically have to hit the "reset" button every few episodes or, at most, every season.

This is a problem unique to American television. Would you read a book or watch a movie where you didn't know how long it was going to be when you started? Even the seemingly interminable Harry Potter franchise eventually came to a conclusion. British shows run for 2 or 3 10-episode seasons (if that). The root of this evil is syndication. 100 episodes makes it viable to sell a show into syndication, and each episode after that adds to the gravy train. A hit show can keep the money rolling in for its creators long after it is off the air.

Consider a show like Twin Peaks. It broke onto the scene, became a sensation, solved its main mystery, and then faded. In the British mold this show would have been a runaway success, but in America, it is seen as a failure, because it "only" had one highly rated season. Lost is a another show, like Twin Peaks, that revolves around a central mystery. But unlike Twin Peaks, it refused to solve its main mystery in the first couple of seasons. The result, however, was the same; the popularity started to fade. Only by setting a firm end date (like a book or a movie would have) was it able to regain its foothold in the ratings. It was as if the creators said, "Hey, look guys. We're actually going somewhere with this. We aren't just going to drag this out indefinitely."

House, which is going to drag out indefinitely,  has to have the appearance of motion while actually standing still. House was a compelling character when he first appeared, but after awhile, he (and everyone around him) become less compelling, unless something happens. Something has to change. But if he changed, he wouldn't be House anymore, and we wouldn't want to watch. If House has a shelf life of only four seasons, then maybe he should only have been around for four seasons. If House ages as a show less gracefully then we would like, I don't blame him. I blame the system.

But seriously? The new team sucks. The show does (and has always done, which I'll get more into later) a terrible job of structuring an overall arc over any period of time. And Kutner's suicide felt completely arbitrary, which I think was part of the point, but it didn't work for me at all. Dr. Gregory House is, and has always been, an A+ character in a B show.