I’ll fully admit I’m not a House fan (though I am a fan of Hugh Laurie)–pretty much anything which goes out of its way to be gross at all costs isn’t likely to be a must (or ever) watch for me. But this story cracked me up. Apparently this guy:
Where the hell is Harold?
…is on House, or was (I just know him from the White Castle stuff). He’s killed himself off, you see, because…um…well…the actor is going to work for Barack Obama.
Yeah. Pretty much that’s it. Evidently Kal Penn, who plays the character Kutner on Fox’s mega hit, has been hired to be an associate director in the White House Office of Public Liaison–which Penn describes as continuing dialogue between citizens and their government and which actually means continuing the Re-Elect Obama 2012 campaign. (Hey, I love Obama–was honored to vote for him, have mostly been impressed with him as president thus far–but let’s call a spade a spade, folks.) I’m not sure what’s so tremendous about this job, but hey, working for the prez is a cool gig, I guess. So Penn told the show’s producers about it, and they decided to handle things by having the character kill himself, utterly out of left field. They even called it that:
“The first thing I [Penn] asked David Shore was ‘Do you want me to change anything? Do you want this to be informed that he’s struggling with something?’ And the answer was you know — not really. This is something that comes out of left field in episode 20, and we don’t want to lead anyone on and we don’t want to mislead anyone, it just is what it is and there’s no explanation for it.”
When the interviewer asks the producers (reasonably) why suicide, we get this:
“I guess obviously stirring the pot brings something to any show. Look, Kal came to us with his opportunities and we were very excited for him, but it created a creative problem for us. I’m very happy with the way it worked out. It gave us an opportunity to do something unexpected, and what’s fascinating about it is it’s a question that House can’t answer, and he’s the man who has the answers to everything. And it’s just so unexpected for the Kutner character and that was what was really exciting about it — the unexpected nature of it, and the fact that there are no simple answers, and nothing that House can figure out.”
Translation: So you think you can just walk out on us, you ungrateful piece of crap? Here, then–have a completely pointless suicide. No, we’re not going to explain it. There is no explanation. This makes no goddamn sense at all. That’s the point. Enjoy your cushy government job, you White Castle reject.
Next up: House decapitates himself with a butter knife after Laurie gets nominated to be ambassador to England. It’s just so unexpected!
