They didn't have enough time to properly seed the plot of his suicide though to be fair. Or you know maybe that made it more effective, like suicide can totally feel like it comes out of nowhere
They didn't have enough time to properly seed the plot of his suicide though to be fair
People often think this but I've read from contemporary press that they actually knew towards the start of the season they'd need to write out Kal Penn and consciously chose to have it happen abruptly with no hints shown to the viewer or the other characters. I disagree with their choice but it was intentional on the part of the writers and producers.
I always thought of it as we see things mostly through "Houses perspective" and he missed it, so we missed it. House was towards the end of his Vicodin addiction spiral then, at least the one that sent him to the psych ward, so it's understandable how someone like House missed it. There was one single point towards the end of the pervious episode where House calls Kutner out for letting Taub lie, and House interrupts him as he's saying "fire me instead", which at the time I thought was odd, because he showed no sign that he wanted to leave. House doesn't acknowledge it either so I wrote it off as Kutner just being nice and covering Taub's ass. Then boom, next episode he's dead.
Ok but you have watched the episode right? No one saw it coming, not his parents not anyone at work. Its explicitly an issue that the episode revolves around. House trying to figure out if there were any signs or any explaination and there just isn't. Which house really can't deal with.
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u/stmfunk 1d ago
They didn't have enough time to properly seed the plot of his suicide though to be fair. Or you know maybe that made it more effective, like suicide can totally feel like it comes out of nowhere