Suicidal Tendencies

Viewers of FOX's hit show 'House' were stunned last week when Kal Penn's character committed suicide.  What, Kuttner gone?  The drily witty one? The guy who was always just barely hiding an ironic smirk?  Him?  Every other character had reasons to off themselves, including House - especially House, but Kuttner?

Kal Penn wanted to leave the show to take up a position in President Obama's administration, so the writers and producers needed a story to cover his leaving, but suicide?  House producers responded by saying they needed to give Dr. House an unsolvable puzzle, obviously something to riff on for a few episodes, but I wonder.  There must have been a dozen ways for Kuttner to leave that could have given Hugh Laurie and the rest of the cast great room for theatrics in response, without resorting to a story line that ends Kal Penn's involvement in the series, permanently.

Sounds more like a sour grapes revenge sort of thing, really.

Of course the show's honchos are doing their best to give the plot twist a meaningful spin.  They ran a public service screen at the end of the show giving viewers who may be considering suicide a number to call.  Nice, I guess, but it seemed to me they were trying to make Kuttner's  suicide feel too real.  Dare I wonder, were they attempting to cash in on the public's empathy as a publicity exercise?  A facebook memorial to Kal Penn's character didn't exactly allay my suspicions...

I just don't know, but to me suicide is too serious an issue to use just to give Kal Penn an out and House a puzzle.  We lose too many people to it every year.  

We don't hear about most of them, but when celebrities - real ones, not characters on a show, kill themselves, we do:  

Kurt Cobain is a suicide victim that comes quickly to most people's minds.  Comedy fans might remember Richard Jeni, and further back in time, Freddie Prinze.  They might also have noted Charles Rocket's passing.  (I remember him fondly as one of the bright spots on Saturday Night Live during that show's dark years).  Fans of more intellectual comedy might remember Spalding Gray.

Gray's mother committed suicide when he was a young man.  And there does seem to be a connection.  Just recently, Nicholas Hughes, the son of Sylvia Plath,  took his own life.  Margaux Hemingway followed her father's example too.

Maybe there's something about the ironic cynicism of comedy that leads to depression and suicidal tendencies, and there is certainly evidence that genetics plays a role.  The sardonic Kuttner could have qualified for the first, and if his birth parents hadn't been shot (according to the story line), but had taken their own lives (suicide pact?), then he might have fit right in with Hughes and Hemingway too.

But that would have been too easy for Dr. House ...

[Sammy, old friend, I still miss seeing you up at Newcomb's.]