Giving It Away

[CAUTION: Spoiler alert! This post contains information about Monday's episode of House. If you have not watched the episode and do not want to have a major plot point spoiled for you, please don't read any further.]

Now that the public service warning is out of the way, I have a couple of things to say about this week's episode. Not so much about the story line itself, though it was certainly a twist I didn't see coming. Viewers now know that the actor Kal Penn left the show to take a position in the Obama administration. I learned this from reading an Associated Press story yesterday morning on boston.com, before I'd seen the episode. Near the end of the article it also said, "His 'House' character committed suicide in Monday's episode."

WHAT?! Thanks a lot for ruining that for me, AP. (Oh, and by the way, AP, titles of television shows are supposed to be in italics, not in quotes. "AP style," my ass.)

I tried to find a statistic regarding the percentage of US households with digital video recorders; one estimate from September puts it at 27%, which is good enough for my argument. Monday's episode of House drew 13 million viewers, so let's say that 27% of those, including me, recorded the episode to watch later. That's well over three million people that potentially had the episode's plot spoiled for them. TV-oriented web sites have learned to be more respectful of viewers, placing spoilery information on inside pages. Does no one at the AP use a DVR?

The other thing about this whole scenario that is a bit odd is that, at the end of the episode, following a public-service ad for a suicide-prevention organization, Fox encouraged viewers to visit a memorial web site for the character played by Penn on the show. The Mrs. said, "That's creepy." I just think it's strange. Characters die on television shows all the time, sometimes by their own hand. But for a television network to create and promote an online memorial for a fictitious character is just a little too... meta for me, I guess.

One other thing about the memorial site that I think is amusing: there are handwritten notes from the other characters on the show, each one on personalized stationery. What a lovely, quaint anachronism. Does anyone bother to get personalized stationery made anymore? I know at one time it was considered obligatory for adult professionals and folks who considered themselves part of polite society. I'm not maligning it; rather, I've always thought it was a very grown-up and dignified thing to do, but I can't even remember the last time I wrote a note to anyone on paper. I guess the show's producers were simply looking for a visual hook for the memorial page.