House M.D. Season 4
Overview
House loses his whole team at the end of season 3, so season 4 opens with television's most entertaining job interview. Dozens of candidates, numbered and competing Survivor-style, get whittled down through differential diagnoses until three fellows remain: Taub, the haunted plastic surgeon; Kutner, cheerful and reckless; and a doctor known only as Thirteen, whose secret — a likely illness of her own that she refuses to confirm — becomes one of the season's running threads. Olivia Wilde, Kal Penn, and Peter Jacobson slot in so well you'll wonder why the show waited this long. The real standout, though, is Anne Dudek as Amber, the ruthless candidate House nicknames "Cutthroat Bitch," who doesn't make the team but starts dating Wilson instead. Their relationship drags House and Wilson's friendship into new territory, and it all converges in a two-part finale built around a bus crash and a memory House can't reach. The closing episode, "Wilson's Heart," is routinely ranked among the finest hours the series ever produced, and it earns the tears honestly. A writers' strike cut the season to sixteen episodes; it might be stronger for it.
