House Season 4

House M.D. has been quite different this season with the addition of the new team winnowed down from a roomful at the beginning of the season after the firing of Chase and the quitting of Foreman and Cameron. Three finally made it on the team, with the runner-up, Amber (known by House as "Cutthroat _itch"), becoming Wilson's girlfriend. Foreman is back, leading the team as House's right-hand man while Chase works in surgery and Cameron in the E.R., so we see them from time to time but not as regularly as before.

But this week's episode ... and next week's as the story line continues ... is a edge-of-the-seat thriller. House is in a bus accident, ending up with a head injury and a nagging memory he can't quite grasp of someone who needs his help. The details of the evening upfold as House and his team work up the bus driver, and then, finally, during a reenactment of the accident during which House takes certain drugs that should stimulate his memory, the truth comes out. Throughout his hallucinations, a result of his head trauma and the drugs he's taken, clues keep coming to him -- a resin necklace with an insect in it and a red scarf. At the end of the episode and under the influence of the memory-inducing drugs that causes House a cardiac arrest, House finally remembers who needs his help: Amber. The resin necklace -- Amber -- and the red scarf that he took from around her neck and tied around her thigh above a bar that impaled her just above the knee -- and, on the very edge of our seats, we watch Wilson and Cuddy doing CPR on House as he comes back to tell them of Amber's condition -- taken to another hospital and without ID, she was only known as "Jane Doe #2."

Next week's episode will deal with Amber's case and House, still suffering from his head injury, will try to save her life. This is definitely some of the best stuff on TV -- and House is the only TV show we have ever purchased in its entirety. Each season gets better and better. Those writers -- and those actors -- are sheer genius on House M.D. And Hugh Laurie especially is pure magic.

Even if you're not a House fan, don't miss next week's episode -- Monday night, 9 PM, right after Bones. BE THERE. We will be. No. matter. what.

(My apologies for all of these TV posts, but when there are so many great great finales going on all at once, it simply can't be helped. And when we get closer to the finale for Dancing with the Stars, I'll have to post yet again -- go Kristi!)