Is Dr. House burning down?

The medical procedural drama

has been around almost since the

invention of television, so

there’s not very much

producers can do to

enliven the genre.

Contemporary

innovations

include a show built around a pathologist ( Crossing Jordan), a show set in a fertility clinic (this week’s

Inconceivable), and a show with a remarkably generic title (last year’s predictably failed Medical Investigation). But one of TV’s most popular medical dramas is built around a crusty, misanthropic bastard: Of course, I speak of House. The show’s titular protagonist, Dr. Gregory House ( Hugh Laurie), is a half-lame, Vicodin-addicted jerk who is so useless at dealing with people that he probably wouldn’t have a job at all if not for his near-genius in diagnostic medicine. He’s a chronic sexual harasser, he’s constantly spitting racial epithets at his African-American underling, Foreman (Omar Epps), he virtually never spends any time with his patients and seldom a word passes his lips that isn’t sarcastic. All of that is supposed to make him fun to watch — and he was, for a while. In the show’s second season, he’s less pleasurable: House’s constant self- sabotage is wearying ( especially since his writers haven’t learned that sarcasm loses its impact when it runs in a constant stream). Furthermore, adding his ex-girlfriend Stacy (Sela Ward) — who played a crucial role in disabling his leg — to the cast on a semi-permanent basis, when she’s now married and unavailable, just makes House look even more pathetic. The producers need to hook him up with Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein): They have crackling chemistry, and it might be nice to see what House is like when he isn’t miserable, for a change.