"House": Season four reboot

I think I've diagnosed an ailment in the new season of TV's top medical drama. Hopefully it's a temporary condition. Watch the video.

Also, I reviewed tonight's debuts of "Reaper," my favorite new fall network show, and "Cane," not my favorite. Read the reviews.

There's a new storyline on TV's most popular medical drama —
the script writers have gone clinically insane! Hopefully the condition is temporary.

As you may recall, "House" ended last season with the sudden departure of not one, not two, but all three of House's residents, who for various reasons had had it with their mercurial boss. Each of them wanted to see what it was like to work for a normal boss.

Well, we know how that's going to end. This is one of those multi-episode diversionary arcs that we've seen every season on "House," whether it was David Morse chasing House with a butcher knife —

no, wait, that was "Disturbia." Or Tai Chi McBride buying a stake on the hospital board seemingly for the sole purpose of tormenting the infectious disease specialist.

And this year, "House" is going to spend several episodes, it seems, dancing around the fact that he needs Foreman, Chase and Cameron — and they in turn, one assumes, will soon learn the same.

Let's cut to the chase. This week's episode is not great — next week's is godawful. In it, "House" recruits 40 doctors, gives them tags like they're running in a 5K, and makes them audition for the three spots on his team. He eliminates bunches of them with a sweep of his hand for no reason at all, has them wash his car, has them examine a patient en masse....

It's a show that proves what a risky procedure "House" was in the first place — a doctor thoroughly broken and unlikable in every way limps into the room and starts cracking jokes. By the show's end the comedy gives way to drama and a life is saved. The beauty of "House" is that he comedy knows when to get out of the way of the drama. Usually.

Well, I'm off for a couple of weeks, but you should have plenty of guidance to get you through the fall premieres at TV Barn and Kansas City dot com.