"House" Remodeling

You know how Television works: When a show becomes hugely successful, the self-satisfaction felt by the creators and stars somehow manages to show up onscreen, and the show itself becomes incrementally less fun to watch.

It’s happened on “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” to name but two recent examples.

I’ve often feared that it will happen to “House,” as well and, indeed, there’s the occasional scene that smacks of an inside joke or something that the producers wouldn’t’ve done were they not feeling so bullet-proof. But entering its fourth season, the only thing about “House” that’s truly self-regarding is House himself.

Last season concluded with House’s staff getting fired or quitting, so we begin this season with House (Hugh Laurie) a man alone. Lisa Edelstein and Robert Sean Leonard get some rare and gratifying quality screen time, as Cuddy and Wilson are pressing him to hire a new team. Wilson even “kidnaps” his guitar, threatening to hold it until House has colleagues to bounce ideas off of. (The stealing-the-guitar thing is one of those indulgences mentioned above, but Leonard has some very droll moments in this subplot, so I’ll let it pass.)

Instead, House recruits a janitor for advice: “What about lupus?” he asks (another running joke: Lupus seems to get mentioned as a potential malady in every other episode).

So tonight’s episode boasts an interesting twist, which leads to next week’s episode, in which House transforms his recruiting process into something akin to “Survivor: House,” bringing in 40 candidates to work beneath him.

I know, I know: It sounded gimmicky to me initially, too. But the “Survivor: House” competition is actually a pretty great idea, because the writers have gone to the trouble of giving the cutthroat doctors competing for his jobs some interesting personalities (trouble is, you have a fair idea of who’s at least in the running to get hired based on the amount of effort put into developing their characters).

Wilson warns House that since he’s feeling burned by the departure of his last team, he’ll make bad decisions hiring his new team: He won’t hire the best people, he’ll choose people he doesn’t like so if they leave, no hard feelings.

Oh, and Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), Foreman (Omar Epps) and Chase (Jesse Spencer) start wending their ways back into the series.

Hence, a clever way of reinvigorating a franchise that didn’t necessarily need it. But the fact that they did demonstrates their dedication to keeping “House” the best network primetime show going.

- “House:” 9 p.m. Tuesday, Fox Channel 11.