"House" moves to Monday, which makes his patients want to kill themselves

When Your Mayor was in college, he wrote a short story for a fiction class entitled "Kindness to a Fault." It was about a guy whose suicide attempt was interrupted by a massive earthquake (get it - "Kindness to a Fault?" My, I was quite the wit). When the guy came to, he couldn't find his razor blades anywhere in his home's rubble, so in the havoc of the tremor's aftermath, he hightailed it down to the neighborhood mall to loot a pack of razor blades so he could finish the job. Complications ensued. It was a comedy.

I mention this only because I was reminded of it by tonight's episode of "House," which is not a comedy. In it, a man in chronic pain is interrupted in his suicide attempt and rushed to the hospital, where House (Hugh Laurie) and the gang try to save his life, against his wishes.

("You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here.")

"Please - just let me die," the guy pleads. "No," House replies. Boy, House has been cruel to patients in the past, but this is just beyond the pale.

Truth be told, you almost get the feeling that they're phoning it in on the disease-of-the-week here, because they're more interested in the sundry character subplots. The patient's death wish forces House to (kind of) examine his own motivations. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) phones in a favor to House to get him to take the case for surreptitious motives. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) is too preoccupied with proving she's a good foster mom to the foster-home officials to really facilitate or muck up House's investigation into the sick guy's ailment. And Foreman (Omar Epps) - who recently swapped a smooch with the ostensibly terminally ill Thirteen (Olivia Wilde) - is preoccupied with helping her, which in turn may help him get into her pants.

Perfectly acceptable episode, with (spoiler alert) a happy ending.

In my short story, not quite as happy an ending: The guy got killed in an aftershock. Cheap irony, I think it was called back then.

- "House:" 8 p.m. Monday, Fox Channel 11.