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Last week, fans of the Fox drama “House” saw the opener of a two-part fourth-season finale in which brilliant but cranky diagnostician Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) wound up confused and covered in blood after a bus crash.
He’s convinced someone on the bus was showing signs of serious illness before the crash, but his head injury has impaired his memory.
But tonight, says Laurie, “you will find out.”
On this Wednesday in late April, “House” has left its usual home on the 20th Century Fox lot in Los Angeles to head south to Manhattan Beach, to a studio that houses such shows as “Boston Legal” and “CSI Miami.”
According to executive producer David Shore, the two-parter was originally planned to start after the Super Bowl, but the three-month Writers Guild of America strike upset the schedule.
“We thought it was dead,” Shore says, speaking during production of Part 2. “It’s a very expensive two-parter, and we thought we couldn’t justify that amount of money. As a season finale, it works. We wanted to finish the story that we were doing this year, so it works out in all respects.
“There’s a bus and a bus crash. Pieces of the bus have been shot all over the place. The inside of the bus was on a soundstage. The aftereffect of the bus crash is at Universal.
“And we’re at Manhattan Beach shooting the bus now. We’re spending a lot of money.”
Shore also says that as soon as this episode is done, “House” rolls straight into shooting season five, propelled in part by fears of a possible Screen Actors Guild strike.
“This doesn’t feel like the end of a season,” Laurie says. “It feels like the beginning of a very, very long season. We’re making 28, unbroken – that’s assuming that the actors don’t go on strike. I say ‘the actors,’ but I am one, nominally. We don’t know what’s going to happen there.”
Employment uncertainty has been a theme this year on “House,” which started its season with dozens of candidates vying to be part of House’s medical team.
In the end, it came down to three, including Dr. Lawrence Kutner, played by Kal Penn (“Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay”).
Relaxing in his trailer between shots, Penn (who spent his strike break campaigning for Sen. Barack Obama in Iowa) says, “We didn’t know who’s staying or who’s going.”
“It’s true,” Shore says, “because the writers didn’t know.”
