10 TV Characters NOBODY Expected To Die
5. Lawrence Kutner - House
Lawrence Kutner (Kal Penn) joined House at the start of its fourth season as a new member of House's (Hugh Laurie) diagnostic team, and it's safe to say that nobody saw his shocking, tragic demise coming.
In the late season five episode "Simple Explanation," Kutner doesn't turn up for work, and when his colleagues visit his apartment, they find that he's committed suicide, having shot himself.
The reason for this? Actor Kal Penn took a job working for the Obama administration in the White House, as necessitated him being suddenly written out of House.
Rather than simply have him, say, transfer away to another hospital for personal or professional reasons, the decision was made to use Penn's exit to open a dialogue about the often sudden and seemingly unexplained nature of suicide.
A major plot point of the episode is that House struggles to comprehend why Kutner would take his own life, even preferring to suspect foul play at first, and while his death remains divisive to this day, it was certainly effective in conveying the below-the-radar nature of depression.