Yesterday, the leaders of America gathered in Washington, D.C. for a health care summit. It was an effort to gnash out the differences between the proponents for a comprehensive health care bill and those who think the current proposed legislation is a waste of paper. We're not weighing in on the debate, other than to say it's a damn serious subject and one that needs solutions, not rhetoric.

But as a television production, the health care summit was a snoozefest. Whether you like any of the political personalities involved, it didn't change the fact that while Chris Matthews was giddy about the political theater, it was dreary TV.

We used to be big House watchers in this house a few years ago. We loved seeing Dr. House be snarky and cynical, and while an addiction to Vicodin is tragic, it was part of who he was. Really, maybe that's part of what addiction is -- it becomes familiar and part of your psyche, and you don't want to give it up. I'm no therapist, though (clearly).

We lapsed with the show as it became more and more predictable, and even the addition of the new team and the Survivor-like way House picked them wasn't enough to make it must-see TV. We watched only an episode or two last season. House's spiral was sad, and we didn't want to watch it anymore. I know long-running shows have to evolve, but we had lost the old House.

During the pilot episode of the new FOX drama Mental, Annabella Sciorra's Dr. Nora Skoff tells Chris Vance's Dr. Jack Gallagher that his recent decision to strip down butt-naked to help a patient deserves some of her Harvard business school advice - ask for royalties because the video of it is sure to be more popular than Paris Hilton's sex tape. To that, I offer some insight from a Syracuse University TV production graduate - there's a reason FOX held off on premiering Mental until the summer. It's not very good.

(S03E23) Here's something I found odd about tonight's episode, though not really having to do with it being a season finale. Why is it that a seemingly not-so-well-off Cuban couple can go through great pains to find House, and yet this is what I believe to be the first time a foreign patient has sought out House's expertise?