Kutner’s Death

Just watched this past week’s episode of House, M.D. and couldn’t figure out why they killed of Kutner (played by Kal Penn). They even ended the episode pointing to some memorial page they have up for Kutner: In Loving Memory of Lawrence Kutner on House and an NAMI ad with a suicide hotline number. Thinking that Kal Penn might’ve actually committed suicide, I went to look up his IMDb biography and saw:

In April 2009, Penn told Entertainment Weekly Magazine that the writers killed off his character on “House M.D.” (2004) because he had asked to be allowed to leave the show to go work for the Barack Obama Administration as the Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Liaison.

Accepted a position as the associate director in the White House’s Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs [April 7, 2009].

So now we know why they had to kill off Kutner’s character. We still don’t know why Kutner killed himself (storyline-wise).

Update: I apologize to those who I’ve unfortunately spoiled this for. Future discussions of things I’ve watched would clearly be marked as ** SPOILERS **.