Dave the Swede asked me the other day if I was planning to watch the House series finale. As it happened, the answer was yes -- but it very easily could have been no. For I haven't watched House in a couple of years now.

For me, the show jumped the shark when House remarked that being happy in a relationship made him lose interest in being a good doctor. Being a good doctor -- if only for the sake of solving the puzzle -- was the character's reason for being; without it, he was nothing. Temporary as that mood may have been -- and temporary as the relationship in question turned out to be -- I could never look at the show the same way again after that.

But Monday night, I went back just for old times' sake. And just to find out something . . .

Some of you longtimers may remember that I used to speculate that House was really searching for God, loath as he would have been to admit it. I was curious to see if that search would be touched on at all in the finale -- and pleased to see that it was, just a little.

Hallucinating during a near-death experience, House hears his former girlfriend Stacy suggesting that maybe there was just a tiny part of his mind that believed in God -- and maybe that just that tiny part was enough. I wish I could give you the conversation verbatim, but the show's not online yet (at least not in any legal and easily accessible format), so I can't re-listen to it.

But just that one moment when we were allowed to believe that there might some minuscule mustard seed of belief in there somewhere was pretty big. I'd have written it somewhat differently myself, but still -- for House, that was huge. And oddly satisfying.