• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, February 9, 2012

It's official: Fox TV will have fewer shows with characters looking for lies.

The series "House" is ending after eight years and 177 episodes -- including such head-scratching moves as a jealous Dr. Gregory House crashing his car into a former girlfriend's living room, and setting up elaborate tricks such as trapping Dr. James Wilson in a big animal net high over a living room. "Everybody lies” is the constant refrain from the complex and infuriating character.

House is a master diagnostician, which unfortunately extends not just to seemingly unsolvable medical illnesses, but to business decisions, other people's relationships, and his own foibles. House especially loves discovering lies from the people around him.

Network and advertising executives might not go to such extents in figuring out problems. Hopefully, there are fewer outright liars in their businesses these days -- though some half-truths continue to infect the fit and healthy.

As usual we can revel in watching the performance of a TV character -- who, while he doesn’t really exist, gives hope to viewers that somewhere such a physican really does figure out medical mysteries.

Lying? That can be a cousin of anger. Which brings us to Charlie Sheen. Sheen will possibly be appearing on a new FX series, "Anger Management," which will in all likelihood gain marketing benefit from the actor’s real-life personal riffs that built steam just about a year ago. Not so coincidentally, FX is a sister network of Fox TV -- where angry, unappreciated, misunderstood characters exist, hopefully building crowd support in rooting for them to succeed and/or be repaired.

"House" is not the only Fox TV show in which lying has played a central role in the subject matter. The short-lived, but well-liked, series "Lie To Me" recently ended. Starring Tim Roth, it focused on the science of those who lied or revealed other semi-truths through facial ticks, verbal indicators and other tells.

But don't worry. Plenty of lying will remain on TV screens in 2012. Just wait until those political advertising campaigns really get going.