Crusty Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) doesn't like to be wrong. Telling this guy that his wife is dead, well, that was wrong.

A woman comes back from the dead in the season-finale of House tonight.

For Dr. House, this isn't necessarily good news.

After all, he doesn't like being wrong about even the littlest of things. So when he already has advised a grieving husband that his wife "is not coming back," cheating death probably is just a vile example of showboating, in his eyes.

Does this mean Hugh Laurie, who plays Dr. House, will have to give back his OBE?

In a ceremony at Buckingham Palace last Wednesday, Laurie -- who is British, although you never would know it from his portrayal of House -- was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. The 47-year-old Laurie, who was a mainstay of the British comedy scene long before House came along, received his OBE from none other than Queen Elizabeth II.

Pretty classy stuff, eh? It certainly will look good on Laurie's mantle beside his Golden Globe Awards and his Screen Actors Guild award. Wonder which one he treasures most?

Anyway, as the third season of House wraps up tonight (Global, Fox), it continues to be one of the most successful series on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. Just about every week through the winter months, it's a heavy dose of American Idol, CSI, Grey's Anatomy and House in the Canadian top five.

Admittedly, every episode of House is sort of the same: Someone has a mysterious disease, House argues with his underlings about what the cause is, but in the end House winds up being pretty much right.

This evening's installment is titled "Human Error", something with which House does not have a lot of personal experience.

House and his team take on the case of a young woman who, along with her husband, has been rescued at sea en route from Cuba in a frantic attempt to get a diagnosis from the apparently famous Dr. House.

TENSION

Meanwhile, one of House's main foils, Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps), prepares for his last day at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. In the penultimate episode of season No. 3, which aired two weeks ago, the tension between House and Foreman reached a breaking point because Foreman suspected his job interview had been sabotaged by House.

It always has been a tad difficult to take Epps' character completely seriously, since he shares a monicker with Topher Grace's character on That '70s Show (Grace's character spelled his last name without the 'e', as in 'Forman'). But optional vowels notwithstanding, the growing tension between House and Foreman has provided one of the main story arcs on House this season.

Recent evidence suggests that when hospital dramas want to get really dramatic, the slam-dunk plot option is to have one of the doctors threatening to leave.

Sure, there's that life-and-death stuff with the patients, but heck, that happens every week. On to the important issues: Will the love-hate relationship between House and Foreman drive them apart?

It was much the same thing with the season-finale of Grey's Anatomy, which aired a week and a half ago. (Caution -- spoiler alert ahead.)

The big question was whether George (T.R. Knight) was going to leave Seattle Grace, because it was becoming too difficult to conceal his forbidden love for Izzy (Katherine Heigl). Turns out George is leaving not of his own volition, but because he flunked his big exam. But remember, this is TV, and there are tons of ways to keep George around next season if the writers want to do so.

Anyway, back to the point: If you were Foreman, wouldn't you want to get away from House, too?

Then again, if you insert the real world into it, that would mean leaving one of the most popular shows on television. And that's about as unlikely as someone coming back from the dead.