Why Jennifer Morrison's Dr. Allison Cameron Left House M.D.

Let it never be said "House, M.D." let something as insignificant as facts get in the way of a brain-tickling mystery. For eight seasons, David Shore's Fox TV drama centered around the weekly cases of the titular, misanthropic, prodigious diagnostician (Hugh Laurie, who probably isn't upset the series cost him a role in disgraced "House" producer Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns") and the team of doctors who spent almost as much time begging him to seek therapy for his assorted traumas as they did helping him diagnose his aggrieved patients. The show's actual medical accuracy ranged all over the place on a scale of remarkably correct to flaming garbage, but you know what? It had a damn effective formula, which provided a framework upon which the series' writers could hang all manner of soapy dramatics.

Although they would eventually escalate things to the level of having House drive his car into the home of his colleague turned ex-girlfriend Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), the "House" writing staff started out simpler with a good old-fashioned will-they-or-won't-they. True to form, a chunk of season 1's non-medical drama centered on the romantic tension between House and the far younger Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), who typically functioned as both House and his team's conscience on their "investigations." Things didn't immediately change after that, even as the series threw new factors into the mix — like House's old flame, Stacy Warner (Sela Ward), re-entering the picture — and Cameron herself began a slow-burn relationship with her peer and House's golden-haired punching bag, Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer).

However, as the show went on and Cameron stopped working directly under House's watchful eye, she increasingly found herself being back-burnered to make room for the newer additions to the story. Hence, by the time Morrison departed "House" for good in season 6 (save for her brief appearance in the series finale), it wasn't all that shocking. But what happened, exactly?

As Cameron matured and evolved as a person, her initial reason for pursuing House (her desire to "fix" him) faded as well. But while that was a good thing for Cameron's mental and emotional well-being, the series' creatives seemed unsure of what to do with her once she and the rest of House's initial team disbanded at the end of season 3. (Okay, Chase got fired, because of course House couldn't resist giving him one last kick on his way out the door.) She and her co-workers remained part of the show for a while after that, but Cameron's screen time diminished substantially as she married and then divorced Chase (for reasons that included House's bad influence on him, naturally) before she took off entirely.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2009 on the heels of her leaving "House" at the DVD premiere event for "Star Trek" (where she plays a brief role as Kirk's mother, Winona), Morrison admitted to finding the situation "confusing" and having "no answer" regarding her exit. At the same time, she praised Shore for being an "authentic" writer, a description that seemed to imply that he and his fellow scribes had, in fact, hit a wall when it came to Cameron's storyline. She lent credence to that idea while speaking to E! News at the same event, admitting the show's creatives were trying to figure out "if she fits into the hospital ... and as far as I know, they don't know. So that's what I know."

Mind you, while we'd be remiss not to address the elephant in the room that was Morrison and Spencer getting engaged for real and then calling things off in 2007, it seems like Cameron's exit really was an artistic matter first and foremost. Don't feel bad for Morrison, though; she would go on to snag a leading role on the long-running hit series "Once Upon a Time" and has even branched out into directing, having helmed the great "Yellowjackets" episode "12 Angry Girls and 1 Drunk Travis." She's doing just fine and dandy, thank you.