[Hack&Lube]

I knew Cudy was going to show up and they'd have at it. You knew he wasn't going to go back. They've done the Vicodin addiction/destructive House for 6 years now, they obviously can't do it anymore. Even the most loyal fans get tired of that trope.

Take a look at the entire season and you can see that the entire season has about House's redemption. The entire season has been about him trying to do the right thing instead of the thing he wants. He went off Vicodin, he allowed his friends to help him have fun, he tried to give Cudy his blessing with the book, he threw the rap sheet on Wilson's ex in the trash without reading it, etc.

Last episode with the annoying therapist, they were setting him up for the fall again, as for this whole episode. Just when House is beginning to think that all his good deeds amount to nothing but more lonliness and hell for him, Cudy decides to finally help him for real which is what he needed all along but never realized until his psychotic episode last season. You don't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need.

I think Hugh Laurie has said that he didn't want House to change too much, that he always feared the sentimentality of American TV shows and their tendancy to go for the happy ending. But at this point in the show's life, it needs this to go on.