As you indicated, I suppose she lets House get away with so much because he brings positive results, he's a good doctor (bedside manner not withstanding), and as she said in her pitch to insurance brass he leads the most innovative diagnostic departments in the world. So, yeah, House has some weight to throw around with her. The Chief Surgeon? Not so much.
And I love the fact that they kept that implicit, that Cuddy never mentioned House by name when pitching the quality of her hospital and its diagnostic department. Too often, it seems that most of what the characters besides House do is talk about House. There was some of that here, with Wilson suggesting to Cuddy that she seek out House's advice on how to manipulate the situation, and in the stuff between her and Lucas, but overall, the Cuddy episode succeeded in being more about Cuddy than about House.
It did. This episode and Wilson's worked for me, despite being light on House. With Wilson's episode it was especialy great as we got to see House's madness from the prespective of the rest of the hospital.
Another carryover from the Wilson-centric episode: mention of House's POTW without ever actually seeing them. The moment I remember from the previous episode is when the Cottages are running a gurney along and Foreman says in an aside to Wilson that it wasn't what they had earlier diagnosed. The equivalent here was the elevator door closing as House said, "Then it's got to be..." and it cuts him off. Overall, it was a very good episode, but not quite enough to push it into Excellent territory for me. Part of that was the convenient way almost everything got resolved in the last 3 minutes; using the last 5 minutes might have been better. Cuddy's still da bomb, though.
A friend of Wilson's, whom he saved before from cancer, becomes ill and under Wilson's care. Wilson discovers the man has a new cancer; the treatment Wilson goes with is aggressive chemo that while it cures the friend's cancer it trashes the man's liver. Wilson struggles a bit but ultimately decides to donate part of his own liver to his friend and patient.
Yes, i'm with you on that one. I love Wilson. The character is nicely fleshed out and interesting. I don't find Cuddy nearly as interesting as either of them. And in regards to Lucas being good for Cuddy because he IS so opposite her....meh. I just think he's an ass. At least, from what we've seen. So far i think he is still pretty much a one dimensional character.