They've Gone About As Fer As They Can Go

As I've noted before, TV characters tend to get more extreme the longer the show is on. By the final season, the leads of Seinfeld were monsters--we'd probably have hated them if we didn't know them already.

It got me thinking about Gregory House, M.D. Here's a character who was meant to be pretty outrageous from the start, but in the first season or so, you still see stirrings up humanity underneath. The character has since become harsher, a real pest to the people around him. I suppose I understand why viewers are still attracted to a brilliant and funny character, but I don't get why his colleagues seek his friendship, much less put up with him.