Should they have let Gretchen's depression off like that?

Who is to say she is not depressed. I suffer from depression and a lot of the time people are surprised when i tell them i am cause i come across fine. Depression is not only the usual outward symptoms a lot of the time its what is in your head.

I'm pretty sure she is going to have a downer path the Next episodes.

Absolutely not. The thing is that it's hard to tell what people are feeling. No one wants to be so depressed that it feels impossible to even get out of your bed to take a shower... or even just fix breakfast.

And when you're depressed, you know that you're making everyone else miserable by letting them in. It becomes second nature to try to hide it... and when it's at its worst you tend to just try to disappear and "fall off the map" because it's impossible to hide (and you don't really even care enough to try). But in your better spells, it's not uncommon to even try to overcompensate and pretend you're very happy and maybe even be "the life of the party."

Gretchen's not at one of her lowest points right now... similar to the person we were introduced to in the show. It does "come and go," but not in the manner of simply being depressed and then not being depressed at all. Remember how she seemed perfectly normal, but was disappearing to have crying fits in her car? For the rest of the show's life... that's the Gretchen that the audience has access to.

Even if she's singing karaoke and drinking with friends and seems to be having a merry ol' time, we'll have to wonder if when she goes home at the end of the night, she's mostly thinking about how great it would be if a meteor just fell out of the sky and ended it all for her. And if Jimmy's being a complete tool and it seems like Gretch could do better... we'll have to wonder if the only reason she was ever with him at all and now stays is just because she hates the idea of being alone with her thoughts when it's time to go to bed... and, well, she doesn't really feel like it'd ever be any better anyways.

To me, that's the impact of season 2, and it always will be.

Basically, just because that part of her life isn't going to be so "in your face" doesn't mean it's not always still going to be hovering in the background and shaping the narrative of whatever story is happening. Pretend we were introduced to some character that reminded us of Paris Hilton and was just going around partying, doing drugs, and having lots of sex... we might not like her very much, right? Well, let's pretend then the story showed flashbacks of all the terrible things that have happened to her (like being molested by her father and such) and showed a completely screwed up life that suggested issues that accounted for her poor choices. Well... the narrative changes, eh? So while we may have thought very little of her when she let a few guys gang-bang her in an early episode, later it may feel like she just doesn't know how to say no to men and uses sex to try and get validation... and at that point the same sort of scenes may make us feel very differently about the character. That's season 2.

Couldn't agree more Erniedavis!!

It's not the fact that she's in treatment that makes it logical to tone down her depression in S3. It's the fact that she wasn't presented with crushing depression for the entire run of the series so far. She had a bit of a bad stretch in S3, but as often happens with certain forms of depression, she mostly got over it and reverted back to her "normal" self. She's not fixed. She's just not at a low point in her life, but with the constant threat of falling back into one being ever present. And having known a few people who suffered from clinical depression, bi-polar, and the like, having her seek actual help (rather than diving into a bottle) while she's deep in one of those low points would be pretty bad writing.

You know what noone tells you about cooking with the Dark Side? The food is really good!