Between the House/Cuddy kiss, the train wreck that is Thirteen, and the rekindling of the House/Wilson bromance, things are really getting good on House [1] these days. The show has some big things planned for sweeps and beyond, and executive producer Katie Jacobs kindly hopped on a conference call with reporters last week to help sort out some of the things to come. Here are some highlights of what she shared:

• On the "unorthodox" love affair of House and Cuddy: "You’re right to say "unorthodox," and at the same time, I think it’s probably more real than any other love relationship on TV insofar as relationships are complicated. House and Cuddy work together. There’s obvious chemistry; there’s obvious respect, but there’s barbs, and there’s jousting. It is unorthodox and, at the very same time, incredibly real."
• On how their story will unfold: "I don't think that it will go on in a predictable, 'OK, now everything is shifting, and this is the story' kind of way. Hopefully, we explore it in a very House-ian way, which is, it's there, and now, what do we do? But, don't expect to see dates and they go to the movies. It's not going to unfold like that."
• On the chemistry between House and Cuddy, House and Cameron, and more: "I certainly hope we go for as much chemistry as possible. I think what it is, is House, as a character, has a hole, has an emptiness. What most of these women want to do is somehow see if they can ease his pain because everybody knows on the inside, or they think on the inside, that there’s a lot of pain and if they can somehow be the one to make House smooth out those rough edges, wouldn’t it be sweet? It's mostly going to be up to House. He could have a relationship with any one of them, but he's got to be in the mind space and be at a place where he's ready to make himself vulnerable. I don't see him as being at that place entirely at the moment. At times, we’ve seen glimpses of his getting closer."

For more from Jacobs (including some hints about upcoming plotlines — consider yourself warned), just .

• On the upcoming storyline in which a patient takes the hospital hostage: "What we were interested in tapping into is the frustration that many of us feel when we go in to see a doctor or a hospital, and we’re not diagnosed, when they simply don't know what’s wrong. This patient had been to 16 hospitals and has been through every imaginable test and he feels that there is a certain indignity, and he’s not being seen, and yet, at the same time, he's lost everything — because, also, people with illnesses know, you miss a certain amount of work because you're not feeling well, or you're not able to carry on even the closest of relationships, so you can lose your life to this illness. That’s what we're more interested in, is patients' frustration and their need to be seen."



• On giving all the characters screen time: "It is hard, and yet, I always find it satisfying when we're able to do it, because what I love about what David Shore has created is, every character, I feel, has their specific point of view on the topic of conversation that we're exploring that week. So, it's hard to do, but very satisfying when we get to hear the different voices and different opinions — Kutner, Taub, Cameron, Chase — they all have different slants. The hostage episode that's coming up reveals that, how they all feel about what House is doing inside while trying to get the gun away from the guy and treating the guy."
• On Thirteen's struggles: "She's kind of at a spirally place, kind of lost all hope, and feels like since she's been diagnosed with Huntington's, and we know that to be a terminal illness, and she watched her mother die from Huntington's, she's kind of given up. It's one of the stories that is in "Last Resort" — the hostage-taker, played by Zeljko Ivanek, decides that every drug that Dr. House is going to try on him to see what’s wrong with him, he's going to make somebody else take it first. That person has to take all the drugs to see how they interact together. Thirteen, as part of her spiral, volunteers for this. She thinks there's no better candidate, since she's sick anyway, to take all of these drugs. By the end of the hostage episode, she's going to come to a very interesting, different place than we’ve seen her before, having gone to the very edge in this episode."
• On the future of the PI character: "We really liked having him. He fits in well, I think, in our show. We really liked playing to him, but right now, he's not in any more episodes. But I wouldn’t rule out completely him coming back."

Photos courtesy of Fox [2]