Dr. Gregory House has officially gone crazy, and fans are about to dive down the rabbit hole with him when House returns on Monday (8/7c, Fox).

The two-hour Season 5 premiere finds House confined to the mental institution we saw him walking into in the final moments of last season. If you’re a fan of Hugh Laurie’s cantankerous doc, you’ll certainly be happy with the premiere, as he and Wilson (he’s in one quick scene) are the only main characters to make an appearance. “It was daunting, I was daunted and I still am,” Laurie told TVGuide.com about House’s solo flight. “It was a big thing to take on for everybody, to set it in a completely different world, with a completely different cast of characters. A lot of people have taken a lot of risks with this. If nothing else, it’s exciting.”

In the meantime, TVGuide.com turned to Laurie’s co-star Lisa Edelstein to find up what’s coming up on this season of House. She reveals what the hospital is like without House, who might give Cuddy a new romantic distraction and what she thinks is the ultimate endgame for “Huddy.”

TVGuide.com: Fans were pretty upset with the season finale because the House and Cuddy love scene they’ve been waiting for was actually a hallucination.
Lisa Edelstein: The thing that I thought was good news about it is that there’s only so far we can take it on the show before you change the dynamic, so the fact is, we kind of got a freebie in, because ultimately it can’t really be that successful because that’s not what House is about. The more time you eke out of the opportunity to just explore two people who have no relationship skills, the more we can play around. I get to be a virgin another time.

TVGuide.com: Was it awkward shooting those physical scenes with Hugh Laurie after having worked with him for so long?
Edelstein: Not for me. I wasn’t awkward. Hugh kept saying how odd it was at the Paley Festival, but I’m not married, so there’s no issue for me. I think Hugh is awesome, we’re great friends and I love kissing, so why wouldn’t I love kissing Hugh Laurie?

TVGuide.com: How will the show evolve this season?
Edelstein: The beginning of this season is really about House trying to find a sense of recovery from himself. He’s most likely doomed to fail in that regard, but that’s where we’re at right now in terms of what’s happening in the season.

TVGuide.com: House is like a rock for everyone in the hospital. How will that change now that he’s not around?
Edelstein: The team is particularly insecure. Even though they all know they’re smart, nobody feels quite as smart as House. So there’s a lot of second-guessing going on on the team. When you have such an overbearing father, in a sense, it’s really hard to know when you can think for yourself. Learning how to think on your own two feet is a challenge when somebody is making all the decisions for you. They’re all kind of faced with that.

TVGuide.com: Foreman is taking over the diagnostics department in House’s absence. How does he handle the new job?
Edelstein: He’s the one that demanded that position, by the way. She didn’t hand it to him. He demanded it. I think she respected that, but then she’s just like, ‘Step up then; this is what you want to do.’ He doesn’t handle it so well. In trying to be the best boss he can be, he actually really screws it up.

TVGuide.com: What does Cuddy get to do this season that we haven’t seen in the past?
Edelstein: This year, Cuddy is really trying to step out a little bit and get her own life and a love life and try not to be so down and up with House, which of course will probably make him go for her even more. I think there’s a lot of exploration going on with that. She should get to sleep with somebody else too. All’s fair in love and war. Damn it, why don’t I get any love scenes with anybody else? Every once in a while, somebody shoves their tongue down your throat that you’re not happy about.

TVGuide.com: What would your ideal ending for House and Cuddy be?
Edelstein: I’m not into endings because I don’t think that’s what life is. It’s not like Lost, where they’re going to get back to the island or everything is going to become clear at episode 17. I think life goes on for everybody. Whenever the show ends, it seems like there’s a chance that they might try, although the hope is very dismal for it to work. The complicated dance that they do kind of goes on forever. I would imagine [that] to be the most honest. To some extent, if you just surrender to it and let it be what it is, good and bad and ugly, that’s a beautiful thing.

What impact will last season’s fantasized hook-up between House and Cuddy have on these characters’ relationship this fall?

Michael Ausiello asked House creator David Shore that question He replied:

“We’re stepping back from it a little bit. We’re not ignoring it. We have to carry forward… It’s going to go someplace eventually. But the beginning of this season is primarily focused on House trying to find some semblance of sanity, and not completely succeeding.”

Follow this article’s jump for more of the Q&A with Shore, including his thoughts his plans for Cameron and Chase next year.

Was the Cuddy sex a fantasy? Was Cameron and Chase’s wedding real? We asked House executive producer David Shore to answer our burning questions about the finale.

After House’s detox and the Huddy sex turned out to be his fantasies, what was real in the episode? The Chase/Cameron wedding? The conversations with Wilson?
There has been some speculation about this, but we weren’t trying to pull any fast ones on the viewers. Every scene that House wasn’t in was real. But even the stuff that House was in was real—it was just his perception of the lipstick/pills that was distorted. And there was no detox or sex.

Will House really get sober this time?
He’s certainly going to purse that. We want to treat this seriously and we want to go down that road.

Why did he enter a psychiatric institution rather than rehab?
The problems are deeper than just the drugs, which are obviously an essential element of it. The fact is he used plenty of Vicodin before, but until Kutner’s death, on top of Amber’s death, he was somehow able to cope with it. He knows he needs to be locked up somewhere or it’s just not going to work. He realizes he has a problem and he has to do something about it. How that will manifest itself is what next season is all about.

What’s the future for a Cuddy/House romantic relationship?
Initally, there are bigger issues on the table, but it would be dishonest to just let that disappear. Obviously House has feelings for her. Even though the love affair didn’t happen, in House’s mind it did.

Will House be back at work when the season begins?
No. We want to deal with this in as realistic way as possible. We are going to be with House, but it’s not going to be at Princeton-Plainsboro. We want to take it through the process that House is going through.

How will House’s group at work function without his presence?
It’s always nice to pull the central cog out of something and see what happens. How Foreman and Thirteen react; how Cameron and Chase react. Those are all the things that will make this fun.

House MVP Lisa Edelstein just finished a conference call with reporters to hype this season’s final two episodes. Of course, what she ended up spending most of her time talking about was next week’s long-awaited “Huddy” hookup. Here are some highlights…

• “We probably did five takes. We didn’t do it for that long. It was more of a question that the cameras wanted to capture a lot of different things.”

• “You’re not going to see me get naked or anything, but it’s a pretty hot scene.”

• “I have a great friendship with Hugh and he’s super-sexy so who could complain about kissing him?”

• “I don’t think it’s a passing thing. It’s been going on for a long time, whether or not they’ve acted out on it. I don’t necessarily think it’ll ever be a satisfying relationship in terms of both of them kind of settling in and saying, ‘This is what we’re doing.’ She has a complicated relationship with men, it seems. She likes the screwed-up ones.”

• On whether the encounter will turn out to be some sort of alternate reality/hallucinatory fake-out, she says, “There’s a chance for anything, isn’t there?”

How long until Monday? (Additional reporting by Jeremy Medina)