So-called spoilers from "House," the lost ending to "Gilmore Girls" ... can you tell it's my 15th day of press tour?

If you experience symptoms of depression or anger when reading stories that reveal upcoming plot lines of your favorite TV shows, this story about Fox's “House” may not be for you. Ask your doctor.

  For the 99.9 percent of you still reading, TV critics got a chance to ask Dr. House, aka Hugh Laurie, when he and others from the next No. 1 show on television paid a “House” visit to the Beverly Hilton on Monday. (I say “next No. 1” because it's already tops among 18-to-49-year-olds and will likely surge past “CSI” and even “American Idol,” the show that helped launch it, next year.)

  You may recall that things ended badly last May for Dr. House. By poorly finessing the line between grumpy and hateful, he managed to drive away all three members of his team in just one episode. After refusing to talk Foreman (Omar Epps) out of resigning, he then fired Chase (Jesse Spencer), which drove Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) over the edge and out the door with him. And that was that.

And this is now: All three sidekicks were on hand Monday with Laurie, co-stars Lisa Edelstein and Robert Sean Leonard and show producer Katie Jacobs.

  Confirming what our eyes could see — and what common sense had long before dictated — Jacobs said, “Everybody is back.” But she added, “Everybody is back eventually … having changed and in different capacities.”

  In past seasons of “House,” the writers have chewed up episodes playing out what-if scenarios. What if a wealthy benefactor (Chi McBride) got on the hospital board and decided House was too unprofessional to continue in his post? What if a vengeful cop (David Morse) had nothing better to do than put House behind bars for his shady ways of acquiring painkillers?

  And next season: What if House took on five new protégés to replace his three that went MIA, and played “Survivor” with them? The five hopefuls will include one of Hollywood's hottest actors, Kal Penn, who's played a stoner in “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” and a second-generation immigrant in Mira Nair's “Namesake.” The other guest stars are Olivia Wilde, Peter Jacobson, Anne Dudek and Edi Gathegi.

  The talent infusion means plenty of fresh meat for Laurie, who was asked about picking up an Emmy nomination after being curiously overlooked in 2006 (for the record, he has two wins from the Television Critics Association, which gives out only one acting award in drama per year).

  “We have absolutely no business expecting or being crabby if we don't get some particular cherry on top,” Laurie said, making no attempt to disguise his native British accent. “We've already got so many cherries on top of so many cherries that one more cherry is — I've exhausted that metaphor.”

Speaking of inevitable comebacks, Fox held a session for “The Return of Jezebel James” that, as far as the people who write about television were concerned, could have been named “The Return of Amy Sherman-Palladino.”

  She's the creator of “Gilmore Girls” and the author of a peculiar TV subgenre: the low-budget, high-word-count dramedy. I've never figured out the relationship between actors talking fast and networks saving money, but I'm told it exists, and it worked wonders for six seasons of “Gilmore.” Sherman-Palladino and her husband, Daniel Palladino, bailed on the show's final season, but now they're back with “Jezebel James,” a comedy about sisters who decide, and I'll just let your imagination run with this, to have a baby together.

  If there were 500 people on stage, you'd be able to recognize Sherman-Palladino immediately. She's the one wearing the outsized, Lewis Carroll/Dr. Seuss-styled hat. (Indeed, a critic sitting next to me, no fan of the “Jezebel James” pilot, began riffing, “I will not watch her show in a house, I will not watch it with a mouse…”)

  And it's clear from the pilot, whatever its flaws — mostly the fact that co-stars Lauren Ambrose and Parker Posey have trouble spewing out Sherman-Palladino's rapid-fire dialogue — that the “Gilmore” gal has not changed her ways, any more than she might change her haberdasher.

  “I like family dynamics because I can't figure out mine,” said Sherman-Palladino, who did most of the talking in the session, 2401 words in 45 minutes to be exact (isn't word count great?). And even though her new show once again features two women yakking at each other, she insisted that she likes loquaciousness in anybody and anything: “I would like it in men. I would like it in chipmunks, two nice squirrels talking to each other, I'd be fine with that, too. Just as long as the dynamic is interesting.”

  (Sadly, unless “Jezebel James” picks up steam in a hurry, this is going to be one of those cases where a documentary of the writers talking about their show is more interesting than the show itself.)

  If you're wondering whether Sherman-Palladino caught the series finale of “Gilmore,” she did not watch the show in a house, she did not watch the show with a mouse.

  “I couldn't watch it because it wasn't going to be my ending,” she said.

  And her ending to one of the great mother-daughter TV series of all time would've been?

  “You're adopted,” said Sherman-Palladino. She was joking. I think.