By Montykins
Let's take care of the medical mystery first. A young man named Wacky Benny is having one of the worst Birthday Party Clown Performances ever, even before he gets puched in his Li'l Balloon Animals. The cause eventually turns out to syphilis, which he got when his biological father molested him. So basically we started with an amateur clown and then things got worse.
Meanwhile, Taub's got his own problems, which magically parallel young Ben's situation. His ex-wife wants to take his daughter Sophia to Portland and let her new guy Phil raise her. So House spends a lot of the episode poking at Taub about how his biological relationship to his daughters doesn't mean he's the best one to help raise them. Incidentally, the girls are named "Sophia" and "Sophie," which I find interesting because I have a small white dog named "Sophie." So I expect I'll be able to remember those names more easily than Taub's two ex-ladies. One of them's Ruby, I think.
up, Wilson has two tickets to what Park adorably refers to as "the boxing game." He was supposed to watch it on television with House, but now he wants to watch it from ringside. But House won't allow this unless he can go with him, so he spends some time trying to get out of the ankle monitor. In the end, Wilson gives the tickets to Foreman, who takes House with him. Poor Wilson! Although it's nice that House and Foreman were able to work together on something for once.
Oh, look! A clown! He's a little nervous, but I guess with the name "Wacky Benny" he can be forgiven for that. The children at the birthday party for which he's performing, however, are not in a forgiving mood. Wacky Benny screws up a balloon animal and gets called a "sucky clown." Then a kid punches him in the junk. This somehow gets an adult mad at him, but then Wacky Benny collapses, announcing that he can't move his arm or leg.
The external office. Park says the clotting parameteres are normal. House wants to talk instead about a wrinkle in the front of Taub's shirt. He really has trouble focusing on the patients in this season, doesn't he? He guesses the wrinkle was from Taub's ex-girlfriend (Ruby), not his ex-wife (Rachel, and yes, obviously I had to look those names up). Taub would like to talk about the patient. Or at least the new furniture in the external office. Chase offers to lay a bet on the source of the wrinkle and Taub buckles, telling a story about Phil, who is Rachel's new boyfriend. Phil wants Rachel and the daughter to move to Portland and there was some manner of altercation. Anyway, how about a massive sympathetic discharge? House continues to harp on Taub's deal, and Taub insists that he's the father of the baby and doesn't want her taken away to Portland. Park thinks the kids need round-the-clock parents. Chase thinks Taub might as well be the one to mess the kids up. House talks about Park's Tiger Parents and Chase's Drunk Parents by way of introducing his thesis for the episode, which is that everyone's parents screw them up. Adams is not interesting in rising to the bait. Taub tries endocarditis, and House is willing to let him test for it.
Patient's room. Wacky Benny's parents want to make sure that endocarditis is treatable. I'd like to stop calling him "Wacky Benny," partly because he's out of the clown makeup and has suffered a dramatic dropoff in wackiness, but mostly because "Ben" is a lot faster to type. Anyway, his mom would like Ben to consider another hobby. Ben says he'd like to become a circus clown, which turns out to be the same job his biological father had. Said father had melanoma, incidentally. The mom thinks Ben could do better. Well, he didn't appear to be very good at birthday-party-clowning, but circus-clowning is a different kind of thing. And is he talking about traditional Western circus clowning or the European kind you get with Cirque du Soleil? Is he interested in being a Harlequin? Man, this episode is shockingly light on clown-related detail.
House is doing clinic hours. The patient thinks he has Type 2 Diabetes, but House dismisses all of the symptoms. House says he, himself is the test. And the test thinks the patient is a giant pain in the ass. The patient insists on a blood test. So House leaves the room and tells an extra that it's a sleep test, so the patient shouldn't be disturbed for eight hours. I wonder if House is going to get eight hours of clinic credit for that.
His responsibilities thus avoided, House happens upon Wilson, who wants to talk about Saturday night. They were going to watch a boxing match on television together, but Wilson has an opportunity to see it ringside. House refuses to gracefully allow him to leave without him. Wilson claims he'd take him if he could, but House, being under house arrest, can't go to Atlantic City with him. House claims the alternate ticket anyway, saying he'll worry about the logistics of how to use them.
More office time. Adams proposes syphilitic vasculitis. Nope. Taub brings up the kid's father's clowning, which House thinks is dumb. Adams tries Sjögren's syndrome, which is the new plan. House decides that Raub only mentioned the kid's father because he has a vested interest in believing that children have a special bond with their biological parents.
Taub hooks up Ben to a machine. Ben has a job coming up with his stepdad's law office, but he's not into it. He talks wistfully about clowning and how it feels "when those kids' eyes light up," which did not happen in the scene we saw. Taub praises Ben's attempts to build a connection with his father. And then Benny's nose starts bleeding. And he spits out a lot of blood. Taub: "It's not normal. And it's not Sjögren's. That diagnosis didn't last very long at all!
Taub returns to House's office and reports the new deal. But House has one of Taub's babies. Named "Sophie." In fact, Taub's kids are named "Sophie" and "Sophia." At this point, I feel that I should inform you that I have a dog named "Sophie." So any time the characters talk about Sophie, I shall be imagining a Maltese. Anyway, Adams claims that the two names have two completely different derivations, then immediately admits she's lying. Park thinks that if Taub's having trouble scheduling time with his children, he should let one of them leave. There are some more random medical guesses, but House wants to claim that babies don't care about biology. "At this stage, you don't matter to either baby," he tells Taub. House jumps to aplastic anemia, which means Ben needs a bone marrow transplant. Everyone but Adams leaves so House can poke at her and try to force her into his theory about bad parenting. He's been investigating her school transcripts and found out that she had a year where she had five incompletes. This, to him, proves the existence of bad parenting. Adams says she's not messed up, so her parents can't have messed her up.
While everyone's supposed to be looking at platelets (for the bone marrow transplant), Adams tells Taub that he doesn't seem to spend much time with his children during the time he's so desperate to have with them. It's true; his whole subplot is about how he refuses to give up time with his children, but one of the kids is currently stashed in the maternity ward.
During a consultation with the parents, Ben announces that he's thinking of dropping out of school, getting his GED, and then taking classes in magic and juggling. I don't know if Ben realizes this, but you can study magic and juggling while you're still in school. He wants to do this so he can "build a connection" to his dead biological father. His mother insists that he didn't know his father. BEEP BEEP BEEP! His blood pressure is dropping. It's a convenient way to end a scene!
Foreman's in a videoconference, and House barges in to be annoying. He successfully disrupts things, although he's right that it's Foreman's fault for paging him. Never ask House to come to your office unless you can give him all of your attention. Foreman tells House that he's received a request from some rheumatologists for House to give a speech at 9:00 on Saturday in Atlantic City because someone dropped out. House claims to hate conferences, which makes Foreman offer to do him a favor to get him to do it. House says he'd like half the clinic hours and twice the petty cash. Foreman reveals that he knows what's going on, and House is foiled.
Clinic. Diabetes guy (again!) wants his urine tested. House wants to know whose urine it is. Diabetes guy insists that he has swollen ankles. He believes that at fifty years old, he's definitely got diabetes, since his father and brother got it then. Chast and Taub enter to announce Ben's latest problems. House says the kid's dad died young of melanoma, but the overprotective mother never took the kid to a dermatologist. His conclusion is that she's hiding something and sends them off to get more information on the biological father and maybe trackdown some bone marrow. Then he gets back to diabetes guy by taking the urine and swigging it. He announces that it's not diabetes and tells Chase and Taub to get more info on "Clown, Sr." It was apple juice, not urine. That's apparently a well-known way to pretend to have diabetes. You know, in the faking-diabetes community.
Taub and Chase talk to the mother and stepfather. Taub claims the melanoma might have had some vague effect, so he needs more information about the biological father. The mother admits it wasn't melanoma that killed him. Because he's not actually dead! He's just living two towns over under a different name. And she doesn't want to tell Ben, because it's better he think his father is dead but decent. Taub has his thing about the importance of biological parents.
In the cafe, Wilson tries to convince House that he'll have to invite someone else to the fight. House is perfectly happy with both of them watching at home on television, but if Wilson goes, House insists on going, too. Somehow. Wilson talks about House's parents, and House steals his sandwich. I would have thought that a year in prison would at least have cured House of his compulsion to steal other people's lunches. I imagine it's not taken as lightly in the can.
Park and Taub bother Ben's father on location at the front door of his crummy apartment. He claims not to have a son "anymore." They offer to take him to a different hospital to test his bone marrow, and he appears to decide that if he can't see Ben at PPTH, he doesn't have a son after all.
Chase and Adams bond while doing vague medical things. Chase used to get locked in his father's study. Adams admits that her parents didn't make their money legally. She spins a tale of high stakes poker and narcotics. When she gets to the slave trade, he appears to start doubting her. Then she grabs his phone, which has House on the other end. House tries to spin this as Adams not being able to trust anyone, but she was obviously correct not to.
Taub tells the mother that the dad wouldn't come to the door. BEEP BEEP BEEP! It's a pleural effusion! Park says he's bleeding into his lungs! The caption says, "[hyperventilating]" and "[whimpering]" so you know things are serious. The goop coming out the end of the tube is not red, so Park announces that it's not his bone marrow. It's his liver!
House has someone working on his ankle monitor. This involves poking at it with a length of metal. House speculates about the causes for the liver failure, and also about why the mother lied about the biodad's death. Park asks, "This is how you plan to get to the boxing game?" This stops everyone dead. House: "Match, bout, fight, contest, day, Helena. Almost anything works after the word 'boxing.'" That alone justifies this whole episode. Adams thinks the ankle monitor isn't going to be easily busted, but the ankle guy snorts derisively. Ankle guy says the sensor works off heat, not force. So he'll just pop the rivets and slide in a heating pad. Easy! Taub wants to tell Ben about his father being alive. Park says it's not medically relevant and anyway, Ben's a minor. I love Park's defining character trait being the only person who understands that the patients' personal lives aren't necessarily their business. House's ankle thing starts beeping (BEEP BEEP BEEP!) and ankle guy runs off. House pulls the metal stick out of the ankle monitor. He starts to leave and then makes up a plan that has the risk of coma and death. But it tests for two things at once, so it's totally his sort of thing.
Two policemen and Foreman follow a beeping tracker (or a tracking beeper) to a room where House is blithely soaking his feet in a bathtub. He acts shocked that the water caused problems with the ankle monitor.
Taub admits that he might be a little out of bounds as he encourages the mother to tell Ben about his father. She says that Mitchell (that's the biological father) is not Ben's father any more than a sperm donor would have been. She's mad about Ben dropping out of school. She's also mad about Taub nosing in.
A woman comes into House's office while he's poking at his ankle monitor again. He doesn't do a lot of actual work, does he? She's the wife of the diabetes guy. She wants to inject something innocuous into his thigh, but House declines to give her an imaginary prescription.
Chase and Adams give Ben a drink of something presumably nonalcoholic. Chase tries to bully Adams into admitting she's screwed up. Before anything happens on that front, Ben reports that his eye feels weird. It's all swollen up!
Taub's home. Ruby (the ex-girlfriend, not the ex-wife) comes in and looks tired. She's here to pick up the baby (Sophie, not Sophia). She lives at home with her parents because day care costs more than she earned as a nurse. Taub tells her to sleep on the couch while he watches the baby, because he wants another night with her anyway. His pager goes off and he ostentatiously ignores it. He seems pleased with himself. You know what's weird about this storyline? He seems to be on pretty good terms with both Ruby and Rachel, but neither of them are really taking advantage of having someone around who's desperate to do some free babysitting. I mean, I understand the lure of a newborn and all, but in my experience with new parents, most of them are very pleased to take a night off once in a while.
Everyone enters House's office. Well, not "everyone." It's pretty big, but I don't think the entire population of the world would fit in there. It's just Chase, Taub, Adams and Park. Taub claims his pager battery died, which is why he didn't come in last night. It's a good thing for him it wasn't a real emergency. I don't think I'd have been willing to take that chance, considering how often House's patients go into life-threatening shock. Chase says they got the eye back in Ben's head with steroids. Too bad; if he couldn't make it as a clown, having a popped-out eye would have given him a good start on being a sideshow freak. A carnival is nearly as good as a circus, right? Adams suggests angioneurotic edema. Park tries anasarca. Neither fits. House wants to keep picking at Taub. Park insists on Burkitt's lymphoma. House mumbles about swelling and cankles. Then, apparently liking Burkitt's lymphoma, he says to prep him for chemo. He starts to leave, but sets aside a metal stick to use a proper cane.
Wilson tells Foreman that he should let House go to the boxing match. But the answer is no, because House has to believe Foreman has authority. So Wilson can't go either. His job is to be House's friend and sit with him, bitching about Foreman. Wilson accepts this plan, since Foreman frames it as the only way to get House through his parole.
Phil (Rachel's boyfriend) tells Taub it was wrong of him to confront him. Rachel says she does still want to go to Portland, for which she would need Taub's permission, but he interprets this as an attempt at manipulation. She points out that this is clearly because he's back working for House. Oh, and they're calling Sophia "Sophie" now so both of Taub's daughters have names that make me think of a small white dog.
House has diabetes guy back in. His heart rate is very slow. House explains that the anti-diabetes meals he's been eating have bok choy, which is making him sick. Is that a thing?
Ben can't believe he has cancer. He mopes about how he could die. "If my father had lived, everything could have been different." Taub talks about the love of his mother and stepdad. BEEP BEEP BEEP! I'm glad that happened (sorry, Ben!) because this discussion was going nowhere.
So it's not Burkitt's lymphoma. Outside the patient's room, House looks at his minions expectantly. There's a pause. House mocks the first two suggestions. While they're not paying attention, Mitchell comes in. The biological dad, remember? But Taub didn't call him. The stepdad did! The mother won't let Mitchell in to see his comatose son. Mitchell sadly turns to leave. House tells him to wait. He deduces that he sexually molested his son. He can also tell from his walk that he has late-stage syphilis, which he presumably gave to his son twelve years ago. Mitchell leaves. Man, this took a dark turn all of a sudden, didn't it? Taub says they tested for syphilis. House says it was hiding in the brain. But the junk punch (at the party in the opening scene) turned it back on. The immunosuppressants caused problems. Anyway, it's an extreme Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction. The mother says that when she found out about the abuse, Ben didn't seem traumatized, but he also forgot about it. So she made Mitchell vanish. Quietly, House prescribes some penicillin and antibodies. He's surprisingly delicate about this, although he does use the phrase "daddy-rape."
Out in the hall, Adams is furious that Ben isn't going to be told about being molested. House decides to make that Taub's choice on the grounds that he's a father. He also decrees that Mitchell's sexual partners (and the police) need to be told about the syphilis.
Ben asks what was wrong with him. Taub tells him it was syphilis. Ben points out that he hasn't had sex. There is a pause while Taub apparently decides what to tell him. Ben's mother is right there; shouldn't this be her job?
Taub enters House's office to say, "I didn't tell him." House appears to praise him for following his brain, not his heart. It's hard to tell with him. I think he's saying that Taub will be a good father. Let's pretend he is!
House joins Adams in the elevator. She decides that his new veneer of indifference is a mere tactic designed to trick her into revealing secrets from her childhood. He claims the incompletes are already proof her parents screwed her up, so he doesn't need the details. She says she got incompletes after she ran away from home because she was the only kid she knew whose parents weren't dysfunctional. She thought divorced parents were deeper or something. So she hitchhiked to Manhattan and spent two months there before going home. House goes with, "Your parents screwed you up by not screwing you up." Then he leaps to saying her fascination with broken families is why she wanted to work with prisoners. "It's why I wanted to work with you," she parries. House admits, "It was a tactic."
Taub hesitates, and then knocks on a door. He would like to talk to Rachel and Phil. He pats Sophie on the head and tells her he can't let her move. But he apparently told Rachel that already. So what's the deal here? He walks down the corridor. I don't really care about Taub's personal life.
Wilson arrives at House's apartment with pizza and beer. He turns on the television, where he's obviously going to see House in the front row. And there he is. With Foreman, which is actually a surprise to me! So it was all an elaborate scam in which House and Foreman worked together? That's neat. Wilson shakes his head ruefully and eats some pizza. Might as well, right?
Follow Monty on Twitter at @montykins and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.