Episode Report Card Monty Ashley: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT House Arrest
By Monty Ashley | Season 8 | Episode 6 | Aired on 11.14.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.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.
Next 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.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!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.