House Season 8 episode 6 Recap: Parents
We all hate clowns, right? Well the kids at the birthday party in the opening scene of this week’s House agree with the rest of us. At the party, a visibly nervous clown is slowly trying to tie balloon animals and the kids are getting impatient. So much so, in fact, that one of the kids take the initiative and clocks the clown in the groin, after which the clown falls to the ground, starts shaking, and declares that he can’t move his arms or his legs.
Instead of concentrating on the patient, House would rather talk about Taub’s parental problems. It turns out Taub’s ex-wife and her new boyfriend want to move to Portland, taking his daughter with them, which he doesn’t want to happen. But House suggests that even though Taub wants to be a part of his daughter’s life, the baby doesn’t care either way. Taub is, of course, afraid he’ll mess up his kid if he isn’t around. And Chase interjects that all parents screw up all kids, so what does it matter where and when it happens. This leads House to quickly analyze how each member of his team was screwed up by their parents, except Adams, who insists that her parents were completely normal and didn’t mess her up in any way.
After an encounter with a clinic patient, House talks with Wilson about the boxing match they are going to watch together on TV, but Wilson has scored ringside tickets. And since House has an ankle monitor, obviously he can’t go. House says he’ll figure out a way to go anyway.
Meanwhile, the patient (a 17 year-old kid) is fighting with his mother and step-father about wanting to be a clown like his biological father who died when he was young. And when the patient starts coughing up blood, the team thinks he may need a bone marrow transplant. But House is more concerned with getting to the boxing match and almost gets away with a prank to convince Foreman to let him go.
Since the patient needs a bone marrow transplant, the team wants to test biological relatives for a match. But the mother insists that the father is dead and there are no living relatives on his side of the family. However, when the team presses the mother, she admits that the father didn’t die. She told her son that he died so that he wouldn’t want to have contact with him because he was a drunk and a drug addict. With this information, Taub and Park contact the father, but he refuses to help. However, tracking down the father didn’t make a difference because the team realizes that the patient doesn’t need a bone marrow transplant; he has cancer.
After all the family drama with the patient, Taub questions whether he is doing the right thing by preventing his ex-wife from moving to Portland so he can be with his daughter.
Wilson approaches Foreman to let House go to the match, but Foreman says he can’t. He says his job is to be the “jerk,” and Wilson’s job is to be the “friend.” And that balance keeps House in check. Therefore, Foreman says that Wilson can’t go to the fight. He should give up his tickets and stay home with House. And Wilson reluctantly agrees.
Finally, the biological father comes to the hospital to see his son, and the mother freaks out and tells him to leave. When House witnesses this fight he surmises that there was something more than alcohol and drug abuse and guesses it was sexual abuse. The mother admits that the abuse took place (but that her son was too young to remember), and House diagnoses the patient with long-dormant syphilis contracted from his father during the abuse 12 years ago.
In the end, Taub decides that he has to be a part of his children’s lives, even if he has a chance of screwing them up as a result.
In the final scene, Wilson shows up at House’s apartment to watch the fight and lets himself in when no one answers the door. He calls for House again and turns on the TV just as the fight is about to start. When the camera pans to the crowd, he sees House and Foreman sitting ringside.
This is a classic House episode that takes a theme inherent in the medical case and explores that theme through the rest of the characters on the show. Notably, this episode is very Taub heavy (like last week), and House spends much of the episode berating and picking on Taub—more so than the rest of his team—which begs the question: Why did Taub come back to work for House? We know that Chase couldn’t work for anyone except House, but Taub had a thriving plastic surgery practice and could work in other fields. So why come back? Maybe we’ll find out later, but for now it seems like the writers may be jumping the shark where Taub is concerned. Here’s to hoping that the writers can focus on other members of the team for a little while and leave Taub alone for the near future.
Image courtesy of Fox
About the author: James Ged is a writer who watches too much TV. But he’s found a good outlet as a blogger for CableTV.com. You can follow him on Tumblr: TV Buzzer.
