The theme for “House M.D.,” Season 8, Episode 6, “Parents” is how parents form the adult the child eventually becomes. Being an episode of “House,” this is taken to be how bad parents can make effective adults.
Spoilers surely follow.
The patient for this week is a young fellow named Ben who is aspiring to be a circus clown. He has come under House’s tender ministrations because he fainted after being punched in the groin by a little kid at a birthday party where he was botching the clown act rather badly. The twist in this episode is that House and his team make the usual series of faulty diagnoses because his mom is not forthcoming about the real relationship between Ben and his birth father.
In the meantime, Taub is having problems with his ex-wife wanting to move to another state with her boyfriend. This is going to alter the visitation rights between Taub and their daughter. He is also having time management problems with his other daughter, the one he had with his ex-mistress.
This causes House to theorize that bad parents make kids grow up to become great doctors, at least in the case of House, who hated his Marine dad, Chase, who was locked in the study by his dad, and Park, whose parents followed the Asian tradition of pushing their kids to excel. Only Adams is the holdout, claiming that she had good parents. House does not believe her.
House is also concerned about attending a boxing match with Wilson. Unfortunately his ankle monitor will not let him do it unless Foreman agrees, which he will not. House even goes through the exercise of trying to get an ex-con to take off the ankle monitor, but to no avail. Foreman will not give permission, as he feels he needs to keep a tight rein on House.
Finally, what ails Ben is that his sexually abusive father gave him syphilis and he had blanked out the memory. The punch had reactivated the dormant bacteria.
Adams had perfect parents, which made her run away from home and shack up with an older man. She moved back two months later and then excelled in college to compensate.
Taub decides to refuse permission to his wife to move out of state.
House and Foreman wind up going to the boxing match together, leaving Wilson to watch it on TV.