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.