Royal Pains doesn’t hurt a bit (but you may feel a slight pinch)

by Julia Hass

I don’t know about you, but for me, when it’s time for summer TV, I need a bit of a break from the heavy fare of regular network programming. Emotional intrigue and deliciously complex plots are all well and good when it’s really cold and your brain needs to keep working in order to not freeze, kind of like a car motor, but by the time it’s summer and my synapses are in danger of overheating, I need something with bright, pretty colors that is refreshing and breezy and easy on my vacationing noggin.

Usually Psych does an exceedingly admirable job, but cruelly, USA is withholding that particular tidbit of pineapple-flavored television ridiculousness. And while I feel it is my sovereign duty to dislike Royal Pains on account of it being what USA is trying to distract me with, I’ve kind of been excited about it ever since I saw the ad. It has that dude from Good Morning Miami! It’s a fun premise! There are bright, pretty colors! I’m shallow and easily distracted!

And I must say, while Royal Pains is certainly no Psych (because Burton Guster holds a place in my heart that is irreplaceable), especially after this last episode, it’s growing on me, like a fungus of delicious medical dramedy.

I love the characters. I love Hank, with all of his medical do-gooder earnestness, yet is still a buttinski and a slob, which makes him even more lovably 3-D. I unreasonably adore Divya, for all that she had maybe ten lines last episode. And the more time we see Tucker, the hemophiliac poor-little-rich-boy Hank helped in the first episode and his neurotic girlfriend, Libby, the more adorable they seem to me.

If anything, though, the last episode really cemented to me how much I adore Hank’s hapless brother Evan. This week’s plot revolves around a mysteriously ill retiring ballerina he has a massive crush on and his attempts to woo her through food, which keep ending in medical catastrophes. What’s actually ailing her (some sort of rare heart disease, I think? I don’t know, I’m not the doctor here) is sort of besides the point. The point is that I sort of felt like the hour I was watching a show about a really sweet, nerdy guy who, incidentally, had a brother who was a doctor, or something. And you know what? I’m pretty chill with signing on to watch that show, too.

I’d say the one weakness that this show really can’t seem to shake is this Jill character. I know she’s supposed to be Hank’s true love or something, but she’s just so bland. She flat and boring and trying too hard to be perfect and cardboard and every time she’s on-screen, I die a little. According to the series website (which I perused on a quest for a promo picture), she has a “mysterious past.” A what? Really now? Don’t tell me, because I can see how this works already; her and Hank’s romance will blossom like a rare, magical flower, only to be nipped in the bud (this flower metaphor is getting confusing, but it’s a blooming bud, okay?) by her past magically and at the perfectly inconvenient time rearing its ugly head. The pain! The horror! It’s her not-quite-ex husband who still loves her/abusive father/former drug dealer and/or bookie! Will her and Hank’s starry-eyed love affair survive this devastating blow?

(God, I hope not.)

If Royal Pains can manage to ditch Jill (who, incidentally, is a royal pain) and spend less time on how she and Hank are so destined to be because of their calling towards the less fortunate or whatever it is they’re trying to hit me over the head with, we’ve got a real possible winner on our hands, here. If not, well, I’ll probably still watch it, because I’ll watch celebrities eat their own feces during the summer, and this is about ten steps above that, quality-wise.

What, you expected me to have standards?

Photo Credit: USA