Royal Pains - Television Series Review

Being home sick from work means you tend to watch a bit of TV that you might not ordinarily see. Occasionally you discover a gem (A Battlestar Galactica marathon when I had the flu got me hooked on that show) and sometimes you discover that you can indeed develop tendon pain from pushing the channel button too frequently because there isn’t anything on worth watching for more than 30 seconds.

On my latest home leave I discovered a show called Royal Pains (USA Network, Thursday nights, also available for on-demand downloads at Amazon.com or streaming for free from the USA Network website) and while this wasn’t a gem, it wasn’t a total stinker either.

ROYAL PAINS centers on a young E.R. doctor named Hank Lawson (played by Mark Feuerstein) who, after unintentionally allowing a rich and powerful benefactor of the hospital he is working at in order to save a younger less wealthy patient, is convinced by his brother Evan (Paulo Costanzo doing a water-downed take on Tyler Labine’s character in Reaper) to spend a weekend in the Hamptons where he stumbles across an opportunity and becomes the reluctant concierge doctor (doctor for hire) to the rich and famous. When the attractive administrator of the local hospital (Jill Flint) asks him to treat the town's less fortunate in a free clinic, he finds himself becoming a sort of medical Robin Hood, taking from the rich so he can give to the poor.

This is kind a cross between All Creatures Great and Small and Nip/Tuck with rich D-bags hell bent on preserving their privacy and avoiding scandals instead of animals as the patients. That is the essence of the problem I had with the show, I really didn’t care much for the people the doctor is supposed to be saving. When Dr. Lawson gets a big retainer from someone putting himself on a solid financial footing, I almost felt like he was being drawn deeper into a soul-sucking morass of social dilettantes, excessive lifestyles and moral ambiguity.

That is, I guess, supposed to be balanced out by the people Dr. Hank helps as part of the free clinic, but it all comes off as being kind of lame. For instance in the Pilot episode, Hank saves a young woman at a rave from being accidentally killed by the cynical concierge doctor when he assumes she is suffering from a drug overdose. Given the rave-like qualities of the party that was an easy assumption to make. Our hero intercedes using near superhuman vision to note the girls eyes from across the room and diagnoses she is suffering an allergic reaction to an insecticide used in a garden she was walking in. It’s this act of diagnostic heroism which lands him the job as the Hamptons new medical mercenary. The first couple of episodes featured several McGyver like medical procedures, so much so a character even makes the comparison just to let you know they are doing this on purpose.

It seems that all of the Glitterati in the Hamptons have a couple of things in common, 1) They all share a disdain for the local hospital and B) They all need their conditions kept secret, which is why they are all willing to pay loads and loads of money for a physician to be on call to treat maladies as varied as a “Flat Tire” (a sudden deflation of a woman’s surgically enhanced breast) or to check out their girlfriends who might have been injured in a car accident.

On the opposite side of the coin, Dr. Lawson also helps a dog-walker who is an aspiring veterinarian whose hand has been bitten by one of his dogs and a fisherman who needs treatment for his diabetes.

Royal Pains is a USA Network show which means it follows something of a formula. A beautiful location (The Hamptons) beautiful people and an undercurrent of people rising above having the disadvantage of being advantaged to try to live normal lives (okay, that’s mostly a shot at Nip/Tuck).

So I hated those show right? Wrong. Is it a guilty pleasure kind of a thing? No. Is it a diamond in the rough? Nope, probably not. So what is it?

Royal Pains is a mild diversion, something to watch when you’re home sick and you have nothing better to watch. These days though I can’t imagine that no matter how sick you are yo couldn’t find SOMETHING better to watch. So what makes this worth watching.

The lead actors are very likable and the scenes they have together are not bad. I think the show would have been better served if the two had switched roles. I think Costanzo could have brought a lot more to the role of Hank Lawson, likewise Feuerstein looks like he is being constrained and just wants to take off and be like a character out of Animal House. I also like the McGyver-style medical treatments, it was cool and kind of believable.

So, if you like some of the USA Network shows like Burn Notice, Nip/Tuck or Monk, you’ll probably like Royal Pains and you should at least check it out. Otherwise, avoid getting a cold and watch more sports.