What I’m Watching: Royal Pains

Royal Pains: Season 5, Episode 8 “Hammertime” (B-)

I opted right before I watched this episode to stop watching and reviewing “Covert Affairs” since it no longer held my attention, even a slow summer, in the midst of more intense dramas. I thought that this series, made for the summer, would be immune to the apparently decreasing affection I seem to have for USA shows lately (“Burn Notice” exempted), but I now do feel that I might not need to continue watching this show. While once I might have thought that things were neatly contained and this was a surprisingly decent comedic medical drama, I think there’s far too much going on right now for it to be appealing on a weekly basis. Jeremiah, for instance, didn’t even appear in this hour, and to have a solely Boris-focused episode immediately after HankMed got acquired is a faux pas. Hank not being able to treat patients in his home should now be irrelevant because he’ll have a state-of-the-art facility he can use. Divya’s pregnancy is really being dragged out, with her constantly coming face-to-face with parallels about family and love. This episode was bizarrely structured as a (tame) horror movie of sorts, with a highly unnecessary series of recalled flashbacks from Paige’s perspective about how they hatched their self-congratulatory plan to stage an auction just to get Milos’ attention. I do hope that Russell and Paige were well-compensated for the ruse, and I suppose it’s worthwhile to note that Milos’ homicidal tendencies all led back to a medical diagnosis.