Review – Royal Pains

Royal Pains – USA Network – 1 Season – USA

Here’s the thing about the Cable network USA, they LOVE taking vaguely recognizable cast members with quirky attitudes and plopping them in fluffy, generic dramas. Take for example Monk starring that guy from those movies in that detective show where he doesn’t like dirt. Or In Plain Sight starring ‘isn’t that the chick from The West Wing?’ in that show about that US Marshal. Or even Psych starring those two guys, you know those two guys, one of them was in The West Wing and that other guy, you’d know him if you saw him, anyway, they’re detectives.

This brings us to Royal Pains which stars that guy who was on The West Wing as a doctor in the Hamptons; he has a brother who is that guy from Road Trip. That guy from The West Wing (Mark Feuerstein) plays Hank, a New York city doctor who may very well be the greatest most noble doctor in the world, but when he doesn’t give priority care to a rich hospital donor he’s told he’s never going to work in New York city again. Hank loses his job, his fiancée and his apartment within the space of a music montage and is encouraged by his wacky, smart ass brother Evan (Paulo Costanzo, that guy from Road Trip) to go on a weekend away to the Hamptons.

As trips to the Hamptons go this is pretty much the usual. They sneak into a party being held a German nobleman (played by a wonderfully miscast Campbell Scott) at his uber-mansion. While at the party somebody conveniently starts convulsing on the floor and when the resident ‘concierge doctor’ fails to accurately diagnose the problem Dr. Hank steps in and saves the day. The next day he starts getting calls, and a super attractive Divya (Reshma Shetty) shows up at his hotel offering to be his Physician Assistant. I don’t know about you, but I think they’ve just stumbled into a weekly medical procedural set in the uber-rich world of the Hamptons.

Dr. Hank is as white bread of a hero as they come. He’s overly serious, dull and not nearly as charismatic as the actors around him pretend that he is. Feuerstein is a little gnome of an actor who always comes across as ridiculous when playing a leading man. The ladies of the Hamptons swoon over him, and ignore his wacky brother Evan, if though they’re both as goofy looking as each other. Evan’s no walk in the park either as his Seth Cohen wise-arse shtick grows more tired and grating with each passing minute. He’s the type of guy who never knows when to shut up, and says crap like “I’m on the verge of having a roman orgy with the entire cast of Gossip Girl” because he’s the wacky one.

We get the feeling very quickly that every episode of Royal Pains is going to follow the exact same formula. Dr. Hank will get a call, they’ll meet some wacky rich people, Evan will be a pathetic wise arse, Dr. Hank will be the best damn doctor in town who can diagnose anything, and then after some quick medical procedures all will be well again. The show wants to be a sexy fun medical drama but these are the words that spring to mind when I think of Royal Pains, and they’re all incredibly unsexy: serviceable, competent, pedestrian, inoffensive.

The problem with Royal Pains is that there’s no real problem with Royal Pains. It’s a mediocre television show that doesn’t want to be anything more than a mediocre television show. I can’t really give it a ‘Bad’ rating because the show delivers everything you need if you want to completely zone out in front of a fluffy, kind of dumb, TV show. I’m going to give it an ‘Alright’, but please understand this isn’t an ‘It’s alright; there’s a lot of potential here’ or an ‘It’s alright; but it could go either way’. Royal Pains is ‘alright’ and every episode will be exactly the same and that’s fine, but don’t tune in and expect to be blown away, ever.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright