Vaguely Bland
By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under TV Reviews | Comments (22)
“Royal Pains” is yet another doctor show. It has a vaguely bland premise, a vaguely bland tone, and a vaguely bland cast. But it’s not dumb. It’s not offensive. It’s not boring. And it’s not insulting. So: Win.
Kind of.
Mark Feuerstein (“West Wing,” “Good Morning, Miami”) stars as Hank Lawson, a hot-shot hospital doctor who sassmouths his boss when she demands that he pay more attention to a big trustee donor in surgery over an younger kid who just suffered a cardiac arrest. He saves the young kid, but because of some unfortunate bad luck, the trustee ends up dying. Hank is fired from his job; sued by the trustee’s family; his stuck-up but beautiful fiancee ditches him; and he’s blacklisted at every decent hospital in the area. So, he pulls a Steve Dunne. He sits in his apartment and watches TV and hides underneath junk food wrappers for weeks, if not months.
Broke, unemployed, and basically fucked for life, Hank relents when his brother, Evan (Paulo Costanzo, “Joey”), insists that he go the Hamptons with him for the weekend to scam for ladies. Pretending to be some sort of royalty, Hank and Evan con their way into a party, where a woman has some a seizure and nearly dies. However, Hank spots the family’s personal physician’s misdiagnosis, saves the woman’s life, and earns the respect and gratitude of the family patriarch, Boris (Campbell Scott, speaking of Steve Dunne).
You can probably guess the rest: The woman (Jill Flint) falls in love with Hank, Boris recruits him to be a concierge physician, which is essentially a doctor-for-hire for rich people in the Hamptons. Bam: You’ve got “House” in the Hamptons. Only there’s no one nearly as compelling as Hugh Laurie on this show.
Still, it’s a fairly watchable, light dramedy, and they made it through the entire pilot episode without performing a tracheotomy with a straw, a pen, or the tube from a lighter fluid can, so it hasn’t yet hit all the doctor show touchstones yet. Feuerstein, like his sitcom counterpart, Breckin Meyer, is mysteriously likable, while Paulo Costanzo is less abrasive than his comedic counterpart, Eddie Kaye Thomas. And the lead romantic prospect, Jill Flint, is suitably somewhere between overly cute and a complete knockout.
All of which is to say: There’s nothing really to dislike about “Royal Pains,” but there’s nothing to love about it, either. It’s likable. It’s watchable. And no one named Spencer or Heidi is involved with it. So, essentially: It’s good, non-addictive summer TV.
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Comments
Posted by: lizzieborden at June 9, 2009 3:13 PM
Dustin Rowles is a very famous Internet personality.
I thought Dustin Rowles was a somewhat famous internet personality...?
Anyway, this was on USA I shit you not three times in a row Saturday morning while I was sitting on Julie's couch waiting to wake up and hoping to not have to really do anything before two. It's not bad. But it's not really good either. I think I'd take Psych or Burn Notice over it.
In fact, the best thing about the show is the commercial I saw for it where the dude from Burn Notice sent the dude from this show a care package with sunscreen, sunglasses and C4 in it. That was fucking awesome.