As Royal Pains Ends, We List What We'll Miss About It Most

With very few exceptions, the fancy, expensive shows we're all supposed to watch and analyze have one thing in common: they're bleak. They revolve around crime syndicates or substance addiction or unconventional sexual practices. If someone gets a medical diagnosis, it's devastating, both personally and financially. Men are predatory. The rich are venal. Officials are corrupt. Lighting is muddy. Fashion is an afterthought. I watch these shows -- we all have to, lest our peers think we're idiots -- but doing so isn't always fun. Royal Pains is the opposite of all of that, and as this mostly silly, rarely plausible show wraps things up, here's why I'm going to miss it.

It's So Summery

Royal Pains premiered in the summer of 2009, which was my third summer living in Manhattan. Have you ever spent time in New York City in July? It's fucking gross. (It's so gross, in fact, that I've used this very site to describe it before.) I don't know anyone rich, so I've never been to the Hamptons, but my god, does Royal Pains make it look good. The men are crisp in their linens and buttondowns; the ladies' hair faces no foe more aggressive than a light ocean breeze. The show features many elements that could be described as wish-fulfillment fantasies -- and I'll get to them -- but I can't think of another show that made me thirsty for its climate. Summer was always officially over when Royal Pains would air its season finale.

Pretty Much All The Patients Get Better

The point of a medical drama is to build stories around the stakes inherent in a life-or-death situation, which means that even if patients mostly survive, viewers have to believe there's a chance some of them won't. Even on Scrubs, which was a straight-up sitcom, coupla three patients would die every season. But on the bluest of USA's blue skies shows, a patient who's seizing in the first act will learn in the third that she just needs to take a zinc supplement or something. The idea that even very showy medical symptoms could be easily remedied is extremely comforting. Related....

It Makes Health Care Look Easy

As a Canadian who now lives in the U.S., I have resigned myself to the idea that using health insurance is (a) baffling, (b) crooked, and (c) barely any different from not having health insurance. (Seriously, if Americans really knew how good single-payer health insurance is, there would be daily riots in the streets until it was enacted here.) On Royal Pains, of COURSE HankMed's patients get excellent care from Hank, Divya, and Jeremiah in their elegant homes or on the flagstoned terraces just outside them: that's why they pay their HankMed retainers. But Hank also moves among grubby townies, and when a fisherman has an allergic reaction to the lobster in his traps or a nanny cuts a thumb half off making Greek salad for her charges, Hank never hesitates to heed his Hippocratic Oath, pitches in, and saves their skin or appendage; if these plebes protest that they can't pay him, he just waves them off, and the subject of money never comes up again. What a beautiful dream.

It Doesn't Even Take Its Own Interpersonal Conflicts Seriously

Being around other humans means fighting sometimes, and that has also been true of the characters on Royal Pains. But when a show's whole ethos is that it's nice, these fights are kind of a joke. Even Evan's declaration that he was cutting his father out of his life for going off the grid to have cardiac surgery (I don't know; it was dumb) only held until halfway into the following episode. Mostly, it was a show about people who like each other co-operating in the pursuit of common goals, which may seem boring on paper but is actually quite pleasant to watch in a TV show sometimes. (In fact, the biggest fights on the show tended to revolve around Boris and his globe-trotting medical tourism and those were the most boring stories by far.)

Everyone Looks Great

If I'm being honest, I haven't been moved to shop any of Divya's looks since she spent the last 500 seasons enormously pregnant. But she did always dress sharp before that, and fortunately Paige has been holding it down for both of them.

I owe Paige a debt for helping me mix patterns and use accessories for a surprising pop of contrasting colour. If not for her, I wouldn't be...sitting here in a striped t-shirt and star print pyjama pants right now.

Everyone Gets What They Want

We've spent this short final season on tenterhooks as several questions remained unresolved. Would Divya get into Johns Hopkins medical school? Would Paige get pregnant? Would Hank find love? lol jk we all knew the answer to all of the above would be yes -- but to reward our pretending to be in suspense, the show threw us one more happy ending: Evan, Paige, their biological child and the three other orphans they're fostering get to live in Boris's estate for as long as Evan is hospital administrator. Even for a series finale, it's an almost comical overload of sweet sendoffs.

But I don't care. Farewell, Royal Pains, and off I go to try to recapture your determinedly non-edgy magic with whatever's on the Hallmark Channel right now.