Royal Pains Could Do Without Boring Boris

Since defining itself as the "Blue Sky" network, USA has gone through several cycles of attempting to darken its image, with shows like the scandalous Political Animals and, a year later, the edgy Graceland. But even as grouchier shows have encroached, there is no bluer holdover from the blue sky era than Royal Pains, except for one thing: the dark and stormy Boris.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that Royal Pains is a good show, because it's not. But a lot of canny decisions went into its construction. We start with Hank, a doctor, so: he's treating patients; there's your stakes right there. In addition to being extremely talented and resourceful, Hank is also so ethical that he got fired from his hospital job for putting the care of a poor kid ahead of a rich donor. Though it would seem to be anathema for such a man, Hank's entrepreneurial brother Evan has the idea of turning Hank into a concierge doctor and setting up a practice for the privacy-obsessed richie-rich in the Hamptons. So Patients Of The Week cycle in and out, while Hank travels from one lavish estate to the next, everyone rocking their most sumptuously coloured summer shirts and dresses and judiciously chosen accessories. It's pretty and dopey; even the patients generally have ailments that seem terrible but end up being easy to treat; and thus it's...kind of a perfect summer show? I mean, when I remembered yesterday that it was the season premiere, I surprised myself with how excited I was to see what Divya and Paige were wearing (and an episode that flashed back through several different times of year did not disappoint, by the way).

Amid all this bright summer fun, Boris is the one of these things that doesn't belong. Yes, he's rich -- richer than anyone else we've met on the show, certainly; he's definitely sitting on the oldest money -- but he doesn't treat the Hamptons like the rich-jerk playground all the show's other billionaires do. And that's because Boris has secrets. He's beset by villainous relatives who are out to steal his fortune (hence his having faked his death earlier in the series); and so far, all his money hasn't bought Boris his way out of his mysterious degenerative illness.

Boris's MacGuffinitis was the pretext for Hank's leaving HankMed at the end of Season 5 -- so that he could be Boris's private physician and travel around the world with him and administering experimental treatment -- and the flashbacks in the Season 6 premiere largely revolve around Hank's colleagues trying to figure out ways to convince him to return to his old company. And while there's never really any doubt that Hank will decide that treating a variety of patients is more satisfying to him than just giving Boris shots once a month (the...company is called HankMed), the shadow Boris casts over my happy sunny show is getting more and more annoying. Boris's motivations for his actions seem inconsistent; I can never remember from season to season if he's a villain or not (though getting Hank away from Divya's labour by lying that he's broken his leg is definitely shady at best); and I just don't think a show this silly really needs an arc like this. Each episode can be self-contained, and should.

This is meant as no slight against Campbell Scott: the only thing better than that voice telling me all about Häagen-Dazs would be if he did it with his pan-European Boris accent. But Boris's bad attitude is totally incongruous with the mood of the rest of the show, on top of which every second he spends on screen is a second I'm not watching a lady's cute blouse and chunky necklace. Royal Pains needs to find some interesting rich weirdo to rent Boris's house, and send Boris to the Continent, never to return.