Summer's Over, Guys

Labour Day has come and gone, which means it's time to pack up the summer house and get out of the Hamptons for another year -- but first, let's review the just-ended season and where our characters have ended up.

Let's start with Hank (Mark Feuerstein), consistently the show's most boring character. Almost as though someone (or everyone) who works on the show finally realized this to be true, an attempt was actually made this season to give Hank a compelling storyline for once -- and no, none of his "romantic" arcs has ever or probably will ever qualify. After suffering a traumatic head injury, Hank got addicted to prescription painkillers and did all the shit we've seen such addicts do on Intervention. First, he used his connections -- in Hank's case, Jeremiah (Ben Shenkman) -- to write him legitimate prescriptions, and though Jeremiah has other, non-narcotic ideas to help Hank with his pain, Hank's blandness actually serves him here, in that Jeremiah never suspects that this dullard is expertly drug-seeking. Once he's exhausted this resource, he moves on to a sketchy "pain clinic." Rock bottom comes when he has to give one of his illicit pills to a patient, triggering an investigation, outing him as an addict, ending HankMed's partnership with Symphony, causing Jeremiah to quit...rock bottom, in other words, though in the process it is determined that he has some totally other thing (doesn't matter) and that he's been treating it wrong this whole time. And while the Symphony situation gets a hard reset -- Shelby (Laura Benanti) severs the relationship and drops the threatened non-compete clause, so presumably we're done with her forever -- Hank does make a change: he's going to travel with Boris (Campbell Scott) as his personal physician, leaving HankMed in Jeremiah's control but not actually requiring him to work with Hank, now his sworn enemy. Kind of a win for everyone! Until someone new tries to kill Boris and Hank gets his head blown open again, I guess. I will say that, historically, Boris's mysterious disease -- let's call it "richitis" -- has been the only thing on the show more boring than Hank, so if its treatment happens entirely offscreen between seasons, I won't be mad.

With regard to Paige (Brooke D'Orsay) and Evan (Paulo Costanzo): I kind of like the way their storyline has proceeded this season. Evan's bid for a seat on the village council is consistent with what we know about him and his sometimes unfounded confidence, and D'Orsay did a nice job playing Paige's ambivalence about it -- hesitant to replay destructive patterns she's seen play out all her life, with a father in public life, but basically supportive of Evan's dream...even if she only manages that because she's pretty sure nothing will come of it, and then something does and she's kind of fucked. It's hard to start a marriage as the partner who doesn't quite have her life 100% together yet (though, admittedly, Paige has a comfortable cushion behind her should she decide to step off her current career path), and though I don't think the whole business with their non-legal marriage probably won't amount to anything, it does give producers an escape hatch for this relationship. But I like them separately and together and I hope their story ends up affirming the notion that two ambitious people can successfully stay married to each other. I'm hoping that their future together is what's being subliminally telegraphed with their matching outfits in their last scene together.

But the biggest reason I still watch what even I acknowledge is a pretty pointless show is my fervent hope that Jeremiah and Divya (Reshma Shetty) get together. I've already written about this at length, and over the course of the season, their relationship progressed significantly from there: Jeremiah got to spend more one-on-one time with Divya when a plot contrivance made her his roommate, and though her chancing to overhear Evan tell Paige about Jeremiah's feelings for Divya caused her to move out, at least then she knew the truth. In last night's finale, Divya and Jeremiah finally talked about the situation openly, and though his official position is that he's outgrown his feelings for her, I'm pretty sure that isn't true, or maybe I just refuse to believe it. And though I haven't seen anywhere that USA plans to repeat its between-season movie "event," if Paige and Evan's wedding merited one last year, I feel like the delivery of Divya's baby does, too, and that's when Jeremiah could propose!!!

Also there were some patients, I guess, whatever. Goodbye for another season, Pains! I think I'll miss the ladies' outfits most of all.