‘Royal Pains’ season 7: Looking at renewal possibilities, more before season 6 finale

Tonight, “Royal Pains” will airs its sixth-season finale over on USA, but there is also another question you have to ask: Is it going to be the series finale? The show has had itself a nice run on the network, and is a part of that same Generation 2 of USA original shows that included “Burn Notice,” “White Collar,” and in our view “Covert Affairs.” One of those shows is already over, and another is ending soon.

The reason that we’d be optimistic if you are a fan of HankMed and its many characters is that the network has a good reputation of allowing shows to have proper send-offs. Even though “Psych’s” final-season plans were somewhat confusing, it received a worthy tribute. Meanwhile, “Burn Notice” and “White Collar” each received dedicated final seasons. The only shows that didn’t were the ones that only lasted a small handful of seasons.

However, there is something else that you have to mention here that is troubling: The ratings. Namely, the show has lost a good third of its total viewers almost inexplicably this season. You cannot really blame it on Emma or any of the other changes this year, either; the drop was consistent from the premiere onward. With that being said, you can really argue that all of USA has fallen off a cliff ratings-wise the past year or so. “Suits” is really the only show that is consistently getting well above 2 million viewers an episode, and also fares extremely well in the demo. “Royal Pains” does score better than “Graceland,” “Covert Affairs,” or either recent series “Rush” or “Satisfaction.” All of these ratings drops does make the network look silly for ending “White Collar,” given that its ratings are the only ones close to “Suits” now.

In the end, we’d like to see “Royal Pains” at least get one more season, mostly because we’ve never gotten the sense this year that we’re approaching endgame. We’re not sold on Charlotte as Hank’s endgame, and we don’t feel like chasing around a still-new character like Emma is an appropriate way to end a show with this much history.