‘Royal Pains’ season 8, episode 2 review: Hank’s latest getaway
Thanks to the extremely short episode orders for USA’s “Royal Pains,” we now face what is a very sad reality … but the reality still nonetheless: We are only six episodes away now from the end of the series.
What’s left to accomplish? Quite a bit really, since it first and foremost now seems like Hank’s relationship with Jen may be ending before it really started. The two spent so long dealing with reasons for them to not be together that by the time they finally gave the relationship a go, they realized soon after that they were not exactly compatible. Had they had more time and a willingness to give that a go, maybe they could have realized it earlier. Maybe this isn’t truly the end of their potential relationship, but it’s a roadblock and a mighty big one. We’ll have to see if they recover from this, and if they do, what exactly it means.
Speaking of recovery, Evan somehow managed to turn a negative into a positive. Remember Diane Underhill? In the premiere, she was the Senate candidate who threw threats all over the place if Hamptons Heritage gave out her identity to anyone while she was recovering there. Then, the hacking incident took place, and within moments it seemed fairly obvious that she leaked her information herself to take advantage of a chance to look sympathetic. What she did not expect was that the hacker was only looking for one person’s information: Boris. He was upset, but the end of the episode showed that he had another priority: Bringing Hank to Carlos. It just so turns out that this could involve him going to Hong Kong. We could have one more cross-continental trip … at least for the characters!
Elsewhere, this episode had a nice little story about Jeremiah’s parents, and how they, while very different than him, still found a way to love and care for him during the time in which they raised him. We’d consider this to be for the most part endearing, especially with the puppies. Who doesn’t love puppies? Also, seeing Divya bridge the gap between Jeremiah and his parents shows just how committed she is to their friendship. This is vantage “Royal Pains,” and precisely what we want to see from this show. Episode Grade: B+.