‘Royal Pains’ exclusive: Why is the musical episode happening now?

Tonight, the penultimate episode of “Royal Pains” is going to air in “The Good News Is…,” and suffice it to say that this one will be well worth your time. The show is giving you a musical episode that contains a few earworms, some fun character moments, and helps to set up the events of the series finale in a rather exciting way.

So why are you getting it now, so close to the start of the end of the series? We asked executive producer Michael Rauch this during a lengthy interview earlier today (we’ll have a little bit more from that over the coming days), and he made it clear that this was something that has been long in the works:

“We wanted to do it since season 1, but by season 8 they realized that they couldn’t say no anymore. It became a season 8 thing, and when we were starting to set up for it, we decided that it would be a really great opportunity to start to set up the finale in terms of storytelling. There would be a two-head back-to-back of being able to tell and complete some of the stories through music, and then set up what is going to be the biggest episode of the series in the finale. Those are the two big reasons that we wanted to do it towards the end of season 8.”

For those wondering how in the world the show plans on making the musical work within the world of the show, we don’t want to spoil that right now; with that said, we will talk a little bit more about this after the episode concludes.

With that said, we will offer up that there is a way in which the show makes it work without changing its tone or making it any less realistic.