‘Royal Pains’ season 5, episode 9 review: Every rose has its thorn

Over the past few weeks, “Royal Pains” season 5 has almost felt as though they were skating the issue when it comes to something that we have seen to be very important to the show, and also extremely important to Hank’s life: His pill addiction. It’s slowly manifested itself, and this week, someone was finally there in Dr. Sacani to put a stop to it by not giving in to what Hank wanted.

But, we know that this story is not going to be going anywhere and in fact it’s going to play a part in what transpires next week. Hank’s insistence on relying on medication to ease his own pain is going to remain a problem, and will continue on until someone physically comes in and stops him.

As for the Evan front, his major story this week was simply that he was struggling to prepare for the village council debate. Thanks to Divya’s help, he ended up actually doing a great job with it, only to have it stopped later courtesy of yet another medical emergency.

The biggest problem with “Royal Pains” at this point in the season is really something that the entire series suffers with: Trying too hard in order to tell us individual stories, and also pushing back what you really want to see. While the story with the socially-awkward florist this week was pretty endearing, it also was completely irrelevant to everything else that was happening on the show. In between the Boris plot, Evan’s election, and the Divya / Jeremiah storyline that we do want to see more of, we’re at the point where we could really be happy to have less extraneous fluff.

Overall, what did you feel about this “Royal Pains” episode? Be sure to share some of your thoughts below!