Royal Pains Review: The Last Volley
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Royal Pains has had quite an interesting fourth season, but, alas, the HankMed team hit the beach for the final time this summer in "Sand Legs."
There was a lot in play, starting with Harper inviting Hank to meet her family. It seems like an easy choice, right? Apparently not for Hank, who bailed on her at the last minute. I'm still trying to decide whether or not Hank realized he was tanking the relationship as he decided to go check on his patient rather than board the ferry... or if it was something he did unintentionally.
I'm more inclined to lean toward the possibility that Hank accidentally broke her heart. As he said to Evan, he thinks he used a patient to hold himself back.
Then again, he knows how important family is to Harper, so shouldn't he have foreseen that his last minute exit would have a severe impact on the future of his relationship with her? From her tone with him on the phone, it's clear Hank is going to have some serious sucking up to do to get fix this one.
Hank and Harper's romance wasn't the only one that got a little rocky this week, either. Divya and Rafa had a serious falling out there toward the end of the episode. I guess she should have guessed that she wasn't the only one on Rafa's lady circuit.
Then again, I see where Rafa was coming from with regard to when to admit that one is a baby daddy in any situation. Like it's been observed in previous weeks, this relationship moved super fast, super quickly. Of course some stuff is going to get left out. It just sucks that she had to hear it from people on set at the photo shoot. That was pretty awkward.
I don't really think that's where the problem lay, though. I think what really got Divya fired up was his casual reference to her as one of the women he sleeps with, perhaps the most ridiculously generic and unfeeling sentences you could hurl at someone you've been so affectionate towards previously. Seriously, it wasn't until she was already walking away from him that we hear Rafa attempt to call to her in Spanish, clearly one of the many aspects of their budding romance we barely saw.
We are assuming that it's over, right? I certainly think it is. I don't mind going along for the ride, but I honestly thought this whole thing was so out of character for Divya that I would prefer she end it and move on.
At least if that happens, maybe we can start to get some traction out of the whole Jeremiah-hearts-Divya thing that's been developing over the course of the last few episodes. I don't even know if he's her type really at all, but I just think he's grown on me in every way as a character, so I'd like to see him get his time in the sun. How cute was it that he brought her a bottle of water and a bottle of wine at the same time? What a sweetheart!
One thing I appreciated about this episode was how, for once, we didn't deal with a complicated and outlandish medical diagnosis. We still got a little bit of Hank's excellent McGyver-ing skills, but in the end, the volleyball player was well enough to play another day and live her dreams, only suffering from an easily cured case of pneumonia.
Then there is the development regarding Paige and her mom, who ended not being her mother at all. Just when Paige was starting to get to know Lou, she pops up with this story about her private investigator and the woman in Michigan whose DNA matched.
In my opinion, this, too seemed a little rushed and altogether too convenient to be believable - but then again, the whole mother-maybe revelation was already out of the blue in and of itself that I shouldn't have been surprised this was how they chose to end it.
I just wonder why they had to make it so that Paige and Lou were so similar and whatnot before they pulled the rug out from underneath the whole thing. That just struck me as odd and contrived.
I'm also not sure how this should relate to them getting married sooner either. While I appreciate the gesture, and I'm sure that it would be something fun to see no matter when it takes place, I just don't think that it necessarily had to be tacked onto their final moments in the summer finale to broadcast what's next for the couple.
Speaking of forcing situations, what the heck was up with that explosion? I think that was a little much... and what on earth did it have to do with the Vodka room and where was Boris in all of this? Why does anything that happens with Dmitri have to be so dramatic and dangerous all the time? More importantly, why did he have to do it to the only person who really seems to have been a friend to him most of the time?
Something tells me it will get addressed as soon as the season gets back under way. And I am certain that Boris probably survived whatever it was. That house is big enough to have about a billion ways out from any given point.
How did you like the finale? What do you think is next for HankMed?
C. Charles is a TV Fanatic Staff Writer. Follow her on Twitter.