If remembering what happened in the previous season is a mark of how good a show is, Royal Pains would rank pretty low for me. Before the recap at the beginning of the episode, I was trying to remember what happened in the second season finale and just couldn't remember anything. After the recap and a couple minutes into the episode, however, memories flooded back and got reacclimated with the show. The bigger point is that I don't care much about the various plots of Royal Pains, not Boris and his medical problems, Hank and Jill's on-off-on-off relationship, Divya and her parents, or Evan and Paige. It's certainly not bad and makes for decent material in between the medicine, but it's not something I actively think about.
"Traffic" starts the new season with a reset of sorts. Eddie is in prison and out of the picture, Boris lets Hank back into his guest home, both Jill and Paige return, and Divya, not engaged to Raj, continues to work for HankMed. There aren't too many immediate concerns, but there are two big ones--Jill wanting to go to Uruguay full time and be with Hank at the same time, and Divya's parents, clueless as ever, try to set Divya up and cut her off after she refuses. I'm a little confused about the Divya situation because I thought she'd earned enough money over the years to get a place to stay, not necessarily in the Hamptons, but somewhere near.
The medical mystery was light padding on top of the ongoing drama and was fun, if not intriguing. The patient thinks she has allergies, but Hank believes she has a deep vein thrombosis. Hank is proven right and while she collapses and has to go to the hospital, all is well in the end.
Score: 8.5/10
