Summer Has Officially Begun: Royal Pains is Back!

I was super psyched to watch Royal Pains last night and catch up on the goings-on of all our Hamptons friends. First, where we left off...

Hank stayed in the Hamptons for the winter camped out at Mrs. Newberg's house while Evan was off gallivanting around Europe with Paige. Jill left the Hamptons for the first time for Uruguay and Divya called off her wedding with Raj while contained in a hazmat truck because they might have contracted the plague from their dance instructor. Also, Boris evicted Hank and Evan from Shadow Pond and Marissa left as well. Eddie is in jail in Florida and you're all caught up!

As the show opens we see Hank running on the beach with a beard! I have some friends who left their facial hair grown for the winter, but Hank must have kept his well-trimmed, because he didn't seem to have a very full beard. Then we see him at the barber, clean-shaven. He thanks the barber, who thanks him by charging him $30. Hank balks a little, but realizes that when the barber raises the price of a beard shaving, summer must have truly arrived!



Hank and Evan meet up outside and discuss Paige's homecoming for which Evan is throwing a party. They then go check their mail at their PO Box and there's a postcard from Jill! Ruh-roh, Jill has a big announcement.

Just as Divya meets up with the boys, there's a big car crash and it's HankMed to the rescue! Of course, our patient of the week (POTW from here on out) is one of the victim, although not the one you'd expect, since she walked away from the accident with no problem. I thought this a pretty tame POTW, since once she summoned them, Hank had his AHA! moment pretty quickly that she had DVT (deep vein thrombosis) from sitting in traffic for 5 hours (5 hours! No wonder I never go to the Hamptons!). The rest of the issues involving the POTW, had more to do with her psyche (divorced woman trying to reclaim her friends) and her wanting to be at her dinner party rather than at the hospital.

Moving on, Divya thought she had fixed things with her parents, until they went to their club for dinner and tried to set her up for an arranged marriage again. Divya, having none of that, turned on her heel and left the club. Her father, not being at all pleased, cut her off. Does this mean she can't drive that huge-ass car of her's anymore? Double ruh-roh!

At the party at Mrs. Newberg's that Evan threw for Paige, Jill returns, but Paige does not. And when she fails to come home for Evan's aphrodiasic filled dinner (as instructed by Mrs. Newberg), citing family "fires", Evan freaks out and assumes that she is bored with him, so he goes off to write her an epic email. Exiting stage left, he leaves Jill and Hank alone in the kitchen where Jill tells Hank that she had an amazing time in Uruguay, despite a tough beginning, but she can't stay in the Hamptons. Hank says he understands. Jill says that she missed him, they kiss and start undressing. Huh? Where did this come from? I know there's chemistry between them, but I was a little surprised by how quickly they fell into bed together.

Elsewhere, at Shadow Pond, Marissa is summoned by Boris, who wants to make sure that the baby is taken care of financially, which Marissa dismisses, until she is overcome by pain and Boris calls in Hank. Hank relieves her Braxton-Hicks contractions (no, she's not in labor) and then examines her.

When the doorbell rings back at Mrs. Newberg's (BTW, she is officially an overbearing Jewish mother to the boys and a touchy-feely one at that), Evan thinks its erstwhile Paige again, but it's Boris! Boris and Hank go to sit on the beach and have a heart-to-heart, which results in HankMed taking up residence back in the cottage at Shadow Pond, but this time with a lease!

And it's in the midst of the joyous moving day that Paige returns, because she had to respond to Evan's epic email in person (although the look on her face as Evan went to collect his hair products from the car leads me to believe that there's trouble ahead) and Evan is thrilled. Divya then asks Hank if she can crash at the cottage for the foreseeable future. Hmmmm.

So, that's my recap. All in all, I thought the episode was a little slow, but it was clearly a set-up opener and I will give my favorite summer show some leeway here. I will hopefully keep up with my blogging over the summer, but probably with less regularity as I'll be dealing with a newborn, but keep your eyes peeled for the recaps and enjoy the fact that summer is finally here!