Do you remember the story of the boy who cried wolf? A shepherd boy calls to his village that a wolf is attacking his flock of sheep, so they run to his aid only to find the boy had tricked them for a laugh. He does this so many times that when a real wolf does come, and he yells for help, no one even flinches in his direction. The wolf eats the flock of sheep.
Royal Pains is inching closer and closer to being that shepherd boy. Last week’s cliffhanger, which hinted at danger for Evan, once again got tied up quite nicely in the opening minutes (just like the previous week’s cliffhanger) as it turns out the kidnappers are Evan’s cigar-selling pal and his crew member. His pal saw Evan’s HankMed merchandise and fairly assumed he was a doctor.
A few more of these fake outs and I won’t even bat an eye when one of their cliffhangers actually results in a crisis.
Fake out aside, the episode is quite fun. Evan has been kidnapped to help his pal’s uncle (Marcos) get his fingers out of a tractor engine. Evan quickly explains his lack of medical degree and sends off for Hank, who once again demonstrates his trusty MacGyver skills. A post finger-removal check up alerts Hank to Marcos’s potentially fatal heart problems and Hank wants to get him to a hospital immediately. The family refuses, since the government actually thinks Marcos is dead and they didn’t bother correcting them since he was in the country illegally.
Hank sneaks them into the hospital where Boris is being treated and while there he runs into a feeble-looking Boris who demands Hank leaves immediately – worried that if caught, the authorities would shut down the entire hospital and incriminate Dr. Caseras.
Concerned by Boris’s physical state, he steals one of the machines and packs it, along with the family, into a car and sends them off to Boris’s house to wait for him.
Hank must have good intuition because in the five minutes this took to arrange, Boris has started seizing.
As Hank works with Dr. Caseras to stabilize Boris, the editor of this episode gets fancy. The screen is split three-ways with each split showing a different camera angle covering the action. It’s kind of jarring, but also kind of cool. I bet the director appreciated having all his shots in the final cut.
Boris is of course stabilized and decides that maybe the clinical trial isn’t for him. He opts to stay in Cuba, however, to spend more time with Dr. Caseras, who has also agreed to help give Marcos the continuing medical treatment he needs as a thank you to Hank for bringing Boris back from the brink of death.
Meanwhile, there’s a subplot with Divya and Jill becoming friends, and Divya continuing to clash with Dr. Emily Peck, who funnily enough, delivers a bombshell to HankMed in the final moments of the episode. She’s decided to stay in the Hamptons and open her own concierge practice. Two doctors, one island, bring on the drama.