Royal Pains (TV Series) The Good News Is... (2016) User Reviews

Why??

[calimaggie · 5/10 · 8 July 2022]

Why is this episode a musical? It doesn't make sense.

Is it because there was only one more ep. After it? No all shows need to do a musical episode- I really don't understand why that is forced upon the cast- some are not meant for broadway... that said, some are (Reshma- she gets a 10/10).

Continuing a fine tradition

[jtphil-2 · 10/10 · 4 June 2017]

Ever since Joss Whedon started the tradition with an outstanding musical episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", other series such as "Scrubs" and "Psych" have gotten into the act. Usually the results are a lot of fun, and the "Royal Pains" musical episode is no exception. In its final season "Royal Pains" is wrapping up story lines, bringing back characters, and just generally bringing the series to a fitting conclusion. "The Good News Is..." works very well in that framework.

In order to justify characters breaking into song, the musical episodes of non-musical shows have to come up with a gimmick of some sort, and "Royal Pains" essentially recycles a gimmick used in an earlier series. No matter; it works, and that's all that counts.

Of course, doing a musical requires songs, and Tom Kitt supplied some good ones: hummable tunes and lyrics that are true to the characters. My favorite is the big production title number where former patients return to thank Hank for saving them. My only complaint, and it's a minor one, is that the patients are not all played by the original actors.

I thought

[merryncoutts · 2/10 · 13 July 2023]

I thought we'd avoided the obligatory musical episode in Royal pains - sadly the second last episode they are suddenly breaking into song everywhere. It distracted from the story., on the whole of the singing was okay, but nothing special, but you had to listen to it, because some of the storyline was in the lyrics. And then they started bringing back characters from the past for random encore kind of performances and very poorly choreographed dance numbers. I wish they had skipped the urge because it really ruined what should've been a decent episode. Why, oh why?! I just don't understand why so many series these days feel the need to try the musical episode at least 9 times out of 10, they fall flat and just annoy loyal viewers.

Either you like musicals or you don't

[baronmw · 10/10 · 12 June 2021]

If you enjoy characters breaking into song to further the plot and wrap up story lines then this episode is a ten. Otherwise I suggest that you bypass this episode.

Jumping the Shark

[jgiampa-50758 · 1/10 · 11 April 2018]

I was binge-watching Royal Pains, enjoying it until this episode. Suddenly, Royal Pains became a musical...they all broke out into song! This reminds me of the final season of Happy Days, when each episode featured a talent show or dream sequence just to give Potsy an excuse to sing. This was bad.

Train wreck

[bladkin · 1/10 · 6 October 2016]

I don't review stuff much, but this was just so awful I was inspired. If I want to watch a musical, I'll watch a musical. Royal Pains is not a musical series. So why this? Actually I guess I know why, the series got canned so they don't care about ratings anymore or aren't worried about sponsors stampeding for the exits. So they wanted to do...what exactly? I have no idea. It's just a mess, awful songs, badly sung, completely nothing to do with everything the series has been. Royal Pains has been diverting, not one of my favourites, but something light to watch now and then, but this was dire. The underlying story is OK, Royal Pains standard fodder. Fast forward through the songs, save yourself time you'll never get back.

Awful Writing

[paulphillipsemail · 2/10 · 25 July 2018]

As a general rule, I like musicals, even those embedded into otherwise non-musical tv series'. This episode, though, was extremely cringy to me, and I believe it has to do with more of the lackadaisical writing near the end of the series than anything. It seems that a lot of the time, the show is either rehashing tired plotlines (Boris doing something secretive, gosh golly I wonder what; Eddie does something stupid and pisses off one of the kids) or just explicitly telling us what's on every characters' mind constantly. It's like they're just biding time until, inevitably, Jill comes back and marries Hank (hardly a spoiler, it's so obvious). The show's become so flat that simply putting the plot lines into song form just makes me roll my eyes. The songs actually sounded alright too, that's the sad part. Plus, I don't care to hear Divya sing about Johns Hopkins when that plotline hasn't so much as developed basically the entire season, despite how much they discuss it and she tells us how upset she is about having to wait. Will ya maybe try and do something about it? Ask around to see if ppl have connections? Like wtf