Royal Pains

Don't Get Royally Burned Notice:
Burn Notice has been moved up an hour this season!
Burn Notice will air an hour earlier to serve as a lead-in
for USA Network's new summer series "Royal Pains".

Royal Pains, USA's first home-grown doctor-drama, stars Mark Feuerstein as Dr. Hank Lawson, a recently axed Manhattan medical wunderkind. Opting to save a street kid's life in ER instead of a billionaire hospital benefactor, he finds his rising star has crashed and his promising career blacklisted. hmmm, sounds a lot like the life of our favorite spy! Which has been played up in recent two-way commercials for Burn Notice and Royal Pains, with Michael Weston sending Dr. Hank a care-package - sunglasses, sunscreen, and some plastic explosives - to get him started in the Hamptons as a concierge doctor to the rich & famous.

USA is pinning their hopes on Royal Pains and Mark Feuerstein being able to fill the gap when Tony Shalhoub and his Emmy winning Monk wanders off into the San Francisco sunset. Having Burn Notice as its lead-in will surely help Royal Pains find an audience, but it remains to be seen if Dr. Hank can get the new series off life-support and standing on its own two feet. Feuerstein's TV track record is a bit sketchy. Like his new character he's remembered more for the series he has killed than saved in the past decade. I remember Feuerstein most vividly from two movies - as Mel Gibson's sidekick in What Women Want and as the lost and bewildered cable TV producer opposite Penélope Cruz in Woman On Top both released in 2000 - definitely good company, but did any of their caché rub off on Feuerstein.

P.S. If you are a Monk fan, remember that later this summer will be the beginning of Monk's final season. The OCD among us already have our DVR's and VCR's programmed to capture those last episodes!