Royal Pains
Royal Pains wraps up its rookie season Thursday (10/9c, USA) with "Wonderland," a modern take on an old-fashioned ghost story that takes places in a haunted Hamptons manor. Dr. Hank Lawson (Mark Feuerstein) treats the hallucinating Zoe Hill (guest star Alexandra Holden), one of the proprietors of the manor where Divya (Reshma Shetty) is hoping to have her engagement party.
As with most of the ailments featured on Royal Pains, Zoe's delusions are not what they at first seem to be. In fact, her fantastical visions serve as nice metaphorical stand-ins for the various deceptions and betrayals that this juicy hour reveals.
Check out photos of Royal Pains' cast
According to executive producer Michael Rauch, the relationship between Hank and his scheming, smirking brother Evan (Paulo Costanzo) is the emotional core of the show. Never mind the uncanny resemblance of Feuerstein and Costanzo, up until now the Lawsons have enjoyed snappy, charming chemistry, in which good-natured banter and brotherly love was exactly what the doctor ordered.
In "Wonderland," however, a questionable business decision by Evan will move the siblings to a darker place ...
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Mark Feuerstein, Royal Pains
Let's face it: Mark Feuerstein is the menschiest mensch who ever mensched. He is known mostly for his good-guy roles on Good Morning, Miami and The West Wing, and in movies like What Women Want and In Her Shoes. Next up he plays Hank Lawson, a noble surgeon, on USA Network's Royal Pains (its 75-minute premiere is Thursday at 10 pm/ET). After a rich patient dies on Hank's watch, he's blacklisted from the Manhattan medical community, but —irony alert! — after heading out to the Hamptons to forget his troubles, he ends up becoming a "concierge doctor," a private, discreet advisor to the area's wealthy. Feuerstein spoke to TVGuide.com about whether he has bad-guy fantasies, why his show isn't just about rich people and what makes costar Campbell Scott's German accent so damn hilarious.
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Evan Handler (Sex and the City) guest-stars on Shark April 5.... John Ventimiglia (The Sopranos) is Caseman's AA sponsor on Six Degrees April 6, 13 and 27.... Lynn Redgrave is Ian's mother on Desperate Housewives April 8.... Kate Jackson (Charlie's Angels) is Paget Brewster's ambassador mother on Criminal Minds April 11.... Mark Feuerstein (3 LBS) on Shark April 12.... Ken Davitian (Borat) on Ghost Whisperer April 27.... And Jeremy Sisto (Kidnapped) dials up Numbers April 27.
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"Do you really want me to explain empathy?" says Seger. I have to say that, although I'm uncertain about the fate of this show, I do like the writing thus far. The exchange between Seger and Hanson is a great combination. I like Seger's eagerness and his persistent nature — wanting to open Hanson to the personal side of being a doctor and breaking away from acting like a machine 24/7. The major story this week — pregnant Kate Larson (Erin Dilly), who has to decide between keeping her baby or removing a tumor that's slowly killing her — is hard to watch, but it's a solid story line to have while this show is still young and vulnerable. I'm interested, and there are still 45 minutes left in the episode...."It's easy to be a saint," Hanson says to Holland when she comments that Seger does mean well. I love Stanley Tucci's veteran-doc attitude that he brings to the character — a convincing portrayal of a neurological surgeon who knows his stuff. I think he's spitting...
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Mark Feuerstein, 3 LBS
Mark Feuerstein, whose credits to date are vast and varied — including TV's The West Wing, Once and Again and Good Morning, Miami, and the movies Woman on Top and In Her Shoes — is exploring new, undiscovered territory these days as Dr. Jonathan Seger, the idealistic young surgeon serving as a fellow to Stanley Tucci's brilliant brain man on CBS' 3 LBS (Tuesdays at 10 pm/ET). We invited the actor to flex his gray matter and weigh in on the new medical drama's strengths — as well as one perceived weakness.
TVGuide.com: If I may steal from the show's ad campaign, some may say that acting isn't brain surgery, but in this case it is.Mark Feuerstein: [Laug
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I loved this show's opening scene: The x-ray vision of her tendons, muscles, wires moving as she plays the violin, struggling as her brain disconnects... the violin falling only seconds before she did. And suddenly we're in the tense, matter-of-fact New York medical office of Dr. Doug Hanson (Stanley Tucci), where a mother is being fed gigantic neurological terms she doesn't understand and Hanson is as cold as ice, but calm and collected at the same time, omitting any emotion or feeling, having not a care in the world other than the work at hand.We meet Penny — who sells medical equipment — someone finally able to break Hanson's straight face with a warm greeting in the locker room. A past fling perhaps?Things get interesting — and personal — when Hanson is scrubbing in and sees a vision of a little girl holding a sand pail. Who is she? A former patient he wasn't able to save? His daughter? It's as if he can turn it on and off when she disappears as he goes into ...
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Meet the replacements. CBS' medical drama 3 LBS (Tuesdays, 10 pm/ET) — the title refers to the weight of an adult brain — fills the void left by Smith. ABC's Day Break (Wednesdays, 9 pm/ET), a Groundhog Day-style thriller, takes over for Lost, which is on hiatus until February (to avoid repeats). How do the new shows measure up?
As the saying goes, you don't need to be a brain surgeon to see how 3 LBS got on air. In a took-the-words-out-of-my-mouth moment, an earnest young doctor wonders of his arrogant mentor, "Do you think in this business you have to have some glaring personality defect to be taken seriously as a genius?"
In the TV business, that's a must. Which is why brilliant neurosurgeon Doug Hanson,
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Stanley Tucci has been tapped to costar with Mark Feuerstein in an untitled medical-drama pilot for CBS.... Campbell Scott is in talks to join ABC's Six Degrees.... Brittany Daniel will star opposite Jay Mohr in the NBC comedy Community Service.... Andrew McCarthy has found The Way in a CBS drama.... Former Practice cast member Marla Sokoloff is Josh Cooke's bride-to-be in ABC's A Day in the Life.
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In other pilot news, Skeet Ulrich will star in Jericho, CBS' drama about a small town isolated from the world after a nuclear disaster.... Gail O'Grady has joined Kevin Williamson's CW sudser about a teen whose family moves to Palm Springs, while Hot Properties costar Sofia Vergara has been cast on ABC's new comedy from Donal Logue.... John Billingsley (Star Trek: Enterprise) and Owain Yeoman (Kitchen Confidential) have been added to ABC's Nine Lives, about strangers who bond during a bank robbery.... John L. Adams (The Dead Zone) will play newscaster Angie Harmon's cameraman in Secrets of a Small Town, from Charles Pratt Jr. (Desperate Housewives).... And, in short order, Mark Feuerstein (Good Morning, Miami
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