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Royal Pains: The Good News Is... (2016)
Continuing a fine tradition
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.
Hawaii Five-0: Imi Loko Ka 'Uhane (2013)
A Wonderful Change of Viewpoint
It's clear that the writers had a lot of fun putting this episode together.
The premise is very simple: a talk show host, sort of a cross between Oprah and Ellen, brings her show to Hawaii and spends a day following the elite Five-O team as they investigate a gruesome murder.
Predictably, fans of the show hated this episode, apparently because it doesn't conform to the formula they've come to expect. That's a shame, because, although the murder is a very bloody affair, the episode is very deftly written, emphasizing the humor of the situation. Members of the team react pretty much as you would expect to the intrusion of the cameras and the cheerful host.
But behind all the humor, this is a pivotal episode, as a familiar character is discovered to have an interest in the case.
Numb3rs: Thirty-Six Hours (2008)
A Tense Change of Pace
Some of the best episodes of Numb3rs are the ones where they try something a little bit different from their usual crime-solving procedural, and this episode is a great example.
Two trains are involved in a head-on collision, and amid all the carnage six surviving passengers are trapped in a car while toxic chemicals are leaking into the air. As some of the team members try to track down the cause of the crash, the others are involved in a tense race against the clock to save the trapped passengers.
Charlie unleashes some robots to help the team map the lay of the debris, as well as the injured humans, in the train car, but as the tension mounts and the clock counts down, tempers flare and patience runs thin.
There is less humor and interplay among the main characters than one normally expects from this show, but most of the time I was too busy biting my nails to notice.