[The takedown; Photos courtesy Dan's Papers and USA Network]
And the Royal Pains backlash begins. Only a few weeks into the first season of USA's ode to a Hamptons on-call doctor, local naysayers are making themselves loud and clear. CEO Robert Chaloner of Southampton Hospital, the model for the show's Hamptons Heritage Hospital, is fuming about references to the institution as a 'taco stand' and 'the local cemetery'. Defying the hospital's PR team by speaking out against this injustice, Chaloner tells the East Hampton Press that his doctors complain, 'We work out (sic) butts off, and they make us look like idiots'. One surgeon felt particularly betrayed after reattaching the finger of a crewman after an on-set accident in Bridgehampton last fall. Fair enough, with lines like 'For something more advanced than a Band-Aid, we’d have to get her to Stony Brook or Manhattan'.
Chaloner, speaking for the little Hamptonites, has inspired other angry TV viewers to come forward. Westhampton Beach was 'skewered by an offhanded remark by one character', who referred to the town as 'Worsthampton', forever tainting it in USA watchers hearts. The Rebuttal: 'We like to refer to ourselves as the Firsthampton,' said Bob Murray, of the Westhampton Beach Historical Society. First, worst, whatever. It's USA.
· New Show a Real 'Pain' for Hospital [EH Press]
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