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It’s always natural to be skeptical about when a show comes back after years away, especially one that was centered around characters in their 20s, as the first years of the original run of Scrubs was. Can that show’s frantic pace, where we hear J.D. Dorian’s inner thoughts and see flashes to the fantasies rifling through is brain, work as well when J.D. is now over 50? Will the bromance with Turk still play? Will Elliot’s insecurities make sense nowadays? (We never worried about Carla, by the way, since she was always solid as a rock.) Read below for the answer.
SCRUBS SEASON 10: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Dr. John “J.D.” Dorian (Zach Braff) has a fantasy about being an ER doc and saving a patient, resulting in a round of applause, a banner saying “BEST DOCTOR EVER!” and confetti.
The Gist: In reality, he’s spent the last 16 years since leaving Sacred Heart Hospital as a concierge doctor, as he says in his inner-thoughts voice over, “making house calls for the upper crust.”
So he was surprised when he found himself at Sacred Heart, following up on a patient (Anna Maria Horsford) who was admitted there. When he gets there, his best friend, Dr. Christopher Turk (Donald Faison), senses his presence and immediately runs out of a surgery to have some bromance time, including a traditional round of “EAGLE!!” which ends in both of them collapsing onto the floor, all in view of Turk’s wife, nurse Carla Espinosa (Judy Reyes). Someone who isn’t as happy to see J.D. is Dr. Elliot Reid (Sarah Chalke), as their divorce still has them at odds.
J.D. is elated to see his mentor, Dr. Perry Cox (John C. McGinley), now the chief of medicine, still at it, tormenting the new interns: Dr. Sam Tosh (Ava Bunn), who seems to be on her phone more than interacting with patients; Dr. Asher Green (Jacob Dudman), a nervous Brit who still gets woozy doing procedures; and Dr. Blake Lewis (David Gridley), all arrogance and good looks. Surgical interns Dr. Amara Hadi (Layla Mohammadi) and Dr. Dashana Trainor (Amanda Morrow), whom are under the purview of Turk, who is chief of surgery, also consult.
“I can’t teach them,” he tells J.D., especially because every time an insult flies out of his mouth, HR rep and wellness manager Sibby Wilson (Vanessa Bayer) pops up and gestures at him to turn it down a few notches. “You have 900 strikes!” she tells him.
Dr. Eric Park (Joel Kim Booster), an attending in the ICU, immediately gets off on the wrong foot with J.D. when they disagree about J.D.’s patient, and Park’s antipathy only gets stronger. Still, J.D. has no problem giving the interns some advice while he’s there, helping Tosh put in a central line. That’s when he finds out why Cox didn’t discharge is patient.
Photo: Darko Sikman/DisneyWhat Shows Will It Remind You Of? Of course, this is a continuation of the 2001-10 run of Scrubs, created by Bill Lawrence, though the 9th “Med School” season isn’t considered part of the show’s canon. It certainly served as a template for future Lawrence hangout comedies, like Cougar Town, Ted Lasso and Shrinking.
Our Take: We’re happy to say that, through the four episodes of Scrubs that ABC gave critics, that showrunners Tim Hobert and Aseem Batra have kept the spirit of the original alive, while adapting to the realities that these “newbies” (or “Bambi,” as Carla continues to call J.D.) are now seasoned, experienced physicians.
We’ll see the issues they face, like Turk dealing with burnout and not having alone time (he has four daughters with Carla), Elliot being impatient with interns like Dr. Tosh, and J.D. trying to make tough decisions as chief while trying to get along with Elliot. All the while, J.D.’s thoughts and fantasies are as laugh-inducing as ever.
We’ll also try to get to know the interns, which will be a tougher go in this first set of new episodes. They seem very generic in the first few episodes, only gaining some shadings to their personalities by the fourth of the four we saw. Ironically, it’s a very similar problem that the “Med School” season had; the old characters overshadowed the new ones, and the new ones don’t get a lot of time to develop. Even Vanessa Bayer’s Sibby feels more like one of her “Weekend Update” characters at first, until we find out more about her in the third episode.
Photo: Jeff Weddell/DisneyPerformance Worth Watching: McGinley and Reyes are only on a few episodes during this nine-episode return, the former due to his commitment to another Lawrence series, Rooster, and the latter due to a little show called High Potential. But, boy, they both make their presences known in the small amount of screen time they have in the first four episodes.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Like in the old days, Turk and J.D. unwind with a beer on the roof of Sacred Heart.
Sleeper Star: We mentioned Robert Maschio as The Todd, and we also know Christa Miller will be back as Jordan and Neil Flynn will return as The Janitor, but we loved seeing Phill Lewis return as Dr. Hooch, because, as fans know, “Hooch is crazy.”
Most Pilot-y Line: X Mayo and Michael James Scott play Nurses Raymond and Dubois, and they sit at the desk and act as a gossipy Greek chorus. It’s sort of the role that Aloma Wright had in the original run as Nurse Laverne (and her twin sister Shirley). But it doesn’t quite work here.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The return of Scrubs works because it acknowledges that its characters have changed with age, and while it struggles to integrate its new generation of characters, there’s still more than enough laughs to satisfy the original’s most ardent fans.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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