Le Cheval Mort – Lamenting the Immortality of ‘Scrubs’

I had time to watch Scrubs’ return episode live on Thursday of last week, but I turned off the T.V. after The Office ended. There were a lot of reasons for this, most directly that I’ve been watching Scrubs on DVD for the past couple of weeks and was perhaps Scrubbed out. Or, maybe I was too afraid that the relative lack of quality in recent episodes would make me even more frustrated with ABC’s inevitable decision to keep the show for an eighth season (Thus making it a dead horse, which is what the title means in French – no, I don’t know why I wrote it in French, it just sounded better).

Watching the DVDs has been a quick process, almost too quick: I know the tragic turn of the 5^th season is coming, and I’m stopping before it starts just to maintain what appreciation I have of Bill Lawrence’s sitcom. And it is an appreciation: the first and second seasons are great television, and it was really unfortunate the show got no Emmy attention until the “dark ages” beyond season four (Which is itself a bit of a mess).

But I decided I was going to give the show a shot, and say down on Sunday night to watch the show’s return following the Writers’ Strike. And, for a good nineteen minutes and fifty seconds, I have to admit it: Scrubs was in good form.

And then reality kicked back in.

That reality was the unfortunate fact that J.D. has a son. The rest of the episode ignored it, but the ending featured J.D. announcing he had to go pick him up. Turk and Carla with a baby works, they are together and it creates further drama – but with Elizabeth Banks off doing much more important things (Like starring in Kevin Smith’s and Oliver Stone’s next films), he isn’t in a relationship: he’s just floating around.

Before that point in the episode, there was some good elements: Turk and Carla’s relationship got to a nice point, I didn’t hate Dr. Kelso’s storyline (Although he has gained a strange amount of weight, the actor looks completely different), and everything felt simultaneously care-free and normal. But then, I was pulled out of that scenario by the baby, a reminder that the show was unwilling to remain subtle and chose to falsely humanize a character through a child.

The problem is that it hasn’t – J.D. can’t be the care-free doctor who throws water balloons at his interns and be this devoted father. You could give a child to Dr. Cox, or two as it is, because it shows a soft interior – in J.D.’s case, it shows a need for maturity that can’t be reconciled with his doofus of a character.

And my concern more than anything else is that I don’t think they get it – I don’t think that Bill Lawrence or anyone else on the series realizes just how far the show has fallen. When the series was filming without a scheduled airdate heading into its, I believe, fifth or sixth season, I remember Lawrence noting that without the stress of consistent airings they were wackier than ever…and said this as if it was a good thing.

I think last season proved that wrong, where said wackiness was too persistent and too frustrating for my attention to remain on the series. The only storylines that resonated were the ones with heart, whether it is the musical episode with its need for a moving ballad or the senseless death of LaVerne that manipulated the audience into thinking the show was more than a shell of its former self. But when the overall arc of the show sent us spiraling towards a ridiculous attempt to convince the audience that J.D./Elliot were star-crossed lovers to the level of Ross and Rachel, forgive me if I’m not convinced.

This all contributes to my frustration with ABC’s inevitable decision to renew Scrubs for 18 episodes next year, after NBC chose not to license the series (ABC owns the series, despite it airing on the Peacock network, so they can just keep airing it with little problem). While I know it’s leagues above ABC’s other half-hour “comedies” (I use that term was loosely as possible Re: According to Jim), I still think that the show has more than run its course: its characters are repetitive and pointless, and any of the show’s attempts to stir things up have been ill-advised or, even worse, ineffective.

At this point, Scrubs is becoming the live action equivalent of The Simpsons: characters we once enjoyed, scenarios that were once new and exciting but now are as familiar as we can imagine, and a divebomb into lunacy in favour of more subtle character development. I think the problem is that, even if I personally disagree with the shift, The Simpsons embraced this reality and doesn’t pretend to be something different. I think Scrubs still wants to be the show it once was, and let’s face facts: it isn’t. At all.

So, for now, my viewing habits with Scrubs are simple: if I have nothing better to do, and I’m sitting in front of the T.V., I might leave it on.

Maybe. And considering my spite that Sarah Chalke will be unable to return to How I Met Your Mother as quickly due to the taping of new Scrubs episodes, perhaps I might reach for the remote more quickly than with According to Jim (Okay, not really, but I’m still frustrated).