I’ve never quite understood exactly why SCRUBS broke through at all. When it debuted a quarter-century ago it seemed to borrow elements from just about everything and everyone associated with it. It was adjacent to ER, so the hospital setting was a natural, and it often attempted to draw from that show’s walk-and-talk shooting style. It also borrowed structural elements from legacy medical comedies like DOOGIE HOWSER and even M*A*S*H., not to mention its occasional attempts at warmth and “a-ha” moments that the latter was far better at executing. THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s venerable Rick Porter explained in a bit more detail in the review he dropped as soon as last night’s two-episode premiere ended on the East Coast:
(T)he revival… is upfront about acknowledging the passage of…time. JD (Zach Braff), Turk (Donald Faison) and Elliot (Sarah Chalke) are all older and more experienced, and their relationships have changed — fractured, in some cases. Where they were interns when the show began, the returning characters are now teachers. Turk is chief of surgery at Sacred Heart Hospital, and JD returns as chief of medicine in Wednesday’s premiere. Elliot also has a senior position at the hospital. (T)he show still features JD’s voice-over narration and cuts to his daydreams, and Turk still dances down the hallway, and Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley) delivers a series of rapid-fire putdowns aimed at an intern. Oh, and JD and Turk, upon seeing one another again, still do their “Eagle” bit — only to have it collapse because Turk’s sciatica is acting up. Again, time has passed.
But as most of us know all too well, not everything is the same that it was in 2001. For one thing, JD and Elliot appear to have consciously uncoupled, though the latter seems to still harbor more than a tad of bitterness and regret. For another, OG showrunner Bill Lawrence is only tangenially involved despite having the title of executive producer–though he did script the set-up episode that helps fill in the gap and also essentially negates the existence of the show’s original attempt to feature a new set of interns in its swan song season. Still, as CNN’s Radhika Marya observed in her review, that playbook has also been revived, with a whole new generation of interns waiting to be schooled by the Hawkeye Pierce-aspiring JD:
For the younger cast members, being the new “newbies” could have been intimidating — some of them admitted to being around a year old when “Scrubs” first premiered. But series veterans made a point of welcoming everyone into the fold. Braff, for example, hosted Saturday night dinners for the cast every week. “We’d go to set, do our work and every Saturday, we’d bond and have a drink and laugh, and the director of the episode normally would come and join us,” said Layla Mohammadi, who plays surgical intern Amara. “I felt like I was in college all over again,” said Ava Bunn, who plays the perpetually online medical intern Sam Tosh — or “TikTok Doc,” as Dr. Cox calls her. “It was very, very fun.”
Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I for one didn’t find her, or for that matter any of her Generation Z colleagues, anything close to being as quirky or original as the OG cast, and none of them were given much of a chance at jokes or plot lines that would give them the chance to make an impression. I honestly felt like this was more like a college reunion where you get a chance to see how your old friends wound up and perhaps make a thinly veiled promise to “keep in touch”. My own such silver anniversary get-together pretty much went that way, and I barely need a second hand to count the number of folks I’ve even maintained a Facebook friendship with, let alone seen in person, since then.
I suppose from ABC’s perspective even if this version’s audience dropped commensurately with its previous attempt to pass the torch it would by today standards be a hit–ABBOTT ELEMENTARY is considered a bona fide hit with an average audience of roughly 2.8 million viewers. But I would caution that even that modest goal might be an overreach. I’m seasoned enough to recall that the last time a medical comedy revival was attempted was AFTERMASH, which merely inherited the time slot that concluded with the highest-ever rating for a scripted episode of television and within two very tepid and uninspiring seasons managed to take the franchise down to 90th place in a three-network universe. The original version continues to thrive and resonate today in ubiquitous reruns; AFTERMASH is, well, an afterthought that has thankfully never been seen outside of home video since that embarassing demise.
One can hope SCRUBS fares better in this second life. But I’ve seen this sort of patient before, and based on last night my prognosis is distinctly negative.
Until next time…