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Callarogashock Media. Hey there, I’m Johnny Mack with another bonus episode. This is a recap of Scrubs season ten, episode two, my second first day original air date, February twenty fifth, twenty twenty six. It’s been two days since the Scrubs revival and I am still thinking about it all the time. I wrote about it on my substack today link in the notes.
It’s free, you can read it. I just I’m in love with this show. I almost rewatched episodes one and two again last night, and I’m like, yeah, let me wait a couple days, and I wound up just watching wherever I am in my season five rewatch. But boy, I can’t stop thinking about this show.
All right, let’s do a recap, a mix of my memory and the AI.
Hopefully the AI is not hallucinating now in this episode. No John c. McGinley, No Judy Rayis. We’re gonna have to get used to that. That not all the regulars around all the time.
Plenty of articles about it. We’ve learned at mcginley’s in three of the nine episodes. I’m not sure how many Judy Rayis is in as Carla. But the crux of this show is the Big Three and the New Kids. So in the new episode we get a little dynamic of Churk versus Elliott with JD having to make a decision.
The decision is about are we’re going to get a new surgical robot which is super cool or some new simulation thing that I still don’t understand what we were trying to get. JD as chief of Medicine in the old doctor Kelso role, he has to decide. We also get a lot of Joel Kim Booster’s Doctor Park. I didn’t talk about him yesterday, but doctor Park is jealous that JD has gotten the big job and is kind of in the janitor antagonist role on the new show. And we also get into the first plots with the New Kids.
Asher is one of the young doctors. He has a patient, Stanley, who’s on heart medication. However, Stanley hasn’t been taking his medication because medical bills. JD encourages Asher to get on the phone with the insurance company. Interesting to me, I’ve mentioned this before before the pit my wife said Scrubs was the most realistic medical show.
So during this episode, when Asher calls the insurance company and he’s on hold for like hours. My wife said that is the worst that she’s done this serious. Creator Bill Lawrence kind of agrees with my wife. He said, I’m going to give Scrubs a pat on the back until the pit. It’s my favorite show.
I love it. My wife and I’ve been doing promo for it essentially. But you can type on the internet what’s the most realistic portrayal of medicine on television? Scrubs was number one for the last fifteen years, So my wife is on point. Laurence says, I’ll tell you why our medical cases were real.
The reason we did the show initially was because my buddy JD, the real JD s said, I rarely kick open a door, and Neil stat and all the medical shows at the time were like, there’s a bomb in his chest, we need two blood stat He’s gonna die. Real life. JD said, the real stuff was using gallows humor to get through the day and trying not to get torn up emotionally with the stuff you’re dealing with. The real JD. Back in the days when he was an intern, if you got paid to a code and you’re the first intern there, you had to run it, and on his first day of work, you got page two code and he hid in the closet.
We put that in the pilot of Scrubs, and that felt very familiar to the medical community, the fear of treating someone. Laurence says. This year, there’s a story that was taking from one of the doctor’s residencies of a family that didn’t want to come into the r and stayed out in the parking lot, hoping it would get better because they knew that once they got into the er, whatever savings they had would be decimated, and unfortunately someone passed away in the parking lot. That’s just a true Lifted story. As for the main dilemma, Turk is getting excited about he surgical robot.
His department is getting Turk and the team starts celebrating. Elliott shows up and she’s mad because it looks like JD has picked Turk over Elliott. She says, this isn’t just about the robot, it’s about the divorce. She feels like Turk took sides in the divorce and has been avoiding her. That leads to a nice scene between those two who really weren’t paired up all that much.
In the original series, and we see that they are indeed friends. JD has to make the call, are we getting the robot or are we getting whatever Elliott wants. He did pick what Turk wants and the reasoning, much like doctor Kelso, it’s better for the business of the hospital. We all become what we hate, right, We’ll come back. And there’s more from the Bill Lawrence interview in Deadline.
He talked about why to bring Scrubs back now. Deadline has a very good interview with Serious creator Bill Lawrence, very interesting. They were curious why to bring the showback. Deadline says, not all shows age well. Bill said, yeah, time’s change.
I’m not afraid of this because people that whine about, oh, it’s hard to do comedy now, I think you have to evolve with the zeitgeist of the time. I think that’s one of the things that makes comedy fun. I think funny always wins, and if you’re going to be dangerous, you got to be careful and make sure it’s funny. There was some I think it was in episode two, some fantastic the Todd moments, and as I’ve been saying since I got on the Scrubs, kick a week ago. Yeah, have to understand what the Todd is.
I’ve said this twenty five years ago. We weren’t like, Hey, that guy at the Todd he’s really cool. I like the way he harasses all the female staffers. We knew what it was, but it can still be funny. They’re all basically that’s what she he said jokes.
He’s a cartoon character. It’s fun Bill Lauren said, the one thing that held up from the original Scrubs is the humanity and the feeling that all these people in the teaching hospital were doing it because they were trying to be of service. The one thing that was canon was the medical advisors all said, you can’t make fun of the patients, and you have to show people that are actually sacrificing their lives to try and do good. But yeah, the comedy winds up with the actual show. In real life, interns and residents aren’t nearly as abused and treated the way they were back in those times.
Doesn’t mean they aren’t still stressed out, and doesn’t mean that they don’t still burn out, but times have changed in the medical world. Donald Faison talked about Turk’s storyline. We’ve seen at times a moody Turk In the new series, Donald Faison said, Turk is stuck. Before it was great to be stuck with your best friend because you guys could play after work and do so many great things. But his best friend’s gone and he’s stuck still.
How does he combat that? How do you combat doing the same stuff over and over again and losing patients? Sometimes there’s a win, sometimes there isn’t, and you don’t have anyone to share it with, someone to laugh about it with. It breaks him down. Even though he holds a brave face for the hospital, his wife and kids.
It breaks him down. Nian doesn’t want to talk about it. JD shows up and acts like everything’s normal again. It’s like, no, no, no, no, we got history, bro. We got to fix first before all that happens.
Faison said, I studied that scene for about a month and a half because I really wanted it to work. Bill Lawrence ads one of the few things that people loved about the early shows is a portrayal of a very non toxic, emotionally open male friendship, and a lot of that involved the joyful, childish exuberance of Turk and JD and fantasies and a voiceover monologue. The thing that convinced us we could still do it is Zach MacDonald’s Super Bowl commercials or their podcast. You can see their friendship as authentic. They still behave like they’re twelve years old when they’re together, and you can still be the people that are patriarchs of their families and directing movies and running businesses and stuff.
So we were like, what a cool thing to hold onto from the old show. Faison said, in real life we are man children. But let’s be honest, I do have to prevent my kids. Scrubs season ten loving it. If you haven’t watched it, check it out on the DVRs and on Hulu.
It’s a separate series. They have it posted as season one. We’re all calling it season ten, but for whatever legal reasons, behind the scenes writes and all that, it is Scrubs season one. Set your DVRs appropriately all right, back in the morning, Pete Holmes, it’s in the can. It exists forty minutes with Pete Holmes.
He was fantastic. It’s one of my favorite episodes I’ve ever done. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Catch you here tomorrow.