Created by Bill Lawrence (Spin City), Scrubs premiered in October of 2001. Lawrence has stated that he had two main reasons for calling the serfies Scrubs: The obvious being the attire worn by doctors, and the other being the fact that most of the main characters are fresh out of medical school, new and inexperienced (known in the medical field as “scrubs”).
Scrubs focuses on the experiences of John “J.D.” Dorian (Zach Braff) as he begins his career as doctor in a hospital crammed with unpredictable staffers and patients – where humor and tragedy can merge paths at any time. J.D. is joined by his college buddy, Chris Turk (Donald Faison), an intern with an elite surgical group, and J.D.’s fellow medical intern, the driven Elliot Reid (Sarah Chalke). Keeping the new interns on their toes are: The chief of medicine, Dr. Bob Kelso (Ken Jenkins); the tough, knowledgeable Dr. Perry Cox (John McGinley), and the caring but slightly jaded nurse Carla Espinosa (Judy Reyes). The hospital janitor (Neil Flynn) also never seems to miss an opportunity to harass the interns.
When Scrubs first came on the air, the show was fresh and new. It had no laugh track, used only one camera and mixed drama with a healthy dose of comedy. All of the characters on the series started out as confused interns but have worked their way up the later as the seasons have progressed. J.D. is now an attending physician. His colleague and friend Turk is now married and has a family with Nurse Carla Espinosa. J.D.’s personal life is not nearly as settled. He has an on again-off again relationship with neurotic, high-maintenance fellow intern (later private practice physician) Dr. Elliot Reid.
Never a Scrubs fanatic, I always felt the show was good for a laugh or two during the first few seasons. The writing was always solid and the acting and comic timing of the ensemble made the show worth watching. Braff and Faison seem like they really could be best friends and Sarah Chalke continues to be one of the most underrated actress around; she keeps Elliot Reid grounded in reality, no matter where the script takes her. The rest of the cast are all fine actors capable of stealing a scene at anytime.
Unfortunately, over the past couple of seasons, Scrubs has grown a bit stale. Like many sitcoms after five years or so on the air, storylines have become somewhat formulaic and characters are becoming cartoonish versions of themselves in an effort to be funnier. The series may have officially “jumped the shark” with a season six storyline that found J.D. forced into fatherhood; the arc, which continued into the seventh season, was clumsy and left Elizabeth Banks (Zach and Miri Make A Porno, The 40 Year Old Virgin), the gifted comic actor brought in to play J.D.’s baby mama, little to do.
Because of the writers’ strike, season seven was an abbreviated eleven episodes. In the bunch, there are some good ones and some real clunkers. Stand-outs include: “My Growing Pains” (particularly for its touching closing), “My Identity Crisis” (The Janitor challenges J.D. to identify everyone in the hospital, when it is discovered that he uses nicknames, because he doesn’t know the people’s actual names) and “My Manhood” (particularly in its subplot about the Janitor’s hospital newspaper).
The clunkers: “My Inconvenient Truth,” for example, was part of NBC’s “Green Week” and never quite makes its eco-friendly set-up into a smooth fit. The season’s weakest episode, however, is its last one–“My Princess,” a Princess Bride-inspired episode where Dr. Cox tells his young son a medieval bedtime story inhabited by his co-workers and inspired by hospital events; just a total misfire.
Scrubs is scheduled to move from NBC to ABC for its eighth season as a mid-season replacement. While there is no doubt that season seven still had some laughs, the fact that its abbreviated season wasn’t nearly as funny as past seasons may signal that the series best years are in the past.
The 1.33:1 full-frame transfer is, frankly, a little weak. The picture is satisfactory but some viewers may notice that the colors aren’t nearly as vibrant as many television series that hit DVD recently.
The Dolby 5.1 mix is pretty much what we’re used to for modern sitcom DVDs; dialogue front, center, and clear, with some directional panning for sound effects and rear surround for music; again, not exceptional, but just fine.
First, all eleven episodes come with Audio Commentaries by cast and (mostly) crew; these are chatty, informative, and frequently funny (particularly one featuring some funny interplay between actors Neil Flynn and Sam Lloyd). Braff does a fairly straight-forward (but interesting) solo commentary of one of his directorial episodes, “My Growing Pains.”
The bulk of the special features are collected on the second of the set’s two discs. First up is My Making Of II: “My Princess” (17:39), which is a table-read-to-post-production look at the making of an episode. Unfortunately, it’s the season’s weakest episode, so there’s that. Next up is an interview with Dr. Bob Kelso himself, One On One With Ken Jenkins (07:25). Each season set features a different cast member’s interview but this is pretty standard stuff.
The Deleted Scenes (13:54) and Alternate Lines (15:40), each playable by episode or using the “play all” function, offer some funny (and frequently unexpected) alternatives for what made it to TV sets. Both are pretty good and worth a look, particularly for fans.
The extras are rounded out by Bloopers (2:52), which have some solid laughs.
As a bonus, here’s a clip of some bloopers by the cast, to get you in the mood for Scrubs – The Complete Seventh Season
