Scrubs season 8
Scrubs is on TV again, for what is almost certainly its last season as something recognizable as Scrubs. A bunch of major cast members have supposedly said that they’re leaving after this season, and while I suppose technically you could have a show without them, it wouldn’t be Scrubs.
A while back, there were Internet rumors that Bill Lawrence had said season 8 would be more like the early seasons tone-wise. Longtime readers will certainly know that the early seasons of Scrubs are, in my opinion, the best. So on the surface this obviously sounds like good news. But I’m generally suspicious of great things that have lapsed into mediocrity, and then promise a return to roots, like, for example, a certain heavy metal band whose name begins with “Metallic”. I expected Scrubs’ season 8 to be a continuation of the tone of seasons 6 and 7, but pretending to be something it’s not. They might try to make it like seasons 2 and 3, but I figured they’ve forgotten what it was that made those seasons good.
So I was pleasantly surprised by the first two episodes of season 8. They’re funny. I was actually reminded forcefully of season 3 by the first few scenes of the first episode. Quite apart from the return to top form of the humor, there are a bunch of encouraging new developments. The best is the JD-Cox rapport (Perry Cox, not Courteney Cox). Cox’s grudging acceptance of JD as an equal and JD’s slide into weary cynicism feel like developments that have been in the making for years, and are finally coming to light. It’s all perfectly done and makes perfect sense.
Courteney Cox as the new Chief of Medicine is all right. I don’t think she plays the role quite right but of course it could be worse. It doesn’t feel like a stupid stunt-cast. Also, ex-Friends actors keep appearing on shows that I like and demonstrating that they’re not completely worthless as actors. It is always surprising.
The Janitor is, as always, still funny. I think even if Scrubs goes on until the end of time and everything else has fallen to ruin, the Janitor will still be funny. And I’m sure the fact that he’s fired will have no bearing on what sort of shenanigans he can create.
Fantasies are back, and while they’re not all that good, the fact that there seem to be quite a few of them is a good sign.
There were some lapses, like Jimmy the Orderly. Those jokes were dragged out for far too long, à la season 6.
The plots are not really like early seasons. Season 1 was all about the overwhelming weight of being an intern. Season 2 was about the characters’ personal lives and the heavy demands placed on it by their work. Season 3 was about the characters growing up and achieving the balance they’d been seeking in season 2, culminating in Turk and Carla’s wedding. Not coincidentally, once season 3 was over the show slightly lost its way; a lot of the plots in seasons 4-6 just felt like the writers killing time. But the problem is that it doesn’t make sense to have those plots anymore. Those challenges have been overcome; the challenges now are new. The main characters are in their thirties and they’re fully competent medical professionals. The personal and professional demands on them are different. There is no more rising tumult as in the early seasons, but instead a settling-down. This is a difficult backdrop against which to have exciting or wacky plots. Any weird relationships created for the characters won’t have the same causes and effects as they did in early seasons, so they’ll feel forced and artificial. What I’m trying to get at is that the plots in this season shouldn’t be like those in early seasons. Tone, sure, but not plots. It remains to be seen how early-season tone mixes with late-season plot.
If they’re going for early-season tone, one major thing they need to stay away from is meta-commentary. For example, a common visual device is what some of the DVD commentary refers to as “the Scrubs teleport”: a character will be in the distance somewhere, like down a hall, then the shot cuts away from that angle for a second and then back, and the distant character is suddenly up close. Meta-commentary on this would be an observing character saying, “How did he get here so fast?” or something similar, which has actually happened and needs to die. These strange Scrubs-world things are funniest if they’re treated as perfectly normal.
Last thing: those little outtake things that play over the end credits. I’m not a fan: they pretty handily break the flow at the end of the episode. The second episode is a semi-serious one, which is spoiled by the outtake.
Since this is the final season of Scrubs in its current form, I think the writers are going to have to do some wrapping-up at the end of the season. I speak mostly of JD-Elliot. Right now it hangs neutral, I think. I don’t really know because season 7 was originally supposed to wrap it up but then the writers’ strike made a total hash of it. So now that the Elliot-Keith relationship has been brought to some sort of closure (in a completely lame 5-minute subplot of the first episode) we might see the resumption of tensions between JD and Elliot. My guess is that they will each have a relationship with another person, and in the course of these they will realize they’re supposed to end up together. I can only hope that whatever happens, it does justice to the seven years’ worth of pent-up complexity in their relationship.
Another thing that needs wrapping up is Dr. Cox. It seems natural and obvious that he should become the new Chief of Medicine, and I’m sure quite a bit of story mileage could be extracted from his trials and tribulations in that job. I think that would be a nice way to end the series, thematically: Cox is Chief of Medicine, JD is an attending — things change but life goes on.
