EJ
Bill Lawrence and Scrubs
Scrubs is one of my all-time favorite shows. After also being a Spin City fan, it definitely solidified my affection for Bill Lawrence‘s writing. It feels like we’re getting spoiled with Ted Lasso, Shrinking, and now Scrubs returning to our TV sets for some good old-fashioned, scheduled-viewing television. Scrubs almost feels like a lightning-in-a-bottle series. Especially considering that when there was that messy reorder from ABC that resulted in a season 9 (which some also refer to as Med School or, cheekily, The New Class), it couldn’t quite recapture the magic of what had just ended a year earlier. And this is all despite the fact that the humor was still relatively fun and the emotional moments were fine.
Scrubs revival
Last week, Scrubs welcomed audiences to a new shift at Sacred Heart on ABC after seventeen years. Granted, I’m not caught up on the latest episode that premiered this week, but with the first two episodes dropping back-to-back at the start, it already feels like we’re up and running. The new Scrubs, being a sequel series, has a lot of the same issues to address that many legacy shows need to — Where are our former beloved characters now? How much have they changed since we last left them? How much have they stayed the same?
A lot of times, shows like this also feel the need to catch audiences up, whether it’d be for fans who aren’t up to speed or new viewers who are meeting these people for the first time. While there had been a flashback to remind fans of the pilot, Scrubs picks up like the show never really ended. It doesn’t try to hold your hand in a way that you have to sit through a preamble before getting to the story. We’re reunited with J.D., Carla and Turk pretty quickly during the cold open and, as always, Turk and J.D. are still reliably the greatest TV best friends of all time.
Why does it work so well?
While other revivals try to recapture what made their originals so special, many times, it comes off as a lesser imitation. Or they try to establish their own identity by going in a new direction and the characters don’t feel like they organically become different. As said before, Scrubs picks up like the show never really ended. It approached its comeback like it’s just another episode from the original series — no big pageantry, no overly-reliant nostalgia bait (however, I’m glad to have a Hooch sighting), and the characters just felt organically older. They’re the same, but different. They’ve respected the characters and maintained why we were attached to them.
When you look at the start of season 9 of Scrubs (which Bill Lawrence is choosing to ignore), there was another big reunion with Turk and J.D. and it felt like it was being milked more with a slow-motion sequence as “Guy Love” dominated the soundtrack in the scene. It was funny, sure. But that sort of says everything about that season compared to the new revival so far. That season felt like a fan’s tribute to Scrubs, whereas this new season just feels like Scrubs. The new characters in the revival feel more well-rounded in just a few episodes, while the characters in season 9 were like caricatures.
Scrubs vs. other revivals
When compared to something like the Frasier revival, there was more of a divide amongst the fans. There were people who thought the new Frasier was just as good as the original, while others thought that, even with such big shoes to fill, it still didn’t come into its own. The new Frasier attempted to reinvent the story of the character (which makes sense, given how Frasier was also reinvented from Cheers), but even with a ton of elements that likely looked better on paper, there was a secret sauce that was missing.
So, what do you think? What has been successful in terms of reviving a show? I have to say, I’ve also been pleasantly surprised how Mike Judge managed to make Beavis and Butt-Head work in the 2020s. The new show was some of the more consistent laughter I had since the original series.
Inversely, what do you think misses with these new shows? It’s being said that the recent Night Court even changed John Larroquette’s character so much that he may as well been someone else entirely. Let’s hear about what you think what worked and what didn’t in the comments!
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