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I knew the first Zach Braff-free episode of this new version of Scrubs was going to be a bit of a bumpy ride, but I didn't think things would be this bad.
It's not just that the episode was lacking in funny. The established characters were mostly written wrong, exhibiting characteristics we've never really seen before. And the med students -- except for Drew -- were so broadly written that they could have been played by anybody.
No wonder why this episode was buried on New Year's Day.
(S09E05) Sorry this one is late, folks. Sometimes life intervenes before you get to see your favorite shows...
Can you blame me? Given the low ratings and the fact that ABC has decided to blow out all 13 episodes by the end of January, it seems like this is the last we're going to see of the Scrubs: Med School gang, unless the show gets yet another last-minute reprieve. So it's tough for me to get too attached to this new set of characters.
But that may be a good thing. If what we saw last night was any indication of how things are going to be once the med students are carrying the show, it's in trouble.
While it's great that fans of Scrubs will be able to see two episodes of the show each and every week starting January 5, that's actually not a sign that ABC loves the show so much and it gets such great ratings that they want to have it on their schedule as much as possible. They're burning off all of the episodes quickly.
They're doing the same thing with Better Off Ted, which somehow made it to a second season (that's not a comment on the show, I'm talking about how it was a surprise that ABC renewed it). Both shows will have two episodes on Tuesday nights for the next several weeks, and both shows will see their 13 episode seasons end in late January.
Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that the shows won't be back for another season (after all, we all thought Scrubs was gone a couple of seasons ago), but it probably means that the shows won't be back for another season.
(S09E04) It was good to see an episode that had a bit more of a balance between the old and the new. Yes, we concentrated a lot on the J.D./Turk "Bro-a-Palooza" and Ted's departure from Sacred Heart. But we also got a fair amount of the students working together.
Do Lucy and Cole still need a little bit more of a personality infusion? Sure. But it's hard to keep up comedically with characters who have been developed over the last eight years. This episode gives me hope that eventually they're going to be able to stand on their own.
I finally, and with great difficulty got the tree up, I've somehow gotten roped into holding a cookie exchange at my house this weekend, and I have glitter in places where glitter should not be. What's that smell? It smells like Festivus to me. While the main thing I want this year is to just lie very, very still in a dark room for a week or so, this is a TV blog, so let's talk about what TV could do to make me happy!
Stop with the long hiatuses already! I don't get to see a new episode of V until March, and I'm being forced into leading a Glee-less existence until April. Give it up already! If you have 3 months between new episodes, it's a new season, why not call it that? You know what I have been doing for the past 11 weeks? Watching the first 11 episodes of Dexter. This week, I will be watching episode 12, and then the season will be over. It's efficient and satisfying. The networks need to get on board.
(S09E03) Since I saw the first two episodes via screener, this is the first time I got to see the "[Med School]" subtitle in the opening credits. Wow, talk about barely there... if you blinked, you missed it. I guess it's better than not having it there at all, but wow; it's as if ABC is really trying hard to tie this show to the original Scrubs.
I felt a little odd watching this episode. By all objective measures, it was a good episode; funny, good story, lots of glimpses into the characters' personalities. But, as in the first two episodes, most of the good stuff involved the old cast, mainly Zach Braff. And, since this is supposed to work more as a transition to a new show than more of the old show, this trend is getting me worried.
(S09E02) Here is where we see glimpses of what Scrubs: Med School could be. Lucy gets too involved with a case. Denise opens up -- well, at least as much as she can open up -- to Drew. Cole being Cole. Cox overseeing everything with his lit-on-fire rantings.
But they're just glimpses. As in the premiere, the more memorable stuff was from the old crew and how they interacted with each other. The most troubling part of that was J.D., or, more accurately, the Two J.D.s.
(S09E01) As much as I want to treat Scrubs: Med School as a new series, let's face it: The show is listed everywhere as being Scrubs' ninth season. So that's the way I'm going to treat it until told otherwise. Sound good to you folks?
Anyway, my preview of this new iteration of Scrubs pretty much gave the entire setup, so we can mercifully skip past that and just talk about what was funny, and what wasn't.
Oh, and for those of you who are still hanging on to the story thread that is the Elliot / J.D. relationship, you'll be happy to know that everything's fine there. More after the jump.
But one thing we didn't know was the biggest question of all: is it going to be funny?
The answer? A qualified yes. The two episodes ABC sent for review, which air back-to-back tomorrow at 9 PM ET, were definitely funny. But most of the humor came not from the new med students we're supposed to get to know, but from the characters we've known and laughed with for eight years. And for this ninth season to succeed, that ratio will have to even out, and quickly.
There are lots of changes coming to Scrubs this season. Zach Braff won't be on it that much and Judy Reyes won't be on it at all. But we will have several new characters at the hospital, and in this video Donald Faison introduces them.
In the hall of TV show bands, The Blanks are The Rolling Stones. Definitely The Who, tops.
The a cappella quartet made their small screen debut on Scrubs as Ted's band The Worthless Peons, played by Sam Lloyd, Philip McNiven, George Miserlis and Paul F. Perry (not to be confused with Ted's air band The Cool Cats that was just a brief side project when they probably failed to win those water park tickets) and have since become a hard-working touring band that has gone back and forth between both sides of the U.S. coasts. But they were a band long before Scrubs was even an afterthought in Bill Lawrence's skull, assuming that Lawrence didn't come up with the idea for Scrubs when they all met at Syracuse University.
Lloyd and McNiven (the completely bald one that looks like Professor Wonder Bread) were nice enough to dish out all the backstage dirt that comes from the hard and edgy road life of an all-male vocal band.
Figured today was going to be a good day to publish the Scrubs-centric part of my conversation with Bill Lawrence last month. Here we talk about what's going to happen during the first episode or two of the new season of Scrubs.
The biggest piece of information? That Judy Reyes, who played Carla during the first eight seasons, won't appear at all in this new-direction ninth season. She's the only regular of Scrubs Classic (my name for it) who won't appear at least once during the upcoming season. "I think she was either going to be a regular on this show or looking to go do other things with her career," Lawrence told me, citing that he "totally respect(s)" her decision.
Other info from Bill: How the season premiere will open, how the transition from Zach Braff's voiceover to another voiceover is going to work, and more about the new character directions for Classic regulars John C. McGinley, Donald Faison and Eliza Coupe.
One of Scrubs' minor but more memorable characters will become a memory this season.
Actor Sam Lloyd, who plays the hopelessly pathetic attorney Ted, will leave the show in the upcoming season. Lloyd said he just finished filming his final episode and called it a "bittersweet moment."
"It was a nice episode, but it was very bittersweet for me," Sam said. "It was basically my choice and I just decided I should move on at this point."
I sat down with Lloyd and fellow band member Philip McNiven to talk about their a cappella music group The Blanks for a feature interview that we'll post soon. In the meantime, enjoy their famous rendition of "Over the Rainbow" to give this sad moment the solemn tone it deserves.
The latest celebrity death rumor that turned out to be false was the one about Scrubs star Zach Braff. He didn't kill himself by taking pills. To prove it, Braff has made the video below. He calls the guy who started the fake rumor (he even created a fake CNN page to make it more believable) a "douchebag" because the story upset his mom.
Here's the full transcript from the phone interview I did with Bill Lawrence a couple of weeks ago... minus the part where we talked about Scrubs. That's an interesting bit in and of itself, and I'll publish that in full sometime during the early part of October.
This goes on for about 5700 words, but if you hang in there, you'll find a lot of good conversation about Cougar Town, the state of the sitcom, why Bill thinks NBC is shortsighted in its dependence on Jay Leno, and why Courteney Cox let him talk our ears off at the Cougar Town TCA session.
You can either leave comments here or at the bottom of the edited version.
(S09E06) Wow. Just wow.
(S09E05) Sorry this one is late, folks. Sometimes life intervenes before you get to see your favorite shows...
While it's great that fans of 
(S09E04) It was good to see an episode that had a bit more of a balance between the old and the new. Yes, we concentrated a lot on the J.D./Turk "Bro-a-Palooza" and Ted's departure from Sacred Heart. But we also got a fair amount of the students working together. 
I finally, and with great difficulty got the tree up, I've somehow gotten roped into holding a cookie exchange at my house this weekend, and I have glitter in places where glitter should not be. What's that smell? It smells like Festivus to me. While the main thing I want this year is to just lie very, very still in a dark room for a week or so, this is a TV blog, so let's talk about what TV could do to make me happy!
(S09E03) Since I saw the first two episodes via screener, this is the first time I got to see the "[Med School]" subtitle in the opening credits. Wow, talk about barely there... if you blinked, you missed it. I guess it's better than not having it there at all, but wow; it's as if ABC is really trying hard to tie this show to the original Scrubs.
(S09E02) Here is where we see glimpses of what Scrubs: Med School could be. Lucy gets too involved with a case. Denise opens up -- well, at least as much as she can open up -- to Drew. Cole being Cole. Cox overseeing everything with his lit-on-fire rantings.
(S09E01) As much as I want to treat Scrubs: Med School as a new series, let's face it: The show is listed everywhere as being Scrubs' ninth season. So that's the way I'm going to treat it until told otherwise. Sound good to you folks?
Here's the full transcript from the phone interview I did with Bill Lawrence a couple of weeks ago... minus the part where we talked about Scrubs. That's an interesting bit in and of itself, and I'll publish that in full sometime during the early part of October.
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