Thursday, October 16, 2014

Scrubs: A Show From 13 Years Ago You Should Watch


Scrubs is an NBC comedy-drama that aired from 2001 to 2010, and if you've never seen it before I need to tell you to get it going in your Netflix queue.


I had never seen an episode until earlier this month-


You have every right to look at me like that
















But I had heard good things and decided to jump into it. Here's the synopsis of Season 1:

        John Dorian (J.D.)                            and                                 Chris Turk (Turk)


are medical interns at Sacred Heart Teaching Hospital. They navigate love, life, and listeriosis as young 20-somethings out of med school entering the realities of life and death. Quite possibly the best bromance on TV, these two set the bar high for laughs per minute and are a pair of friends who are so clearly more than actors pretending to like each other.

They are joined by a cast of well-written, varied characters including:


Doctor Cox, the hardworking, smack-talking 'Obi-Wan' to J.D.'s 'Skywalker'



Carla Espinosa, the experienced, friendly nurse and 'Leia' to Turk's 'Luke'



Elliot Reid, a fellow intern and the, uh... 'C3P0' to J.D.'s 'R2D2' (complete with sexual tension)



Chief of Medicine Bob Kelso; stuck somewhere between 'Jar Jar Binks' and 'Darth Vader'














Star Wars analogies aside, Scrubs is a fantastic example of how comedy can be used to amplify drama. 

There are many episodes that use a whimsical A-plot only to sidewind you with a "harsh reality" B-plot. 

Having these characters grounded in their talent as doctors and surgeons allows them to explore an absurd angle on some really heavy issues. Much like current TV hits "The Mindy Project" and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine", having characters who are professionals and not Al Bundy archetypes means when they screw up, we really feel it.

Death is a recurring theme in Scrubs and it's dealt with matter-of-factly. Doctors deal with it every day, and if they stop to mourn, they'll miss saving someone else. 

That being said, Scrubs is a comedy first, and it is through such a command of the "it comes from a real place" style of comedy that the ups and downs really feel up and down.



I'm a lover of dark comedy, and this is what I would call a comedy with dark edges. It lacks the melodrama of Grey's Anatomy and the situational tropes of the Big Bang Theory, finding a niche of relatable humour with a stripe of reality in the creamy centre.

Watch it and laugh.



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