Scrubs Review

I apologize in advance, because this is going to come off more as a rant than a review.

It’s just that “Scrubs” is one of my favorite shows of all time, so what’s about to follow is more of an emotional response than I usually have toward stuff I review.

I’ve seen every episode of this show. Even after the quality noticeably dipped following the first four genius seasons, I hung in there and laughed because even diminished “Scrubs” is better than 75% of the sitcoms on TV.

Yes, the last couple of years were pretty rough, but I felt the show rebounded beautifully with a touching finale that wrapped up our protagonist’s arc (and the entire series) perfectly.

Except that it wasn’t the end.

When I heard that “Scrubs” had been renewed after such a perfect finale, I rolled my eyes. When I heard that “Scrubs” had been renewed and that it would focus on an entirely new group of med school students, I rolled my eyes so far and so hard that they popped out of my head and I had to have someone reattach them.

From what I understand, “Scrubs” creator Bill Lawrence wanted to give the new show a different title. (“Scrubs: Med” or “Med School.”) On top of that, Lawrence said a big reason he was hoping for another season was so that the crew (and some of the cast) wouldn’t be out of jobs, which is certainly admirable. I mean, if ABC wanted to renew Lawrence’s show, it would’ve been silly for him to turn them down, given these circumstances.

The main problem with ABC’s refusal to renew the show is that the “Scrubs” we all knew and loved ended last May. (This new show is more like “AfterScrubs.”) The other problem is that the new “Scrubs” is not very good.

To ease the transition, the network apparently threw enough money at Zach Braff to appear in the first batch of episodes. J.D. is married to Elliot (Sarah Chalke cameoed) and expecting a kid. Also, the best running joke in the first two episodes of season 9 was simply J.D.’s attempt at a professorial wardrobe. (Tweed jacket with elbow patches and sweaters.)

Unfortunately, Braff’s replacement as protagonist/narrator is awful in every conceivable way. Kerry Bishe plays naïve, overwhelmed and caring Lucy and her comedic line readings mostly leave something to be desired. Still, the absolute worst part is that she appears to have combined the most annoying parts of Braff and Chalke’s performances. Lucy is a deadly combination of wimpy (J.D. at his worst) and chatterbox annoying (Elliot at her worst!) – is this REALLY the best person to build a show around. She makes me want to hang out with Meredith Grey.

Wouldn’t it have been more interesting to build a show around the comedic gifts of the great John C. McGinley’s Dr. Cox? Or, even better, why not build the show around Eliza Coupe’s Denise, who joined the show last season and whose gruff bedside manner and tough sense of humor is actually, you know, interesting?

Instead, we get Lucy and a bunch of uninteresting new characters. For example, I get that Dave Franco’s rich kid character Cole is the guy we’re supposed to love to hate, but the writers forgot to show us anything remotely worth loving about the guy.

Fortunately, McGinley is still around to enliven every scene that he’s in. However, it’s just not fun watching him chew out characters I don’t care about. Donald Faison’s Turk is also around full-time and he definitely had some good moments with Braff in the first two episodes (like when he and J.D. tried to out-falsetto each other). Still, Turk is approximately 80% less funny (I did the actual math) when he doesn’t have J.D. or Carla (who wasn’t even mentioned last night) to play off of.

Since this is mostly the same crew who put on “Scrubs” there WERE some decent moments. For example, I’m grateful the show introduced me to the term “wingmom.”

Still, the best things about new “Scrubs” other than Eliza Coupe were Zach Braff, the Braff/Faison chemistry, and McGinley. In other words, the best thing about new “Scrubs” is the stuff that made original “Scrubs” great.

ABC – if you’re going to air such a subpar show, at least have the decency to protect the shield and call this show something else.

Scrubs…D+