First Impressions: Scrubs

Welcome to a new segment I’m calling First Impressions. In this  section of the blog I will be analysing Pilot episodes, I will be starting with Scrubs but others will be added later, as will a pretty flash button for the sidebar. I will also be combing through past posts and tagging them with the First Impressions tag, so all my Pilot musings are available to you guys at the click of a button.

Ok so new Scrubs: Med School started this week on ABC, although technically not a new show, it’s a new format and that is good enough for me.

Hopefully this isn’t too old school for people to follow, but new Scrubs felt like Saved By The Bell: New Class and J.D felt somewhat l like Screech, a remnant of the past that doesn’t quite fit.

As far as I was aware Med School was supposed to be a totally new show, NOT Scrubs Season 9. It isn’t. Other than four members of the full series cast plus some extras returning, the show seems to follow an identical format. There are those annoyingly, increasingly more ridiculous, day dream sequences, that worked so well during the early seasons (and yet failed drastically in the later). The same musical ding dongs undercut every moment in the same way they always did. J.D and Turk are possibly more exaggerated than ever and they completely dominate the new cast that is supposed to be replacing them. Plus, it’s still not funny…

I don’t want to blame Zach Braff for the decline of the laughs in Scrubs, but to be honest by the end of season 6, I hated his guts. J.D is incredibly selfish and the fact that he doesn’t realise it makes him almost detestable. What made Scrubs so funny and clever has been lost along the way and replaced with slapstick and increasingly ridiculous stories.

I hoped that Med School would return the show to it’s roots, but it seems I am out of luck. Instead of the characters being subtle and understated, they are outlandish caricatures. Lucy is a Zach Braff clone with a skirt, even Denise (Jo)  seems to be a reinvented version of herself.

That said, assuming J.D gets relegated to the background as promised I can see some potential. Drew is a really good character and the way Mosley and McGinley play off each other seems promising. I also have high hopes for Eliza Coupe (Denise) who was my favourite new character from last season.

But I can’t help but feel that nobody has learnt from the mistakes of the last four seasons and this new reboot is going to fall into the pits that it’s predecessor did. The problem with that is that the audience already expects the show to fail, for it to not be as good as Scrubs and the moment that happens Med School will be closed for good.