Like ER but half as long and twice as funny (Scrubs)

Member Name: sharrowing

Product:	Scrubs
Date:	03/05/02 (398 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast, Fresh, Funny

Disadvantages: No I.T. Support Characters :)

Curse you Sky! I've got better things to do with my life than spend two and a half hours of it every Thursday watching American Imports! How dare you presume to air my three favourite American shows back to back on one night? Have you no shame?? Have you no compassion???

(By the way, are there any DooYoo guides regarding the over-use of question marks??)

Scrubs (currently 10:00 PM Sky One, Thursday Nights) is probably the best comedy to come out of America since Frasier. Recipe: take the group dynamic from "Friends", add in a dash of cynicism from "Spin City". Sprinkle with a commentary by the main protagonist a-la "The Wonder Years". Add fantasy sequences reminiscent of "Dream On" and "Ally McBeal". Mix thoroughly and spread thickly over a completely unprepared base of "E.R.".

The first thing I loved about Scrubs was the way it quickly built on our pre-conceptions of what each character would be like and how they would act, only to completely smash them before the end of the first episode. We loved the avuncular Dr. Kelso, shepherding the new flock of interns with a fatherly hand. We hated Dr. Cox, the overly hard-nosed resident who has no time for "newbies".

But very soon we discover that Kelso is the nasty one, two-faced and money-grubbing; and that Dr. Cox, while not the nicest person you could meet, has a true love of the work and a desire to always do the best for his patients.

This changes slightly week by week. Characters change and grow. So now I even have a sneaking respect for Kelso, who sometimes has to make the hard decisions in order for the hospital to work.

A sitcom can only survive past it's first season by constantly re-inventing itself. If J.D., the intern who acts as our narrator, was still as hopeless and bewildered 10 weeks into the season as he was in the first episode, it would no longer be funny. Now he's m
ore secure in what he does, which opens up new opportunities for comedy and drama. One of the finest moments in an early episode was where J.D. realised that he had overtaken Nurse Carla in experience. In the beginning Carla has lead him by the hand with basic E.R. procedures, but now his extra training as a doctor meant she wasn't needed. She felt unwanted, he felt guilty, and their relationship changed.

One of the mistakes that long-running sitcoms like Friends and Frasier have made is milking the comedy of the status quo. We eventually got bored of the will-they-won't-they Ross and Rachel thing. And we got so used to Niles pining for Daphne that when they inevitably DID get together it seemed an anti-climax.

Scrubs doesn't seem to be making the same errors. The relationship between J.D. and Elliot Reid had the makings of a classic "will-they-or-won't-they" storyline, destined to run for years. But in one episode recently they got together, and by the end of the next episode they had split up, with a definite air of permanence. The writers seem to handle each storyline like it's a patient in ER: stitch it up, ship it out, move on to the next one. It's a remarkably bold approach, we can just hope that they don't run out of storylines altogether.

The writers, having established strong characters and their relationships, seem to revel in mixing things up. Each week new pairings of personalities are tried out. How would the feisty Latino nurse Carla get on if she car-shared with white-bread Doctor Kelso? And Dr. Cox and Turk the surgeon haven't had many scenes together... how about if they coincidentally ended up taking pee breaks at the same time?

I love Scrubs. It's the first comedy in ages that I actually look forward to finding out what's going to happen next. Oh, and did I mention that it's very funny? Laugh-out-loud funny. Repeat lines the next day to your co-workers funn
y.

If I had to make one change it would be to add one dashingly handsome I.T. Support person for realism. The computers never seem to go wrong in American TV hospitals. In my experience they go wrong ALL the time, but then again I work for the NHS.

Summary: