Angry as Always: Scrubs Dead, Buried, Gone…For Good

By: Adrian Sannen

(This is the premiere edition of Adrian’s new column “Angry as Always”. Enjoy)

After 9 seasons, they’re pulling the plug on scrubs.

Hey, here’s an idea! Why don’t we take a popular show, end it on a high note (and when I say high, I mean acclaimed beautiful send off) and then we’ll bring it BACK next year…BUT…are you ready for this?! We Remove the main character and pretty much every single thing that’s good about the show.

As a viewer, you can tell that the above proposed idea is awful, right? Well if you,
or I can see that, quite plainly I might add…then why couldn’t ABC? As a writer you try to be fair and balanced… I, however, will be honest. I’m an avid fan of Scrubs… NBC Scrubs… and even, for a while, ABC scrubs… but I was on record before season 9 as saying it was a terrible idea. Especially after the end of season 8…Which in my honest opinion, WOULD have been one of the best endings in television history. Now, however, it’s not. How can an ending be good if it’s not even the ending?! No no, instead of that glorious tease of an ending, we’ve got the plug pulled on James Franco’s unfunny brother, random toss in characters…and the same Dr. Cox rant that can only be funny directed at Zach Braff. Where was Zach Braff? In the first few episodes, sure, but then we were left with a neurotic clumsy person named Lucy Bennet as the lead.

Neurotic? Clumsy? Girly…? Wait a second… couldn’t they have said “Hey, Sarah Chalke!
We want you to be a main character.” because to me… it seems like the same thing. Now, I won’t discredit Lucy completely. Kerry Bishe did a fantastic job with what she was given. That said, I don’t think that part should ever have been written…at all.

Bill Lawrence is in my opinion, one of the best creators/writers in a long time. I was
convinced that he could do no wrong. Yet, it seems like when you’ve got ruthless networks like ABC breathing down your neck for more, with barrels of cash, it’s easy for a smart, funny guy to lose his dignity. I mean, Clone High is probably the best cartoon ever made. If you go to imdb or wikipedia and look under creators, guess who’s name you’ll see? So the guy is sharp to say the least.

After the first 8 seasons of Scrubs and watching the one season of clone high over and over again, it’s very easy for me to forgive Mr. Lawrence. However, it may have been out of his hands. There’s hearsay that Bill wanted it to be a full spin-off, but that was vetoed by ABC. Why, ABC? You know better. Even I know better!

It’ll take me quite a while to start watching the old reruns with the same fondness that I once did, but I guess since I already paid for the DVDs, those networks got their money.

Until next time, I’m Adrian Sannen, angry as always.

Posted by Adam Wright on March 24, 2010. Filed under Features, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry