Scrubs Love

I'm a little ashamed to admit -and probably should be more ashamed than I actually am- but I think this is my favorite TV show. Ever. It was only last summer that I finished Season Eight, but just the other night Dave and I went back to Season One to start re-watching episodes. I actually get cravings for this show. I could do without most of the sexual humor (most of which I cringe through), and I'm especially bugged by all the J.D./Elliot casual sleeping around. But still, how does a show that regularly features floating-head-doctor daydream sequences (and there's a lot more ridiculousness where that came from) manage to feel so darn real? So full of heart?

How many other comedies could pull off a storyline as heavy the Doctor-Cox-fails-to-save-three-patients-and-his-friends-have-to-pull-him-out-of-a-drunken-stupor one--while still making you laugh out loud every couple of minutes? There is this delicate, magical balance of the funny with the sad, the mundane with the profound, and Scrubs makes it all look so easy. Unlike 30 Rock or Malcolm in the Middle (comedies I've also been enjoying lately) Scrubs usually leaves me with something meaty to chew on. You know, questions like: What are the ethics of modern health care? What does it mean to be a mentor? A friend? What's the best way to deal with death? Change? Lots of medical dramas ask these same types of questions, but I think it's the subtlety, warmth, and humor with which Scrubs does it that is so effective.

It's a show that evolves. Characters and relationships develop believably. Take doctor Kelso. Yes, he is the penny-pinching, cantankerous chief of medicine, but a flat character he most definitely is not, or at least does not remain so for long; by the end of the series, Bob Kelso is one of the show's most sympathetic characters (watch some of the episodes after he has retired if you don't believe me -or the episode told from his point of view). 

The writing is creative and often unexpected. There's an episode done as a musical, an episode told from the eyes of relatively minor characters, an episode which follows a day's chain of events and then goes back and follows them again as they might have occurred. There's the gut-wrenching twist endings, sweet surprise endings, and everything in between. There is none of the formulaic script-writing of House, none of the forced wittiness of Gilmore Girls.

The acting is spot-on --with lots of fun guest-star appearances too (see Micheal J. Fox as an OCD doctor, Dick Van Dyke as one of Doctor Kelso's old friends, Brendan Frasier as Doctor Cox's brother-in-law). But it's really the details that bring everything together for me. The soundtrack, the elaborate day-dreams, the little quirks that make you love the characters, the careful way that events come together. The rough-around-the-edges sincerity. The unabashed goofiness. The heart. And, of course, The Janitor. :)