‘Scrubs’ marked a pivotal moment in pop culture at the start of this century
They pretty much came up with all of the classics: friendzone, the Journey craze, bromance and deconstructing very real things in a very surreal way.
During my last mega-binge-fest of the NBC show Scrubs (2001) I realised how immensely influential this multi-cam sitcom was. I started taking notes of all the things that later on became generic tropes in commercial hit franchises like How I met your mother, Community and Apatow films. Showrunner Bill Lawrence and to a certain degree Zach Braff left a mark in millennial comedy and pop culture – at a point in time the USA hadn’t too many reasons to be laughing.
The “friendzone” was first depicted in S01E03 of Scrubs as a metaphorical room filled with male acquaintances, who had missed a romantic opportunity with the female love interest, Elliot. JD doesn’t kiss her within weirdly precise 24 hour so he is banished in said zone and remains “just” friends with his colleague — for the time being.
A today well known expression and concept of modern interpersonal life was born. It must be said, that the word “friendzone” and its strange rules for being either friends or lovers, have an extremely bitter incel-aftertaste to it. Nonetheless the word was co-opted by countless other shows and films, and foremost, by all of us.
JD’s obsession with Journey and their break out hit (we don’t need to name it I think) were heavily featured in S03E02, fittingly titled “My Journey”. We all know this song, one way or other, and have drunkenly screamed alongside it, ironically or pure heartedly. It was top ranking on Spotify and throughout the last decade the mantra “All white people do, is listen to Journey and break their iPhones” (preferably at the same time) never seemed so true. Scrubs was the first TV-show to missionize this musical earworm-trend all over the world, even before Family Guy’s Journey karaoke session two years later.
(Oh and the same powerful foreshadowing of 80s nostalgia seems to happen with the now gaining similiar popularity “Africa” by Toto, also already worshipped by JD almost a quarter century ago.)
Although the “will they, won’t they/on and off”-story line of Elliot and JD was not too original, the “bromance” or “guy love” between Chris Turk and JD on the other hand was a very new take. From the first episode on, there was this intimate friendship with pet names and uncommonly shown male closeness between the two characters, and it worked.
Even if the joke kind of carries a baseline of “they seem gay” — which by itself would be lame but the show fortunately also contextualises — in our times of toxic masculinity it was and is important, wonderful and sweet to convey male affection to each other in that way. We all know this trope of “male buddies appearing as couples” to reappear in comedies like Superbad (2007) and almost every sitcom until recent years.
But also the female characterisations in Scrubs were unconventionally deep and realistic. The relationship between the main two women characters, Carla and Elliot, had to grow initially, because they weren’t friends from the beginning. They bonded over body issues, over their differences in class background and damn real things — not over their boyfriends or lipstick.
They bonded over body issues, over class background and damn real things — not over their boyfriends.
Elliot by the start of season 3 reinvents her character completely, a thing that basically never happens in a successful TV-show. They usually want to keep everything as it is and the way the audience knows it — even if that calls for ridiculous choices like a mid-30s actress playing a highschool kid. All the women in Scrubs have agency, a smart and emotional arc, and all of that without tying them to men or letting them play second fiddle.
Scrubs let the hero of the show be the butt of the joke, like Ben Stiller before or so many comedy routines before. That was nothing unique, although actor and producer Zach Braff put his own spin on it — sometimes some of this dorkiness seemed to radiate into real life, when thinking of the boner pills and the kickstarter fiasco in 2013. When I say innovative hero take, I am actually talking about Dr. Cox.
HBO’s The Sopranos and Oz already taught us, the audience, about the concept of an anti-hero, but what happened in Scrubs was new. This alcoholic asshole with the god complex and endless monologues turned out to be a comedic juggernaut. The concept of the mean and grumpy hero, with a genius mind and hidden warm nucleus, later on was almost identically copied in the drama series House (2004), which Scrubs very awarly makes fun of in their sixth season.
House kind of “stole” something else from Scrubs, a whole scene: In House S03E17 “Fetal Position” (April 2007) an unborn baby, being operated on inside the mother’s womb, grabs the surgeon’s finger. The exact same thing happens to Turk in S06E08 (February 2007) of Scrubs, as he is operating on a pregnant character, two months before! Even the moralising result of feeling something for and knowing the patient was the same in both shows.
Scrubs kicked of the new century with bold and fun choices. Communicating very real things in a surreal goofy way was key. Scrubs refined slapstick, cut aways, foley artistry, dancing and cartoony hyperreality (anyone remember Parker Lewis Can’t Lose?) by combining it with what people know and actually struggle with: death, grief, disappointment, pride, envy, fear, misanthropy, sexism, disabilities, loved ones being conservatives, parents being able to make an adult feel like a kid again and the billion things we can mistake for love.
We were able to put a whole spectrum of human emotion into JD’s moral voice overs, because they were — most importantly — were brillantly written. I don’t like hospitals, as any sane person, but because of Scrubs making it a place of joy, absurdity and philosophy, I may have grown to like them a little bit more.
(picture by the author)
