In a sea of hospital (melo)dramas that take themselves too seriously, even though their quality is questionable, Bill Lawrence created something different, a hilarious sitcom that takes the best of both genres, placing the "Friends" type of sitcom in a hospital setting. "Scrubs" is a sitcom, with all the features of sitcoms, but it is much more than that.
In addition to the features common to all series of this type, the "Scrubs" team made an effort to think out of the box and bring many innovations and elements atypical of a sitcom to the genre. The most common are inner monologues, which help us get to know and understand the characters much better. Next are slapstick gags, which often go to extremes, so the series has to use stuntmen. And as our protagonist is prone to daydreaming fantasies, many episodes also have surreal scenes, which often require special effects.
The series was not filmed in the studio, but they rented the entire abandoned hospital and the whole team practically lived in it. Over the years they became a kind of big family, and that is felt in the series and makes it more convincing and natural.
The main character of "Scrubs" is Dr. John Dorian (Zach Braff), a young doctor, immature and confused, with a strong emotional side and even more prominent bad luck, especially in love. He is counterbalanced by his best friend and roommate from college, surgeon Christopher Turk (Donald Faison), a sports guy, confident but emotionally closed. Their bromance is the backbone of the series and is one of the best I've seen on television.
Elliot Reid (Sarah Chalke) is a spoiled daddy's princess, who meets real life for the first time in the hospital and, with many professional and love turbulences, finally grows into a doctor and a woman worthy of respect. On several occasions, she gets into affairs with Dorian, which regularly ends badly.
Nurse Carla Espinoza (Judy Reyes) is Eliot's friend and Turk's fiancée. She is bossy and compulsive gossip of "Sacred Heart" hospital.
Dr. Perry Cox, played by the fantastic John C. McGinley ("Platoon", "Stan Against Evil") is a top doctor, arrogant, narcissistic, and extremely entertaining inexhaustible source of sarcastic remarks, Dorian's unofficial mentor, who steals every scene in which he appears.
Jordan (Christa Miller) is his ex-wife (actually the wife of Bill Lawrence, the creator of the series), strong, determined, uncompromising, with a tongue so sharp that she is the only character in the series who is able to steal a scene from Cox. Their love/hate relationship is deeper and stronger than all the other romances in the series.
Neil Flynn plays Janitor who, along with the tireless polishing of hospital floors, always finds time to haunt and stress interns. Along with Cox, Janitor is probably the funniest character in the series.
Sam Lloyd plays a hospital lawyer with an inferiority complex, always on the verge of suicide, except when he practices with his acapella group in hospital elevators.
The head of the hospital, Dr. Bob Kelso, played by Ken Jenkins, is only interested in profit and that no one bothers him. He treats his wife like a dog, his dog like a wife, he is in love with his old-timer and with his mean and/or cold-blooded remarks is a kind of the main villain.
Turk's colleague, surgeon Todd (Robert Maschio), is a sexually burdened latent gay man, obsessed with high-fives, to which he constantly invents new varieties, while trying to crawl under every skirt he sees and pours outrageous jokes.
In addition to the main four, which consists of Dorian, Turk, Elliot, and Carla, and permanent supporting characters, of which I mentioned the most impressive, through "Scrubs" parades a considerable number of guest characters, some only for an episode or two, while others stay longer or occasionally return to the series. Neither of these characters lags behind in their characterization and performance, and some are played by quite famous names, such as Elizabeth Banks, Tara Reid, Heather Graham, Heather Locklear, Michael J. Fox, David Copperfield, Ryan Reynolds, Dick Van Dyke, Matthew Perry, Colin Farrell, Christopher Meloni, and others.
The characterization of all, even the most secondary characters, is fantastic and after a few episodes you get the impression that you know them personally, and after a few seasons, they seem like family. They are very diverse and cover all types of characters, often brought to caricature. Which brings us to humor.
The series is very intelligent and witty written, and uses all kinds of humor, from naive childish, romantic, and friendly, through slapstick and comedy of the situation, to mean irony and sarcasm, and even quite morbid black humor. I can't remember exactly when political correctness became the basic and most powerful principle of modern television and destroyed everything it touched, completely killing the spirit of healthy humor, but there is no trace of that here. Moreover, I noticed a couple of moments that make fun of PC trends.
Although the series lasted the entire first decade of the new millennium, they did not run out of inspiration and themes. They couldn't when they don't hesitate to ruthlessly and shamelessly make fun of all the topics that come to their mind, even those that most of the similar series avoid at any cost. Although I can't think of any really similar ones, except maybe "Ally McBeal".
"Scrubs" skillfully combines all genres into a kind of sitcom, new, original, and refreshing, and it does it very well, which is confirmed by the duration of nine seasons. I started probably about two hundred series, finished maybe fifty, and very few even partially rewatched. I'm watching "Scrubs" for the third time in its entirety.
10/10.
