Scrubs – Season 6

Archived Review

For a couple of years now I've been complaining about how my favourite comedy has been going downhill, and with this season it finally occurred to me; it hasn't lowered in quality (much), it's just that it has evolved into the sort of show I find more difficult to like. As creator Bill Lawrence put it in the most recent DVD, earlier seasons saw a drama show with bits of comedy thrown in, but it is now a comedy show with bits of drama thrown in. And this is where I see the problem. When the focus of a show is drama, comedy is appropriate at almost all times (this is evident from Joss Whedon being able to switch the entire tone of a scene in Buffy from horror to comedy to drama to comedy in mere seconds) but when a show is just trying to get laughs, a dramatic turn can often seem as if it has been shoehorned in awkwardly, and the sudden sentimentality can be jarring. It's a problem because Scrubs had to change; It was initially a show about nervous interns who could be emotional wrecks and there were also many fraught working relationships. In later years, everyone has hit their stride, become confident and grown to be rather fond of each other (even if they still pretend otherwise). The only way to go, without hitting 24-like excessive disasters, is to lighten the show up and play it for gags. In that respect, Scrubs is still as funny as it's ever been, although perhaps a few more jokes fall flat than in the past, and certainly some of the staple ingredients of the show have gotten tiresome, most notably the still 1.5-dimensional recurring characters and Dr. Cox's long monologues which have lost much of their wit. Occasionally, it still has just as much dramatic impact too; Carla's farewell to Laverne was a tearjerker, but still not a patch on Brendan Fraser's death in Season 3.
A show like this obviously has a limited lifespan so I shouldn't be too hard on it for changing its ways, given that it couldn't carry on the same. At the same time, I am glad it is being put to bed next year. If we get at least one more brilliant episode like last year's "My Way Home" or this year's "My Musical" I'll be happy.

NB – I never got around to writing about the shortened (writers' strike, what else?!) Season 7, but most of the above still applied. Season 8 would bring the unexpected turnaround of the show...