Scrubs - Season 9

This review will be almost as brief as this botched attempt at a series revival seemed to be. It’s safe to say that Season 9, the almost-certainly-final season of my once favourite TV comedy, was a failure. There are many factors in this – some concerns I raised in my Season 8 review and they did indeed all present themselves as problems here. Any complaint you might read about the show this year, I probably at least partially agree with, particularly to do with the mistreatment of old characters that should never have been brought back in the first place (I’m looking at you JD!), although the one thing I would disagree with was that the new characters weren’t as compelling. In fact, for the show to continue I would have been much more in favour of focussing on new unfamiliar characters rather than rehashing storylines with the original ones. To be honest, I thought that this season’s one success was to give us Cole, an annoying arrogant tool, and within several episodes actually make him likeable. The writers also did well with Drew, the mature med-student who Dr. Cox has a refreshing relationship with (one of adoration rather than hatred, even though it is initially just to infuriate JD), though appreciation has to go more towards the actor for good comic delivery. It was also nice to see more of Denise, as her new relationship with Drew was a nice parallel to Jordan and Perry’s own adorably vitriolic marriage. They dropped the ball with Lucy sadly. She had nothing going for her, which was a bit of a problem as she was providing the increasingly tiresome narration.

However, for all of the many changes that happened to the show this year, I feel it’s important to note the one that is harder to write about objectively – the show just wasn’t funny any more. My concerns about cast changes and rehashing old plots are nothing compared to my realisation that the format of Scrubs has gone stale – 9 years is a good run, but it’s best to finish there. I wonder what they’ll do in the end about DVD collections – I could imagine a lot of fans would actually view Seasons 1-8 as the complete series, and I wonder if it might eventually be packaged as such!