Scrubs

Even though by showing it tonight, as the last episode of Scrubs NBC intends to air, it violates internal chronology (Bob Kelso is magically back in charge at Sacred Heart), I can see why they kept this charming episode for the season finale. And possible series finale, though it does seem more likely than not (according to various sources on this site and elsewhere) that ABC will commission and run at least a few more episodes to make a full season's worth for the last set.

Using a framing device that, as others will remind you, resembles that of William Goldman's novel The Princess Bride and the film made from it, we have the intersecting stories of Elliot and JD attempting to diagnose a young woman patient of Elliot's who seems to be getting worse no matter how her symptoms are treated, and that of a bedtime story Cox tells his young son which is inspired by the day's events in the hospital, including Kelso's maniacal drive to ensure no doctors are working overtime, and therefore Elliot and JD's hiding from Kelso while they search for what's actually killing the patient...and argue as to who was about to kiss whom in a tryst that didn't quite happen some weeks before.

Cox is puzzled, as well, when consulted about the young woman, but offers some advice that turns out to be more useful than it seems at first blush: Try to remember even that which you weren't listening to. Some junior staff playing a medical variation on Jeopardy! within earshot of JD and Cox earlier in the day, it turns out, cited the disease the patient has, Wilson's...which in the deftest parallel between Cox's bedtime story and the day's events, is characterized by copper deposits around the patient's irises, looking like a golden ring...a golden ring being the talisman necessary to dispell the ghostly monster that is the disease's analog in Cox's fable.

The in-jokes for longtime viewers in this one (Aloma Wright's storyland character is much put-upon, at one point literally; the Todd's fantasy analog is a fairy, if one who is, of course, obnoxious and obsessed with high-fiving to celebrate his own feeble wit) are at least a little funny in themselves, and would be for new viewers, which puts them ahead of similar references in most of the weaker episodes of the past two seasons...I suspect Zach Braff has been waiting for years to deliver lines as cheefully disgusting as tonight's about his hairstyling products. (The secret ingredient, atop manure and mud, is more manure...)

Keith, the Janitor, and Ted all get good turns, even if Keith's seems particularly odd after the later episodes we've already seen, and Cox's irritable conflation of Carla and Turk into a two-headed creature named Turla (playing, among other things, off Turk's recent testicular surgery) is delivered with brio by all concerned. We learn that Cox also definitely is among those who thinks Elliot and JD should be a couple, even as they themselves seem to decide otherwise, though probably not forever (in the fable, at least, they admit that they were mutually attracted on that night of some weeks before).

And in wrapping up the bedtime story with a happy ending, but admitting, as Cox does to his wife immediately afterward, that the real patient might not've lived happily ever after, Scrubs reminds us that it has never been solely all about goofy comedy.

If this is the last episode to be broadcast, they could've done a lot worse. We'll look forward to what ABC has to say about their new season orders.

(Coincidentlally, running at the same time as this episode that flips back and forth between fantasy and more-or-less reality, with special effects and vaguely medieval costumes, PBS offered on its Live from Lincoln Center a performance of Camelot on a dark "limbo" set and featuring black modern costumes...which made for an interestingly reinforcing experience, when I'd flip over during commercials.)

For more on Scrubs, please see our Online Video Guide.

And we're back to a "merely" watchable episode, albeit one with some inspired bits of business, not least a flashback involving Ken Jenkins, as the now-retired Kelso.

Kelso has left, and Perry Cox is the new Chief of Medicine, a fact he insists everyone recognize by addressing him and referring to him as Chief Doctor Cox; nonetheless, the bureaucratic responsibilities of the office don't sit well with him. Jordan's presence is, at best, only mildly helpful with that, albeit she does give Cox someone to enumerate his woes with. Ted notes that he is now Cox's subordinate, and offers the same sort of slavish assistance he provided Kelso, till the Janitor points out to Ted that he doesn't have to continue toadying, that with Cox he can make a fresh start. The exuberant Ted not only begins asserting himself with Cox, who is only slightly puzzled, but with the Janitor as well, who finds himself no longer the undisputed leader of his little group of hospital misfits.

Meanwhile, Turk is considering, supposedly (at first) for Carla's benefit, having his missing testicle replaced with a prosthetic one; this already ticklish matter is complicated when Carla decides that she would like to have another child, something about which Turk's feelings are mixed at best. And JD, spending some time with his infant kid Sam, also finds himself spending time with a not atypically frazzled Elliot, who is attempting to track down a patient of hers whom she hand once prescribed a now-discredited, even potentially lethal, drug. In the course of helping her with this, JD notes that when he is with Elliot, it's not the same sort of dynamic as he has with Turk, which goads her into playing a prank with him that eventually leads to a fast-food restaurant manager being kidnapped by a lunatic.

In the aftermath of that brush with the law, Elliot and JD bond a bit more, and find Carla and Turk, who have just negotiated a deal for sexual favors on demand in exchange for shooting for pregnancy; meanwhile, the misfits strike a more democratic balance, as the Janitor attempts to make nice with Ted in hopes of bringing them all back together.

This episode particularly reminds of the Marx Brothers' film career...after a string of good to brilliant films, they found themselves making pretty bad ones, then rallied briefly with the film Go West, which begins much as their recent bad ones had but offers at least one extended sequence nearly as good as anything they'd ever done in their other films. This episode has a conversation of sorts between most of the characters in the episode, in which nearly all of them are talking at cross purposes while also making note of the fact that they are doing so...the kind of self-referential in-joke the show has relied upon entirely too often in the last couple of seasons, usually a pity both because it completely loses viewers new to the series and because it is by its nature prone to being a bit tired, but so well worked out in this instance that its hard to complain too much.

The saddest aspect of the episode was reflecting upon how close Scrubs has occasionally come to the contrived Wacky sitcom that JD's fantasy Legal Custodian is, a fact that Scrubs is smart enough make the ultimate point of that joke-sequence. As well as staking out a little of 30 Rock's territory in mocking NBC directly.

A good-enough episode.

For more on Scrubs, please see our Online Video Guide.

An episode that could stand comfortably with any of the previous seasons' episodes, the first one in this stymied season that I can write that about without hesitation.

And, of course, I failed to heed my own advice and forgot that NBC changed time slots for the show on Thursdays to 8:30p ET/PT, so missed it last night and caught it today on NBC's website.

But it's a fine sendoff for Ken Jenkins's Kelso, with the A story devoted to Elliot and Carla's attempts to rally folks to attend a meeting of the hospital's board of directors, to get them to rescind Kelso's forced retirement at age 65 (Kelso had falsified his age on HR documents so as to buy himself some time). The B story is mostly devoted to Kelso's reminisces about his life at the hospital, as delivered to a young intern named Boone (or Boon, which Kelso, with characteristic charm, refers to as a stupid name). The C story involves Cox unable to diagnose a chronically ill patient who's been in and out of Sacred Heart for months; JD and Turk, by accidentally leaving the patient's urine sample in sunlight, are able to make a diagonsis of a rare disease that would be difficult to determine otherwise. Particularly since they've spent some of the episode teasing Cox about his failure to diagnose (and suffering bungee-cord attacks in revenge), this little victory is particularly sweet for them.

Ken Jenkins and Sarah Chalke are in particularly fine form in this episode, and it's nice to see Christa Miller again, and the joy that Sam Lloyd's Ted evinces at the prospect of Kelso's retirement, and that joy's consequences, are a treat.

I see that one commenter would've liked to see more dramatic vignettes in this farewell-to-Kelso episode...I'll suggest that they did well by him, and I must admit (since I avoid spoilers as much as possible) that I was surprised that they were giving Kelso the big exit this soon in the windup. I have to wonder how and if he'll return.

For more on Scrubs, please see our Online Video Guide.

Angela Nissel, the writer who perhaps has made the most of her or his association with Scrubs, is credited with this amiable episode, and while she does offer a few good, wild concepts, one of the true pitfalls of the aging sitcom is in evidence here: the attempt to make well-rounded characters out of roles which are best preserved as devices. Bob Kelso, grounded just enough so that he isn't just a two-dimensional, two-faced ogre...is funny and at times sobering or acidly touching (most obviously in the episode where the audience gets to see what he hides from his staff, how much life and death decisions take out of him every day). Bob Kelso, tragic figure who has to depend on Elliot and Carla and, for goodness's sake, eventually Cox to rescue him from forced retirement: considerably less effective in every way.

But, then, that last wasn't the only unlikely development in this thinly-plotted but incident-rich episode. The A-storyline: Turk has apparently returned from a week's visit with his brother, and is acting out in all sorts of machismic, if basically good-natured, ways, many of them involving wrestling to see who gets to control the breakroom tv set. He gets the best of JD on several occasions in this manner, often while JD's infant son is present and being acerbically instructed by Dr. Cox as to JD's inadequacies. When the husband (episode director Michael McDonald), of a desperately horny woman who attempts to seduce JD in the cold opening, confronts Dorian, it's Turk who chases him away. JD accidentally finally bests Turk in a wrestle, and in the chase that follows, JD and Elliot learn from Carla that Turk was actually gone for a week to recover from having one of his testicles removed; Turk confesses to overcompensating while he and JD work out a compromise face-saving for both of them among their peers.

The B-line: Kelso lets Elliot know, by pretending to have a phone conversation where she can overhear it, that the Sacred Heart board of directors are forcing him out as the hospital's chief adminsitrator (though how he knew she was hidden in the restroom at the right time for that bit of theater isn't spelled out)...though the fact that Elliot is hiding in a mens room stall allows Nissel to drop a "booty" joke or three over the course of show; the funniest: Elliot seeing hers rated "9.2" and exulting that the hospital's male staff is so overwhelmingly white and therefore presumably more likely to appreciate her somatotype (Kelso also somewhat improbably takes the wind out of her sails by noting that the 9.2 is on a scale of 100). Elliot and Carla eventually come to realize that Kelso, in his backhanded way, is asking for help in keeping his job.

C-line: The Janitor, insulted by Kelso, joins with such other often-disregarded characters as the surgeon Todd, pathologist Doug, and lawyer Ted (when the others can be bothered to note that Ted is present) to produce a paper/online newsletter, The Janitorial, which can offer up to three issues/updates a day; when Cox insults the Janitor and their newsletter, the Janitor retaliates by fabricating an interview piece with Cox in which the prickly doctor supposedly cries out for the hugs and physical affection from his colleagues which he can't ask for in face to face encounters...and, as a result, he gets them, many more than he can stand, till he apologizes.

Thus, these various challenges to manhood (or simple personhood, particularly in Ted's case) are presented for nearly all the important, recurring male characters in the series, as well as for a young male patient of Elliot's, also goofily if undogmatically machismic, who is devastated by a diagnosis of breast cancer. And for a man so obviously in good physical tone, Turk's health is a litany of problems, most notably his diabetes and now this loss due to testicular torsion, the result of an accidental kick from his daughter.

But JD's daydream of finding Turk's excised testicle and planting it, only to grow a slightly smaller and inarticulate vegetable Turk, is one of the more inspired bits of dream-logic the series has offered, and Sam Lloyd's Ted and Robert Maschio's Todd are given good bits, even if Neil Flynn never quite gets to fly in this episode. Also interesting that a script by Nissel gives the women, with the partial exception of Elliot, so little to do...

And thanks to GDenisePR for providing a quick transcript and translation of the purely Spanish dialog sequence in last week's episode.

NBC is shifting Scrubs back to 8:30p ET/PT as of next week, presumably in a trade of slots with 30 Rock--though somehow Scrubs always struck me as a natural transition between other sitcoms and ER. Most doctors I've known see Scrubs as the more realistic of those two series (the most realistic of all the American dramatic series, in fact), in its portrayal of the medical life...and one wonders if anything will do all that much better stacked up against the latter halves of CSI and Lost, or improve "flow" that much for NBC, on that crowded night.

For more on Scrubs, please see our Online Video Guide.

Finally back, and with a good episode, albeit one that felt a bit more Sitcom than we might hope for from Scrubs...the pace was right, the performances on, but the jokes were often just a bit too typical of what we might see in a (shall we write) lesser show. That's a problem that this series will continue to have, as it wraps up on NBC this season and, it appears, makes its way to ABC for a very short final set of episodes...it set such a high bar in its first seasons, managed so frequently to pull together its disparate elements, even the disparate styles of its performers, so well, that it's almost unfair to expect them to sustain that level of quality into seventh and eighth seasons...particularly with the syndicated and cablecast evidence of those earlier triumphs available every day.

Carla, having forgotten a playdate for her infant daughter, spirals into an intense guilt trip against herself which Turk allays, reassuring her that she's an excellent and attentive mother and this oversight won't matter a bit. Carla, slightly to Turk's dismay, lets him know that that's the nicest thing he's ever said to her; less distressing, she assures him that his much needed pep talk will result in something similarly good coming back to him. In telling JD about this later, and presuming that the good thing will runn along the lines of sexual favors, Turk first teases JD when the latter wants to high-five him, suggesting that they might be a bit old to get that excited about sex (when Turk relents, JD admits, "Cood, because I just died a little inside when you said that."). They also determine that bumping chests is an acceptable celebratory move, but bumping crotches just doesn't quite work, at very least not for Turk. They then turn to the real business at hand, tormenting interns: they've arrayed the medical and surgical interns into a Space Invaders analog in the parking lot, and stand on the roof of Sacred Heart pelting their underlings with water balloons.

Meanwhile, Cox is frustrated and ranting to Elliot and Kelso, on this occasion about an obesity patient who is undergoing extreme surgical and medical procedures to slim down, rather than simply abstaining from food...Cox begins to express how he'd just as soon slap the food our of his patient's hand as put him through his current course of treatment, when Kelso, eating one of the muffins of the lifetime supply he'd won in a previous episode, tells Cox how utterly bored he is with his rants, both irritating Cox and providing him with a new target. Cox begins a program of stealing Kelso's muffins whenever possible, and later the administrator's pizza, to make his point. Kelso comes to depend on this over the course of the episode, daring and actually hoping Cox will steal the large, ridiculously caloric cake he buys. (This would be an example of more sitcommy than Scrubs usually allows itself to be, with Kelso willingly putting himself in a position of depending on Cox for much of anything, much less personal behavioral correction.)

Meanwhile, the sixth anniversary of Carla and Turk's first date approaches; Turk has been studying Spanish on the sly, so that he can surprise Carla with his new ability to speak conversationally with her. He lets JD and the other men in committed relationships know about his plans, even as they offer up countersuggestions and examples of what they do for such occsions, such as the Janitor's attempts to help his Lady with her neuroses, and Kelso's insistence that women, like crows, are drawn to "anything shiny." JD unsurprisingly has a daydream in which he and Turk are allowed into a sort of hidden Hispanic paradise, due to Turk making polite small talk with the day laborers who gather for jobs across the street from Sacred Heart. When Turk overhears Carla speaking in Spanish on the phone about his burning desire for breakfast food at supper time, or "brinner," he decides to act on what he's overheard and not let her know about his new abilities, and improvises a jewelry-store offer as his gift. He soon wonders if what he's doing doesn't amount to spying on her.

And JD attempts to cheer up a high school senior, admitted with severe burns, who is afraid he'll miss his graduation ceremony; JD requests a consult from Elliot, who suggests the kid should probably stay in the hospital, but JD tells him he should be able to go. Elliot wonders why he bothered to ask her, particularly in light of infection the kid developes, but eventually she, Carla and Turk help JD get the high schooler, barely and not without some suffering, through the ceremony.

Cox spills the beans about Turk's new Spanish fluency when Turk irritates him in front of Carla, and Carla, while slightly put off, quickly forgives him, letting him know that that was part of the good thing he had coming to him...and proves to him that his prediction of what she had meant by that was also accurate. As the episode ends, and Elliot and JD are negotiating how and how often they'll keep in touch with each other while dating other people ("But what if the person is fugly, but really easy?"), Carla and Turk take note of them while walking by and discuss their potential getting back together yet again, in a bit of untranslated, unsubtitled Spanish. (At least, Turk suggests they might get back together, but I'll have to check the web for a replay tomorrow to catch her response, since I had the volume low enough so that I only caught what sounded like the pre-fluent Turk's old favorite word of Spanish, "queso" [cheese]).

So, still not quite a full return to form, but a good episode and a welcome return.

For more on Scrubs, please see our Online Video Guide.

Scrubs returns to NBC next week, to begin the last new episodes of the season, but NBC's announced schedule for next year doesn't include the series...so it might be up to ABC to run the last, short season as planned. Or will they be DVD-only? That seems unlikely, somehow.

...And this is the Scrubs we've seen a little too much of, of late...good enough to watch, but only intermittently or fitfully funny, and perhaps not quite seemlessly mixing the frequent tragedy of medical life with the various sorts of comedy offered up.

A recap can be pretty quick on this episode, since the A, B, and C plotlines are pretty thin in outline: Elliot faces an ethical dilemma when she learns that one of her private-practice patients, dying of ALS, has landed in the hospital in a suicide attempt; Elliot is unsure as to whether to make the authorities and her patient's home-healthcare nurse aware of this, or to allow the patient to die on her own terms. JD suggests she should tell, for no better reason than that Elliot tends to let such things get under her skin; by episode's end, Elliot has decided to keep her patient's secret, having accidentally let the dying woman know how more effectively to drug herself to death. Meanwhile, JD, having discovered how insanely competitive Turk and Cox are, gloats when RateMyDoctor.org, which Kelso has just signed Sacred Heart Hospital with, consistently shows JD as the most popular of the hospital's doctors; they temporarily sabotage his rankings by having the Todd claim to be JD with his patients. And Carla, seeing the Janitor with his womanfriend Lady, named by her parents after the Disney cartoon dog, gets to know Lady slightly (and discovers that she is surprisingly normal-seeming) and then urges the Janitor to reveal his true nature to her, against Kelso's warning. When Lady can't believe the litany of eccentricity the Janitor spews about himself, Carla steps in to suggest that he's joking, much to Lady's relief; Carla then warns the Janitor to spill just a little of his craziness at a time.

Best (apparent) Neil Flynn improvisation in the episode: during his self-revelation to Lady, the Janitor notes that he doesn't "believe in the Moon." It's just the back of the Sun, don'cha know.

Least convincing aspect/dilemma: Well, perhaps I can buy the healthy-looking, spunky Lou Gehrig's disease sufferer...it helps make the point that she is about to lose all her physical faculties, and she is, after all, portrayed by a television actress of the typically pretty and slender sort (not quite model-anorectic, but close)...but Elliot's hang-wringing over her decision to end her life intentionally, a month or three before the disease would kill her anyway, didn't ring true for me. I'm reminded of a discussion I saw once of a M*A*S*H episode, wherein the doctors in the the episode anguish over removing the healthy appendix of a foolhardy frontline officer, to put him out of commission temporarily so that he wouldn't endanger more of his men. The writers and actors heard from their advisors after the episode aired that unlike the characters in the episode, real Army veteran doctors wouldn't've missed any sleep over performing such medically unnecessary but almost harmless surgery for the greater good. Elliot's crisis, such as it is, is a considerably lesser one. (And this is an example, folks who like to suggest that Scrubs is just a frothy clown show, of how it actually isn't...even if this isn't the best example of how the series has tackled some thorny issues.)

4th Wall Breaking: As commenters Jayhawk and SemperSF allude to below, there's a sequence in which the characters are apparently reacting to, and perhaps actually name-checking, some of their favorite online commentators on the series. An amusingly pomo touch.

Now, this was the Scrubs we've come to expect...sharp, goofy (but grounded), humane. Very funny, even when (painlessly) lecturing.

J.D. hangs out at the nurses' station with Turk...and with his infant son. Turk invites J.D. to play basketball, which J.D. declines, pointing out that his son is strapped to his chest...Turk suggests that he simply won't pass the ball to J.D., and J.D. notes that that would be just like a typical game for them. J.D. also has a brief fantasy about being able to breastfeed his boy, one among several large-breasted lactating male cast members (a tapped-out J.D. allows Kelso to feed the child; J.D. had apparently used most of his own milk in winning a squirting duel with Turk, who then sprays Kelso and J.D. in a sneak attack). Turk is brought up short by Carla, who notes that Turk could be spending time with their daughter, Izzy. Meanwhile, interns are being detailed to follow, at a close distance, a resident known for his short temper, Hooch (a character used sparingly in the past, and never better than now).

Kelso and a hospital board member are walking down a corridor, and Elliot overhears that Kelso's birthday is approaching. She offers to throw a party; Kelso demands that she not do so, and to mind her own business about his age, which he grudgingly gives as 58. The Janitor and Carla note that Kelso has been holding at 58 for several years, while lawyer Ted loses an argument with himself as to whether he will attend or even help organize a birthday party for his boss and nemesis. After brainstorming with Ted and the Janitor, Elliot decides that she won't be able to find out Kelso's true age, till the Janitor produces the keys to the cabinet holding the personnel files.

Meanwhile, Cox has a young teen patient who turns out to have a treatable case of leukemia..and parents who don't want to tell their son that he has cancer. Cox can't tolerate their reticence, even when Carla warns him about going behind their backs. He tells the kid, and while Ted's concerns that Cox has set the hospital up for a lawsuit hardly faze the doctor, Cox is desperate to know exactly why Carla thinks telling the boy about his illness was so wrong. Meanwhile, Cox is unimpressed by J.D.'s planned jokey stunts with Turk, expressing mild but expected disappointment that J.D.'s previous statements that was going to begin behaving maturely, now that he was a father, have gone by the wayside. J.D. takes his criticism to heart, and decides to tell Turk that he won't be playing.

Turk can't accept that...even while Turk and J.D. sit with their children, treating them almost like dolls (J.D. notes that his infant son might or might not eventually get together with Turk's infant daughter, given all the other options he has, including Cox's infant daughter), Turk argues that J.D. can't simply turn a switch and change his own personality, that that's not what parenting takes. Meanwhile, Elliot and her confederates prepare Kelso's 65th birthday party, even if Ted chooses to buy Channukah decorations, which are on sale.

In a tag-team lecture, Turk makes his case more forcefully to J.D., even while Carla finally explains why she's angry with Cox for telling his patient about his cancer, and thus making him have to worry about adult matters too soon. Cox nonetheless demonstrates why his approach was at least partially correct, and J.D. realizes he can still engage in goofy fun with Turk and still be a responsible father.

And, unfortunately for Kelso, his birthday party makes his age apparent to the board member, who reminds Kelso that, traditionally, Sacred Heart forces its adminsitrators to retire at 65. Kelso asks for, and gets, a reassurance that there will be no public announcement of his replacement till the new candidate is selected.

Really, just a cracking episode, so packed with incident that it's tough to recap elegantly and succintly, and with its three primary storylines so well weaved together, and dealing with real issues of life and death (and bothering Hooch) in the best manner of the series. This isn't one of the best episodes, but it's better than B+ for Scrubs, and is further evidence that they've hit their stride again...we'll see how many episodes they're able to finish in this punctuated season, and what any interruption might mean for the show. If it maintains the quality of, or improves on, this episode as we run up to the finale, we'll all be very lucky, indeed.

Well, like a baseball (or beisbol) team, sometimes a great series needs a "rebuilding" season. "My Identity Crisis" still wasn't up to the heights of most previous years of Scrubs, but it was the funniest episode of the season so far and it will do.

We begin with a dream sequence; Carla (Judy Reyes) is making out with her husband, Turk (Donald Faison) in a hospital bed at Sacred Heart. Turk pulls out a restraint and binds her wrist to the bedframe, but the prospect of kinky fun is dampened by the sudden appearance of JD (Zach Braff) and then Elliot (Sarah Chalke), who are there to murder Carla, allowing Turk and JD to pal around endlessly and Elliot to steal and raise Carla's daughter, Izzi. What turns out to be the most disturbing aspect of the nightmare for Carla, however, when she awakens, is that its the first dream she remembers having in English, rather than in Spanish. Meanwhile, Cox (John C. McGinley) is informed by his partner Jordan (Christa Miller, too absent of late) that she will be taking their children to visit her mother; since his not-quite mother-in-law actually has a restraining order against Cox coming within fifty feet of her house, Cox can't come along. An almost-funny argument ensues about who will cave in and call or admit they missed the other first. (Somewhat more funny is the Risky Business daydream this inspires in JD, with the Todd's [Robert Maschio] too-enthusiastic participation in dancing in underwear.)
Elliot is particularly challenging to Cox, who is at loose ends in his otherwise empty apartment, and even comes into work on his day off to find himself helping JD study photos of the Sacred Heart staff, so JD can win a bet with the Janitor (Neil Flynn). JD, having bragged to the Janitor that he, as a beloved member of the Sacred Heart community, knew everyone's name there, only to realize when the Janitor challenged him that he didn't know anyone's beyond his circle of friends. The Janitor bets that JD can't learn all the staff names in a day; if the Janitor wins, JD has to do the Janitor's job for a day, and if JD wins, the Janitor will actually do his own job for a day. This all boils down into Carla and Cox trying to decide what their own identies are now, while JD tries to memorize everyone else's, while Ted (Sam Lloyd) and the rest of his a cappella quartet work on a version of the Who's "Who Are You" (Scrubs enjoys tweaking its timeslot competitors; it's taken till now, as far as I remember, to get around to CSI, which uses the song as its theme). Carla and Turk have a bit of an argument as to whether their daughter should be raised bilingually from the beginning, an argument Carla eventually wins even as Turk realizes he doesn't really know or care much about his ancestry, while gathering how important it is to Carla. Cox and Jordan reach an understanding and a level of mutual teasing that seems a bit more like that of a true couple. And JD, having failed to ascertain the Janitor's name (he has never been named in the series), finds himself scrubbing the floor, noting how aggressive even the ammonia fumes make him feel; the Janitor is impressed by his quick adoption of janitorial surliness. And we end with another version of Carla's nightmare, this one in Spanish, with the highest level of electrical shock on the murder weapon, a defibrillator, now labelled "Mata Carla" rather than, as in the first nightmare, "Kill Carla." Carla awakens to find herself lying on Turk, who's listening to a recording with earphones; he claims, as she goes back to sleep, that it's a medical lecture, but it's actually Spanish-language instruction for beginners.

This was almost up to speed, so they're moving in the right direction (and Aloma Wright actually had a couple of lines in this one, with her new character); the first routine between Jordan and Cox, as noted above, didn't quite come off for me, but their videophone conversation did. Some of the Cox-JD interaction was as good as any we've seen, other bits seemed a bit forced. But the hilarious nightmare sequences which bookend the episode, and Turk's casual incredulity when Carla thinks he's confused about George Washington Carver's contributions ("Baby, how dumb do you think I am?") help make up for the inconsistencies elsewhere, and more. WGA strike activities interfered directly with the filming of an episode last week; we can only hope for a briefer rather than longer job action for several reasons, perhaps the most selfish of which is the hope to see this show pull further out of its slump as it approaches its last episode...and that it gets to film a legitimate last episode.

Well, despite J.D. (Zach Braff) finally being told by nearly everyone he knows that he needs to grow up, and Cox's useful, if revenge-driven, demand that Elliot recognize that she is starving herself dangerously, this was the frothiest episode of the season so far. And yet, while pleasant, it also managed to be the least funny, even given that it was paced like the most like typical Scrubs episodes of past seasons.

As part of NBC's "Green Week" stunt, the episode begins with a discussion between hospital lawyer Ted (Sam Lloyd, sadly underused this season till this episode) and the Janitor over Ted's relative eco-friendliness versus the Janitor's tendency to leave his van running all day so that it's air-conditioned for his drive home. Ted shows the Janitor Al Gore's augmented-lecture documentary An Inconvenient Truth, and the latter is inspired to ask Kelso if he can become the ecology officer for the hospital. Assured that it will cost Sacred Heart no money, Kelso agrees, just to get the Janitor out of his hair. The new EO wears a sash, in the manner of fraternal organization poobah or a Boy Scout, and begins to nag and bully his coworkers, sometimes even for good reason. Elliot, bothered by her medical colleagues' hypocrisy, chews out Cox for telling a patient to lessen his stress by letting little things go. Cox notes that Elliot, who is growing ever thinner, has a patient who is blacking out because she's starving herself. Elliot's instruction to the patient to start eating more healthily gives Cox an opportunity to both mock her and point out that as a doctor, she will have to give advice and instruction to patients that she herself might not be able to follow. Later, Carla finds herself telling both Elliot and the Janitor a variation of the same message: that they have to forgive themselves for not living up to their own ideals at all times, something, Carla notes, she had advised Elliot of two weeks ago. That was a nice way to suggest that they realize the show is running back over old ground. In fact, the A storyline in this episode has been dealt with explicitly before, when J.D. finds himself saying aloud to his newly successful brother Dan (Tom Cavanagh) that Dan's success has shaken J.D.'s confidence. J.D. is invested in having Dan being a screw-up so that J.D. can feel better about his own flaws. Dan, who'd enlisted Turk in a particularly bloody stunt to spook J.D., gets to be the first in this episode to to tell his younger brother to finally grow up. This leads J.D. to quiz his friends and colleagues, all of whom, with greater or lesser kindness and reluctance, tell him that Dan is right. J.D., having avoided visiting his newborn son, since his ex Kim had moved about 50 miles away, asks Dan to accompany him to go meet the baby boy.

These actors are still masters of comic timing and are still good at keeping their characters grounded, even when they're being ridiculous caricatures, but there was a certain lack of surprise about nearly everything in this episode. Some bits might never grow stale, but, sadly, nearly everything in the episode seemed, when not simply overfamiliar, then forced or at least lacking the energy of the early seasons. It's clear they are aware of wrapping up the series, and what they're doing is still very good, even at times excellent, but it's not quite what it was when the show was insanely great. Ted and the Janitor's argument came close, but the Green Week promo run during the show, featuring Faison and Braff, may've been the worst bit we saw tonight (and, of course, wasn't properly part of the show).

Another pretty solid episode — still not Scrubs at its comic best, and still at least as much about the serious subtexts of the series as about the blackouts and fantasy sequences.

Kim (Elizabeth Banks) is about to give birth, and J.D. (Zach Braff) is ready for everything... except for openly admitting to Kim that he doesn't love her. Meanwhile, Cox (John C. McGinley) looks for someone competent to give his infant daughter a shot, unwilling to give it to her himself for fear that she'll associate him with pain. Carla (Judy Reyes) can't do it,since she's enraged at Turk (Donald Faison) for his stubborn insistence on playing a console video game to its conclusion... or at least for his obliviousness to her need, as great as his, to be something other than a parent sometimes (and, to a much lesser extent, to his obliviousness to her ability to play the game better than either her husband or the Janitor (Neil Flynn). Even Kelso (Ken Jenkins) proves his worth as a parent, while drunkenly comforting his son over the phone, the son despondent over the latest exploitation by his various lowlife men-friends. So when J.D. does find himself telling Kim how he feels about her, in what is probably the funniest as well as the most painful sequence (quite literally for Kim, who finds that her argument with J.D. has caused her to miss her window for an epidural), he is banished from the delivery room in favor of Elliot (Sarah Chalke). But he gathers his lessons in the usual Scrubs style, and goes back in. Kim, while quite sure that her romance with J.D. is over, apparently looks forward to coparenting with him, so J.D. seems suitably awed.

While I'm as much a casual Colin Hay fan as anyone, having him reemerge as he does in the teaser of this episode is an example of the kind of not-quite-airless self-reference too common last season (after his much more effective "haunting" of "My Overkill," the second-season premiere). In fact, let's estimate that perhaps a third of the jokes, maybe even a few more, were just a little too labored, cough, in this episode... which leaves all those others coming at the speed and interlocking screwball logic that we expect of this series.

With the summer's unplanned-pregnancy film comedies Knocked Up and Waitress having done suprisingly well, perhaps there's something in the air. Scrubs is already (unsurprisingly) more realistic in its handling of the matter, so if the writers' strike doesn't bench the series, it'll be interesting to see how they sustain this... and how many cameos and guest spots from previous seasons we'll get. (The show has been notable for giving a number of guest stars, from Heather Graham to Tom Cavanagh to Tara Reid, some of their best roles-in one case, perhaps their only good role [whom could I be thinking of?].)

I'm very glad to see Aloma Wright back.

At last, the best sitcom on television is back... alas, for its final, short season.

Synopsis: Picking up with the season finale's emotional cliff-hanger, J.D. (Zach Braff] and Elliot (Sarah Chalke) are about to kiss. J.D. speculates that they are both afraid to commit (even to this), but after seeing Elliot close her eyes, he readies himself, only to discover that Elliot is about to call them both to their senses, or at least to get them both to wonder why they keep pulling themselves and each other out of serious relations. Elliot decides she can't marry Keith (Travis Schuldt), and tells him so, only days before the wedding; he doesn't take it so well. After a week of insulting Elliot at every opportunity, Keith arranges to pick up his stuff at her apartment with the proviso that she'll not be there; she can't abide his hostility, though, and shows up hoping to make things at least civil between them. Instead, they become impulsively romantic... leading to Elliot breaking up with him again, several days later. Meanwhile, J.D. queries Turk (Donald Faison) for hard truth as to why J.D. would attempt to mess up his own budding relationship with Kim (Elizabeth Banks), gravid with J.D.'s child. Turk suggests that J.D. barely knows Kim and was deceived by her almost immediately, thus he has no strong feelings for her and is sticking by her solely because she is pregnant by him. J.D. can no more accept that than he can that the Janitor (Neil Flynn) has a womanfriend whose name is Lady, but nonetheless strives to go a whole day without sabotaging himself in any way. Meanwhile, first Cox (John C. McGinley), then Turk, and finally Kelso (Ken Jenkins) all find themselves charmed by a patient who'd just like you to call him Joe (Kevin Rahm), and strive desperately to find a diagnosis for what seems like Lyme's disease, although the patient doesn't show the telltale symptoms. By the end, nearly everyone is more or less on the way to feeling better, with Carla (Judy Reyes) comforting Elliot. The exception is J.D., who's realized that he really has trapped himself into a relation that might always be loveless.

While not as packed with comic business as the funniest of the episodes of the series, this was one of the most effectively dramatic, particularly since the potential tragedy isn't a matter of death so much as of growing desperation. J.D., mocked throughout the episode by Cox as a "whiny, annoying boy-man," is at his worst precisely that. But he has also demonstrated loyalty and usually an eventual honesty, among other positive attributes, that keep him from being contemptible. We can only speculate how he'll handle being forced to take on a consistently adult role as the series draws to its conclusion. Elliot seems to have lucked out, in comparison, as she extracted herself from a parallel situation, with fewer disincentives for a breakup.

Meanwhile, as noted, this was not the funniest of episodes in the series, but it was by no means lacking in the wit and deft redoubling of jokes that is the show's hallmark. Last season particularly saw a few episodes where they seemed content to run self-conscious variations on previously established jokes and situations, making the show, if not quite airless, then less amusing particularly to those who were seeing it for the first time. Those of us who'd been watching from the beginning could get the references, but also wondered if the writers and the rest of the creative staff were finally feeling the stress of keeping up with high bar set in the first several seasons. There are few sitcoms that have sustained themselves for multiple seasons, and few sitcoms that have been as brilliant as Scrubs is at its best (and few that have been so taken for granted, frequently slighted so that series ranging from the only nearly-as-good Arrested Development to more consistently-popular bland or supposedly "edgy" shows might be overpraised in comparison). It's a tribute to its creators' desire to simply do the best series they could, after the veterans among them had often banked their fires in doing work that simply wasn't their best, that so many disparate elements have hung together so well on the series... that, for example, a frequently (at least momentarily) surrealistic comedy should be perhaps the most realistic of our current medical dramas (medical personnel I know assure me that Scrubs captures the reality of the profession much better than the soapy hour-long series).

This episode is a promising start for what might well be a tour de force of a last season. I'm glad it's getting the opportunity to wrap up.