Most TV watchers are familiar with the wacky hospital sitcom Scrubs’
own peculiar story arc, especially NBC-TV’s mistreatment of the series
over its seven years on the Peacock Network. The show was jerked around
in numerous time slots and was always a “bubble” series during renewal
time, yet despite NBC’s idiocies, Scrubs maintained its healthy
demographic with the 18-49 age bracket, which advertisers always
coveted. So when NBC decided to drop the show after its seventh season,
which was disrupted by the writers’ strike, ABC-TV—which produced the
sitcom, anyway—agreed to an unprecedented eighth and final season as it
switched to the Alphabet Network, a move that gave creator Bill
Lawrence the opportunity to craft a season-long sendoff that would tie
up various character-driven plot lines. (It also gave Scrubs additional segments for syndication purposes, where it has been a lucrative hit.)
Bromantic overtures: Zach Braff and Donald Faison enjoy their buddy-buddy shtick in the new Scrubs: Eighth Season box set.
Those 19 episodes from the January-May
2009 run form the appeal of this three-disc set, and fans will enjoy
the audio commentaries that Lawrence and his cast members handle on 16
of the shows. The third disc has an option with more bonuses (that menu
page takes place in the hospital’s morgue, a signal that this sitcom
may actually be dead), including three minutes of bloopers, more than
15 minutes of alternate scenes, 20-plus minutes of deleted scenes and a
dozen “webisodes” featuring the eighth season’s crop of interns
interacting with the cast. There’s also a funny 20-minute travelogue
that chronicles the company’s working vacation in the Bahamas for the
installments in which the Janitor (Neil Flynn) gets hitched.
The real surprise at the end of the
eighth season, however, was ABC’s decision to renew the series for a
ninth, which meant renegotiating contracts and Lawrence refiguring the
concept to incorporate a cast of newbies with returning veterans. The
new Scrubs, currently airing Tuesdays at 9 p.m. (WSYR-Channel 9
is ABC’s local affiliate), features Donald Faison’s Turk and John C.
McGinley’s Perry as holdovers, plus Eliza Coupe’s snarky Denise from
last season’s intern crop, along with promised appearances from series
anchor Zach Braff’s J.D., Ken Jenkins’ Kelso and others. The jury’s out
on whether the new incarnation will be embraced like Cheers spinoff Frasier or become a rejected disaster such as After M.A.S.H., but at least longtime Scrubs buffs can take comfort with the bedside manner provided by these DVD box sets.
