TVSquad

(S08E03) Since there are two episodes again tonight, I'll keep things brief.

I gotta say, I'm not sure why they brought Courteney Cox in for this arc. In her three episodes we didn't see much of her, and what we did see was at best a one-dimensional caricature. Other multi-episode guests have shown more depth; heck, Michael J. Fox did twice as much with one less episode when he was on the show in season three. She wasn't even the centerpiece of her final episode. Everyone else was, from Kelso and Dr. Cox, to Janitor and Ted. As last week, the second episode was better than this one. But this one wasn't bad.

Something you have to realize when you're a Scrubs fan is that there isn't much in the way of jokes or plots that you haven't seen before. That's what happens when a sitcom gets to a certain age. How many times did Frasier and Niles compete for something? How many times did Hawkeye bitch about the horrors of war?

This episode was like that: the doctors trying to get around the system even though Maddox won't let them; Carla trying to set Intern Katie straight about how to operate at the hospital and it's used to parallel what's going on in the hospital, blah blah blah.

No, it was the little moments that counted here: Cox begrudgingly telling Kelso that he misses working with him, and not just to get his help ousting Maddox; Janitor developing a character to get him pumped to break into someone's office; Carla's listing of every one of the staff's messed-up family lives ("Dr. Cox: emotionally and physically abusive dead mother and father that we're not sure he didn't kill."). That stuff is what made the episode.

When I saw this episode, I still wasn't quite sure what role Kelso was going to play, but that got answered for me in the next one. More on that in the next review.

Other fun stuff:

• Jordan getting hot over seeing Janitor feed Kelso a scone. All I have to say about that one is: Gahhh...
• Maddox: "Dr. Cox -- which I think is a silly name, by the way."
• Missing cast member alert: Donald Faison.
• Cox (Dr., not Courteney) wants to carry and birth a baby? What a girl!
• Janitor's long story about why making barking noises helps him fight loneliness in his apartment. Oh, and also the fact that he knows no one sees him as an organism that has sexual relations.
• The doctor who wears the same thing as Elliot every day, who even changes when Eliot does. Wow, it's creepy.
• 35!
• Not too many J.D. fantasies in this one, even when he talked about Interferon the interfering robot. That's probably a good thing.