ElizaCoupe-related stories
Posted Oct 16th 2009 3:02PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Scrubs, Interviews, Reality-Free
Figured today was going to be a good day to publish the
Scrubs-centric part of my
conversation with Bill Lawrence last month. Here we talk about what's going to happen during the first episode or two of the new season of
Scrubs.
The biggest piece of information? That Judy Reyes, who played Carla during the first eight seasons, won't appear at all in this new-direction ninth season. She's the only regular of
Scrubs Classic (my name for it) who won't appear at least once during the upcoming season. "I think she was either going to be a regular on this show or looking to go do other things with her career," Lawrence told me, citing that he "totally respect(s)" her decision.
Of course, with the new med-school-centric direction of the show, there's less of a need for some of the other semi-regulars;
Sam Lloyd (Ted) has already shot his last episode, for instance.
Other info from Bill: How the season premiere will open, how the transition from Zach Braff's voiceover to another voiceover is going to work, and more about the new character directions for
Classic regulars John C. McGinley, Donald Faison and Eliza Coupe.
Continue reading Bill Lawrence: Judy Reyes won't appear in season nine, and other Scrubs news
Posted Aug 20th 2009 4:24PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: OpEd, Scrubs, Casting, Reality-Free
In
Bill Lawrence's interview with our own Joel Keller, he said: "There's going to be a new young lady with a voice over and she's either going to be funny and talented and great, or the show's gonna crater."
Well, now we know who that young lady is and I'm sure Kerry Bishe (
Virtuality) will be thrilled to find out that Lawrence is hinging the entire success of
Scrubs 2.0 on her. No pressure! She joins
Dave Franco, cast earlier this week, and
Michael Mosley to complete the new faces of Scrubs (Med School?).
Besides being the new narrative voice for the show, and presumably the lead, Bishe will be a 22-year old first-year med student. She's the first in her family of fisherman to go to college. Mosley, the other new cast member signed today, is ten years older than the rest of the students, the result of a major meltdown a decade earlier when he was at Harvard. So this is his second chance.
Continue reading The cast is complete for the new and improved(?) Scrubs
Posted Jul 16th 2009 3:10PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Scrubs, Casting, Reality-Free
With ABC's
Scrubs transforming into a teaching show instead of a hospital show, it seemed a pretty safe bet that most, if not all, of the new interns we met during the last season wouldn't make the new format. Throughout the season, only one of those characters really grew into a character that anyone gave a damn about: ice queen Denise.
So I was pretty stoked to find that
Eliza Coupe has officially been cast in the new season of Scrubs.
Continue reading Eliza Coupe's Denise makes the grade for the new Scrubs
Posted Apr 28th 2009 1:02PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Industry, OpEd, Scrubs, Watercooler Talk, Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free
(Update: Bill Lawrence himself responds to my plea in the comments.)Oy, not again.
First we heard, straight from Bill Lawrence's mouth, that
Scrubs could get a ninth season. Then we heard
it was definitely done at the end of this current eighth season. Now,
The Hollywood Reporter is hearing that
talks to renew the show are back on, with Lawrence and company trying to figure out how to bring back most of the cast, at least in a recurring fashion.
They have to be recurring, since
Zach Braff has vowed that he's done with the show, and Neil Flynn, John C. McGinley, and Donald Faison are all attached to new pilots, with
Scrubs being a second option in case they're not picked up. Heck, even Lawrence is busy on the new Courteney Cox show
Cougar Town.
I'm here, as one of the show's biggest fans, to beg ABC and Lawrence to let the show die. Please. It's the best thing they can do for it.
Continue reading Memo from a Scrubs fan: please let the show die
Posted Mar 26th 2009 9:06AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Scrubs, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S08E12) It's always fun when
Scrubs takes its annual trip outside of J.D.'s head and lets us know what some of the other people around Sacred Heart are thinking. Considering we've heard from just about everyone else, it was nice to give the interns a chance in the spotlight. And, after last week's heartfelt but mostly laugh-free episode, it was good to see the show come back to the funny standard it had set for itself this year.
I'm starting to realize that if Bill Lawrence had actually taken the plunge and given us a spin-off featuring the interns, the character whose head we'd be in would be Denise / Jo. Yes, Jo's caustic. Yes, she's got about as much sympathy as a rock. But she seems to be the most well-developed character of all the interns, the one whose history we already know a little about and the one we know is ripe to go through a transformation over time. It doesn't hurt that Eliza Coupe a) does such a great job and b) is so darn nice to look at...
Continue reading Scrubs: Their Story II
Posted Mar 9th 2009 12:02PM by Brad Trechak
Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities, Casting, Reality-Free
It looks like the remake of the television min-series
V has cast its new evil alien leader, apparently named Anna. Former space-hooker Morena Baccarin (okay, she only played a space-hooker on the TV series
Firefly)
will be playing that particular role. She even bares a passing resemblance to Jane Badler, who originally played a similar role (when the character name was Diana) back in the 1980's.
Baccarin was great on
Firefly. I loved the interplay between her and Nathan Fillion as Captain Reynolds. This just gives her something else to talk about when she goes around the sci fi convention circuit.
The Hollywood Reporter article also mentions a some other casting in the coming season, including Tony Hale (formerly of
Arrested Development) in a new series called
Cop House and Eliza Coupe an ABC remake of the British series
No Heroics. So, of the three, Tony Hale is the only one not appearing in a remake. Good for him!
Posted Feb 11th 2009 10:01AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Scrubs, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S08E09) Looks like the final season cost-cutting didn't spare anyone, did it? This is the first episode in quite awhile -- if ever -- where we don't see Zach Braff on screen for even one second. We do hear him via Elliot's cell phone, but the writers wisely decided that, if J.D. wasn't going to be there in body, he wasn't going to be there in mind, either. In other words, this episode was fairly narration-free, and it was quite refreshing.
This has been a season of in-jokes and external observations about how each character deals with things around the hospital. Yes, we got the usual jokes about J.D. and how he goes off on his fantasies. But Carla and Elliot also got some of the business, and in Carla's case, it made for a well-done story.
Continue reading Scrubs: My Absence
Posted Jan 6th 2009 10:02PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Scrubs, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S08E02) As I mentioned in
the review for "My Jerks" and my
season eight preview, if you want to see a perfect example of what
Scrubs has done so well over the years, look no further than this episode. It's a deft mix of comedy and drama, with emotion mingling with character-based jokes that move the story along instead of interfering with it. It's the kind of episode that makes people like me believe that the show has something left and buy into Bill Lawrence's suggestion that the show is going to get back to basics and keep the silliness to a minimum.
Continue reading Scrubs: My Last Words
Posted Jan 6th 2009 9:32PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Scrubs, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S08E01) It's interesting how much attention
Scrubs gets from us TV-loving types, considering how little attention it gets from everyone else. Why is it?
Well, partially it's because of Bill Lawrence and the cast, who have been entertaining to cover and very press-friendly. But mostly,
it's because of the comedic potential the program showed over it's first couple of years, which included the ability to go from comedy to high drama in an instant and make it look easy.
The eighth(and final?) season premiere was more comedic than dramatic (the second episode of the night, "My Last Words," demonstrates this balance quite well), but it showed that Lawrence was serious when he told critics that he was going to dial down the silly and get back to what made people like the show to begin with.
Continue reading Scrubs: My Jerks (season premiere)
Posted Nov 11th 2008 1:54PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Scrubs, Early Looks, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
A lot of people -- fans included -- wonder how
Scrubs has managed to get to an eighth season. After all, things weren't breaking its way at the end of what was supposed to be its seventh and final season: the writers' strike truncated the season, its network (NBC) no longer wanted the show, and, though the writing quality had picked up by the time the seventh season was cut short, it had declined enough that even the show's most ardent fans were wondering if it was time to put the show out of its misery.
But thanks to the efforts of Bill Lawrence and ABC Studios,
Scrubs does live on, this time on ABC. And, after viewing the first two episodes of the new season, I'm happy to say that going to an eighth season was worth it. Lawrence told me that
he wanted to get back to the humor and storytelling basics of the early seasons, and the episodes I saw show evidence of that.
Continue reading Scrubs season eight - An early look
Posted May 22nd 2008 2:19PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Industry, Scrubs, Interviews, Celebrities, Reality-Free
As I found out
when I first spoke to Bill Lawrence last year, it doesn't take much to get the creator of
Scrubs going. All it might take is a quick question and he'll go off on a monologue that is not only funny, but has a lot of good information as well.
That's what I got from him when I spoke to him earlier this week. Yes, we went over what happened with NBC after the writers' strike and how his show was able to make the shift to ABC. But, since he already
spoke about that at length, we talked more about why NBC treated the show like it did, what creative shifts he's going to make to the show this year (expect to see less baby and relationship stuff this year, and more of the medical drama and comedy that got people hooked on the show). And, of course, he also dropped the mini-bombshell that I posted about earlier in the week,
that there might be a ninth, "next generation" season of Scrubs.
I'll warn you right now, this is a long transcript, which is why we're splitting it into three parts. But it's got a lot of good information, and if you're patient, you'll find some interesting spoilers about what's going to happen next year on the show (production on eighth season should be wrapped up by August, according to Lawrence). So, buckle up and enjoy the ride...
Continue reading Bill Lawrence of Scrubs: The TV Squad Interview
Posted May 16th 2008 8:41AM by Erin Martell
Filed under: Scrubs, Celebrities, Casting, Reality-Free
Sacred Heart will have three more interns when
Scrubs moves to ABC.
TV Guide's Michael Ausiello is reporting that
Aziz Ansari, Betsy Beutler, and Eliza Coupe will have recurring roles on the comedy's eighth season. Bill Lawrence wants to take the show in a more dramatic direction, and these cast additions are part of that agenda.
Betsy Beutler is best known for her role as Joanie on the
Black Donnellys. Eliza Coupe guest-starred on an episode of
Flight of the Conchords and had a role on the
prematurely canceled HBO series 12 Miles of Bad Road. Fans of MTV's
Human Giant are already familiar with the comedic work of Aziz Ansari.
Continue reading Three new interns coming to Scrubs
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