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.
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.
The latest celebrity death rumor that turned out to be false was the one about Scrubs star Zach Braff. He didn't kill himself by taking pills. To prove it, Braff has made the video below. He calls the guy who started the fake rumor (he even created a fake CNN page to make it more believable) a "douchebag" because the story upset his mom.
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.
On the last day of the TCA press tour, as the stars of ABC were yukking it up at a crowded party at the Langham Huntington in Pasadena, Bill Lawrence and I were out in the courtyard talking about what the new season of Scrubs -- or as I'm calling it, Scrubs 2.0 -- is going to look like.
Essentially, it's going to be like a medical version of The Paper Chase, with Turk and Cox being the professors. We'll be following the lives of young medical students who will shuttle back and forth between classes and their rotations at the "new" Sacred Heart, which is being rebuilt on the med school's campus. While in the hospital, they'll run into a lot of the characters from Scrubs 1.0, including J.D., as Zach Braff is scheduled to be in the first six episodes.
It all sounds a bit confusing, so I'll let Bill lay it out for you folks. An edited transcript is after the jump. The full transcript can be found here. And I'll be getting on the phone with Bill to talk Cougar Town sometime next week, so stay tuned. Oh, and at the end of the interview, we talk about the role Bill's wife, Christa Miller, had on Scrubs that didn't involve any acting.
Here's the full transcript of the interview I did with Bill Lawrence on the last day of the TCAs. It's goes into some of the financial nitty-gritty of the Scrubs deal and drops a few other details. I also asked him to repeat what was going to go on in the new Scrubs a few times, just so I could understand completely what was going on. Enjoy! The main post, where you can leave your comments, is here.
Well let's start with the obvious. You've been thinking about doing another season of Scrubs for like a year now. (laughing)
Because you told me...when'd you talk to me about that? About a year ago? We're the only people who shot the shit about it. I thought there was a chance it would happene. I just saw the landscape, you know.
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.
Confirmation has finally arrived and the show will indeed go through an extreme makeover that will take the action from the hospital to medical school. Slight spoilers coming up!
What will the upcoming ninth season of Scrubs look like? Only ABC and show creator Bill Lawrence know the answer to that question.
During the network's recent upfront presentation, ABC Entertainment president Steve McPherson said Lawrence was playing with two possible scenarios for the show, one of which is "a complete rethinking" and the other a simple continuation of the format with a new cast.
Either way, things will be different. And with star Zach Braff signed on for only six episodes next season and Sarah Chalke not looking to return full-time, it seems like this might be Donald Faison's time to shine. Or bomb terribly. It could go either way, really.
It looks like we're creeping closer and closer to ABC bringing Scrubs back for a ninth season. Now comes word that Zach Braff and Sarah Chalke have both inked deals to appear in six episodes, most likely at the beginning of the season to help set up the new J.D.-less Sacred Heart. Creator Bill Lawrence said that he responded well to Eliza Coupe's crotchety Denise (the intern with no bedside manner). He didn't seem to say much about the rest of the cast, but I think this could work.
Imagine transitioning Scrubs fully into a teaching hospital show. Instead of following one batch of interns, you can bring in a new batch every year or so. We can keep some of the good ones from prior classes, like Denise, but other than that it's new interns and we focus on the "teaching" staff, which would now include Turk. Donald Faison, Neil Flynn and John C. McGinley are on board for a full season, so that direction could definitely work. It would be a different kind of show, but if Lawrence stays involved it can still be a very funny show.
(S08E18) Since I have no idea whether this is truly the end for Scrubs or not, I hedged my bets on the season vs. series finale label. I will say this, though: If this is indeed the end for the folks at Sacred Heart, they couldn't have gone out any better than they did tonight.
Tonight's finale hit on all the same themes that have carried the show for eight years: people grow and change, but life at the hospital just keeps going. Someone leaves, someone dies, someone makes a life-changing decision, and life keeps going. "It's just a day," as Cox almost-convincingly said during one of J.D.'s attempts at getting an emotional goodbye from his mentor. He's right. And as Sacred Heart didn't make such a big deal out of J.D.'s departure, neither did the show. He didn't even turn to look back at the ICU as he turned the lights off. Well, he did, but I'll talk about that after the jump...
This is probably an odd thing to say in a post at a TV blog, but you probably shouldn't look at the video below. It's not exactly a spoiler in the strictest sense, but it does show what will definitely be a very special moment in the history of Scrubs. It really does feel like a series finale, not a season finale, so I'm curious to see how they handle things if the show does return for another season.
(S08E17) After the roll the show's been on lately, it was kind of weird to see Scrubs hit a bit of a creative pothole right before the series/season/show-as-we-know-it finale. Lots of personal character movement happened during this one, but the laughs were few and far between. And, despite the upheavals, we're still dealing with some of the interns, signifying life goes on at Sacred Heart. It was just a weird mix, and it made for a decent but not great episode.
(S08E16) We're in the homestretch now, folks. Things are advancing in the world of Sacred Heart. And when characters who've been living more or less the same lives for eight years all of a sudden get new jobs, urges to return to old ones, or pangs to move away, you know a finale is a-comin'.
It's kind of too bad, since this season has been pretty satisfying for the most part. As Bill Lawrence and his crew have gotten down to basics, the show has gotten funnier, more personal, and more dramatic (when drama is called for). In fact, this has probably been the best season since season four, and it's good to see that the show still has hilarious episodes like this one still in them.
(S08E15) There's a reason why you don't see too many sitcoms do two-parters or one-hour episodes more than once every couple of years; the comedy momentum set in the first half-hour usually doesn't continue during the second. Although the second part of Scrubs' Bahamas adventure was still pretty good, it definitely wasn't as funny as last week's first part.
But two interesting things came out of this episode, one character-based and the other actor-based. And, even though I had an inkling the latter was coming, it still surprised me when I saw it. More after the jump.
(S08E14) As Homer Simpson might say, "The Scrubs are going to the Bahamas!"
For eight years, Scrubs hasn't ventured all that much away from Sacred Heart and it's surrounding environs. There was an RV-based road trip to Washington so J.D. can see Kim, and J.D. somehow ended up in Las Vegas during an extended fantasy/reality sequence. But other than that, the gang's lives have been confined to the claustrophobic world of the hospital.
But Bill Lawrence must have figured, what the heck, it's the last season, so he shipped everyone down to the Bahamas for a well-deserved location shoot in paradise. And, I've got to tell you, part one is the funniest episode of the season (I've seen part two, and it ain't bad either). I'll tell you why after the jump.
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.
In 
On the last day of the TCA press tour, as the stars of ABC were yukking it up at a crowded party at the Langham Huntington in Pasadena, Bill Lawrence and I were out in the courtyard talking about what the new season of Scrubs -- or as I'm calling it, 
With ABC's 
What will the upcoming ninth season of
It looks like we're creeping closer and 
(S08E15) There's a reason why you don't see too many sitcoms do two-parters or one-hour episodes more than once every couple of years; the comedy momentum set in the first half-hour usually doesn't continue during the second. Although the second part of Scrubs' Bahamas adventure was still pretty good, it definitely wasn't as funny as last week's first part.
(S08E14) As Homer Simpson might say, "The Scrubs are going to the Bahamas!"
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