I had made up my mind, before watching the new episodes of the newly reincarnated ABC series Scrubs, that the show would be painful to watch. I wasn't a devoted follower in the past, but I've seen a handful of shows in syndication on Comedy Central, so I became attached to the main characters and the story itself. When I had originally heard that Scrubs would not be renewed after its 7th season, I wasn't too distraught. But it was picked back up, and subsequently dropped after the 8th season. The goodbyes and tied loose ends were for naught...
Here we go, season 9! Let's beat this dead horse a little bit more!
Believe it or not, I wasn't displeased with the first two episodes of the latest iteration of the series. Only a handful of the original cast members remain, while incorporating fresh meat; it is on a trajectory to evolve into a different show. The hospital has been torn down and rebuilt (in the span of a year?!) on the campus of Winston University, and many of the doctors from the original Sacred Heart are back to teach at "Med School", thus explaining the show's new title. JD is still actualizing alternate perceptions of reality through his inner monologue/narrative voice, but now he is not alone: newbie med student Lucy is following in his footsteps, as both his student and his sister in digressive fantasies.
Purist Scrubs fans - and myself - will not appreciate the fact that JD is only set to appear on 6 episodes of season 9. We've become attached to his cutesy narrations, his lessons-learned attitudes about compromising being both a person and a doctor, although in separate worlds... we don't want him to grow up yet! That means we'll have to grow up too, and we don't want that! Parting is such sweet sorrow...
I feel that this new season's resurrection is not an attempt to get the Scrubs fans of yesterday to remain loyal to the enterprise. Rather, it is a hypothetical "passing of the torch", a shot at getting newer/younger fans to jump on the bandwagon, to cheer on and relate to the fresh med students. And after seeing the ratings for the first 2 episodes on Futon Critic, I think they might have succeeded, but only time will tell.
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Good theories going on in your review. I am also not an intense fan of Scrubs, I more or less just catch a few reruns on Comedy Central as well. I agree with you that this season is a sort of passing of the torch for the show, which in my opinion is better than killing it off quickly which is what happens to many shows. They are allowing it to die a slow, but not painful death rather than giving it a shot to the head and putting it out to pasture. I think most Scrubs fans will appreciate this.
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