Scrubs: My Finale [series finale]
By fred | May 7, 2009
(S08E18) I don’t care about the rumors and whatnot, this was the end of it. Scrubs was a very good series, I’ve enjoyed it for eight years, and as much as I love it I really feel this should be the series finale, there shouldn’t be anything after this episode, don’t turn this into a Prison Break. And this is especially true after this episode we just got, that was meant as, and worked perfectly, as a series finale.
But it was done, of course, in pure Scrubs fashion. Meaning that while of course this was a very special day, because the show has always (for the most part) been about and from JD’s point of view, and it was his last day at Sacred Heart. It was special, but not so special that the rest of the world would stop of course, because every time you leave your job, even if you had a great time there and was loved by many friends, there’s still work to be done, nothing stops, especially not in an hospital.
As Dr Cox said it, if for JD it was a unique day that he would remember forever without a doubt, for everybody else it was just a day, another day at work with patients to treat. And because while a sitcom, Scrubs has always been more than that, what this wonderful episode did was making us both happy and sad, one last time. One last time it was a perfect mix of comedy and drama, being brilliant at both.
This season has been about growth, how much JD but also everyone else there has changed over the years, how much they’ve evolved, and also how life just goes on. People come in, some make it, some don’t, some stay and some left, but there’s always another day to come next. What I particularly liked about this episode, was that they didn’t make too big a deal out of it.
In fact, they even made fun of it, JD imagining himself turning the switch that would turn everything off, as if there was no life once he left/the show ended. That’s often how it goes down in TV land, but not in life. There was no switch to be turned, JD might have walked away, but everybody else stayed there and will continue to go and do what they’ve been doing for years, we just won’t be there to watch it.
We had plenty of little resolutions and callbacks to past season and of course the pilot, like the very nice moment between JD and Carla when she called him “Bambi” again, or of course Cox refusing to ever tell JD how he really felt, but – tricked by him the same way the Janitor tried to trick JD with Denise and her hilarious dramatic exit – eventually making the speech JD always wanted to hear.
And if he didn’t hug him back, the fact that he let JD hug him meant enough. There was also JD seeing almost everyone he ever crossed path with along the years, dead or alive, or finally admitting to the Janitor that what he did on his first day, and the Janitor knowing that he knew it all along of course, it was just a test, a test JD failed. I also loved that we weren’t given the answer to that one question : what is the Janitor’s name??
He did give an answer to JD, but was called by another name right after thus leaving it up to us, I guess, to decide what we want to believe. Maybe is name really is Glenn Matthews, and maybe not. I choose to believe that it is not, but every one of us is free to make the call. Just like that one last fantasy about what the future holds for JD was brilliant, it was tearful to see all the things that might happen, him and Eliot getting married, and of course JD and Turk’s kids getting married one day, and everybody celebrating Christmas with Perry and his own family, and again we can all choose whether to believe that is what will happen, or not.
This episode was the perfect ending for the show, it was what Scrubs has been at its best during all those years, as funny as any other comedy can be, and at the same time as moving as any drama can be, if not more.
What did everybody else think?
First of all that was a perfect series finale. No other show has made me cry so much, especially in just one episode.
But about the janitors name…remember how the janitor mentioned that no one wanted to know the janitor’s name and that JD had probably already forgotten it? When the orderly walked by and called him “Tony” I took that as, the orderly didn’t know his name or had forgotten it. Like the orderly called him the wrong name. Kinda a joke like “See what I mean? No one remembers my name.”
I believe he is Glenn Mathews :)