Scrubs: My Saving Grace
By fred | January 14, 2009
(S08E03) If you’ve been a fan of Scrubs ever since it started, with the show now in its eighth season you are doomed to see things comings. It will happen, sometimes the plots of a new episode will resemble the one you’ve already seen, so the important part to make it good, the thing that will make us enjoy this new take on a story we’ve already seen, sort of, is that it works for the characters involved, that it sounds true, and more importantly that it makes us laughs.
For instance over the past 8 years it’s safe to say that Dr Cox and Dr Kelso have had their disagreements, they’ve fought, and they’ve hated each other most of the times. It’s no secret, just like we’ve also seen them showing signs of respect for one another, because they both know, as we do, that each in their own way are good doctors, and good people.
So sure, it’s nothing new to see the doctors trying to play around the system for the benefit of their patients, and it’s certainly not the first time that Cox had to say something nice to Kelso, and mean it even. But the fact remains, that to see him reluctantly confess that he did indeed miss him, miss working with him, was still a very nice moment.
Cox could have faked it, but he knew it wouldn’t have worked, and he respects Kelso enough to tell the truth. And the truth freed them all from Dr Maddox, of whom we’ve seen the last in this episode. I gotta say, it was a weird thing they did here, because while Courteney Cox – “Ridiculous name by the way” – was featured in a multi-episode arc, she was never really at the center of any of them.
You’d think that they would have used her a little more than that, because it almost looked like they only had her at the minimum. At the same time, I kinda liked that, actually. That while she was a guest-star and the new Chief, it wasn’t that much big of a deal, that the show was still about the same group of people, not the new kid in town, and that they didn’t make a big deal out of it.
In all fairness though, with only so few episodes and so little appearances on some of them, (and maybe also the fact that we have two episodes back to back each week,so this was only the second and yet already last week featuring Cox,) it almost felt rushed, as it all went by very (very) rapidly, and I (almost) wish they had kept her around a tiny bit longer.
Anyways, just because he doesn’t work here no more doesn’t mean Kelso is out, and the same can be said for the Janitor. This guy has always been quite unique, and funny, but this time he was on a roll. Sure, there were plenty of funny stuff all around, but I don’t think I laughed more at anything but what he did this week, from him barking to connect with his neighbors to the fact that he knew no one sees him as an organism that has sex, to this other personality scared of going back to prison he created himself so he could feel things when breaking into someone’s office, to what he meant by “photoshop” when listing ideas on how to get ride of Maddox – loved it, loved it all!
And if there were things we definitely had seen before, such as Carla having to straight out some new interns who thought they didn’t need anyone and could survive on their own, it was the little details that made things work. Because we had heard that nurses run the place before, but finding out about Dr Cox’s past was what made this good – “Dr Cox: emotionally and physically abusive dead parents, which he may have killed, no one’s sure.”
What did everybody think of this episode ? Was he Janitor absolutely hilarious or what ? Are we going to find out why and how that doctor manages to always wear the exact same clothes as Elliot, even when she changes during the day ?
