Scrubs, 20 years from the pilot of "doctors at the first irons"

Scrubs

"More clinical than ER, more cynical than AllyMcBeal, hotter than Sex and the City, more sparkling than Friends." How many years have you spent in front of the TV, dreaming of seeing the dream of that slightly ugly boy come true, but madly in love with the blonde colleague? How much did you laugh, and not too much under your breath, at the squabbles with the attendant and Dr. Kelso, who for nine long years kept us company in the early afternoon? Well, it's been nineteen, eternal years since it all started. Scrubs - Doctors at the first irons, better known only with the title Scrubs is an American television series, conceived by Bill Lawrence and launched on the small screen starting from 2 October 2001, annus horribilis for America following the attack on the Twin Towers , until 2010.

Started right at the dawn of the "serial revolution" experienced in US production, which took hold in particular since 2003, Scrubs was first broadcast in the United States first by NBC (for the first seven seasons) and then by ABC (for the eighth and ninth seasons). In Italy, all nine seasons of the series were first broadcast by MTV; the series also aired on the FOX satellite channel. The first season was aired in the USA from 2001 to 2002, while in Italy it only arrived in 2003, a delay that has increasingly tapered off in the seasons to come. But do we remember everything about the pilot of this series? Together we rediscover the joys and sorrows of J.D., Turk and the rest of the crew.

I'm no Superman, the first steps ...

Let's start right from the basics, namely the title of the series, created thanks to a play on words. The terms scrubs and to scrub, in fact, indicate the uniform worn by doctors and nurses, as well as the surgical practice of washing hands thoroughly before surgery (a gesture that has become increasingly "sponsored" in recent months also in Italy to try to counter the spread of the Covid-19 virus). Not only "interesting" meanings, but also tragicomic and sarcastic, as it can also indicate an insignificant or unimportant person. In the specific case, it can be translated as "beginners", to indicate the lack of experience of the protagonists in the medical profession.

As we anticipated, in fact, the subtitle of the Italian translation is precisely "doctors in the first place", a characteristic that it fully belongs to our unfortunate doctors. Let's briefly rediscover the plot of the pilot, the very first episode that aired just nineteen years ago like today. Dr. Jonathan Michael "J.D." Dorian begins his first day as a resident at the Sacred Heart hospital. Even for Chris Turk (better known simply as Turk), specializing in surgery, it is the first day and the two are not long in becoming best friends, as they had already tied up in college.

The couple of “dottorini ”Later makes the acquaintance of Elliot Reid, also a specialist in medicine, in addition to the nurse Carla Espinosa, the two female counterparts who will turn out to be the other half of the two friends' hearts. However, not everything will be simple and livable, from the very beginning of the two's careers: the first and main daily hindrance that faces their lives is precisely the sarcastic doctor Percival "Perry" Cox and the hospital's chief physician, Robert "Bob" Kelso. .

It goes without saying that, in an environment that is not as simple as that of the hospital and dealing with superiors who are not at all friendly, this new reality scares the young JD from day one , who is facing a life that he never imagined to be actually so heavy, but breaths of air are certainly not lacking. His young heart beats faster and faster for Elliot, "rescued" by J.D. when, during a visit, the girl fails to answer a question posed by Kelso, and the trainee takes the opportunity to suggest the answer, hoping that in return the blonde will accept her invitation to dinner.

Meanwhile, JD makes the acquaintance of the legendary hospital attendant, played by Neil Flynn, an actor known to lovers of TV series also for his constant presence in The Middle and CSI - Crime Scene, as well as Indiana Jones and the crystal skull. The attendant is repairing a broken automatic door and J.D. try to suggest to him that in reality it is a coin stuck, so as to raise doubts about the fact that it is his fault and a long enmity arises between the two.

... and the first renunciations

From the start, JD he discovers that he will also have to give up living with his friend Turk, who decides to go and stay with his surgeon colleague Todd "The Todd" Quinlan, is terribly afraid of causing irreparable disasters with patients and begins to discover (like the spectators) which are the real personalities of his superiors. Kelso thus begins to show himself for what he really is, while the "good doctor", in fact, is not him but the irascible Cox, who is instead more interested in the good of patients and in teaching trainees.

If making peace with Elliot in this episode you think it will be enough to win his heart, you definitely have yet to discover the rest of the 9 seasons to follow, each with at least twenty episodes, except for the seventh and ninth, which they count just over ten. A curiosity instead concerns the seventh season, consisting of 18 episodes, which should have been the last, but due to the writers' strike (an event that lasted several months, from November 2007 to February 2008), only 11 episodes were made, leaving the season unfinished. This is where ABC takes over, which bought the rights to the series to produce an eighth season, whose series final (the last episode) was conceived as a real series finale.

Per for this reason, when ABC renewed Scrubs for a ninth season in May, we noticed a marked change in the characters and setting in the latter. Lawrence initially stated that the eighth season would be the final one if Braff did not participate in even one episode, and that if he did he would probably have dedicated himself to another program, as well as claiming that "the Scrubs we know" is over. with the eighth season, and that there is the possibility of a recasting for a new sitcom, in the style of ER - Doctors on the front line. But it was not so: on March 23, 2010 Zach Braff announced on his Facebook page that the series would not be back for a tenth season and on May 14, 2010 ABC announced the cancellation of the series.

Let's stop for a moment at the eighth season, in particular to the pilot: it opens with a classic speech between JD and the Servant, with the latter provoking him by saying:

"Maybe you hope that after talking about a new thing of mine, a conversation will follow What about a new thing of yours, like your new teenage Miami Vice beard? "

in a surgical back-and-forth, J.D. he replies sharply: "There is someone who says that I look like Dr. House" - "Who?" - "The". In reality, the quotation relating to Dr. House is present only in the Italian adaptation, since in the original version J.D. he replies to the attendant: "There are those who say I look like a young Ken Loggins". Kenny Loggins is a famous American singer-songwriter and guitarist, but less known to the ears of the Italian public, so as to adapt the dialogue in a different way, while maintaining the same effectiveness thanks to the citation of a rather famous fictional character.

Two citations then, followed by JD introducing us to the new trainees, up to Ed: “Ed, did you finish filling out the files last night? ". The boy replies:

Mmmm I was going to, really, but I was on the Lost fan club site and I was chatting with a girl, but after a while I realized that it was a man who was hitting on me . I took my revenge: I got a new account, HotGirl99, I started flirting with this guy: you know, I look like Kate from Lost and he falls for it, I can get an appointment at the hospital, he should have a red balloon ".

Scrubs: Med School, how do I change the series

As anticipated, the ninth season of Scrubs is decidedly different from what we have seen so far, always set in the Sacred Heart, but in the care of patients alternate university lectures for young trainees, since the faculty of medicine is now also located there. Furthermore, of the previous protagonists only Cox, Turk and Denise remain, flanked by the new students: Lucy Bennett (new narrator, alongside that of J.D.), Drew Suffin and Cole Aaronson. Due to the differences of this season compared to the previous ones, it has Med School as its subtitle; creator Bill Lawrence considers Scrubs finished with the final episode of the eighth season. Even the theme song is totally renewed.

Some protagonists like Carla and the attendant (who appears only for a brief initial cameo) are absent this season, while others have a secondary role (such as Elliot) and Kelso), as the new students take up more space in the events.

And there are several cameos in this long series, starting with the producers themselves, such as Mike Schwartz in the role of Lloyd the delivery boy, and Randal Winston in the role of security guard Leonard, the African American with the hook, while in the 23rd episode of the first season, My Hero, the reservation board for the operating room is resumed, where the operating room is also operated. producer Bill Lawrence, also present in other moments of the series. Other writers in the series have appeared in small cameos, such as John Inwood as a doctor in the episode My Ballerina, the fourth of the fifth season, while Deb Fordham appears as a doctor in the eighth season.

Speaking instead of "familiar faces", in the 19th episode of the first season the actor R. Lee Ermey appears as the father of the Servant, who passed away in 2018 after giving his voice to the character of the Toy Story Sergeant and Toy Story 2, and having appeared in some animated series including The Simpsons, Family Guy, Spongebob, but also in Dr. House - Medical Division (in which he plays the role of Gregory House's father), in A Blunt Bullet 33 1 / 3, and in several video games including Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex, Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel and Call of Duty: Ghosts.

In the 22nd episode of the second season the handsome Ryan Reynolds also appears in the role by Spence, followed by David Copperfield astounding JD with a play of magic, Michael J. Fox arrives in the 12th and 13th episodes of the third season as Dr. Kevin Casey, but also for nine episodes of the fourth season we find Heather Graham as Dr. Molly Clock. Among others, there are also some "friends" of Friends, such as Matthew Perry as Murray and Courteney Cox as head of medicine Taylor Maddox, alongside Brendan Fraser as Jordan's brother and Cox's best friend, Colin Farrell as an Irish boy accompanying a friend of his to the hospital, and a few more.

Award winning series

In the first three seasons, Scrubs received Emmy nominations for Casting, Editing and Screenplay for a sitcom. In the fourth season, the show received other nominations such as Best Sitcom, Best Actor in a Sitcom (Zach Braff), Best Editing for a Multi-Camera Series (due to the 17th episode of the fourth season, “My Life as a sitcom ”, where the shooting technique of the episode is single chamber). Other prizes won by the show are the Humanitas Prize won 3 times out of 7 total nominations, for the 30 minutes category (for the episodes "My old lady", "My long goodbye" and "My last words"), and the Sean Murtha Award.

Zach Braff himself has been nominated four times for the Teen Choice Award (never winning), the Emmy Award and the Satellite Award in 2005, and three times for the Golden Globe for Best actor in a comedy or musical series. In 2006, Season 5's My Chunky Liver episode was nominated for The Sentinel for Health Awards. Also in the same year, the episode My Way Home won the Peabody Award for Best Episode.

My Disaster and My Lunch are the highest rated episodes of a television series ever recorded on TV.com, averaging 9.8 out of a maximum of 10 both, followed by the episode My final which ranks as the third episode with the absolute highest rating with a rating of 9.7 out of a maximum of 10. This last episode thus also becomes the series finale with the highest rating ever recorded on the site. Also on the same site Scrubs ranked 5th on the list of the 30 highest rated shows recorded on the site, making it the best rated dramedy and medical hospital television series there.

To top it off, in 2011, at the conclusion of the previously announced series, Empire magazine also ranked Scrubs in 19th place among the 50 best television series of all time. All excellent reasons to recover the entire story and celebrate nineteen years since its inception!

To rediscover the entire series at home, we recommend purchasing the Kelso shirt with quotes from the series, or the Funko POP version! by Elliot and J.D.