Scrubs is an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning American situation comedy/comedy-drama that premiered on October 2, 2001 on NBC. It was created by Bill Lawrence and is produced by Touchstone Television. The show focuses on the professional and personal lives of several characters working at Sacred Heart, a teaching hospital. It features verbose characters, slapstick, fast-paced dialogue, and surreal vignettes which are presented as the daydreams of the main characters. This latter feature was originally focused entirely on the central character, Dr. John "J.D." Dorian, however it was expanded to the daydreams of other characters as the series progressed. The seventh and final season of Scrubs premiered on October 25, 2007.
Synopsis
The show is structured around multiple storylines thematically linked via voiceovers by protagonist and narrator Dr. John "J.D." Dorian, played by Zach Braff. According to Lawrence, "What we decided was, rather than have it be a monotone narration, if it's going to be told through Zach's voice, we're going to do everything through J.D.'s eyes. It opened up a visual medium that those of us as comedy writers were not used to." The show is also notable for its use of a single-camera setup for filming as opposed to a multiple-camera setup, which is more traditional for situation comedies.
The broad comedy is often counterpointed by more serious scenes, as Lawrence notes: "One of the things we thought early on was [if] we occasionally showed actual patients and actual people dying and things with emotional stakes, working in single camera, that it might be enough to combine with broad comedy."
At the end of most episodes, J.D. summarizes the story's moral or theme in a sequence of shots that show how it has affected each of the characters. Scrubs has been advertised as "half as long as ER and twice as funny". The series often features guest appearances by major movie actors not generally seen on episodic television, such as Colin Farrell, Heather Graham and Brendan Fraser. The show has now entered its seventh and final season.
Cast
Main characters
The main cast of Scrubs: John C. McGinley (Dr. Cox), Neil Flynn (Janitor), Sarah Chalke (Elliot), Zach Braff ([J.D.]), Donald Faison (Turk), Ken Jenkins (Kelso), and Judy Reyes (Carla)The majority of the main characters in Scrubs are medical professionals. The show's narrator and main character is J.D. (Zach Braff), a young attending physician and staff internist who is sensitive, good-natured, and talented. He develops a close friendship with fellow intern and attending physician Elliot Reid (Sarah Chalke); their relationship becomes romantic on several occasions. Dr. Reid is driven by a neurotic desire to prove her abilities to her parents, her peers, and herself.
J.D.'s best friend is Dr. Christopher Duncan Turk (Donald Faison) who is a talented Surgical attending physician. Turk roomed with J.D. at college and medical school, and the two have an extremely close relationship. Dr. Turk eventually marries Carla Espinosa (Judy Reyes), the hospital's head nurse. Carla is a strong, independent woman who cares deeply about her patients. She is prone to over-reaction, and compulsively tells her friends how to go about their lives.
Two other characters play senior roles in the hospital. Dr. Percival "Perry" Cox (John C. McGinley) is the senior attending physician at Sacred Heart and the hospital's Residency Director. J.D. considers Cox his mentor, despite the fact that Dr. Cox routinely criticizes and belittles him. Cox frequently suggests that this rough treatment is intended as conditioning for the rigors of hospital life, but it is also an outlet for Cox's frustrations with his own life.
Cox is actually proud of J.D., believing that he has the potential to become a great doctor. Ken Jenkins plays Dr. Robert "Bob" Kelso, Sacred Heart's Chief of Medicine. Dr. Kelso is portrayed as a cold, heartless individual, driven primarily by the hospital's bottom line rather than the well-being of patients. However, it is occasionally suggested that he has a softer side, and that his cruelty is a means of coping with the hard decisions he is often forced to make.
The only lead character who is not a medical professional is a hospital custodian known only as "Janitor". Played by Neil Flynn, Janitor has appeared in every episode except "My Lucky Day". An incident in the pilot episode establishes an adversarial relationship between J.D. and him, which persists throughout the series.
Cameo appearances
Each season premiere and finale features a shot of Bill Lawrence's best friend as a good luck charm.
Several cast members from Spin City, another show created by Bill Lawrence, have made guest appearances on the show. These include Michael J. Fox, Barry Bostwick, Alan Ruck, Richard Kind, Michael Boatman, Alexander Chaplin, and Heather Locklear.
Similarly, many cast members from Scrubs have lent voices to Clone High, another show created by Lawrence. They include Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, Donald Faison, Neil Flynn, John C. McGinley, Christa Miller Lawrence, and Scrubs recurring actors Michael McDonald and Nicole Sullivan.
Cast members Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, Donald Faison, Judy Reyes, John C. McGinley, Neil Flynn, and director/producer Bill Lawrence all made cameo appearances in a scene in the 2002 TV Muppets movie It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie that shows Miss Piggy playing an extra in Scrubs but trying to improvise and give herself a bigger role.
Several Scrubs crew members have appeared in minor speaking roles, such as writer/producer Mike Schwartz having a recurring role as Lloyd the Delivery Man, producer Randal Winston as the security guard Leonard, and writer Gabrielle Allan as a nurse.
My Charlie Brown Christmas
"My Charlie Brown Christmas" is a re-cut and re-dub of A Charlie Brown Christmas, starring the cast of Scrubs. It was created by Daniel Russ and Ryan Levin for the show's 2003 Christmas party.
In it, J.D. (Charlie Brown) is feeling depressed at Christmas, Carla (Lucy) is mad at Turk (Schroeder) for not buying her a Christmas present, and Elliot (Sally) is drunk off egg nog. In the end, Dr. Cox (Linus) teaches everyone that "Christmas is about love."
Production details
Scrubs is produced by ABC, through its production division, even though it is aired by rival broadcaster NBC. According to show runner Lawrence, the arrangement is unusual, at least for 2007: "The show is a dinosaur, on one network and completely owned by another" and, since it is now in syndication, making a "ton of money for Touchstone." Both he and Braff confirmed ABC would have broadcast the seventh season had NBC refused to do so.
The chest X-ray featured at the end of the title sequence was hung backwards for most of the first five seasons. Bill Lawrence has stated that having the X-ray backwards was intentional as it signified that the new interns were inexperienced. However during Zach Braff's audio commentary on "My Last Chance", he states that the error was actually unintentional. The error became somewhat infamous and was even parodied in "My Cabbage."
An attempt was made to fix the error in the extended title sequence that was used at the beginning of season 2, but the extended sequence (including corrected X-ray) were soon scrapped at fan and network request. Finally, in "My Urologist", Dr. Kim Briggs steps into the credits and switches the X-ray around, saying, "That's backwards, it's been bugging me for years."
Every episode title begins with a possessive pronoun, usually the word "My..." with notable exceptions in the episodes entitled "His Story", "His Story II", "Her Story", "Her Story II", "His Story III", "His Story IV", and "Their Story". Apart from a brief period of narration from J.D. at the beginning and end, these episodes primarily contained internal narration from another character besides J.D. The only exception to this rule is "Their Story", where the narration instead switches to a whole crowd of supporting cast members. The transfer usually occurs at a moment of physical contact between the two characters.
Since Scrubs is aired around the world in many different languages, instances of foreign languages on the show have to be changed for the international versions. Carla's Spanish is changed to Italian in the Spanish language version of the show, and Elliot's German is changed to Danish (or, in at least one fourth-season episode German with a Swiss accent) in the German version of the show.
Crew
Bill Lawrence The show's creator, executive producer, and head writer; he has written many episodes, and has directed nine. He is also the show runner and does many uncredited re-writes for episodes. Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan Have produced and written a number of episodes together. They started as writers/co-producers on the show, and worked their way up to executive producers. Bill Callahan Executive producer (2007-Present). He started on the show in season 4 as co-executive producer and has since written six episodes. Mike Schwartz Co-executive producer (2006-Present) who started as a story editor. He has written 11 episodes and also has a recurring role in the show as Lloyd the Delivery Guy. Michael Spiller Has directed 15 episodes between 2002-2006, the most of any director to date. Adam Bernstein Directed the pilot episode of the show, My First Day (11 episodes, 2001-2006) Zach Braff Has directed four episodes of the show, including the landmark 100th episode "My Way Home", which won a George Foster Peabody Award in April 2007.
Medical advisors
Scrubs writers work with several medical advisors, including doctors Jonathan Doris, Jon Turk, and Dolly Klock. Their names serve as the basis for the names of characters John Dorian, Chris Turk and Molly Clock (played by Braff, Faison, and Heather Graham, respectively).
Sacred Heart Hospital
Scrubs is filmed on location at the North Hollywood Medical Center ( 34°9'28.86?N, 118°24'31.22?W), a real decommissioned hospital located at 12629 Riverside Drive in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.
However, the location of Sacred Heart Hospital within the fictional world of Scrubs is left ambiguous. Cast and crew on the show refer to the location as "San DiFrangeles" — a portmanteau of San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles that is meant to encompass a large part of California.
Name
In the pilot episode, a comment from Dr. Kelso alludes to one meaning behind the show's name: "Dr. Dorian, Do you not realize that you're nothing more than a large pair of scrubs to me? For God's sake, the only reason I carry this chart around is so I can pretend to remember your damn names." Bill Lawrence has stated that he has two main reasons for calling it Scrubs: The obvious being the attire worn by doctors, and the other being the fact that most of the main characters are fresh out of medical school, new, and inexperienced (known in the medical field as "scrubs").
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