In defence of the Scrubs eboot’s total lack of reinvention

Annabel Nugent, The Independent

The Scrubs reboot opens with a code blue. A man’s heart has stopped beating after he’s shot and is taken into the hospital on a gurney. Blood gushes from his wound. The scene is dark and intense as JD, Zach Braff’s doctor, works to save his life, cracking ribs and clamping bleeders. Watching this, I wonder for a split second whether the makers of Scrubs 2.0 have reinvented the medical comedy in favour of something more serious and stoic like HBO’s The Pitt. Then a dance party breaks out.

Phew, I think, as confetti cannons go off and a comatose patient suddenly wakes up and waves around a giant foam finger — the scene growing more silly and stupid by the second. Sixteen years may have passed but this is Scrubs as we once knew it: ridiculous and committed to the bit. This, reassuringly, feels like the Scrubs of yore.

Rebooting Scrubs was always going to happen. The medical sitcom, which ran on NBC (E4 in the UK) from 2001 to 2008 (with a further two seasons starting on ABC a year later), was simply too popular for studio execs to leave alone. In its heyday the show was reaching almost 16 million viewers at its peak and an attempt at resuscitation was all but inevitable.

Braff is back as JD – he’s not the hardcore, life-saving doctor of his daydreams but a cardigan-wearing concierge physician whose job mostly entails writing Viagra prescriptions for the wealthy. A chance visit to his old stomping ground of Sacred Heart Hospital, though, quickly brings him back into the fold where familiar faces like Turk (Donald Faison), the “chocolate bear” to his “vanilla bear”; Carla (Judy Reyes); old flame Elliot (Sarah Chalke); and reluctant mentor Dr Cox (John C McGinley) await. The gang’s all here, and their chemistry still sparks. (It makes sense to learn that the actors remained good friends in the time since the show ended.)

As is customary for any series making its return after a period of five or more years, Scrubs redux is front-loaded with references to just how old everyone is. Turk can no longer do the “eagle” because of his sciatica; JD can’t read without his glasses; and Cox has changed his nickname from “Newbie” to “Oldie”. These comments are as obligatory as they are boring. Thankfully they are dispensed with quickly, and once JD has said “the nostalgia washed over me” for the first and last time upon entering Sacred Heart again, the show lets itself forget that it’s a reboot.

The only character saddled with real growing pains is Turk, whose childlike wonder has dulled and whose enthusiasm for slicing people open has been worn down by the grind of adulthood. And who among us original Scrubs fans — also older, also exhausted — can’t relate to that? It’s what Scrubs has always done well — combined the sad with the funny.

Comedy-wise, the show finds much material in how these once young, progressive doctors bristle against the ways of their younger counterparts, embodied by a new gaggle of interns. There is “Dr Selfie”, who is paying off her student loans as a TikTok influencer; a wide-eyed British hopeful who pines for the £10 NHS medication back home; and a handsome braggart who, when asked how people can ever afford their sky-high hospital bills, replies swiftly: “If you’re ugly, it’s GoFundMe. If you look like me, OnlyFans.”

But this is 2026 and the torrent of sexual innuendos from the Todd and sarcastic diatribes from Dr Cox simply won’t fly. “I can’t work them crazy hours or even abuse them any more,” Cox laments. Enter Sibby, played by Saturday Night Live alum Vanessa Bayer. Her character has become a sort of trope of workplace comedies in recent years: the virtue-signalling, woke-enforcing administrator. It’s a way for old shows to address their past bad behaviour in a real but, crucially, lighthearted way. Truthfully, this could be tick-boxing and cliched, but in Bayer’s more than capable hands, Sibby becomes a character much stranger and weirder than her buzzkill title as “head of a wellness programme” suggests.