If you know who Doctor Jan Itor is, the difference between Chocolate Bear and Vanilla Bear, and who’s got two thumbs and doesn’t give a damn, then congratulations, you might be excited for the revival of Scrubs as much as I am – or rather, was.
The show originally ran from 2001 to 2010, and its tales of the trials and tribulations of John Michael ‘J.D.’ Dorian – as well as his colleagues – in and out of Sacred Heart hospital made it one of my favourite shows ever.
But (full spoilers below) there’s a twist in the new reboot that has me wondering if I can even keep watching.
Hilarious and heartfelt, for me, Scrubs balanced slapstick gags with poignant lessons and heavy emotional beats.
As a teenager, I spent many a weekend watching and rewatching the DVDs, memorising quotes, and learning ALL of the lyrics to the power ballad ‘Guy Love’ with my best friend.
Even now, my Spotify playlists are crammed with songs from the series.
My vocabulary is peppered with quotes burned into my brain by the aforementioned DVD marathons.
Scrubs (with the obvious exception of season 9 – luckily not considered part of the official continuity) remains my comfort show because, like The Simpsons, when it first came out it helped me make friends and shaped my sense of humour. And these days, it connects me to my youth.
Will you be watching the Scrubs reboot?
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Can't wait!
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Not for me
So imagine my joy when, in July 2025, ABC announced it was taking a defibrillator to Scrubs’ cold corpse and bringing it back for season 10.
What’s more, this wasn’t some lazy, half-hearted semi-reboot where half the original cast wasn’t coming back (looking at you, Frasier); this was the real deal.
The original cast – Zach Braff, Donald Faison, Sarah Chalke, John C. McGinley and Judy Reyes – were all set to return, along with series creator Bill Lawrence.
A sense of optimism quickly turned to twitchy anticipation when ABC released the trailer, and we got our first look at the revival.
It was incredible, perfectly capturing the silliness of the original series while also acknowledging the passage of time and looking forward. I was unbelievably excited.
But as it turns out, I was wrong (real fans will hear the extended Dr Cox rant version in their head.)
Because Scrubs season 10 finally aired last night in America, and with one silly decision, they’ve killed any buzz I had about the series.
JD and Elliot are divorced.
Now, anyone who’s watched Scrubs will know that for the first eight seasons of the show, the pair had an on-again-off-again situationship.
But after all that turmoil, the show gave us a perfect ending. In a flashforward presented via a montage of home videos, we see that JD and Elliot finally get together, marry, have kids – the whole kit and kaboodle.
That ending was one of the best things about Scrubs.
I remember crying in my university dorm room watching that finale – it was one of the first times I’d ever felt that sort of emotional catharsis. Even now, when I want a bit of a cry (you can take the boy out of the black skinny jeans, but you can’t remove the emo), I’ll rewatch that episode.
It was pure fan service, but honestly, after eight years of will they/won’t they, the fans deserved it.
Unlike so many TV shows before and since, it stuck the landing – but now, it’s all come undone. My favourite ending in TV history is no more.
And the worst thing is, I think I could get over it if it wasn’t seemingly done for such cynical reasons.
You see, new showrunner Aseem Batra and Bill Lawrence decided to split the pair up because, as Aseem told The Wrap, ‘We all kind of realised we need places to go.’
That’s right, they split JD and Elliot up for the sake of drama.
You can probably tell from all of the above that I’m biased, but I think that’s lazy. It’s like if there was a Friends reboot and you found out Ross and Rachel broke up two minutes after Monica and Chandler left.
Having a family is not the end of someone’s life; it’s a new beginning, full of potential and possibility.
I hate the implied notion as well that life somehow gets less exciting after you get married.
I know countless people who are happily married, but whose lives are still incredibly dramatic as they go through the rough and smooth of life.
As a result, I was looking forward to seeing the next chapter in JD and Elliot’s life together. Instead, it looks like we’ll be suffering through a retread of their wonder years.
JD said in the original finale, ‘It’s never good to live in the past too long’. This may well be true, but if this is the future, I’m not on board with that either. It’s boring and the exact opposite of what I wanted.
To my cynical eye, this smacks less of ‘giving the story somewhere to go’ and more the writers knowing there’s mileage in the ‘will they/won’t they’ dynamic JD and Elliot had in the original run. They’ve even got proof of concept: Dr Cox and Jordan’s ‘lovers to enemies to lovers’ journey from the original series provides the perfect blueprint.
And then to make matters worse, Bill Lawrence tried to defend it by saying the flashforward we saw was just a fantasy, arguing ‘nothing ever turns out 100% happy. It’s always more complicated than that.’
Well, it might be that life is complicated, Bill, but so is storytelling, and by splitting up JD and Elliot to give you ‘places to go’, you’ve taken the easy way out.
Scrubs is available to watch now on Disney Plus.
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