58: Scrubs

I have a theory that at any time during the day, a Scrubs episode is on. I knew it was syndicated on a couple of different local channels here, and on Comedy Central, but only very recently did a I randomly come across it on MTV. Also it never seems like it's shown one episode at a time - it's always paired up with at least one more episode for an hour block. I had never seen any Scrubs and honestly didn't know much about it at all until after the fourth season or so, at which point it entered into syndication, and I watched two episodes a day until I was just about all caught up. I then started watching the show when it was on, and combined with reruns drove me to a point where I had about a year period where I didn't want to see Scrubs ever again. I've now just about come back into the middle territory.

I think Scrubs is similar in a lot of ways to How I Met Your Mother, which partly explains why I've put them relatively close together. Scrubs has been on a few seasons longer, which explains why it's ranked higher. However, Scrubs is another show which I like overall, but does things that drive me crazy that prevent me from ranking it up as a great show.

Scrubs gets credit for being one of the first single camera sitcoms of the current era -predating Arrested Development, The Office and 30 Rock among others (to be fair Malcolm in the Middle did it first and was one of the first sitcoms to incorporate tons of Family Guy-style flashbacks and dream sequences. And, yeah, it's funny. The characters are wacky, and a lot of those sequences inside JD's head are good, and the wackiness which could easily go too far and become intolerable, is usually reigned in, and a welcome part of the show.

My nitpicky problems of course, like in How I Met Your Mother, come from simple things that are relatively small but for some reason I can't always just ignore. The show oozes in way more sentimentality than I'm comfortable with. Every episode has to contain two or three storylines that dovetail together to have some GREATER MEANING that JD will narrate for us throughout the episode, reaching a climax towards the end "Whether, it's making a new friend (shows two characters), facing up to your fears (shows another character) or dealing with family (shows another character) life is about making all the little sacrifices that make you better for it in the end" (or something like that, more or less).

Some of the side characters are used too much - Ted and the Todd in particular, and frankly, Dr. Cox is just a dick. Yeah, I know - he's a dick on the outside because he has trouble dealing with emotions and whatnot, and really inside he's a huge teddy bear who just cares too much about helping people and doing things right. I'm sorry, I know I'm suppose to believe that. And believe me, I know JD is very annoying and probably somewhat deserves what he gets by constantly going back to Dr. Cox even though Cox is constantly hostile to him. And when I first started watching the show, I bought into that, and I laughed away at Cox. But it's just so fucking mean and it really did wear on me after watching for a while. There's making fun of someone, there's giving someone a hard time, and there's harassing an employee constantly during every moment of his employment.

Anyway, yeah, I guess I seem to manage to look past that to award it this prestigious spot.