Scubs Season 9

Scrubs- Season 9

As the show is likely to be cancelled in May and the last episode aired last week, I thought I'd do a little review of the rebooted season.

Overall season 9 wasn't bad at all, there was a lot of good stuff and real promise in the 13 episodes and I don't think bringing it back was a complete mistake, just that they made a lot of mistakes whilst doing it.

The biggest mistake they made was bringing back Zach Braff for 5 episodes, he had a perfect finale episode in season 8 and I don't feel we really needed to see his story continue here, especially once Elliot was brought back into the mix. Yes it was nice to know that his dreamed future of him and Elliot starting a family came true, but we could've done without. It was also a shame that JD was the man child of seasons 5-7, ie the character at his very worse during the very worse seasons of Scrubs.

Personally I think Donald Faison and John McGinley have enough acting and star power to carry the show as the returnees. I had to suspend my disbelief a little that the chiefs of the hospital and surgery spent so much time with a group of lowly med students but since they mostly interacted well (ie Cox calling the students murderers was a very funny recurring joke) I was happy to do that. Denise, the surprising star from last year's interns, was a welcome addition to the old returning cast and Eliza Coupe definitely helped to bring the funny to her character.

As for the new cast on the whole I liked them. Lucy was of course the weakest of the bunch which was a shame, but she became more enjoyable after they ditched most of the dream sequences. Cole was annoying but Dave Franco played the douche really well and he became a lot more likable as the show went on. Drew was the most endearing character, but I don't feel like we got to see enough of him. He was well partnered up with Denise, but it was a shame to have all the characters paired up a few episodes in, though that does seem to be creator Bill Lawrence's style (Turk and Carla were paired up in the first episode as was JD and Eliot for the most part).

The show was never really laugh out loud funny (though it did have its moments), but then for me Scrubs never really was. It was a dramedy and was successful when it found the balance between the funny and the sad moments. The season kind of felt like what season 8 was, a new cast of interns brought in to share the air time with the old cast and perhaps the season would've worked better had that been carried on rather than bring in the med students and restart again. It was a failed experiment, but by no means a bad one and the show at least tried something new which has to be commended. Ultimately the biggest mistake was that the show didn't go far enough in its changes. Had this been marketed as a spin-off and creatively been written so, with fewer returning characters to begin with and a change in style and tone, this show really could've succeeded; and for the new cast and crew, its a shame that it didn't.