Man, I love “Scrubs.”
I’m not gonna tell you that I love every episode equally, because I think even the show’s most diehard fans would concede that it hasn’t entirely been firing on all cylinders for the last year or two, but even the episodes that weren’t consistently great invariably still had moments that made me laugh out loud. So when Bill Lawrence says he’s excited about the prospect of this new season and that he’s feeling creatively reinvigorated, I couldn’t be happier.
“I’m really proud of the show this year,” he assured us. “If you go online, there’s a lot of nerds and blogs…I say “nerds” affectionately…that love to say this season was the best or that season was the best. But I’m going to put some of the shows that we’ve done this year out to people that are interested early before we premiere because I’m really proud of them, and I think they’re as good as anything we’ve done.”
Let’s start off with a few revelations that Lawrence laid out during the course of the panel:
* Ken Jenkins will remain a regular on the show. “Dr. Kelso won free muffins for life on the show,” Lawrence reminded us, “which gives him an excuse to hang around the hospital and be somewhat of a different character.”
* Courteney Cox will be appearing for a three-episode arc as Dr. Kelso’s replacement as Chief of Medicine, and “we would have her back in a heartbeat,” said Lawrence. “I wrote on the first year of ‘Friends,’ so I know her a little bit, and her greatest attribute, besides the fact that she is hilarious and just a great actress, is that she is what we call a gamer. She is up for anything, and I don’t think you get that all the time with high-profile actresses.”
* Don’t hold your breath waiting for another musical episode. “I think we were not the first people to do a musical, nor do I think we are definitely the best people to do a musical, even though I liked ours,” said Lawrence. “I think for us to do another one would be slightly insane, but, as always on this show, there’s a huge musical presence and already there’s a fantastic song that we wrote called ‘Steak Night.’ But probably not another musical.”
* The show shot an episode in the Bahamas for the new season, partially because they wanted a vacation and partially because Lawrence wanted to prove an old friend of his wrong. ” I have tons of friends in the television business, but my mentor, Gary Goldberg, told me that the worst experience they ever had creatively was when he took ‘Family Ties’ to London,” Lawrence explained. “He once presented to me the challenge that you can’t take your cast and crew to a different country and do a good show, so we went to a small island in the Bahamas, because they were willing to pop the bill, and it had no roads, and they have rolling blackouts every couple hours…and it was one of the best experiences I’ve had. Man, it could not be any more fun. It’s a fantastically funny episode, and it’s because once a year we have to let Neil Flynn’s character (The Janitor) be a real person. He gets married in the Bahamas. He invited 700 people to the Bahamas on three days’ notice because all he wanted was the gifts. He didn’t want anybody to show up, and J.D. motivated everybody to show up and essentially ruin his wedding…and that is the episode. And there are both girls in bathing suits and boys in bathing suits…and, unfortunately, Rob Maschio (The Todd) in a tiny banana hammock.”
* And, lastly, Sarah Chalke is indeed the mother on “How I Met Your Mother.”
(This is possibly not true…and if it is, we almost certainly won’t have confirmation on it for quite some time…but a grinning Lawrence assured us, “They don’t want me to say it, but she’s the mom. Write it. You heard it here first.” So I just thought I’d mention it, just in case we find out a year or two down the line that we had a scoop on our hands.)
One of the biggest pieces of news…well, sort of, anyway…was the one-two punch that this will be Zach Braff’s final season of “Scrubs,” but that it might not necessarily be the final season of “Scrubs.” Certainly, no-one can be surprised by the former, given Braff’s attempts to carve a film career for himself in recent years, but the latter isn’t something that has been floated nearly as often.
Braff couldn’t offer much in the way of specifics of his character’s departure from the show. “I suppose I should have come up with better answers for this before I got on a panel in front of all you guys,” he said, with a laugh. “Bill and I haven’t even really talked about it too much. The sense is that we thought we were ending, and then, thanks to Steve, this has been an amazing bonus year. We’re having a blast doing this. My sense is this is my last year. If the show does continue, like an ‘ER’ kind of thing, I would love to come back and visit and definitely direct some…and do craft service if they need some help.”
“Zach’s sentimental, and we pride ourselves occasionally being known as a show with a little heart,” said Lawrence. “I tried to convince him for a while that the finale was he gets hit by a truck. And he doesn’t. But as you know, we’ve copied 90 percent of the show from ‘M*A*S*H,’ and if you remember the finale of ‘M*A*S*H’…”
“I suffocate a chicken,” interrupted Braff.
“It wasn’t a chicken,” corrected Lawrence. “It was a baby.”
With mock horror, Braff said, “I didn’t get that far. It’s a kid? I thought it was a chicken!”
“It started as a chicken…”
“You’ve ruined everything!” shouted Braff. “I still haven’t gotten to the end yet!”
Man, talk about playing to the TV critics with that reference. But after the laughter died down, Lawrence sobered enough to offer us this: “I think that, without giving away too much, the end of the show will be J.D. leaving the hospital.”
As to the possibility of continuing the show into a post-Braff incarnation, Lawrence certainly wasn’t committing to anything, but he was in no way ruling it out, either. “We’ve got a family (at ‘Scrubs’) and a crew of people in a landscape right now that is not friendly to television production, and they love it there,” he said. “And, so, if we can come up with a way that creatively…you know, the show would have to be redefined. Much like ‘Frasier’ was a show on its own after ‘Cheers,’ it would have to be a show that Steve (McPherson) and Mark (Pedowitz) and all of us really felt was creatively sound on its own, even if we were starting out of a vacuum. Otherwise, we wouldn’t do it, nor do I think Steve would have us do it.”
Lawrence has said repeatedly that you will know that “Scrubs” is finished when we finally learn the real name of The Janitor. Nonetheless, someone asked if we might possibly discover it in the Bahamas episode, when he gets married.
“I can tell you my name right now,” said Flynn. “It’s Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate. There. End of mystery.”
Lawrence laughed along with everyone else, then confirmed, “We do not find out the janitor’s name in the wedding episode. It is hidden. When you hear the janitor’s name, it means the show is over. That’s just the thing I’ve always told all these guys. And so when it’s out there, it means we’re done.”
“Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate,” repeated Flynn.
Another writer tried to follow up this, asking, “Was that a name that you had as a child for one of your toys or something, or did you just make that up on the spot here?”
“I’m not interested in your foolish speculations,” snapped Flynn. “That was a name that I gave to an imaginary enemy I had as a child. A full-grown mountain man that used to live under my bed.” (Actually, it’s a Dr. Seuss character, as Flynn revealed later.)
Flynn’s comments gave Lawrence the chance to praise him as one of the the show’s greatest assets. “We’ve literally written in the script before ‘Neil Flynn says something funny’ next to the janitor’s name. He’s one of the best improv comedians working in our country.”
“Okay,” began Flynn, “I need a location…”
“And credit to him,” continued Lawrence, “he’s created an atmosphere that every actor here does the line as written once and then usually does stuff that they make up. When somebody says to me, ‘That joke was really funny,’ I always say, ‘Thank you,’ and I never give any credit to anybody.”
“That, by the way, makes it great, great fun,” said Flynn, getting serious. “I don’t know if any other show would allow that. Maybe many shows have. Maybe many shows do. But as Bill said, we always do it as written and then oftentimes have fun with it and see if we can find something else there. And what fun that is to have that be your job.”
Man, these guys were great. I realize I didn’t really spotlight Chalke, Donald Faison, or John C. McGinley, all of whom were also on the panel, but this post can’t go on forever. Suffice it to say that they clearly have a great bond as a cast, and it’s a pleasure to hear that the next season of “Scrubs” is gonna be – at least by Lawrence’s estimation – one of its best.
On a closing note, I spoke with Lawrence later that evening – he went to William & Mary, so we were bonding over some of the favorite concerts he saw in the Hampton Roads area (several of which, including R.E.M. at William & Mary Hall and the BoDeans at the Boathouse, I attended as well) – and he said he’d be sure I was one of the people who gets a copy of these new “Scrubs” episodes that he’ll be sending out, just so he can prove that, yes, the magic really is back. You know these things go, so maybe I will and maybe I won’t, but if I do, I’ll be sure to confirm or deny their quality right here on Premium Hollywood.
