Scrubs review – Silly gags and volcanic fury bring medical sitcom back from the dead | television

forThe sick Lawrence is on the verge of tears. This is the man who gave us Ted Lasso and Shrinking, and who is just days away from the launch of Rooster, the Steve Carell sitcom that HBO already sees as the anchor for its comedy output. At this point in his career, Lawrence could blow his nose and the contents of his handkerchief would become a beloved, heart-warming sitcom.

So it’s interesting that out of all the options available to him, Lawrence instead decided to revive Scrubs. It’s a show with a big footprint — when Friends ended, you could say it became the biggest sitcom on Earth — but it still feels very much of its time. It was a medical comedy that not only derived a lot of laughs from Family Guy-style skits, when they were considered fresh and exciting, but it also had more of a character specialist in baroque cruelty, which just didn’t seem on-brand for Lawrence anymore. Ted Lasso would never do that.

Add to that a cast that seemed to be doing its best to move away from the joy of the show the moment it ended (Zach Braff became a freelance director, while Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke became more visible in the drama) and you’re left with a terrible feeling that the magic may have dissipated in the last decade and a half.

Fortunately, that feeling goes away in about 15 seconds, because the Scrubs revival is as Scrubsy as it gets. Obviously, your enjoyment of this new round will depend on how much you liked Scrubs to begin with. But if you’re a fan, the new series will feel like the safest hands imaginable.

We meet Braff’s JD deep in his new career as a concierge doctor, sipping tea while meticulously handing out erection pill prescriptions to the wealthy and quiet. But a chance visit to Sacred Heart Hospital makes him remember what he left behind. Within 20 minutes he was back at work as one of the senior staff there.

Other ancient characters are dealt with just as quickly. Chalke’s Elliot gets rid of a bunch of old resentments in just over an hour and — I’ll keep this vague to avoid spoilers — Faison’s Turk begins the first episode with a pretty serious set of new personality traits that other shows could build their entire premise around, but manages to get rid of in less time than it would take to make a bowl of noodles.

However, Scrubs is a show set around a teaching hospital, which means there has to be an influx of newcomers so old ones can teach. Here the show is a little less successful. You’ll remember, of course, that this is the direction the original Scrubs series attempted with its ill-fated Med School series.

But let’s stay positive. As of the first four episodes, the new young doctors on Scrubs are a bunch of one-trait nobodies, but given the scarcity of screen time they have, that’s probably to be expected. There’s a good chance they’ll evolve as the show goes on. Even more interesting is that Vanessa Bayer gets a cameo turn as Sibby, a kind of HR head tasked with reining in the show’s more colorful aspects. In the best way possible, her character often feels like she’s dropped from a different, weirder show. I think she’ll run away with everything before long.

It must also be said that one of the ways in which Scrubs has moved with the times is through its mood. The original show carried an air of discontent about the US health care system. Now this often leads to outright anger. A recurring theme in the opening episodes is that the characters are exposed to danger – often fatal – due to a lack of affordable cover. Doctors either scramble to bend the rules to help them, or play by the rules and ignore them. Neither approach ends well.

There’s even a new British doctor whose main goal is to tell the American public that prescriptions only cost a dime. And yet, somehow, these two poles — the absurd comedy and the deliberately volcanic fury — manage to coalesce into a show that’s every bit as watchable as Scrubs ever was. May he run and run.