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Scrubs
Scrubs title card
Created by	Bill Lawrence
Starring	Zach Braff Sarah Chalke Donald Faison Neil Flynn Ken Jenkins John C. McGinley Judy Reyes
Narrated by	Zach Braff as J.D.
Opening theme	"Superman" by Lazlo Bane
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	139 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Bill Lawrence Goldman and Donovan (2006-Present) Bill Callahan (2007-Present)
Producer	Touchstone Television
Camera setup	Single camera
Running time	approx. 22 minutes
Original release
Network	NBC
Release	October 2, 2001 – TBA, 2008

Scrubs is an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning American situation comedy/comedy-drama that premiered on October 2, 2001 on NBC. It was created by Bill Lawrence, who also co-created Spin City and is produced by Touchstone Television. The show focuses on the professional and personal lives of several characters working at Sacred Heart, a teaching hospital. It features verbose characters, slapstick, fast-paced dialogue, and surreal vignettes, which are presented as the daydreams of the main characters. This latter feature was originally focused entirely on JD, however it was expanded to the daydreams of other characters as the series progressed. In May 2007 it was confirmed that the show would return for its seventh and final season.^[1]

Synopsis

The show is structured around multiple storylines thematically linked via voiceovers by protagonist and narrator Dr. John "J.D." Dorian, played by Zach Braff. According to Lawrence, "What we decided was, rather than have it be a monotone narration, if it's going to be told through Zach's voice, we're going to do everything through J.D.'s eyes. It opened up a visual medium that those of us as comedy writers were not used to."^[2] The show is also notable for its use of a single-camera setup for filming as opposed to a multiple-camera setup - the more traditional setup for situation comedies.^[2]

The broad comedy is often counterpointed by more serious scenes, as Lawrence notes: "One of the things we thought early on was [if] we occasionally showed actual patients and actual people dying and things with emotional stakes, working in single camera, that it might be enough to combine with broad comedy."

At the end of most of the episodes, J.D. summarizes the story's moral or theme in a sequence of shots that show how it has affected each of the characters. Scrubs has been advertised as "half as long as ER and twice as funny".^[3] The series often features guest appearances by major movie actors not generally seen on episodic television, such as Colin Farrell, Heather Graham and Brendan Fraser.

Name

In the pilot episode, a comment from Dr. Kelso alludes to one meaning behind the show's name: "Dr. Dorian, Do you not realize that you're nothing more than a large pair of scrubs to me? For God's sake, the only reason I carry this chart around is so I can pretend to remember your damn names." Bill Lawrence has stated that he has two main reasons for calling it Scrubs: The obvious being the attire worn by doctors, and the other being the fact that the most of the main characters are fresh out of medical school, new, and inexperienced (known in the medical field as "scrubs").^{[citation needed]}

Cast

Main cast

• Zach Braff as Dr. John "J.D." Michael Dorian MD—Attending Physician and staff internist—narrator, except for seven episodes.

• Sarah Chalke as Dr. Elliot Reid MD—Private Practitioner

• Donald Faison as Dr. Christopher Duncan Turk—Surgical Attending

• Neil Flynn as Janitor—a janitor at the hospital (in every episode except "My Lucky Day")

• Ken Jenkins as Dr. Robert "Bob" Kelso—Chief of Medicine

• John C. McGinley as Dr. Percival "Perry" Cox MD—Attending Physician and Residency Director

• Judy Reyes as Carla Espinosa—Head Nurse

Supporting cast

• Robert Maschio as Dr. Todd "The Todd" Quinlan—Cosmetic Surgery Fellow/Surgical Attending (98 episodes)
• Aloma Wright as Nurse Laverne Roberts (2001–2007)—Nurse (85 episodes)
• Sam Lloyd as Theodore "Ted" Buckland—Hospital Attorney (75 episodes)
• Christa Miller as Jordan Sullivan—Sacred Heart Hospital Board Member and Perry Cox's ex-wife (70 episodes).
• Johnny Kastl as Dr. Doug Murphy—Pathology MD (46 episodes)
• Travis Schuldt as Dr. Keith Dudemeister—MD Resident (31 episodes)
• Charles Chun as Dr. Wen—Surgical Attending (20 episodes)
• Michael Hobert as Lonnie—MD Resident (15 episodes)
• Scott Foley as Sean Kelly (11 episodes)
• Tara Reid as Danni Sullivan (11 episodes)
• Elizabeth Banks as Dr. Kim Briggs—Urologist (11 episodes)
• Heather Graham as Dr. Molly Clock—Attending Psychiatrist (9 episodes)

Cameo appearances

• Each season premiere and finale features a shot of Bill Lawrence's best friend as a good luck charm.^[4]
• Several cast members from Spin City, another show created by Bill Lawrence, have made guest appearances on the show. These include Michael J. Fox, Barry Bostwick, Alan Ruck, Richard Kind, Michael Boatman, Alexander Chaplin, and Heather Locklear.^[5]
• Similarly, many cast members from Scrubs have lent voices to Clone High, another show created by Lawrence. They include Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, Donald Faison, Neil Flynn, John C. McGinley, Christa Miller Lawrence, and Scrubs recurring actors Michael McDonald and Nicole Sullivan.^[6]
• Also, cast members Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, Judy Reyes, John C. McGinley, Neil Flynn, and director/producer Bill Lawrence all made cameo appearances in a scene in the 2002 TV Muppets movie It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie that shows Miss Piggy playing an extra in Scrubs but trying to improvise and give herself a bigger role.^[7]
• Several Scrubs crew members have appeared in minor speaking roles, such as writer/producer Mike Schwartz having a recurring role as Lloyd the Delivery Man,^[8] producer Randal Winston as the security guard Leonard,^[9] and writer Gabrielle Allan as a nurse.

My Charlie Brown Christmas

"My Charlie Brown Christmas" is a re-cut and re-dub of A Charlie Brown Christmas, starring the cast of Scrubs. It was created by Daniel Russ and Ryan Levin for the Scrubs 2003 Christmas party. In it, J.D. (Charlie Brown) is feeling depressed at Christmas, Carla (Lucy) is mad at Turk (Schroeder) for not buying her a Christmas present, and Elliot (Sally) is drunk off egg nog. In the end, Dr. Cox (Linus) teaches everyone that "Christmas is about love."^[10]

Crew

Medical advisors

Scrubs writers work with several medical advisors, including doctors Jonathan Doris, Jon Turk, and Dolly Klock. Their names serve as the basis for the names of characters John Dorian, Chris Turk and Molly Clock (played by Braff, Faison, and Heather Graham, respectively).^[11]

Awards

In its first three seasons, Scrubs received Emmy nominations for casting, editing, and writing of a comedy series. Following Season 4, the show received additional nominations for Best Comedy Series, Best Lead Actor in a Comedy Series (Braff), Best Editing for a Multi-Camera series (although the series is predominantly shot single-camera, Episode 4.17 "My Life in Four Cameras", has a brief segment shot multi-camera, sitcom-style), and casting. The show also won the 2002 Humanitas Prize, 30-minute category, for season 1 episode 4 "My Old Lady".

Braff was nominated for the Golden Globe award for Best Actor in a Television Series, Comedy or Musical in 2005, 2006 and 2007, but lost to Jason Bateman for Arrested Development in 2005, to Steve Carell of The Office in 2006, and to Alec Baldwin of 30 Rock in 2007.

Scrubs won a George Foster Peabody Award for its 2006 season; the press release specifically noted the Wizard of Oz parody episode "My Way Home".^[12]

At the 2007 Primetime Emmy Awards, which will air in September, the episode "My Musical" was nominated for five awards in four categories: Outstanding Directing For A Comedy Series (Will Mackenzie), Outstanding Original Music And Lyrics ("Everything Comes Down to Poo" and "Guy Love"), Outstanding Music Direction (Jan Stevens), and Outstanding Sound Mixing For A Comedy Or Drama Series (half-hour) And Animation (Joe Foglia, Peter J. Nusbaum, and John W. Cook II).^[13]

Production details

Scrubs is produced by ABC, through its production division (formerly Touchstone Television), even though it is aired by rival broadcaster NBC.^[14] According to show runner Lawrence, the arrangement is unusual, at least for 2007: "The show is a dinosaur, on one network and completely owned by another" and, since it is now in syndication, making a "ton of money for Touchstone."^[15] Both he and Braff confirmed ABC would have broadcast the seventh season had NBC refused to do so.^[15][16]

The chest X-ray featured at the end of the title sequence was hung backwards for most of the first five seasons. Bill Lawrence has stated that having the X-ray backwards was intentional as it signified that the new interns were inexperienced.^[4] However during Zach Braff's audio commentary on "My Last Chance," he states that the error was actually unintentional. The error became somewhat infamous and was even parodied in "My Cabbage." An attempt was made to fix the error in the extended title sequence that was used at the beginning of season 2, but the extended sequence (including corrected X-ray) were soon scrapped at fan and network request. Finally, in "My Urologist," Dr. Kim Briggs steps into the credits and switches the X-ray around, saying, "That's backwards, it's been bugging me for years."

Every episode title begins with a possessive pronoun, usually the word "My..." with notable exceptions in the episodes entitled "His Story," "His Story II," "Her Story," "Her Story II," "His Story III," "His Story IV," and "Their Story." Apart from a brief period of narration from J.D. at the very beginning and end of the episode, these episodes primarily contained internal narration from another character besides J.D. In these episodes, internal narration duty switches from J.D. to the "guest narrator" at the beginning and then back to J.D. at the end. The only exception to this rule is "Their Story," where the narration instead switches to a whole crowd of supporting cast members. The transfer usually occurs at a moment of physical contact between the two characters.

Sacred Heart Hospital

Scrubs is filmed on location at the North Hollywood Medical Center (34°9′28.86″N 118°24′31.22″W / 34.1580167°N 118.4086722°W / 34.1580167; -118.4086722), a real decommissioned hospital on 12629 Riverside Drive in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. However, the location of Sacred Heart Hospital within the fictional world of Scrubs is left ambiguous. Cast and crew on the show refer to the location as "San DiFrangeles" — a portmanteau of San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles that is meant to encompass a large part of California. ^[17]

Episodes

Music

Music plays a large role on Scrubs. A wide variety of rock, pop, and indie artists are featured. Almost every episode ends with a musical montage summing up the themes and plot lines of the episode, and the music for these montages is often picked even before the episodes are completely written.^[24] Members of the cast and crew are encouraged to contribute song suggestions, with many ideas coming from series creator Bill Lawrence, writer Neil Goldman, and actors Zach Braff (whose college friends Cary Brothers and Joshua Radin appear on the Scrubs soundtrack) and Christa Miller Lawrence (who selected Colin Hay and Tammany Hall NYC). According to Bill Lawrence, "Christa picks so much of the music for the show that a lot of the writers and actors don't even go to me anymore when they have a song. They hand it to her."^[24] Producers expanded Scrubs' musical emphasis with a musical episode early in the sixth season, called "My Musical". This episode aired on January 18, 2007.^[25] A complete list of music used on the show can be found here.

Theme song

The theme song of the series, performed by Lazlo Bane, is titled "Superman", and can be found on the album All the Time in the World, as well as on the first Scrubs soundtrack. Bill Lawrence credits Zach Braff for finding and suggesting "Superman" as the theme song^[4]. The lyrics "I'm no Superman" relate to the show's theme of its characters' fallibility. The Scrubs version of the song is normally played at a faster speed than the original recording of the song. To be specific, the part used in the titles is one second shorter than the original song. The original, slower recording was used briefly at the beginning of Season 2, played during an extended version of the title sequence (that included Neil Flynn and full cast credits), as well as a special edit of the title sequence for resulting in roughly 1-2 seconds of music, followed by the line "I'm no Superman", accompanied by a quick flash of credits. The original intro from season 1 was used through most of season 3 (except the few episodes with the very short intro) and then used for seasons 4, 5 and 6.

Soundtracks

Two official soundtracks have been released. The first one was released on CD on September 24, 2002, and a second — an iTunes exclusive — was released in mid-2006. An iMix on iTunes of the music used through the first five seasons has also been released.^[26]. On August 7, 2007, the soundtrack to the episode "My Musical" was released.^{[citation needed]}

Featured musical contributors

The Worthless Peons

The Worthless Peons (also known as Ted's Band, The Blanks, or in the non-canon "My Way Home" Director's Cut as "Foghat") are an a Capella group made up of hospital employees from different departments. They are a cover band, and often sing songs from a specific theme (for example, cartoon theme songs or commercial jingles). They have appeared in several episodes. In the extended cut of the 100th episode, found on the Season 5 DVD, Ted tells J.D. that they are being forced to change their names after a lawsuit. Their new name becomes Foghat, but this is most likely not canon.

The Worthless Peons are played by The Blanks, who are a real-life a Capella band made up of Sam Lloyd (who plays Ted), George Miserlis, Paul F. Perry, and Philip McNiven. The Blanks' album, Riding the Wave, features guest appearances from Bill Lawrence and members of the Scrubs cast.

Colin Hay

Colin Hay, who is the former front-man of Men at Work, has been featured in Episode 1.24, "My Last Day" ("Beautiful World"); Episode 2.01, "My Overkill" (Men at Work's "Overkill," performed by Hay, who follows J.D. around the hospital); Episode 2.13, "My Philosophy" ("Waiting for My Real Life to Begin," performed by members of the cast at the end of the episode); Episode 2.22, "My Dream Job" ("My Brilliant Feat"); Episode 3.13, "My Porcelain God", (Men at Work's "Down Under," performed by J.D.); Episode 4.17, "My Life In Four Cameras" (the Cheers theme song, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name", written by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo and performed by Hay) ; and Episode 6.21, "My Rabbit" ("Pure Love").

Joshua Radin

The music of Joshua Radin, who is a friend of Scrubs star Zach Braff^[27], has appeared in several episodes, including Episode 3.14, "My Screw Up" ("Winter"); Episode 4.14, "My Lucky Charm" ("Today"); Episode 4.19, "My Best Laid Plans" ("Closer"); Episode 4.22, "My Big Move" ("Don't Look Away"); Episode 5.06, "My Missed Perception" ("These Photographs"); and Episode 6.11, "My Night to Remember" ("Winter").

Keren DeBerg

Music by Keren DeBerg has featured in many Scrubs episodes, including "My Fifteen Minutes" ("See Ya Around"), "My Occurrence" ("Daydreams and Lies"), "My New Coat" ("A Little Better"), "My Monster" ("Daydreams and Lies"), "My Philosophy" ("At Last"), "My Brother, My Keeper", ("My Fault"), "My T.C.W." ("Boy On TV""), "My Kingdom" ("Samantha"), "My Drama Queen" ("Sleep"), "My Dream Job" ("Sunday"), "My Lucky Night" ("Almost Feeling Better" and "On and On"), "My Choosiest Choice of All" ("Jump Off"), "My Best Laid Plans" ("Can't Go Back"), "My Chopped Liver" ("Take Another Step"), "My Transition" ("Boy") and she appeared in "My Musical" as an extra in the song "Are You Okay?"

DVD releases

Around the world

Since Scrubs is aired around the world in many different languages, instances of foreign languages on the show have to be changed for the international versions. Carla's Spanish is changed to Italian in the Spanish language version of the show, and Elliot's German is changed to Danish (or, in at least one fourth-season episode German with a Swiss accent) in the German version of the show.

References and notes

External links

• Scrubs at NBC
• Scrubs at Buena Vista (Syndication)
• Scrubs video blog at IGN (#1 to #54)
• Scrubs video blog at Quick Stop Entertainment (#1 to present)
• Scrubs at Channel 4
• Scrubs Wiki
• Scrubs at the Global Episode Opinion Survey

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