As promised, here's the complete transcript from my new interview with Scrubs' main man Bill Lawrence (an excerpt of which appears in this week's Ask Ausiello). If you consider yourself a fan, I urge you to read it and heed the urgent call to action at the bottom. Time is of the essence, people!

Where do things stand on doing a series finale?
Bill Lawrence: It's tough for me to say because I can't really get involved in that stuff until the strike ends. But either way, [NBC] is going to air the episodes we already shot.

And what about shooting new episodes?
Lawrence: The worst-case scenario is that ABC/Disney lets me make the last four episodes as a DVD. And I say that's the worst-case scenario because I'm going to try as hard as I can to get NBC's support in finishing the show up on TV. I just don't have any definitive answer because I haven't been talking to them.

When the strike is over, what will your first order of business be?
Lawrence: The second we're told that we can go back to work, I'm going to give [Peacock honcho] Ben Silverman a call and say, "Scrubs has been on NBC for seven years, and it would really be a bummer if I didn't get to end it there." And I'm hoping I'll get a positive response. I would be surprised if NBC didn't want to figure out a way to end the series on their network.

How many additional episodes do you think you'd be able to shoot?
Lawrence: Even though we were supposed to do seven more episodes, I'm sure I could finish the series in four or five. If somebody told me I'd get to do five more episodes on NBC and end the show in a normal way, I'd be superpsyched, considering all the stuff that has gone on.

What can the fans do?
Lawrence: As long as they still have a desire to see the show, it would be a good thing for them to let NBC know.

http://community.tvguide.com/blog-entry/TVGuide-Editors-Blog/Ausiello-Report/Scrubs-Creator-Lawrence/800032637

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/arts/television/13tube.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

...NBC will have to make much quicker decisions on two of its long-running series, “Scrubs” and “ER,” because writers for both shows would plan finales if they knew the series would be ending. That had been expected at the start of the season, but yesterday Mr. Silverman said NBC had been reconsidering its plans for both shows.

He said that the network planned to continue “ER” for another season if a financial deal could be struck with the show’s studio, Warner Brothers. The situation is more complicated with “Scrubs,” which is owned by the Disney television studio, sister company of the NBC competitor ABC. Mr. Silverman said NBC would decide soon if it would order three to five episodes to wrap up the series, which had been the desire of the show’s creator, Bill Lawrence.


Basically we either get 3-5 episodes on TV or not. I hope NBC does the classy thing and lets Scrubs finish there. It would be a disappointing if the last episodes were direct to DVD, but at least we'll still be getting final episodes one way or the other (thank you Bill Lawrence!).