A Scrubs Spinoff May Be on the Way!

[Brian Damage]

“Scrubs,” the surrealist hospital sitcom that spent seven seasons as a stepchild of NBC’s schedule, has come close to cancellation more times than its creator, Bill Lawrence, cares to remember. So it’s a surprise, even for Mr. Lawrence, that the show is getting to write its own ending.

Well, some sort of ending, anyway — on a new network. In a rare move for network television, Mr. Lawrence’s “Scrubs” is moving to ABC, beginning Jan. 6.

“It’s freaky,” Mr. Lawrence said in the former hospital room that he uses as an office, between editing sessions of the forthcoming episodes. “I can’t believe we get to do it. It’s incredibly odd in this landscape to actually get to end a show.”

Even the end might be in question. This season will be the last one for Mr. Lawrence and the show’s star, Zach Braff. They have already taped what they call a series finale.

But in television, some shows barely get to begin and other shows never seem to end, reflecting the whims of executives and the tug of the Nielsen ratings. Based on those two factors, “Scrubs” could continue without Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Braff, perhaps with a different name.

Both Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Braff call the 18-episode order from ABC a gift. In separate interviews, they showed no hesitation about departing. “I desperately want to do something else,” said Mr. Lawrence, who is writing a sitcom pilot for ABC titled “Cougar Town.”

Mr. Braff, who plays the attending physician John Dorian (better known as J.D.), is writing his second film, five years after he wrote, directed and starred in “Garden State.” A handful of other acting and directing opportunities, he said, are “on the stove right now.”

“In a small way, I’m changing careers,” he said.

“Scrubs” is lucky to have come this far. With its daydream sequences, slapstick humor and recurring jokes, the show has always required something of a learning curve from its viewers. Its meandering success can be credited both to the eccentric vision of the writers and to the cultish devotion of fans, who interact with the creator and cast members online and devour every extra clip on the season DVDs.

“Scrubs” was never the favored sitcom within NBC. In six years, Mr. Lawrence said network executives never visited the shuttered hospital along the Ventura Freeway where the show is taped, a few miles from NBC’s West Coast office in Burbank.

“I didn’t mind it, by the way,” he said, calling “Scrubs” the “ultimate under-the-radar show.” The ratings were hardly notable — an average of 6.3 million viewers watched the seventh season — and the cast and crew suffered through several rounds of speculation about the show’s fate.

But “Scrubs” always had an exit strategy: ABC.

The show is produced and syndicated by ABC Studios, where Stephen McPherson, now the president of ABC Entertainment, developed it. When the writers’ strike halted the seventh season of “Scrubs” last winter, NBC wavered about whether to broadcast the remaining episodes, the producers said. The uncertainty came as a shock to the cast.

“I don’t think it ever occurred to us that the network where we’d been for seven years wouldn’t give us the opportunity to give the fans a proper ending,” Mr. Braff said. (The episode that NBC called a finale was a fairy tale set in medieval times.)

ABC, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, quickly showed interest in broadcasting the series. And once the network picked it up, executives did come visit the hospital.

Mr. McPherson says he expects “Scrubs” to expand the network’s comedy brand, something that it has struggled to do in recent years. (It will be the only new half-hour sitcom on ABC’s schedule until at least the spring.) On the schedule this winter, “Scrubs” is surrounded not by other sitcoms but by a documentary-style reality show, “Homeland Security U.S.A.,” and candid-camera editions of the newsmagazine “Primetime.”

Mr. Lawrence is well aware that ABC could renew the show, and he says he is no longer averse to the idea. Keeping the cast and crew of “Scrubs” employed, even without its creator, would be hard to object to.

Mr. Braff has already said that he’d be willing to continue recording the voice-overs that connect the story lines of the show, which is set at a California teaching hospital. And Mr. Lawrence is already imagining a transition, which he says would be “a new show.”

“It would have to be like ‘Frasier’ was to ‘Cheers,’ ” he said.

Like an eager movie producer who leaves the door open for a sequel, Mr. Lawrence is bringing in a new crew of interns for the new season, something that he admits is a tricky move for a comedy in its eighth year. New characters are “usually the harbinger of doom for a sitcom,” he said, “but I think we did it well, because they weren’t replacing people who had left.” The interns star in a series of Webisodes alongside the series.

Assuming this season is the last, “Scrubs,” is ending the way the writers want it to. Mr. Braff said the long-simmering relationship between his character and Elliot Reid, played by Sarah Chalke, would finally be resolved. And a number of guest stars, most notably Courteney Cox, will appear throughout the season.

Attentive viewers may notice some other changes. Mr. Lawrence said a popular character nicknamed the Todd is no longer allowed to wear the thong-style swimsuit he occasionally wore on NBC.

“That was an actual edict from the head of standards at Disney,” he said.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/ar...scru.html?_r=1

[R.jsheedy]

A spinoff would be fun to see. But i don't realy see then spining off that show unless they tack one of the doctors of the Sergents and place then in a diffrent hosptital. Evan then i don't see a spinoff working out!

[Chocolate Moose]

I don't see Turk strong enough to host his own show. Elliot either. Anyway, they both get other work.