Why Doesn’t Scrubs Get Any Respect?

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http://www.vulture.com/2015/09/stay-...witter_vulture

Last week I started rewatching Scrubs. I knew it was a show I loved, but rewatching it is just reminding me how great it really is. It seems like everyone has collectively decided to forget that it was a great show. Why is it not on more "best of" lists? Is it because the world has seemed to sour on Zach Braff? (Which I don't understand, by the way.) I even recommended a watch to a friend of mine, and her only response was, "For some reason, I just hate Zach Braff." What gives with the lack of respect for Scrubs? —Kerrie

Hey! I love Scrubs! It might be my favorite no-respect show, so I feel your pain: It's a series I've recommended in Stay Tuned a lot, so I doubly feel your pain because people often scoff. Scrubs is great. (Though I will say the whole "calling a man a woman's name" thing wears me down.)

So why doesn't it get more cred? Part of it is timing: Scrubs debuted in 2001, which was not a great year for comedy debuts: Do you remember Off Centre? How about Men, Women & Dogs? Raising Dad? Bob Patterson? Maybe It's Me? Ellen DeGeneres's second sitcom, The Ellen Show? The late, great Undeclared debuted that season, too. The big new comedies from Scrubs' freshman class: Reba and According to Jim. You can't blame this on Americans not being ready to laugh or something after 9/11 either. These shows would have flopped anyway. Terrorism is not responsible for the failure of Emeril Lagassi's sitcom Emeril. America did that all by itself.

So Scrubs was already swimming in an awkward school of fish. But it also didn't fit in with the shows that were already on the air: Its lead-in its first season was Frasier. Frasier is a wonderful show, one I admire and revere, but those two don't go together very well. It aired between Friends and Will & Grace, which is as plumb a spot as exists, except single-camera comedies and multi-camera comedies rarely pair well together because the single-camera comedy always winds up feeling small somehow in comparison. (That smallness is actually intimacy, which is essential.) Then NBC started to bottom out, and Scrubs bounced around the schedule a bit. It aired after Father of the Pride in 2004; that was that computer-animated Sigfried and Roy show, if you remember. It also aired as a lead-in for Committed, which barely lasted 13 episodes. Joey and Teachers? Those aren't helping anyone. By the time Scrubs got paired with The Office — correct! finally! — NBC had had enough. Then ABC picked it up, and it aired after a reality series called Homeland Security USA. Until it changed time slots again. It finished out its run with its own rerun as a lead-in. Scrubs got the shaft from NBC and ABC in terms of scheduling, and it never had the same time slot for more than season. That taints its legacy, making it seem like an also-ran, even though it was terrific. Punch for punch, Scrubs gives The Office a run for its money.

As for Braff, some people just don't like him. That's true for all of us, but I think he gets hated on extra-hard because he winds up serving as a clearinghouse for our culture's deep discomfort with the concept of celebrity; on the one hand, we want access and intimacy, but we also want a performance of superiority, something to aspire to. We want them to continue earning their keep through output, but also lament all the chances they're given over someone less famous. We want them to be rich, but also very humble and discreet about it. It's fine if you hate Garden State, but there are plenty of movies much, much worse than that. Humanity is mostly garbage, I guess. I also remind skeptics that Braff didn't write Scrubs, so it is possible both to enjoy the series and dislike his screenwriting.

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There's a discussion on this subject going on right now in Reddit regarding why it seems like Scrubs disappeared from the cultural zeitgeist.

One reasoning could be because Disney completely owns the show, so anything pertaining to syndication is up to them. More to the point, the show probably hasn't been on the mind of anyone at NBC for at least 13 years now.

According to Zach Braff on his podcast, the music that was featured on Scrubs was never purchased for the streaming rights. In other words, they can’t even play it with its original soundtrack on streaming services. Netflix did have Scrubs at one point, but internet reports say that it was removed around 2016.

Scrubs in itself, was full of things people would likely find questionable today, such as J.D. in black face and the constant comments about Turk and Carla's races. Even without that concern, it was never a massive success or all that culturally relevant when it was first airing. Scrubs peaked in the ratings during its early seasons before falling off a cliff around Season 4.

It was also one one the last big network shows presented in 4:3 instead of widescreen. So that right there, makes it look way more dated than it really is. To put things into perspective, Arrested Development premiered just two years later but, was in widescreen.

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There are several other reasons behind why Scrubs may have not gotten more mainstream respect.

For starters, it may have simply been a sitcom that was a tad bit ahead of its time. The quick flashes into the lead character, J.D.'s head were not something you’d see on TV back then. J.D. could also be off-putting to some considering that he was generally, a childish, selfish, and weak individual, at least most of the time.

All in all, the show's irreverent humor could be seen as being at odds with the otherwise sober subject matter. MASH was probably the only show that's remotely similar to Scrubs, but there, they used black humor on the show. And as others have pointed out, Scrubs was full of things people would find questionable.

Secondly, when Scrubs first came on the air in 2001, other shows were taking the spotlight and overshadowing it. There was ER, Friends, Frasier, and then The Office on Scrubs' own network, NBC. Also during the 2000s, there was CSI, The Mentalist, and later The Big Bang Theory on CBS, Grey's Anatomy on ABC, and House and Glee on Fox. So in this regard, Scrubs may have simply come along at the wrong time.

Thirdly, there was never any security in it. For one thing, Zack Braff kept jerking everyone around and threatening to leave. Not only that, but Scrubs was adversely affected by a writers' strike, which led to a truncated seventh season. The show would then, switch networks (moving from NBC to ABC) for Season 8. For its final season, the show was retooled with the original cast shifting into cameo territory. So it goes without saying that Scrubs didn't exactly bow out gracefully.