I’m not often a fan of direct reboots, but this review suggests “Season 10” may be the exception that proves the rule.
It is possible to believe contradictory things. For instance, I believe TV’s reliance on reviving old shows is a risk-averse, creative regression. On the other hand, I love it. I particularly love it when fictional characters have visibly aged. There’s a broken humanity that you don’t get with flawless, collagen-rich skin. You sense you could talk to them about your sciatica and they’d get it.
I got that feeling with the new series of Scrubs (Disney+, from Thursday 26 February), a show I once mainlined on E4. Scrubs was as comforting as tea and toast. Surprisingly malleable, too. In its bones, it was a coming-of-age workplace bromance between junior doctors JD and Turk, played by then newcomers Zach Braff and Donald Faison. Their chemistry was the show’s anchor, balancing sassy racial harmony with irreverence and heart, as they bore witness to universal human drama. But is it healthy enough to survive resuscitation, more than 15 years after its last episode aired?
Sensibly, the writers have shaken things up. JD has grown into complacent early middle age, working as a private doctor for the affluent and elderly. “You write scripts in the suburbs” is Turk’s withering appraisal. (For a hot second, I thought he was beefing with Braff’s indie film-making.) Braff directs the first episode, in which a problem with one of JD’s pampered patients takes him back to Sacred Heart, the training hospital where he earned his wheels.
I’m going to be honest, what grated on me with the middle of Scrubs was the tone leaning too hard on wacky humour. I liked episodes that parodied that sort of thing, like My Life in Four Cameras or My Big Bird, that made a point of saying it wasn’t supposed to be that kind of show…but then it’d go back to JD and Turk abusing their interns by making them play Space Invaders in the parking lot.