Truth: we’re living in the reboot renaissance. Anytime two or more cast members from a beloved ’90s or early ’00s TV show gather in the same place, you half expect a revival of their series to spontaneously materialize. For Scrubs fans, that possibility just became, well, more possible.
On Saturday, the quirky medical comedy had its first official reunion in almost a decade at the 2018 Vulture Festival in Los Angeles. Nearly all of the major cast members turned out, too: Zach Braff (J.D.), Donald Faison (Turk), Sarah Chalke (Elliott), John C. McGinley (Dr. Cox), Ken Jenkins (Dr. Bob Kelso), Judy Reyes (Carla), Christa Miller (Jordan), Robert Maschio (The Todd), Neil Flynn (The Janitor) and series creator Bill Lawrence.
Yes, the cast of #Scrubs did reunite & there's pics to prove it: https://t.co/Z6KEyfJPnnpic.twitter.com/m6Umtpzq5X
— HollywoodLife (@HollywoodLife) November 18, 2018
So, naturally, talk turned to the idea of a reboot. What Lawrence had to say about it could be interpreted as both good news and bad news for fans of the OG series, which ended in 2010 after nine seasons.
“I would do anything to get to work with not only this group [but the entire crew]… it was the best time of my life,” Lawrence told the crowd during a panel discussion, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
There’s one caveat, though, and it’s kind of a big one — he doesn’t foresee another Scrubs TV series coming to fruition.
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“If we ever do it, we’ll do it as a short little movie or something else,” Lawrence said. “I think the problem from me is I would just want to see where everyone is. I would want to see where their marriages are [as opposed to a huge event].”
He elaborated on his hesitation, explaining that “sometimes reboots — not all the time — feel like a money grab.”
But, speaking from a fan’s perspective, we’re not greedy. We’ll take what we can get. We just hope that, if a reboot in any form happens, it hearkens back to Scrubs’ earlier seasons.
For its first seven seasons, Scrubs ran on NBC. After that, it was picked up by ABC, and Lawrence and that cast admitted that they had to tone down the show slightly for those final two seasons. For example, they were no longer allowed to show The Todd in a Speedo. “I had to frame above his penis. Rob’s banana hammock was not Disney-approved,” Braff joked of directing an episode.
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The final season of the series turned out to be a reboot in its own right. Originally, the series gave J.D. and the gang an emotional farewell at the end of season eight.
However, the oft-maligned season nine revived Scrubs for one more year, moving Dr. Cox, J.D. and Turk away from Sacred Heart and into another facility to mentor new residents. Other cast members, with the exception of Reyes, returned in guest roles.
To be fair, Lawrence insisted this follow-up season should have been treated as a new series altogether. He even pleaded with the network to call it Scrubs Med, according to NJ.com.
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Based on this backstory as well as Lawrence’s new comments, it does seem unlikely that another episodic version of Scrubs will ever happen. But Lawrence did say he would do anything to work with the cast and crew again, right?
This definitely opens the door to possibilities like a mini-movie or a non-Scrubs TV movie with the Scrubs cast (just look to Lifetime’s One Tree Hill “reunion” Christmas movie).
In the meantime, we’ll be over here getting our Scrubs fix by streaming the original series via Hulu and following Braff and Faison’s real-life friendship.
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