Scrubs (TV Series)
Originally written on June 7th, 2020
I discovered Scrubs when I went to the University, in 2011. The series was already complete, including the infamous 9th season, so I started to watch it and immediately fell in love with it and its characters. Between 2011 and 2013, I watched it 5 or 6 times (4 or 5 in Italian and once in English). I was always fascinated with the characters, their stories, how well-constructed some of the more complex episodes are, the mysteries. Since I saw it for the first time, with my aspiration of becoming an actor and a game developer, I've always wanted to create a movie trilogy or a Telltale Games style video game, but not the ones with multiple choices and quick time events that lead to Telltale's bankruptcy. I'm talking about the first ones (Tales of Monkey Island, Sam & Max). Even, though, on second thought, a multiple choice game wouldn't be a bad choice, because, in the world of Scrubs, sometimes things aren't exactly clear on how they happen and WHICH ONES happen.
I decided to watch it again (English) the last week, and noticed a lot of interesting things. I originally wanted to do a "What is The Janitor's Real Name?" Theory, but since there aren't enough elements to work on that, I'm going to launch in a monologue on how some episodes are incredibly clever and what my starting point would be for a video game. But we're gonna start with the Janitor anyway.
THE JANITOR'S REAL NAME
His name is Glenn Matthews. There have been theories that his name was Neil Flynn, because in the same episode he uses the names Nigel, Claus and Efrem, he appeared in "The Fugitive", in which he's credited as the actor (weird that JD didn't check the name in the credits), or Mike Heck, because he left Scrubs for The Middle, or one of the other names used in the series, like Tom, Jan Itor, Rotinaj, Captain Billy Stinkwater or Josh (during his wedding, he was almost called Scott), but the creator Bill Lawrence confirmed it by saying "whatever the janitor in Clone High was named".
The funniest parts about this mystery are s7e1 "My Own Worst Enemy", in which the Janitor's lady appears and her name is literally Lady. Or in s7e4 "My Identity Crisis", in which JD gets a lesson by the Janitor and learns almost everybody's name in the hospital, and then we see the Janitor call Jordan with the wrong name in s8e11 "My Nah Nah Nah".
THE JANITOR WASN'T SUPPOSE TO EXIST
Bill Lawrence admitted that, if Scrubs was canceled at the end of the first season, The Janitor was suppose to be only a figment of JD's IMAGINATION. The main point is that JD was the only person interacting with Janitor during the first season. I rewatched it with this little nugget of knowledge in mind, and it is so FALSE! Other people acknowledge his presence, like nurses walking around him or Turk looking at him, and interact with him (a little girl and her mother during Christmas, his own father, a new intern in the last episode). That kind of stuff is, sometimes, hard to pull off, unless you're doing it on a single episode, like:
BEN'S FUNERAL
The 14th episode of the 3rd season (My Screw Up) is not only one of the most emotional, but also one of the most clever! Ben Sullivan (Brendan Fraser) was Jordan's brother and one of Perry's best friends. In this episode, Ben has leukemia and he didn't check it for 2 years. His hobby for photography grants him the question "Will you be doing random photos forever?", to which Ben replies "Until the day I die". JD suddenly arrives with a particular patient, Perry asks for a test on that patient and JD sarcastically replies "He's not gonna die in the next 30 minutes". 2 minutes later, Perry is alone, JD arrives and plays the pronoun game with "he died after 20 minutes", Ben arrives and says "Bummer!". We think that the patient died, but from that moment, Ben doesn't have his photo camera anymore and he interacts only with Perry. Other people never speak to him and never look him in the eyes. Perry doesn't acknowledge the camera absence until the end of the episode, asking for photos. Ben doesn't reply and JD brings him back to reality, revealing the twist to us.
The only other time they did this was on season 6 episode 15 (My Long Goodbye), when Laverne fell in a coma and Carla imagined Laverne's ghost following her. The interesting connection is that she asked to PERRY if he ever had the ghost of a friend following him around. HE LIES. When it was Carla's turn to LIE and accuse someone else of IMAGINING things, it was the second time the Janitor was able to blackmail her. The Janitor blackmailed Carla when he found Turk's real dead dog (she lost it and they substitute him with another one, s4e4 "My First Kill"), the second time was on season 8 episode 10 (My Comedy Show). Carla pulled a hair from her chest and he saw it. She was able to make him believe he was imagining things with the help of Bob Kelso, who was lead in a similar head game by the Janitor himself in season 4 episode 6 (My Cake).
Believe it or not, the first blackmailing episode was the 13th of season 6 (My Scrubs), the exact same episode in which Kelso punishes everyone for stealing the scrubs by making them wear brown scrubs. The sad color changes everybody's mood and makes them more obedient. The only other time Kelso changes the color of a uniform to punish someone? Season 4 episode 22 (My Big Move). Who? The Janitor. Which color? Cyan. Other's mood? Happiness. What else happens in the episode? JD already left Kylie, he kissed Carla and Turk keeps IMAGINING them together. The only other time in which the Janitor has a cyan uniform? Season 4 episode 17 (My Life In Four Cameras). What happens? JD IMAGINES life as a TV sitcom, and we don't get to know how much is real and how much is fantasy. It's the only Kylie-less episode of the Kylie series. It's one of those clever episodes in which the change of colors indicates it's all a fantasy, but it's perfectly mixed with reality, like season 7 episode 11 (My Princess).
Another clever episode in which we don't get to know what really happened (because nothing in it is ever addressed again), is season 3 episode 16: MY BUTTERFLY. In this episode, we get to see the same day progressing in two different ways, but ending with the same outcome. For the differences, it focuses on the butterfly effect (the episode even starts and finishes with a butterfly). Between this particular episode, the presence of a smart-ass raging alcoholic (Perry), the presence of Sarah Chalke and some inconsistencies and continuity errors in the series, it's almost like watching Rick & Morty. Inconsistencies and continuity errors are very common in long TV series, but usually the ones with different writers and directors after one or more decades, like the Simpsons, not like Scrubs. However, an episode like My Butterfly may implicitly say that we're not always watching the same timeline of events, but a slightly different one depending on the episode. This might explain people teleporting or objects with catchy brands moving without anybody touching them between shots, the same license plates on different cars (like 2FAN321 or ...233), and overlapping situations, like JD meeting Turk in s2e19 "My Kingdom" and Turk meeting JD in s4e25 "My Changing Ways", or JD and Turk being separated during Turk and Carla's honeymoon in s4e1 "My Old Friend's New Friend" and them revealing to Carla that JD was with them during the honeymoon in s8e17 "My Chief Concern", or JD accidentally finding the Janitor's house in s2e20 "My Interpretation" and helping him move out from a different apartment without even noticing in s5e5 "My New God", or JD explaining baseball to Elliot in s1e12 "My Blind Date" and then reminding to everyone he doesn't know anything about any sport for the other 8 seasons, or Turk imagining himself with Elliot in s2e20 "My Interpretation" and then revealing he finds JD's girls unattractive in s6e14 "My No Good Reason", or JD and Turk meeting Elliot together in s1e1 "My First Day" and JD remembering telling Turk of when he met Elliot in s8e11 "My Nah Nah Nah". This multiverse timeline theory is my explanation for my video game's starting point:
KIM AND LITTLE SAMMY DON'T EXIST
Don't get me wrong: JD's evolution as a father and his big goodbyes that were supposed to end Scrubs with the 8th season are really wonderful, but there are a lot of signs and red flags indicating that Kim Briggs and little Sam Perry Gilligan Dorian weren't suppose to exist.
Kim suddenly appears with many red flags in s5e23 "My Urologist", with Turk explaining to JD that she was always there. This is the episode after "My Déjà Vu, My Déjà Vu", half of which dedicated to repeating scenes of the past 5 seasons and confirming us that things were always as we saw them. The explanation for her appearance is that JD doesn't see women with wedding rings. However, they say she's single from a year and CARLA never disappears. You may say because he knows her, but she is the one showing this magical power of wedding rings on Todd. The scenes in which Kim appears are with CARLA and JD in the first season, when JD sings in the elevator in s2e15 "His Story" (when he was trapped by the JANITOR and let go only in someone else's presence) and on BEN'S FUNERAL. The intro of the episode is slowed down and the x-ray gets reversed by Kim. When JD left Julie in s5e10 "Her Story II", he was obsessing over an unfocused future wife ON HIS PORCH. Carla has a butterfly medallion.
2 episodes later, s6e1 "My Mirror Image", JD announces Kim's pregnancy. Many red flags here, too: the conception (made ON JD'S PORCH) is so ridiculous that we almost doubt it actually happened; compared to Turk and Carla, who tried for almost a year, it's the exact opposite (and when Carla was finally pregnant in s5e16 "My Bright Idea", JD called out the Janitor for his lies); it's the episode after Jordan's second pregnancy, which shouldn't have happened due to Perry's 2 vasectomies; while Kim announces the news to JD, she has a butterfly on the back of her dress; this is the second episode in which we see the Janitor's father, and he's completely different (and in s6e17 "Their Story", the Janitor says he and JD never met his REAL father).
In the next episode, "My Best Friend's Baby's Baby & My Baby's Baby", they try to decide for or against an abortion, and they almost decide with a "butterfly moment": a coin toss. The coin lands vertically, leaving the decision to them. They decide against abortion because Carla delivers her daughter. In the same episode, Jordan reveals she had an abortion. In the episode in which Carla is finally pregnant, when JD apologizes for an abortion joke, the priest replies he is "pro-choice".
6 episodes later, in s6e8 "My Road To Nowhere", Kim lies to JD by saying she miscarried the baby and they leave each other. When JD meets her again and she's pregnant in s6e20 "My Conventional Wisdom", JD and Elliot are freaking out about Elliot marrying Keith for different reasons and the Janitor play pretends to be the Chief of Medicine. When JD and Kim decide Sam's name in s6e22 "My Point Of No Return", a locker in the hospital says "Veer Felt At Peace Sam" (I'm unsure of its eventual deeper meaning) and JD and Elliot almost kiss. When Kim delivers Sam in s7e2 "My Hard Labor", the nurse Shirley appears, and JD is the only one who notices she's played by Laverne's actress (Aloma Wright) and calls her "Laverneagain". This is the episode after Lady appears, and she's played by Dr. Mitchell's same actress of s2e13 "My Philosophy" (Kit Pongetti).
For all these reasons, I've always imagined the video game as an alternative 8th or a real 9th season. There are many "what ifs?" that make you wonder in Scrubs: what if JD and Cox open the "Dorian-Cox Clinic" together, or what if JD becomes the Chief of Medicine of Sacred Heart after Cox (it can still happen), or what role would Ricky "Caramel Bear" have if he went to med school with JD "Vanilla Bear" and Turk "Chocolate Bear" (s7e5 "My Growing Pains"). My idea of a Telltale Game's style video game was to make it episodic with a "My Butterfly" dynamic or more explorable and more linear.
Final note: what I wanted to do most in the game, was to have a relative of Ted Buckland (Sam Lloyd) interpreted by Christopher Lloyd (Sam's real uncle) and interacting with each other. Sadly, the day I rewatched the 8th and 9th seasons, I discovered Sam's tragic and untimely death happened a month before. Rewatching Ted that day got pretty emotional, especially in s9e4 "Our Histories". I didn't know him personally, but I wish I could've met him to act and sing together (even if I'm an amateur at it).
