A Final Curtain Call for "Scrubs?"...Please!

Its scary that I can trace it's first episode back to college, but one of my favorite shows was NBC's (now ABC's) Scrubs.

But either in an effort to make more episdoes for syndication, or because they are out of new ideas in Hollywood, Scrubs is currently trucking through Season Nine, which is probably 2-3 too many.

For those who don't know, Scrubs is a comedy that followed the path of several interns at a hospital as they naviagated their first job.  It peaked in Season 2 with 10 million viewers (thanks Wikipedia!) probably with the help of other comedies on Thursday night like Friends.  However, it slowly lost viewers over the years, was set for cancellation, until it was saved by ABC because of the relative low overall cost of the show. 

Originally, it was probably one of the funniest shows on television.  It served as the springboard for Zach Braff's (JD) career as an actor and later a director.  In between being berated by experienced doctor (Cox) John McGinley, what made the show was JD's flashbacks to whatever crazy situation was on his mind, often featuring fellow medical buddy (Turk) Donald Faison.

The show had an elaborate finale last May, as they recalled all of the guest stars from over the years Seinfeld style and sent off all the main characters in a grand setting.

And then the show returned...

Its my own fault for still watching, (I've invested all this time, I gotta see this thing out!) but its painful to watch this show continue. 

Here are three things that are driving me nuts about the show:

1)  Charater Continuity After 8 years of pretty much the same cast, this year Scrubs introduced a new cast...sort of.  Turk and Dr. Cox returned, but JD was a part of the show for only 6 episodes.  In addition, other cast members stopped by for anywhere from 1-10 episodes depending on how they apparently fit in the story.  There was also little attempt to talk about why they were there.

2)  New Setting In an effort to cut costs, ABC moved the filming location.  The result in the show was a "rebuilt" hospital next to a medical school, where Turk, Cox, and JD (when he wanted) where apparently tenured medical professors.  I know its TV, but that's a reach.

3)  Casting The new cast brought in seems to be a perfectly capable group of people, but each one pretty much shares a personality with the cast members that sorta moved on.  This time, I'm not going to watch this for eight years...umm probably.