‘Scrubs’ Returns, With Lashings of Millennial Saccharine

I have a confession: I own every season of the original run of Scrubs on DVD. Yes, each of the 181 shows from the original 9 seasons is on a Digital Versatile Disc stored neatly in an album. So when I found out that Scrubs was being rebooted, I was intrigued: I obviously wanted more but most reboots suck (Justified), and the last season of Scrubs in 2010 was a rough go, just as was that year’s brief follow-up, Scrubs: Interns.

The new run of shows drops on Hulu on Wednesdays, and three episodes in, Scrubs is exactly what we want out of nostalgia TV: old friends and familiar situations. Even if updated; the Scrubs reboot is pure sugary comfort.

For the skeptics, the core formula is still intact. Turk and J.D. remain the emotional core of the show, with Donald Faison and Zach Braff slipping back into their respective roles like no time has passed — even if they now need arch support. Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley) is also back, though the character is now edging toward retirement, which raises the question of how deeply he’ll be woven into the new stories.

Chalke’s Elliot is still sharp and slightly spiraled, now divorced from J.D. — a wrinkle the writers mine for plenty of awkward territory. Reyes’ Carla remains the grounding force of the hospital, the one person capable of cutting through everyone’s nonsense at full blast. The Todd (Robert Maschio) is still spectacularly inappropriate, and Dr. Hooch returns gloriously unhinged.

The newcomers shake up the dynamic without disrupting it. Joel Kim Booster’s Dr. Park quickly becomes a new foil for J.D. and Mayo nearly steals the show as charge nurse Pippa Raymond, a gossip-loving scene-stealer with impeccable timing.

My gripes about the show’s writing is a one-two punch: J.D. walks back into his ex-wife’s hospital after their divorce and Elliot barely pushes back until the third episode. This is her house, she never left, and he just shows up without so much as a conversation about it with her. The other issue is how the staff treats J.D. like a stranger. This man was with their boss for twenty years. He had to have shown up to a birthday, a holiday party, a random Tuesday — the staff would have been subjected to Dorian stories whether they wanted to be or not! The show does address his return to Sacred Heart in episode three, but for two divorced people, J.D. and Elliot get along suspiciously well. Divorce is messy and corrosive in ways that don’t just evaporate because you’re both professionals — there’s unresolved anger, wounded pride, the specific exhaustion of being around someone who knows exactly who you are and chose to leave anyway. Even in a comedy, that residue doesn’t just wipe clean. As a divorced person myself, I call bullshit.

This awkward “back on the job” entanglement is also there with when Cox asks J.D. to take his job. Instead of walking through the awkwardness with the proper timing, the entirety of that scene and resolution was about three minutes. It feels like they rushed through that plot point to get people in familiar territory.

So, while I am happy the slapstick and heart of Bill Lawrence and his writers are back, the lazy set up to get J.D. back in the hospital irks me. Years of well written television have given viewers a lot of story and while I know Scrubs isn’t necessarily what one would call “prestige” a little push–pull would be nice.

So why is Scrubs back?

My theory is that Gen X and Millennials came of age before the smartphone made every atrocity instantly accessible, and that memory has never loosened its grip. Their nostalgia is a longing for when the horrors of the world weren’t living in your pocket. Scrubs is a nod to that simpler past and honestly, with the reality that we endure, it’s a nice respite. The world of Sacred Heart hospital is filled with dumb humor and silliness. A lot of people need that when everything outside is a nightmare.

Scrubs scratches the nostalgia itch because it isn’t trying to be topical or political. At its core, it’s still a show about people trying to help other people. One moment captures that perfectly: J.D. and Turk attempt their signature “Eagle,” sprinting down the hallway with J.D. riding on Turk’s back. This time, though, they can’t quite pull it off. They’re both in their 50s now, and the bit collapses halfway through. The joke lands because the show acknowledges it. J.D. and Turk aren’t the guys they were in their 20s anymore. Sacred Heart is still humming along, but the sands of time have caught up with everyone. It’s harder now to scream in joy while riding on your best friend’s back.

Sacred Heart has a fresh batch of interns — played by Ava Bunn, Jacob Dudman, David Gridley, Layla Mohammadi, and Amanda Morrow all armed with Gen Z confidence and TikTok-attention spans. Chaos, naturally, follows. J.D., long removed from hospital life, gets dragged back into the mix, and through the first episodes, the show feels surprisingly like the one fans grew up with: warm, weird, and emotionally sneaky.

I’m curious how the show will pay tribute to the cast members who are no longer with us, like Ted, the buffoon lawyer cum sad sack (Sam Lloyd who passed in 2020); Chief of Medicine Dr. Kelso (Ken Jenkins died in 2024); and the Janitor. Right now, in these first few episodes, the admission of the past is there but dances on the fringes. One thing that made the original run so great was that the cast felt like a family formed when Turk, Carla, Elliot and J.D. met at the hospital. Kelso was needed because he was a lovable but complex villain of the show. The show will need that in some form, even as the lovable J.D. fills his other role as the Chief of Medicine. For all his good intentions, someone will have to occasionally step on him. I hope that through the season, we see small attributions to those who’ve moved on, when they were such a big part of the original show’s charm.

The strength of Scrubs is that it’s always known how to take something real — a stubborn family member who won’t see a doctor, the quiet devastation of a medical mistake — and make it land without leaving you wrung out. As we head into this new run with the world burning, I’ll take my Millennial saccharine.