'Scrubs' Keeps Itself in Stitches

By Rick Porter, Zap2It.com | November 30, 2006

Zach Braff of 'Scrubs'

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Move to Thursday is secondary to quality for show's creator and star

The original plan at NBC this season was for "Scrubs" to join the schedule in January, just as it did last season.

Then the season actually started, and pretty soon that plan headed out the window, which meant the show was ticketed for a late-fall start as part of a reconstituted Thursday-night comedy block. It begins its sixth season at 9 p.m. ET Thursday.

"Scrubs" fans, among the most loyal for any TV series, are no doubt happy to have their show back early. For creator Bill Lawrence, though, "it's a nightmare of editing. That's what I do all day."

He's not really complaining, though -- even though his show is up against the two biggest series on TV at the moment, ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" ("We're going to nickname Zach [Braff]'s character 'McWeenie,'" Lawrence jokes) and CBS' "CSI."

"As a comedy writer, I love that we're going to be on Thursday nights on NBC," Lawrence says. "In the middle of all these people crapping on comedy, they're putting on what I think are actually four really good comedies ['My Name Is Earl,' 'The Office' and '30 Rock' are the others]. I think it's cool to be back there. It's our 150th timeslot, and it's a good celebration to make it a good block of comedy again. I'm psyched about it."

"Scrubs" begins its sixth season pretty much where it left off in the spring, with J.D. (Braff) confronting the fact that a woman he's dated just once (returning guest star Elizabeth Banks) is pregnant with his child. Never mind that, typical of J.D.'s history with women, he's in the situation even though they didn't actually have sex.

"Zach kind of plays a man-boy on 'Scrubs,'" Lawrence notes. "One of the things we kind of like about the show is his friends and the people around him are basically forcefully dragging him into adulthood. His best friend is married and [about to] have a kid, his former mentor has two. Even his ex-girlfriend and best friend has moved in with a guy and looks like she's moving toward that. So we very intentionally kept Zach's character as still the guy who might not completely grasp that it's time to put his feet in the water as far as being an adult goes."

Suffice it to say J.D. isn't too comfortable with the notion at first. His attempt to escape the reality of his situation eventually lands him in Las Vegas, where he has a run-in with the Blue Man Group and, with shades of Tobias on "Arrested Development," ends up doused in blue paint.

"That was so fun," Braff says of shooting the Blue Man scene. "The whole team and cast couldn't have been nicer people. I had a great time with them. ... I'm not ashamed to tell you that literally three weeks later, I still had Q-Tips with blue on them when I cleaned out my ears."

"Scrubs" averaged about 6.3 million viewers last season, and NBC would probably be okay with a repeat of that performance, given its exceedingly tough timeslot. Lawrence doesn't mind the low expectations for the show -- "It's much easier to be a pleasant surprise to everyone," he says -- and would be "shocked" if most of the core "Scrubs" audience doesn't follow the show to Thursdays.

Both he and Braff, though, have moved beyond caring too much about where the show is on the schedule -- the "150th timeslot" remark wasn't much too big an exaggeration -- or how many people watch it. They're more concerned with continuing to do a show they enjoy.

"I think starting with last year, Bill sort of set the tone that we're going to stop making the show for anyone else other than the fans," Braff says. "I think that's freeing: 'Let's make a show for us and for our fans, what makes us laugh.' We joke about it, but he could very easily write tons more sex into the show, more love triangles, and I guarantee you ratings would probably go up. But it's more about staying true to his vision and what he wants the show to be."