Thursday, December 18, 2003
In A Hospital With Heart
Originally published in The Age Green Guide, 18 December 2003.
At first glance, you could be forgiven for missing the fact that Scrubs is a sitcom. At least not the sort of sitcom we've become accustomed to. For one thing, it's set in a hospital, usually a setting for drama, or soap, but rarely comedy. I suppose M*A*S*H could be an exception, though the 4077th wasn't really a hospital. And there's no laugh track in Scrubs; someone somewhere has finally decided that we are clever enough to figure out where to laugh for ourselves. But there's something else that sets Scrubs apart from the sitcoms of the 1990s; from Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier and the dozens of copycats that have tried (and failed) to imitate the wisecracking comedy style that made those shows incredible successes. Scrubs, God bless it, has a heart.
Heart can be an ugly word in the world of television comedy. Better the 90s cynicism that sees Seinfeld's George Costanza thankful for his fiancée's sudden death from licking their wedding invitation envelopes than the sickeningly saccharine 80s idealism that ensured a hug would end every episode of Full House.
So I'll clarify. Scrubs has heart, yes, but it is also funny. A little peculiar, perhaps, but very funny. It features fantasies, dreams, voice overs, even poo jokes. Good ones. And it will try anything. Just when you think it couldn't possibly get any more absurd, the ongoing rivalry between medical and surgical residents is played out in a musical sequence lifted straight from West Side Story (even down to the original choreography).
This sort of stylistic variation is largely unexplored territory for a contemporary sitcom, and Scrubs is cleverly mining a reserve of laughs left largely untapped by a decade of television comedy (the at-times hallucinatory Ally McBeal a notable exception).But what really separates Scrubs from the rest of the sitcom bunch is its sentimentality. Rather than distancing us from its characters by dehumanising them and encouraging us to laugh at their misfortunes (think Seinfeld, and even Friends at times), Scrubs does all it can to make sure we're on their side. It wants us to feel for JD (Zach Braff) when his special patient dies, and to fear for Eliot (Sarah Chalke) when she finally cuts herself off from the financial support of her father. One of Scrubs' greatest strengths is its knack for finding both the comedic and the dramatic in any situation.
When JD's (Zach Braff) brother (Ed's Tom Cavanagh in a hilarious cameo) comes to town, there is comedy in his incessant quizzing of Eliot about JD's sexual performance. But there is also a wonderful dramatic moment when JD recognises that he is ashamed of his older, but less successful brother. His voice over - 'right then I knew I'd never see my brother the same way again' - has a little of The Wonder Years about it, but hits a very real emotional note: when we mature, the way we see people changes, and not always for the better.It seems cheesy, and Scrubs acknowledges its debt to 'family values' comedies such as Growing Pains and The Brady Bunch with referential asides that demonstrate that the writers know exactly what they are doing: combining good comedy with just a little bit of love.
Of course, the downside is that emotional depth requires the exploration of emotional pain - something that Scrubs isn't afraid of. Dr Cox's (John C McGinley) cruel sarcasm is not merely a comic device employed by the writers for laughs; it is also used to conceal Cox's simmering misanthropy. When it comes down to it, Cox has no-one to go home to and no-one to make him happy; only an unfulfilled crush on Nurse Carla (Judy Reyes) and an ex-wife (Christa Miller Lawrence) more intent on torturing him than reconciling. He is a poignant reminder that we use humour to distance ourselves from pain. Cox reveals this to Turk (Donald Faison) in a rare unguarded moment when he explains that doctors make jokes about their patients because it's the only way they can cope.No, that's making it sound cheesy again. The other reason Cox gives for making cruel jokes about patients who are stiff in a body bag is 'because it's fun'. This is what is so great about Scrubs: just when you think it is about to descend into a sickly pit of sentiment reminiscent of Full House, it will pull you back with a joke that makes you realise just how sucked in you were.
Scrubs walks the difficult line between drama and comedy without falling to the temptations on either side. Its humour is rarely cruel, and its drama is only occasionally soppy (watch out for a musical finale a few episodes from now). But the best thing about Scrubs is that we really care what happens to its characters, and in a comedy, that's something we should hang on to.