“Scrubs”: My Growing Pains
Posted by SH
What has two thumbs and has to retire? Bob Kelso. Turns out the administrator/devil in a white coat has been acting weirdly juvenile this season (“Hells, yeah!”) for reasons that have nothing to do with his newfound bachelorhood. He’s 65, mandatory retirement age at the hospital, and the search for his replacement is on. My prediction: It will be revealed that throughout his time at Sacred Heart, Janitor has acted as an undercover monitor in order to find out what’s wrong at the hospital he one day will run. His true identity is that of a brilliant neurosurgeon named — wait for it — Dr. Jan Itor!
Age and maturity themes run through this episode, which isn’t quite successful at the blending of wacky comedy and poignancy that is a Scrubs staple. Turk and J.D. desperately try to find time amid their lives as new dads for games like “World’s Largest Black Doctor” until a scolding from Cox shames J.D. into putting away childish things. Pity poor Turk, standing alone in his extra-large doctor’s coat and stethoscope. This isn’t a bad issue for J.D. to deal with, but since when have harsh words from Cox ever changed J.D.’s behavior? Turk made a much more compelling argument to grow up just a couple episodes back, which seems to be a recurring theme this season. We had Carla repeating advice to Elliot “two weeks” later, and J.D. mentions that “two weeks ago” Turk was telling J.D. to grow up, and now Turk is trying to revive his friend’s immaturity. What is it with the “two weeks” thing? And hey, acknowledging lazy writing does not excuse lazy writing. Remind me to tell you again in two weeks.
Cox delivers that scolding because he’s in a bad mood over some parents who won’t tell their 9-year-old son he has leukemia. Perry takes it upon himself to tell the boy, which infuriates not only the parents, but also Carla, who believes Cox has taken the boy’s childhood from him. My counter would be that it was the blood cancer that did that, but whatever. Carla drives her point home saying that the kid was doing so much Internet research on leukemia and mortality rates that she had to give him one of Turk’s basketballs (which she didn’t realize was autographed by Michael Jordan) to get his mind off it. “Baby, you’re going to get my basketball back from that cancer kid” was my favorite line of the night.
Cox isn’t limiting his sourpuss-ness to his patients. When his son Jack wants to hear Daddy make the funny voice that helps him go to sleep, Cox refuses, saying 4 years old is too old for funny voices. Even for Cox, this is pretty harsh. Upon hearing Carla’s plea for extended childhoods, however, he reconsiders and makes with the goo goo gaa gaa.
When Elliot and Janitor find out it’s Kelso’s birthday, they decide to throw him a party. Ted at first refuses to be recruited to help the man who makes his life a living hell, to which Elliot nods understandingly. What can Ted do except fold like the cheap suits he wears and agree to pretty much set up the whole thing? Something’s fishy, though. Kelso keeps telling everyone he’s 58, but people seem to remember him saying that several years in a row. A little digging through the personnel files shows that his true age is 65. After stomaching the party — which Ted festooned with Hanukkah decorations that were on sale — Kelso gets the news that he has to leave. He asks the board member to keep it quiet, although J.D. apparently knows about it, given his narration. Hmmm …
Not a bad effort, but other than the Kelso stuff, it seems like everyone’s just treading water. And where was the Todd?
Some highlights:
– One of the games Turk uses to try to lure J.D. back into adolescenthood is the old favorite, Find the Saltine.
– “Hooch is crazy!”
– Apparently there is a fifth (or in this case, third) Beatle in J.D. and Turk’s band of merry men. On only their second day of knowing each other, the Latino man they called “Caramel Bear” (possibly played by the guy who was Pedro in “Napoleon Dynamite”) — to complement Chocolate Bear and Vanilla Bear — bravely volunteered to pull a prank that involved him putting a bag of you-know-what on someone’s doorstep. Problem is, the owner of the house — the kind of burly, bearded man they warn new prison inmates about — was waiting. He opened the door, pounced on Caramel Bear and pulled him into the house. He was never heard from again.
Once again, we begin with Heather being down on herself for the previous week’s performance. Jenah is also down on herself, as she got the dreaded “personality” note. As in: “You’re a great model, but you need to work on your personality.” Great, that’s helpful, and so easily changeable.
