Since “My Celebration” didn’t feel much like a season finale, it’s no surprise “My First Time in Awhile” doesn’t quite feel like a season premiere for the Scrubs revival, which picks up the various narrative batons strewn about Sacred Heart as if there hadn’t been a season finale and near-six month break in between. Thankfully, it does feel like the Scrubs writing room took away some important lessons from the show’s nine-episode first “season”, most of which carries through to “My First Time in Awhile”; it’s still a sitcom struggling to make its new characters or its new romantic stories more dimensional – but when it continues to focus on its original main characters, Scrubs remains a compelling, if slightly more wistful (if a bit overtly elegiac) version of itself.
The only thing that really feels season premiere-y about “My First Time in Awhile” is that, well, it marks the first time J.D.’s had sex since his divorce, which… I guess is a good way to delineate between the revival’s first two seasons? Without it, “My First Time in Awhile” kind of just feels like a midseason episode of Scrubs, continuing the stories of Cox’s diagnosis and the younger generation’s attempts to find themselves in Sacred Heart – even though there’s a subplot about Sam finding her “new Tosh”, the dichotomy between the show’s generational storylines remains as stark as it did in the first season.
There is, at least that concerted attempt to integrate Dr. Tosh a little more seamlessly into the show’s emerging rhythms (which make sense, given she was the one intern upgraded to the main cast for season two), even though it does so on the back of her character’s flimsy, forced connection with Asher (who at least has facial hair this season, and appears to be carrying himself a bit differently from season one) and what is essentially a Xerox’ed version of Elliot’s arc of self-discovery in the early seasons. Like Elliot, Scrubs did a lot of recalibrating with her character in the first season, leaning harder on her neuroses as the season went on to develop her beyond just a try-hard with an attitude; Sam’s initial appearances were far goofier and less chaotic, there’s a distinct effort that feels a bit derivative (part of this, admittedly, probably comes from recently watching and reviewing the first season of the original, which you can read here), especially when she eventually turns to Dr. Cox for guidance.
However, her arc, as predictable as it may be (or nonsensical – I’m sorry, but the Asher/Sam thing still makes no sense; what does she see in him again?), does provide a nice parallel to J.D., Elliot, and Cox, all of whom find themselves being pushed into new and uncomfortable positions in their careers. These stories, of course, stand out a bit more, because they call back to so many rich storylines from the original series; J.D.’s diagnostic insecurities, Elliot’s will, and Cox’s inability to give up control form the heart of their journey in this episode, as J.D. tries to figure out why Dr. Cox isn’t responding well to his treatments, which the rest of “My First Time in Awhile” examines as it ripples through the Sacred Heart team.
The results are stories that are both simplistic – Elliot confronting Jordan and taking it a bit too far, and Cox reflecting on going from ornery chief of medicine to ornery, helpless patient – but strong enough to give the premiere an unexpectedly emotional shift. And while it’s certainly well written and performed, it feels a bit heavy-handed, even for Scrubs, as its soft-lit, serious-face scenes kind of throw the show’s balance off a bit. It’s not that Scrubs can’t be a serious series – at its best, it was often examining the dichotomy between life and death, using its setting for any number of challenging, even occasionally morbid stories of failure and regret.
But in its best moments, Scrubs always kept comedy close, a tool of both deflection and poignancy that provided such balance and pathos in the show’s best moments (in other moments, like Shirley’s death in season six, it could feel a bit cheap and maudlin). “My First Time in Awhile” certainly doesn’t skew too far in that direction, but the way Cox’s medical journey is interacting with the Scrubs characters has the potential to throw the show out of balance, if it continues to lean so heavily on scenes like the one Cox and Carla have in the breakroom – which, for the record, is a beautiful scene anchored by Carla’s insistence that she’s the one with more experience in this situation, but in the larger mosaic of how Cox’s arc is forming and building, could become incredibly repetitive and cloying if it continues the patterns of the past three episodes.
Regardless, the image of Carla taking Perry’s hand (notice the shift in characters slowly referring to him as Perry instead of Dr. Cox) is a powerful one – and even though the episode really isn’t about Carla and Turk’s marriage, the surprise he plans on the roof for his wife lets the premiere close on a more affirming, familiar moment of how Scrubs can still find interesting new wrinkles to explore in its main characters. The sight of them on the roof, not a single new cast member among them, might portend a bit of where this revival’s alliances continue to lie, but hopefully the attempt to integrate Sam a bit closer into the A story is something Scrubs embraces over its “extended” 10-episode season.
Other thoughts/observations:
- Dr. Park and the female nurse are just gone without a mention, it seems. We also don’t see Blake this entire episode, which just leaves his whole mysterious persona hanging, as well as the moment he shared with Amara in the season finale.
- I’m still not sure what this show is doing with Charlie, but as a lifelong The O.C. loyalist, I’m not going to complain about more Rachel Bilson.
- Sibby: “Snitches get… gift certificates!”
- The nurse who told Cox it was “takey time”? No. Just no.
- Cox, talking about Dr. Cox: “I barely even know who that guy is anymore.”
- nobody is hot enough to be a flat earther, sorry J.D.
- Dashana is barely present, but does get one good line when Sam reveals she was briefly an ‘above the belt lesbian’: “If you only touching blouse, get out this house.”
- The Power Rangers cutaway is decent; Harmless Pervert Todd who cuts the buttcheeks out of his superhero costume, however, is perfection.
- Fake Moby from How I Met Your Mother and Fake Dean from Community J.P. Manoux briefly cameos as Dr. Meeko of the MRI department.