Second Look: Scrubs Season 1, Episode 15 – “My Bed, Banter and Beyond”

Scrubs Season 1, Episode 15 “My Bed, Banter and Beyond”
Written by Gabrielle Allan
Directed by Lawrence Trilling
Aired February 5, 2002 on NBC

From Cheers to Friends to New Girl, much of modern sitcom television followed a general romantic blueprint: spend the first season flirting, the second season dating, the third season breaking up, then “getting back out there” for an indefinite amount of time until ratings start to flounder terminally (or its time for a high-profile series finale, of course). As a series building a penchant for subverting its own genre, it’s not surprising Scrubs would take an atypical approach to J.D. and Elliot’s inevitable pairing – however, their relationship playing out over the course of 22 minutes, against the backdrop of some incredibly strange, The Office-esque framing, makes for a strange, though undeniably affecting, episode.

Beginning a few minutes (presumably, wink wink) after the end of “My Drug Buddy”, Scrubs immediately drops the whole “J.D. dates a drug-addled social worker”, following the two as they eat pizza and lounge in bed for the first 24 hours of their relationship. In between that, “My Bed Banter and Beyond” plays out the first two weeks of J.D. and Elliot’s accelerated relationship, against a backdrop of the other characters – Carla, Turk, Cox, and Kelso – reflecting on their own experiences in love, both personal and professional, in “interviews” for a psychology research project being done at Sacred Heart.

Some of these cutaways simply provide some texture; Kelso talking about Enid’s “choice” to be a housewife, Carla seeing a doctor help her mother, and Turk’s history of getting into sports are great bits of character, but they mostly exist to reinforce things we already know about our main characters. Through Cox, however, “My Bed Banter and Beyond” provides a much more somber bridge for the parallel Elliot/J.D. plots of the episode, basically narrating the ups and downs of their short-lived relationship, as he reflects on the failings of his own love life. Since we’ve already spent time examining their failed marriage in numerous episodes, Cox’s reflections almost become a distraction to the Elliot/J.D. story happening around it, as the microcosm of their brief relationship pales in comparison to the existential pain we’ve watched Cox experience all season as he continues to pick up the remaining pieces of his ego following his pre-pilot split from Jordan.

How strong Cox’s scenes are undercut the tension of Elliot and J.D.’s story a bit, as it becomes obvious pretty quickly that there’s no happy ending awaiting this couple at the end of their pizza grease-laden sex romp. To its credit, their plight is captured in fairly nuanced fashion, as it explores how two co-workers date, how two friends can struggle to fall in love with each other – and how, as Cox so presciently points out, the odds were pretty stacked against them anyway, given that 90% of couples break up and those who “make it” still end up alone nearly half the time. Given that, their arc is poetic as any, their initial infatuation and recontextualizing of their personal and professional dynamics slowly building into indifference, annoyance, and straight out regret and anger as their idiosyncrasies quickly prove to be incredibly incompatible. It’s best represented by J.D.’s smarmy little laugh, which endears Elliot before quickly becoming the bane of her existence, but “My Bed Banter and Beyond” does a lot of legwork to dig to the heart of their issues: Elliot realizing that J.D.’s affability comes with its own pros and cons, and J.D. exacerbating Elliot’s anxiety with his immature, almost condescending attitude towards her.

Ultimately, the acceleration of their relationship makes sense, because it’s able to lean on the fact they already know each other so well, the only thing the episode needs to do is observe how sex completely changes the scenario for them. And, of course, why sometimes its better to be surprised and frustrated (Turk’s frustrations with suddenly falling in love a few episodes back) than to sit in furious anticipation of quirks and flaws you already know exist. To do so, “My Bed Banter and Beyond” offers two fantastic counterpoints with Carla/Turk and Cox, the failure of the latter informing the budding success of the former. Couples need to push each other, yes, but they also need to be able to work with each other’s flaws, accept them rather than be drowned in them. It’s not a major theme here, but Turk accepting Carla’s need to control the world around her is a major theme in later seasons, a frustration he needs to reconcile, and eventually does (and/or the show just reduces her character to the point it doesn’t matter) – and is a great counterpoint to Cox’s failed relationship, and a major signpost that J.D. and Elliot aren’t destined to end well.

(which, side note – anyone notice Elliot and J.D. aren’t wearing wedding rings in any of the promotional material for season 10? Fingers crossed this means they got divorced.)

Here, “My Bed Banter” offers why Cox wasn’t able to make his relationship work with Jordan, with the powerful, difficult observation we all face at some point in life, that loving someone intensely doesn’t equate to happiness, especially with yourself. Happiness comes from within, and without some satisfaction of self, we have no chance of being able to wholeheartedly accept someone else: Cox couldn’t do it, just like J.D. and Elliot can’t do it – but Carla and Turk can, offering “My Bed Banter and Beyond” a beacon of hope in an otherwise challenging story about what makes relationships work, balancing that with the counterpoint of how those same assets can be ticking time bombs.

Though I’m not a particular fan of how Scrubs upsets its episodic formula for the sake of this story – primarily, the “mockumentary” interviews, which are effective but so quiet and isolated, they feel like they’re from a different series – the format of the Kelso-mandated interviews to expedite Scrubs‘s ability to observe the emotional states of its main characters, a litmus test of sorts for the show’s progress with some of its Big Picture ideas of season one. Smartly, J.D. and Elliot dating is only but a small cog in that machine, because spread out across a whole season, this story could fall privy to typical sitcom cliches as it drags and contorts to fill the narrative needs of an entire season’s worth of plot. Condensed into a single half hour, “My Bed Banter and Beyond” is a surprisingly effective story about every stage of love, from infatuation, to heartbreak, to the lingering dissatisfaction that always remains when reflecting on a failed relationship with someone we truly loved.

Grade: B+

Other thoughts/observations:

• There can’t be anything more awkward than watching Basic Instinct with your grandmother (save for any Lars Von Trier film).
  
• Continuity break: the janitor is seen messing with Nurse Roberts, the first (and probably only) time he’s seen interacting with anyone else in the first season.
  
• “Dance for the puppet master!”
  
• High Five Count: Todd returns for a strong double five, celebrating his plan to ask Elliot out (he fails), bringing the season count to
  
• “All I heard was lesbian.”
  
• Enid taught art to underprivileged children? Kelso’s interviews are wonderfully evil (“sometimes, she laughs so hard she cries a little”), but that little nugget always sticks out to me as ringing false, especially in later seasons, when Enid basically turns into an annoying, sentient potato.
  
• Who doesn’t love Newbie Theater? Dr. Cox, who could care less about the “whiny, neurotic, extremely pale sex” J.D. and Elliot are probably having.
  
• Anyone surprised at how prude and neurotic Elliot is at sex need to just remember she’s a Republican.
  
• Network-friendly sex montage!
  
• Kelso: “Sometimes when I call her that, she laughs so hard she cries a little.” Scrubs usually is quite sweet with the underlying nature of his marriage… this moment is an uncharacteristically dark one, even for him.
  
• “Why don’t we get all my friends in a room and we’ll fight your friend?” is a better burn than it needed to be.
  
• The four reasons someone becomes a doctor, according to Cox: chicks, money, power, and chicks.
  
• Kelso also talks about his “jackass” father who became a small town doctor and would take food and other goods as payments. Guessing Kelso isn’t one for the Best Medicine life.
  
• The vagina transplant fantasy is so silly, but so essential. “We’re not going to make it in time!”
  
• Todd High Five Count: The Todd returns with a strong double high five this week, bringing his personal total to 11, with the full season total resting at 13.
  
• Up next: Death and anger provide the backdrop for “My Heavy Meddle”.