Second Look: Scrubs Season 1, Episode 3 – “My Best Friend’s Mistake”

Scrubs Season 1, Episode 3 “My Best Friend’s Mistake”
Written by Eric Weinberg
Directed by Adam Bernstein
Aired October 9, 2001 on NBC

With its ensemble neatly in place, “My Best Friend’s Mistake” is the first episode of Scrubs that begins to push outwards from J.D. a bit towards Turk and Elliot. It feels like Scrubs exploring the studio space within the trappings of buddy comedies and rom-coms – and smartly, does so without compromising its J.D.-centric perspective, using his naivety as a way to inform Scrubs‘s attempt to subvert expectations with its secondary protagonists. And for the most part, it works; although it would be the show’s fourth episode that would prove to be its watershed moment, its third episode is an amusing experiment in the young series spreading its wings a little bit to figure out what makes its characters tick.

“My Best Friend’s Mistake” is largely able to accomplish this by how well it has defined J.D. in its first two episodes; anxious, lacking in confidence, and self-centered to a degree where he often misses (or at least, misunderstands) what’s happening around him. In the opening scene, J.D.’s flirting with Elliot leads to her asking for a kiss, “My Best Friend’s Mistake” frames it from J.D.’s perspective; he’s finally won over the girl he’s crushing on – but when their kiss gets pre-empted by Dr. Cox coming in the room and killing the vibe, J.D. puts himself on a 48-hour time limit to lock down the missed kiss – or be doomed to the friend zone forever (his words, not mine).

Immediately, “My Best Friend’s Mistake” centers us once again on J.D.’s point of view – but unlike “My First Day” or “My Mentor”, “My Best Friend’s Mistake” uses his perspective to unseat the expectations he, and by proxy the audience, have placed on Turk and Elliot. With Elliot, in comes in the simple form of him misreading signals, of mistaking Elliot’s flirting and desire for closeness as influenced by his behavior, rather than Elliot seeking a reprieve from the loneliness of an overworked intern; it’s a simple, nuanced misunderstanding, but an important building block in the episode to follow, in which J.D. continuously misinterprets what’s happening around him.

It’s most acutely defined with Turk, of course: J.D.’s clinginess to Turk is something Scrubs would waffle with throughout the series, exploring the pros and cons of J.D.’s attachment to his best friend, and how often their dependence feels one-sided. As detailed, J.D. has struggled with his confidence since his first day at Sacred Heart; but even though he’s starting to get a little comfortable, he still lacks identity, in a way that the basketball-playing, nurse-dating Turk clearly has had no issues finding at their new job. And as Scrubs makes very clear, J.D. and Turk see the world differently; so while Turk is continuously trying to establish himself outside of his friendship, J.D.’s narrow, anxious sense of self leads him down paths where he doesn’t kiss a girl when he wants to, whines about his insecurities, and folds whenever Dr. Cox challenges or breaks him down.

He’s simply a man who doesn’t know himself, nor does he quite have the confidence yet to find it; and although that doesn’t necessarily make for the most captivating protagonist, it does help paint a realistic, dimensional character, on a show where the writers are ok with characters not being 100% likeable or unlikeable. Nobody’s perfect; J.D. is a good friend but a bad listener, and Turk is a bad listener but a good friend – and this leads them to an interesting place, when a patient gets sick after a procedure, and J.D. has to contend with the possibility that Turk may be responsible.

It’s an interesting choice to see J.D. try and judge Turk’s potential culpability by his perceived health of their friendship, after Laverne notes the patient is probably getting sick because “some young surgeon left something inside that man” – even if it’s not a big surprise when it’s revealed Turk discovered J.D.’s mistake and fixed it, rather than the other way around. Turk isn’t exactly a mature human being, but he’s also not weaponizing his friendship with J.D. in the way we hear J.D. do in his internal monologues; though “My Best Friend’s Mistake” doesn’t get to really let this idea blossom, it picks up from a few specific notes of the pilot episode, and turns them into interesting character dynamics for the series to explore later on.

I also like what “My Best Friend’s Mistake” does with Elliot, pushing away from the rude, competitive Elliot into someone a bit more malleable and engaging. Where she was introduced as opportunistic and self-centered, she is presented as headstrong and incredibly gullible, which plays out in hilarious fashion when Dr. Cox jokingly convinces her to stand up to Dr. Kelso, who is calling all the women around the hospital “sweetheart” (and clearly has done so for the past forty years). By pulling Elliot away from J.D. for much of the episode, it allows Scrubs to start pulling at the neuroses that would come to define her character in these early seasons, rather than allow her to immediately fall into a trap of being the one-note sitcom love interest – it makes all the difference in an episode that begins and ends the way “My Best Friend’s Mistake” does, with J.D. eventually missing his window and falling into the “friend zone” with Elliot, relieving writers and audience from having to solely define Elliot by her romantic proximity to J.D.

Another fortunate byproduct of Elliot’s plot is how it continues to help establish the characters of Cox and Kelso, even though they’re decidedly in supporting roles in this episode. Cox pushing Elliot to confront Kelso might just seem like an easy avenue for repeating beats of “My First Day” – but it really allows us to see a bit more how the interns respond to the different, equally self-centered approaches to the profession the two bring (and how far either of them will go to give themselves a good laugh).

There are a lot of signature touches around “My Best Friend’s Mistake” that would become mainstays on Scrubs: the fantastic camera work (one long, uninterrupted shot follows J.D. running down a hallway, including a great pan and drop when he trips and falls out of frame) and the uncomfortably close friendship between Turk and J.D. that comes to light through a medical case. Sprinkled about the trappings of early sitcom episodes and the challenges of finding engaging storytelling avenues are some of the qualities that would come to light throughout the show’s run – though without the understanding and emotional connection that comes with spending time with these characters, the subtler moments of “My Best Friend’s Mistake” may be lost to new viewers. The blueprint is there, however, and although this episode is hardly the best of what Scrubs has to offer, its consistency with its foundational elements across its first trio of entries, and the adaptability it shows with Elliot throughout this episode, are encouraging signs Scrubs is walking confidently in the right direction.

Grade: B-

Other thoughts/observations:

• I like this episode uses characters singing Erasure’s “A Little Respect” as a way to show connection throughout the hospital – however, its applicability thematically is questionable (and at the very best, it’s inconsistent).
  
• J.D., to himself: “Try not to sound too much like a girl.” J.D., out loud: “I miss you so much it hurts sometimes.”
  
• Who else is in Elliot’s friend zone? A high school classmate, a co-worker at Penguin yogurt, and Becky, J.D.’s teammate during the basketball game he plays in against Turk. “She’ll come around!”
  
• The sound effect when Turk jumps was one frequently used in slow motion shots on Clone High, and also famously appeared in a Chappelle’s Show sketch.
  
• One understated thing about the first season of Scrubs are its night settings; not only do night shifts add to the dramatic tension, but it allows for opening shots like this one, where a lone light in the foreground bathes Elliot and J.D. in a backdrop of darkness. It’s haunting and suggestive, and I can’t get enough of it in early episodes, even if its just a dimly-lit background during a conversation in a hallway.
  
• Cox, to Elliot: “And you, you one-woman neurotic freak show, take your blah blah to the blahologist!”
  
• Ted teaching the difference between accident and lawsuit is great. “Say it with me; accident, lawsuit. Accident, lawsuit.”
  
• Janitor: “You look unhappy. I like that.”
  
• Becky from the basketball game is also in Elliot’s Friend Zone: “She’ll come around!”
  
• High Five Count: a rare 1 1/2. Todd is actually the 1/2 here: him and Turk share a quasi-dap outside of the surgery room. The high five comes from Carla and Nurse Roberts, when Carla is teaching J.D. how to have attitude.
  
• “What comes before Part B? Part-ayy!”
  
• This episode was written by Eric Weinberg, long time co-EP of Scrubs. He unfortunately spent 68 episodes in the same position on FX’s Anger Management.
  
• Scrubs takes a leap forward with “My Old Lady”.