Second Look: Scrubs Season 1, Episode 9 – “My Day Off”

Scrubs Season 1, Episode 9 “My Day Off”
Written by Janae Bakken
Directed by Elodie Keene
Aired November 20, 2001 on NBC

It’s Thanksgiving week on Scrubs – but instead of a holiday episode, Scrubs takes the opportunity to flip the tables on J.D. and Cox in “My Day Off”, and force the rest of its main ensemble into a moment of reflection on how their perceptions of self have affected their ability to treat patients (and their friends). Although it doesn’t feature any turkey dinners or commentaries on Black Friday shopping, “My Day Off” uses J.D.’s first admittance to Sacred Heart (as a patient) to tie these ideas together with the appropriately-timed concept of family, in what makes for one of the more more unassuming highlights of its first season.

When J.D. ends up in the care of his friend and colleagues after developing appendicitis, Scrubs uses this is a precursor to quickly reverse some of its still-growing dynamics; the doctor becomes the patient (and his colleague Elliot becomes J.D.’s doctor), while Dr. Cox’s own patient,former Sacred Heart chief of medicine Dr. Benson, similarly turns him into the J.D. of his own mentor-student relationship. In doing this, “My Day Off” watches as many of its characters attempt to step out of their presumed boundaries, an idea that is immediately brought to the forefront when JD says Turk is “still the same goofball who tells me to be cooler”.

Even Elliot finds herself entrenched in these themes, when an uppity patient (played by Michael McDonald, no less) tries to help with her awkward, painful and ice-handed ways with patients. And with Turk, “My Day Off” makes this idea personal, when J.D. isn’t comfortable with Turk performing his appendix surgery, because he still doesn’t entirely take him seriously as a surgeon (though I can’t entirely blame him for being in a slightly uncomfortable, fever-laden state of anxiety… probably doesn’t help when Turk moonwalks into the room, chanting “I get to cut you open”).

With all of its characters, though, it filters this idea of perception through a very simple lens; how can you be your best self, when you are still fixated on how everyone else feels about you? This has been a core idea of Scrubs since J.D.’s first monologues in “My First Day”; however, “My Day Off” ambitiously tries to crystallize this idea through all of its characters (save Carla, the most self-assured personality of the group by far) – and then when they’re dishonest with themselves (mostly when Carla presents them with nosy, if helpful, advice they choose to ignore), Scrubs appropriately punishes them for their actions in the third act.

Now, the balance of all three stories isn’t quite evenly distributed – as it often does, Scrubs doesn’t equally spread its emotional resonance equally across its plotlines, no matter how much the J.D. Wrap It Up Monologue at the end of many of these attempts do. However, the emotional undercurrent running through Turk, Elliot, and Cox – that is, each character struggling against the perceptions of themselves entrenched in their own mind, and others – embodies these ideas with life, finding a neat thematic parallel to help drive home the resolving moments of “My Day Off”, even if the emotional tambors in Elliot and Cox’s stories are wildly different (just to use one example).

Of all these stories, Cox’s is the best – unsurprisingly, McGinley is up to the task of carrying the emotional weight of the episode, when Dr. Benson tells Cox that the most disappointing part of his return to Sacred Heart was seeing Cox in the exact same place as he’s been, because he’s unable to even “play the game” a little bit so he can have a real impact on the hospital. Through Cox, “My Day Off” catapults from a decent episode to a very, very good one, mostly because of how well McGinley embodies Cox’s need to consistently undermine himself – as he points out with his friendship with Carla – unscrewing so much of Cox’s backstory without ever saying a word in direct reference to it.

We can feel how desperate he is to show Benson that he’s a good doctor (even trying to parade J.D. around as his shiny protege), how hard he wants to impress Benson with his lone ranger, fuck the world attitude – and we can fill all that slip away when Cox realizes Benson’s disappointed in seeing him still playing pranks on Kelso and toeing the line with the hospital’s board. Cox’s “hard” character comes from a place of great emotional insecurity, and Dr. Benson (in his only appearance in the series) ends up an incredibly effective vessel for Scrubs to explore that in Cox, making this a nice spiritual follow-up to “My Bad”.

Oddly, “My Day Off” doesn’t try to reach so far with the other resolutions of the episode; J.D. and Turk make up rather effortlessly – and once Elliot helps out one single, if engaging, patient, she begins to feel better about her performance as a doctor (though this is a bit of a hint towards stories to play out later this season, and next). However, the linking idea between them of shedding comfortable, simplistic identities for something a little more nuanced is an exciting one, and one that brings the idea of Thanksgiving into the final act into a meaningful way, as they all gather at the Free Clinic to celebrate their lonely holiday together, with an appropriate closing joke about everyone alcohol and awkward silences being the hallmark of a family holiday.

The idea of never allowing oneself to be tied down by a certain flaw or preconception, especially around those you consider family (ala where one is most comfortable) is a powerful one; how “My Day Off” expresses it, in those final moments, is contemplative and almost poetic – and even though ultimately, the episode’s comedic intentions outweigh the dramatic, it doesn’t lessen the impact of a powerful Cox story and a number of intriguing examinations of the now-established personas of Sacred Heart.

Grade: B+

Other thoughts/observations:

• Cox, to J.D.: “Don’t do that annoying thing… where you talk.”
  
• There are a couple great Fat Albert cutaways in this episode; the references to Golden Era sitcoms have increased in recent weeks, and I’m here for it.
  
• Dr. Cox wears a baseball jersey for the entire episode…. all to service one tiny bit with Kelso. The visual gag just isn’t worth it; it’s more distracting than intended, and the joke doesn’t really register.
  
• Elliot: “If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the supply closet eating sugar packets.”
  
• Elliot, again: “I don’t want anyone touching me unless we’re going to have sex. Even then, I don’t want them to over do it.” People from Connecticut, amirite?!
  
• Turk, to J.D.: “I want to be the one inside you.”
  
• Sadly, the high five count in this episode is a big fat zero, leaving our Official Count at 6.5 Todd High Fives, and 7.5 Total High Fives.
  
• I love that Turk stitched his initials into J.D. Not ethical, but hilarious, and a reminder that while Turk is growing and changing, there is a reason J.D. still sees the young goofball he spent his college years with.
  
• Up next: J.D. and Carla’s friendship hits a rough patch in “My Nickname”.