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

Scrubs Season 1, Episode 1 “My First Day”
Written by Bill Lawrence
Directed by Adam Bernstein
Aired October 2, 2001 on NBC

Though mostly told from a first-person perspective, “My First Day” is not only a pilot detailing medical intern John “J.D.” Dorian’s inaugural 31 hour and 13 minute long shift at Sacred Heart Hospital, but the lives of a dozen other people working inside the hospital, all of whom would form the core ensemble of Scrubs over its nine-season, 182-episode run. As one might expect, it is an incredibly busy, distractable pilot, throwing in all sorts of random elements – cutaway gags, thoughtful inner monologues, rom-com cliches, reflections on the healthcare industry – into its 23 minute running time, bursting at the seams with bits and ideas that never really find a consistent rhythm with each other. But when it does find a few seconds to slow down to show off a slightly more reflective version of itself, “My First Day” teases the intriguing mix of heartfelt and absurdist that would become its defining traits of the single-camera comedy over the seasons, and years, to come.

In fact, a lot of the chaos is by design; Bill Lawrence’s script overwhelms both J.D. and the audience, layering on characters, ideas, and jokes as he, along with his best friend (and surgical intern) Chris Turk and newfound nemesis (and fellow medical intern) Elliot, try to navigate their first shifts at Sacred Heart. All three operate from some place of ego, being doctors in the early 2000s and all (J.D. even casually jokes about his eight years of medical debt, an amount that would be about 25% of what most graduates leave school with now), but “My First Day” gets a lot of ground out of simply observing how it manifests in its core trio, specifically contrasting the natural braggadocio of Turk and his fellow surgical interns with the neurotic, occasionally chaotic anxiety of J.D. and Elliot.

Or at least, some ground: “My First Day” gets tied up a bit with its romantic comedy cliches when J.D. immediately crushes on the first hot girl who talks to him at the hospital – which doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for the pilot episode to dig into her character at all. While Turk gets plenty of definition alongside J.D. as the best friend he secretly admires, Elliot is mostly shrill energy with a messy bun and misfitting glasses, a competitive presence that doesn’t really push or challenge J.D. in any way beyond having to tuck his emotional boner in his pants at various points in the episode – even after she screws him over during rounds.

The “will they, won’t they” bug really brings down Elliot’s character; aside from her getting dressed down by Carla, Elliot is mostly introduced through her own exposition – and while Scrubs always prided itself on showing and telling, the telling in this episode feels like a perfunctory checklist of character traits, which don’t remain consistent through the episode. Elliot agrees to go on a date with J.D., then sells him out to Kelso when J.D. gets stuck; they argue in the supply closet after wimping out on their first red code, then she kisses him on the cheek at the end of the day and apologizes… as a character who was already going through a creative rework (Lawrence notes on the DVD commentary they decided to make her less mean and more neurotic early on), Elliot is hard to understand in this first episode, which makes her ever-shifting dynamic with J.D. even harder to comprehend.

J.D. mostly operates out of fear in this first episode; which mostly works for the script, as it allows characters like the whip smart, bitter non-mentor Dr. Perry Cox and his moral counterpart, chief of medicine Bob Kelso to shine as the show’s two differing takes on career healthcare employees. But it also keeps J.D. from feeling like a protagonist in his own story; it’s not until the on call montage during the third act that J.D. stops observing those around him and gets down to the doctoring, limiting our ability to connect with him, other than as a point-of-view character entering a strange, vibrant world of personalities and stories alongside the audience.

Oddly enough, however, its Dr. Cox who feels like the character who gets the shortest stick in “My First Day”; as a byproduct of an incredibly busy pilot, Cox’s behavior isn’t given the context it would as the series continued – which makes him quite an obnoxious presence in his first appearance, even if it’s clear the performance immediately brings an energy to everything around him. Of course, it is eventually revealed that Cox is the “good guy” and Kelso the “bad guy” by the end of the pilot (setting up the classic conflict between hospital doctors and administrators, the kind of stuff mediocre medical dramas have relied on for decades), but the thesis behind this is really only conveyed when Kelso is screaming in J.D.’s face near the episode’s end – which Cox rightly predicted would happen, when he warned J.D. that Kelso was arguably the “most evil man” alive. Though we see his intelligence and a bit of his defeated ego at working in healthcare for decades, Cox’s depth of character is not really even introduced in this hour – which gives a lot for the season to follow to reveal, of course, but it paints such a limited picture of what is undeniably the show’s richest, most rewarding character.

However, where Scrubs is a bit of a mess on a character level, it succeeds in doing two things very well: introducing us to its weird world through its secondary characters, and giving us a strong emotional thoroughline to “buy into” the show – something most modern comedies, especially single-cam, greatly struggle with making feeling even remotely organic. The former quality is probably the most interesting to study – Ted, Todd, and Janitor all give such great color and atmosphere to the world of Sacred Heart, making it really feel like a lived-in setting – but the latter of which is one of the most amazing things about Scrubs: its ability to use humor for emotionally devastating storytelling, the kind of which is not often seen on any type of comedy, single camera or otherwise.

Scrubs never forgets it takes place in a hospital, where doctors are fighting against the inevitable, and tragedy strikes more often than not; Mr. Burski’s death is hardly an impactful one in a larger sense, but J.D.’s inability to reconcile his sudden departure is the pilot’s most raw emotional moment, and one that reveals exactly how Scrubs would be a different kind of medical show (and comedy). After all, shows like ER and the like always built up to a happy ending or a tragedy; in “My First Day,” Mr. Burski dies off-screen in his sleep, removing the melodrama and the agency from its main characters hands: having no control over the life and death of others (or at least, as much as he could control his own), is a powerful realization for J.D. as a doctor, and a human being.

From there, “My First Day” ends a lot closer to the show Scrubs would become then where it started only fifteen minutes earlier. While processing Burski’s death, J.D. gets a visit from Turk, who reveals that his confidence, just like J.D.’s lack of it, comes from a place of fear. “I need you,” he tells J.D., the life-affirming moment that he’s been seeking for the whole episode; and with that emotional support behind him, J.D. finds his second wind to make it through the day.

The episode then ends, with J.D. having a moment with each new member of his medical family, processing the events of the previous 12 hours as he recovers from finally being able to touch a patient, saving a life mere hours after helplessly losing another. Those final moments aren’t bombastic or preachy, despite J.D.’s voice overs; he simply realizes that “I can’t survive on my own,” and even having his best friend for the past decade along for the ride may not be quite enough. He’ll have to trust the strangers around him (well, maybe not the threatening janitor) to survive in a world where tragedy is guaranteed and hope is a sharp double-edged sword, lest he want to spend his life walking into doors and stressing about worst case scenarios.

Scrubs‘s first half hour may not be a perfect one, but those final few minutes foster the atmosphere and emotional pull that would prove to be so crucial throughout the show’s run. For all of the flaws in “My First Day,” those key components are alive and thriving – and it wouldn’t take long for Scrubs to build a world around those strengths, creating one of funnier, more criminally underrated comedies NBC (or any other channel, for that matter) of the 21st century, a series that hasn’t lost any of its appeal since its debut nearly 24 years ago.

Grade: B-

Other thoughts/observations:

• Welcome to Scrubs reviews! With rumors of a revival coming, and the show’s 25th anniversary next year, I thought it was time to revisit the show (at least its early seasons), and see if its particular blend of comedy and pathos still holds up.
  
• “Your butt looks like two Pringles hugging.” Is that a compliment?
  
• Scrubs‘ first cutaway is J.D. racing Elliot, dumping coffee on his face, and running to Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me.”
  
• The sound editing is classic early Scrubs: whip pans and goofy sound effects galore.
  
• Todd High Five Count: 3, all from his introductory scene.
  
• Ted’s introduction is so good: his whiteboard simply has the word “lawsuit” crossed out and the phrase “alcohol + surgery = no-no” written on it, and he ends the scene with his head in his hands.
  
• Resident Dr. Jeff Steadman introduces himself to J.D. and Elliot: “I’m a tool, I’m a tool, I’m a tool, tool, tool.”
  
• J.D. briefly imagines him and Elliot together as a multi-camera sitcom, where he gets to tell their hypothetical son how he first nailed his mom.
  
• Dr. Cox, about administering Tylenol to an elderly patient: “Here’s what you do. Get her to open her mouth, take a handful, and throw it at her. Whatever sticks, that’s the correct dosage.”
  
• Carla’s two big pieces of dialogue are a great microcosm of her two sides: her fun side that defines her early seasons on the show (getting Turk to strip naked before leaving him in the break room), and her aggressive side (which… would unfortunately overcome her character in later seasons), when she admonishes Elliot for gossiping about her.
  
• “Worst case scenario, you kill someone. Absolute worst case.”
  
• Turk considers the deep, defining quote of the surgical team: “One way or another, everyone stops bleeding.”
  
• One scene with Elliot, and J.D. is talking about how she’s his “dream girl”. The most eye-rolling moment of the pilot episode, by a long shot.
  
• Kelso telling J.D. “Don’t you realize you’re nothing but a large pair of scrubs to me” still holds up. Such a great reveal of him as the show’s lightly villainous force, while teasing that Cox may actually be the titular Sacred Heart of the series.
  
• Up next: J.D. tries to bond with Dr. Cox in “My Mentor”.