“My Last Day” opens with a shot mirroring the first of the season – except this time, it’s J.D. preparing for his final day as an intern, reflecting on the year that was as the cast of Scrubs appears in his bathroom mirror. It’s a distinct choice for the Scrubs season finale, setting up an episode that mostly spends its time recapping the first season, through the lens of an ineffective patient story and a cliffhanger that feels both redundant, and a few degrees more melodramatic than necessary (especially considering the specific trio of storylines referred to in the season’s final scene). Fortunately, what followed wasn’t the last impression of Scrubs viewers would got – had this been a series, rather than season, finale, “My Last Day” would go down as one of the more disappointing Scrubs entries from a wildly entertaining, ambitious first season.
Perhaps the strangest choice of “My Last Day” is that, after setting up a story where J.D., Elliot, and Turk team up to help a returning patient without health insurance (J.D.’s patient from “My First Day”), the series finale hinges itself on Jordan Sullivan’s ego, which turns the season finale into a much more passive observation of its characters and where they are on their journey, as it passively observes the growing list of criticisms leveled at her by others around the hospital. But instead of using Jordan’s presence as a way to bring poignancy and closure to the season’s running stories, she’s treated as an agent of chaos, waiting until Mr. Bober’s case is resolved and the crew is celebrating the ends of their internship, until she comes in and blows up every recurring subplot in the course of about forty seconds.
So after passively observing its central trio of main characters (and mostly sidelining Cox in a strange, out-of-character story where he considers groveling for a potential promotion), “My Last Day” abandons what it is trying to say about its characters and their growth, for a surprisingly typical sitcom series finale, complete with the sudden front-seating of a bunch of subplots that for the most part, wouldn’t amount to anything in the second season (after all, Cox’s crush on Carla is dropped like a hot potato and Jordan sleeping with J.D. is largely forgotten; Elliot and J.D. would continue to be an item, of course, to the point even the revival couldn’t stop dealing with it). While one can see what the episode was going for – showing the growth of its characters through their shared victory – the execution of the scene feels off, undercutting anything it was trying to achieve with its main characters, for a plot twist that springs from a conversation Jordan has with Cox that, in the large scheme of things, really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
That’s just kind of theme of the episode; from Cox’s sudden softness to Elliot’s passivity (outside of the one moment she confronts Jordan and dresses her down, the catalytic moment for the episode’s inevitable conclusion), Scrubs spends the final either reinforcing the most simplistic traits of its characters, or presenting its conflicts with such rigidity that it renders most of it one-dimensional and uninspired. Even more frustrating is how the promise of the premise (which observes its doctors as both empathetic and self-obsessed) sets it up for a much more dynamic episode; instead, “My Last Day” is incredibly content to be static, even when it is presumably “shaking things up” with Jordan’s season-ending monologue.
That final scene, which is really only one of two with any substance in the finale, is one of the more disappointing resolving moments of the entire season: it doesn’t feel like an organic culmination of events, but instead a solution to the question “Well, we have too many story lines to wrap up in 22 minutes – what do we do?” Cliffhangers are often a terrible choice for comedies – interrupting the status quo of a comedy is hardly handled well, and are usually abandoned quickly, often out of sheer necessity (lest a series end up like New Girl in its later seasons); “My Last Day” hits all the sour notes of a finale laden with unnecessary cliffhangers, and it leaves the episode designed to wrap up the season with a neat bow, with a wildly unsatisfying conclusion. J.D. sitting alone at the table just feels empty; less a result of meaningful climatic events, and more a byproduct of an over-engineered non-ending.
It’s too bad, because the fringes of “My Last Day” hint towards something much greater and meaningful. However, like numerous episodes preceding it, Scrubs is still finding its way, juggling its many individual stories and struggling to find balance between them all. Later seasons would (mostly) do a better job than much of freshman year did, but as the 24th of 24 episodes in the series, the first Scrubs finale proves the series was still not (and maybe might never really be) ready to handle such a heavy load of critical character developments at the same time, rendering much of what happens a forgettable, funny (but surprisingly bitter) mess, closing out an otherwise impressive, consistently improving first season of comedy on a particularly underwhelming note.
Other thoughts/observations:
- “Hello, Jordan. To what do we owe the horror?”
- Turk and Carla are fighting again? Kind of! About what? Who cares!
- “Do it, Ted. Just do it.”
- “Todd did bad?”
- Jordan’s approach to sex is illuminating: “Sex is for making babies and revenge.”
- Cox actually matures quite a bit in this episode, showing Kelso he can make decisions to both help the hospital and his future. The episode does not reward him for this.
- While I appreciate the consistency of Cox’s self-defeatism, how he lays into Jordan to ruin the good thing they have going is a bit too heavy-handed here.
- The cycle of hatred never ends: the Janitor picks a new victim with the door bit from the pilot, though I have a feeling it will be a short-lived obsession for ol’ Jan.
- This would not be the only season to end with a Cox meltdown; this one, relatively speaking, is pretty minor.
- Final Todd High Five Count: Only one for three in the finale. Denied by not one, but two see-through surfaces (J.D.’s mirror and the operating room!), but gets a Last Day Five from J.D. Total: 14 successful high fives (out of 18 total across the whole cast). Not too shabby!
- And that wraps up (finally) the Second Look at Scrubs‘ first season. I will be finishing out the rest of season ten’s episodes over the next couple weeks, and will be covering season eleven when it returns this fall. Want to see a Second Look of season two? Let me know in the comments!