The opening two episodes of Scrubs‘ second season have firmly established it as Scrubs Redux, mostly repurposing old plots through new characters in a way that feels almost obligatory next to the more inquisitive, emotional stories offered to the OG generation of Sacred Heart. There’s some pros and cons to that; in “My Mentee”, it’s mostly a con, as the show’s naked retreading of old stories with Sam and Dashana fails to register alongside J.D.’s more meaningful attempts to circumvent insurance and the Sacred Heart board for Dr. Cox’s expensive treatments, and the more manipulative, tacked-on emotional resolutions offered J.D., Turk, and Elliot in the episode’s final moments.
As the title suggests, “My Mentee” is almost exclusively about the central trio of doctors (and now, chief of medicine) as they embrace Sacred Heart’s tradition as a training hospital, and begin to ingratiate characters like Sam, Dashana, and newcomer Grant Summer, the chief of residents J.D. sets his eyes (and heart) on guiding throughout the episode. Unsurprisingly, these characters become catalysts for the Big 3 to further explore themselves, which really only exacerbates the growing dichotomy between the two generations – which is expressly by design, given some of the comments by show creatives, but still feels like a backwards approach to building something that is sustainable, or has any potential beyond being mindless nostalgia. A cynical read, which I’m trying to avoid, feels like Scrubs brought back its best character, only to use him as a mawkish catalyst both for nostalgia and a tacked-on plot that comes across a lot more manipulative than is obviously intended.
J.D.’s pursuit of Grant as his mentee is the worst of these remixed plots, simply because it relies so heavily on the Gay J.D. (Gay-D?) jokes that dominated the latter seasons of Scrubs. Without Turk on the receiving end of that dynamic, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for “My Mentee” to make these jokes land, or more importantly, to give Grant some autonomy and definition as a character. So when J.D. tries to bring him under his wing, by trying to convince him to help admit Cox as a patient, despite not having any justification to actually do so. So when Grant goes and reports him to Sibby, it feels like an empty plot machination, rather than a demarcation moment for Grant’s amorphous personality; it just makes J.D. look like he still hasn’t learned anything about being a mentor over the past decade, while reducing the humorous parts of his story to some of the most reductive, lazily miscalibrated jokes from Scrubs‘s worst seasons.
Turk and Elliot’s stories fare a bit better, if only because where it places them are more natural reflections of their character’s evolution over the past two decades. I liked the theory of Elliot’s arc, which follows her getting frustrated at Sam for potentially being interested in medical disciplines that Elliot herself was never able to experience. It’s just too cute for its own good; it isn’t enough that Sam hears the exact same gender-based spiel that Elliot herself faced in “My Own Personal Jesus” – but Sam also has to express interest in endocrinology, the exact same discipline Elliot spent five days in at the beginning of season five (and never returned to, being mostly consumed by J.D. or Keith-related plots for the rest of the main series). While I really like the generational divide being defined by Elliot’s regret, the parallels it draws aren’t just simple, but a carbon copy of what came before, rehashing the exact same plot points without much reflection on it for what it means to Elliot. There’s a slight nod towards Sam being more personable and natural than Elliot, but Scrubs explicitly leans away from that so it can have Sam act as a mirror of Elliot’s professional arc… all of which to lead Elliot to what seems to be a subplot about having a medical podcast, a subplot I cannot possibly express how uninterested I would be in seeing.
By the same token, Turk realizing he’s aging and has possibly reached the peak of his medical and physical skills, opens up strongly, tying his frustrations at losing a stitching exercise to Dashana back to the existential conflicts teased at in the revival’s earliest episodes (and then not returned to). But in doing so, it reduces Dashana – one of the revival’s only semi-defined characters – to nothing but a pale reflection of young, confident Turk; there’s no room for nuance, no room for Dashana to exist as anything more than a delivery device for Turk’s story – which ultimately needs a heavy lift from Cox at the end to really tap into its poignancy.
Which brings me to Cox’s presence in “My Mentee”, in what feels like a quickly-forming crutch for the series to lean on. After nearly twenty minutes of story, Cox wraps it all up for Turk, Elliot, and J.D. – not in the way he used to, by reluctantly and gruffly guiding J.D. to the knowledge he needs to grow. No, instead he just explains everything directly to Turk, Elliot, and J.D. – and because he is now facing his own mortality, Scrubs can conveniently soften him with moments like when the camera cuts to look directly at his wordless face, so we can see the tears forming in his eyes. It’s an incredible performance by McGinley, who has made this older, more Carhartt-laden version of Cox just as poignant as he always was; but his speeches, which have only further minimized the new generation of Scrubs interns, are being tasked with carrying a lot more of the emotional weight, the show relying on his wisdom and his frailty for poignancy, in ways that don’t feel naturalistic to how he’s been utilized for the previous 180+ appearances of the character.
I even enjoy where the episode ends up, where J.D. puts his position on the line to admit Dr. Cox (who opens “My Mentee” by pointing out that his outpatient treatments cost $35,000 each) and forces him, along with Nurse Dubois, to ride back into Sacred Heart in a wheelchair, signifying he’s finally ready to let others carry at least a bit of the load for him. I can even recognize how it ties the episode together, returning the show back to its roots by flipping the J.D./Cox dynamic on its head (which the series has done in season two, and season five, and… you get the point); but the way it is presented, as a stand-in for resolutions to other stories with other characters, just feels like it is cheapening Dr. Cox’s presence and reducing him to a button for Instant Emotion it can press over and over again (it also feels like they are teeing up a plotline to kill off Dr. Cox at the end of the season or in a potential third season, which…. not even going there). And that’s the theme of the episode, and how I’m feeling about season two so far; I want to like it, but its reliance on being pure nostalgia bait while leaving its new characters underdeveloped and mostly on the sidelines is exactly the direction I’d hope season two would avoid; after the opening episodes of the revival suggesting a series looking for a new direction, the second season’s opening episodes have backtracked in ways that might make the series more familiar, but feel imitative and reductive in ways similar to most reboots of recent vintage.
Other thoughts/observations:
- Todd has a mentee! He’s not ready for the big league dick jokes yet, though.
- Tamera Mowry-Housley has a brief guest appearance as a pediatrics doctor who tries to recruit Sam…. very jarring, unless we’re going to see her again?
- Love that Turk plays A Tribe Called Quest in surgery. The classics are classics for a reason!
- “Her gay-dar is set to church mode.” Honestly, I’m enjoying Francois more now that he’s a solo act.
- Flavor Flav cameo!
- Really like the show hinting towards the more ambitious version of Elliot from the show’s earliest episodes.
- I’ll say it again: please no medical podcast subplots; I don’t want to see Dr. Mike on Scrubs.