Second Look: Scrubs Season 1, Episode 2 – “My Mentor”

Scrubs Season 1, Episode 2 “My Mentor”
Written by Bill Lawrence
Directed by Adam Bernstein
Aired October 4, 2001 on NBC

Scrubs, at its best, was a sitcom able to strike an infectious balance between sarcastic and saccharine, a series able to be ridiculous and resonant, often in the same breath. It didn’t always work – particularly as the series went on and its overarching narratives grew longer in the tooth – but when it was able to ride that thin line between brash and heartfelt, there was a certain magic to its energetic collection of straight-faced monologues and cutaway gags. All of those elements, in different ways and states of maturity, are contained within Scrubs‘ second episode, “My Mentor”, even though it’s still too busy and unsteady on its feet for its climactic moments and resolutions to quite stick the landing.

“My Mentor” focuses on a pair of disparate stories, connected to each other through a pair of conflicts briefly explored within “My First Day”; J.D. and his attempts to bond with Dr. Cox over a patient (who is a smoker), and Elliot and Carla’s very public personality clashes. Both stories are united by an interesting idea – that people can’t help but be themselves – but how these two stories play out across its three acts make for a somewhat dissonant affair, especially when one leans into some more complex, reflective qualities, while the other relies on superficiality to resolve its non-conflict.

What does work with “My Mentor” is how it begins to draw in Dr. Cox as a more defined entity than the curt introduction we’re offered in the show’s pilot episode. As J.D. tries to get invested emotionally in his patient, Scrubs begins the process of peeling back the layers of Dr. Cox’s rigid cynicism. When their patient, Will, reveals he smokes 2-3 packs a day, J.D. predictably begins a personal crusade to get the man to quit – a sentiment Dr. Cox doesn’t share, reveling in the visual of Will sneaking a stairway cigarette right after J.D. talks about how much he ‘reached’ him with his pleas.

J.D., being the naive resident he is, thinks Dr. Cox is just lonely, and is lashing out by pretending not to care – and when he shows up at Cox’s apartment with a six-pack to cheer him up, he’s met with some hard truths by Dr. Cox, who does not see his intentions as benevolent, but childish and a bit selfish. “My Mentor” does a great job in this scene detailing the emotional chasm between wet-behind-the-ears J.D. trying to make sense of his new job and the venerable veteran Dr. Cox, who has spent multiple decades dealing with the repetitive, often depressing ins and outs of emergency room work. Cox might be a bitter, arrogant jerk – but he lives life with the clarity of knowing who he is, and the experienced perspective of someone who has been through a lot of painful, frustrating experiences with patients.

The knowledge he reluctantly imparts to J.D. is a critical one; we can’t save people from themselves, and spending our lives trying to fix people will only break us. It’s a great bit of dialogue, and one that quietly informs the less rewarding story of Turk trying to resolve Elliot and Carla’s burgeoning beef so he can get Carla to go out with him. In that story, Elliot and Carla’s strong personalities parallel J.D. and Cox’s – and though it is the one that explores the inherent resolution of its premise, is the part of “My Mentor” that ends up feeling a bit undercooked.

Most of this comes from the J.D./Cox story and its prominence in the episode’s script; as the emotional fulcrum of the episode, Elliot and Carla’s conflict has to provide a lot of comedic relief, while still giving some sort of voice to why its two female leads have gotten off on such a bad foot. Where it lands – in some vague place between white privilege and unrealistic expectations – is something the episode struggles to give voice, especially when it folds it into Turk’s attempts to get Carla’s attention, which culminates in him dressing her down in front of the nursing staff for her admonishment of Elliot.

In sequence, it makes for quite a strange progression; Elliot ignites the conflict by tattling on Carla to Dr. Kelso – and after being presented with an opportunity to apologize, only makes things worse for herself (complete with a great cutaway of her literally digging her own grave). While it speaks to the idea of people not being able to help themselves, “My Mentor” does nothing to explore Carla’s character and her instinctual reactions to Elliot’s presence and behavior; she’s simply mad until Turk tells her to stop acting a fool, and then she’s so blown away, she welcomes Elliot into the fold and gives Turk a time for their first date. It’s a strange bit of plot, one that takes away Carla’s agency in her own story, isolating her for seemingly no reason except to provide some alliterative tension for the episode’s themes.

Regardless, the story does fit within the ethos of the episode, in observing the power of letting go of preconceptions and expectations – in that way, it almost feels like a statement by Scrubs, a young series trying to convince an audience to invest in a series offering a different rhythm and tone than anything else on television at the time. Even in two incredibly busy, surface-level episodes, Scrubs has a lot going on; exploring a group of characters trying to challenge their conceptions of self and others makes a lot of sense for the second episode of a series asking an audience to truly invest in grounded character stories told within the framework of some intensely absurdist comedy.

And while the formula doesn’t quite work in “My Mentor” (especially Turk’s big speech at the end; his conviction of Elliot’s character is a bit underdeveloped), it’s a noble effort for the notoriously difficult-to-pull-off second episode, its attempts to mix humor and pathos occasionally finding a bit of momentum, especially when its focus turns to the developing relationship between Dr. Cox and J.D. Of course, it wouldn’t take long for Scrubs to turn this mix of detached pessimism and earnest heart into something potent; for a second episode, it’s a solid first attempt at slowly looking past the pilot’s mechanics into what the series could potentially offer emotionally.

Grade: B-

Other thoughts/observations:

• Janitor, to J.D.: “No, seriously… you can come over to my humble house and point out things that are cheap.”
  
• High Five Count: One lonely high five this week. “The Todd will show himself some love.”
  
• Cox, admiring Days of our Lives: “The breasts are probably fake, but by God, those tears are real.”
  
• Cox’s temporary apartment in this episode is such a horrible, cheap looking set. Thankfully, the show would quickly move him into something with much more personality and room to shoot. The claustrophobic shots on the couch, along with the horrible gray color scheme, is extremely distracting.
  
• What Carla says to J.D.: “You tell her to watch her little behind, because if she doesn’t, I’m going to kick all the blonde dye off her head.”
  
• “When did you meet Morgan Freeman?” “That’s my mom!”
  
• Up next: Dr. Cox encourages Elliot to challenge the patriarchy in “My Best Friend’s Mistake”.