Following the complete creative recalibration of “My Best Friend’s Barbecue”, Scrubs picked a perfect time to integrate Dr. Cox back into the world of Sacred Heart – and smartly, for the first two acts his presence is mostly an observatory one, giving the revival a bit of a moment to reflect on what it’s tried to accomplish across its incredibly abbreviated first season. And while Dr. Cox’s return is a welcome one, especially when the episode gives way to a powerful, emotional third act, his sudden reappearance also points out the stark contrasts of what is working, and isn’t, in what’s been a fairly rushed attempt to mash two generations of characters together in the span of a half-dozen episodes.
Adopting the format of “My Old Lady”, where Scrubs explored the parallel journeys of three uniquely unlucky Sacred Heart patients to memorable effect, initially feels like a bit of a cheap, reductive imitation for “My Odds”; after all, where this story is clearly heading from the get-go is something fundamental about J.D. and Cox – so when it immediately splits into a trio of patient stories centered on the new generation of Scrubs, it feels like an episode walking itself into a very obvious, avoidable trap of trying to recapture lightning in a bottle with dissimilar ingredients, especially as it leans into the “rule of thirds” trope that it was obviously going to subvert at some point later in the episode.
Two of these plots – Asher/Turk’s patient and Park/Blake’s patient – are definitely the episode’s weakest points. It’s fairly telling that Asher and Turk spend most of their time in a storage room, playing a game to distract themselves; as it has proven time and time again, Scrubs has the least to say about Asher to date, his character boiling down to his mousiest traits in moments of crisis or definition… which is exactly what happens in this episode, as he struggles to both compartmentalize his patients and to execute the simple mechanics of Turk’s mannequin-dunking game. There’s just not much here, especially when there’s so much more exciting, consequential events happening all around them; I get wanting to have a lighter, more weightless story, but it’s only in fleeting moments where Turk’s superstitious side surfaces that the story even gets remotely interesting, or finds a way to connect itself to the other, more existential stories happening in “My Odds”.
Park and Blake’s story had the potential to be the most interesting of the three – not because it was about a patient with a challenging, evasive diagnosis, but because it finally gave Dr. Park someone to interact with in the show besides J.D. or Turk. This story kind of dies on the vine, as well, ineffective in both building mystery around Blake (who apparently was present when someone died in the parking lot?), and making their patient conflict something that was illuminating about either character; Scrubs clearly doesn’t want Park and Blake to be the Cox and Keith prototypes (respectively), but this story doesn’t do much to break them out of it. I even appreciate the idea of tapping into fear around uncertain diagnoses – but “My Odds” doesn’t really even commit to that, pulling on the reins of all three of these stories just as they could’ve gotten interesting (and also doesn’t do much with Dr. Park except some perfunctory leadership quotes, to boot).
However, it is Elliot and Sam’s plot, which sees Sam file a complaint against Elliot after she yells at her when a patient nearly dies (because of Sam’s mistake), that is the most underwhelming; mostly because of how it portrays Sam as a whiny Gen Z’er who immediately breaks down when things become uncomfortable, or when she’s yelled at by a superior. I get what the story is going for – toxic approaches help nobody, and part of Elliot learning and growing from how Cox treated her is evolving as a mentor – but it makes Sam an incredibly soft, pathetic character if we’re being honest, hiding behind a formal complaint she files because Elliot didn’t give her complete instructions and she blindly went ahead and incorrectly treated a patient; though it gives us an amusing scene with Sibby (who just kind of floats back into frame after multiple episodes away) as she mediates between them, the storyline doesn’t quite work as intended, only gaining any kind of gravitas when it connects Elliot’s journey back to her relationship with Cox.
After quickly introducing these stories, “My Odds” makes a sudden mid-episode shift, mostly resolving its three patient stories, and making it clear the episode has something else entirely on its mind when Dr. Cox suddenly collapses in front of J.D. and the interns, and gets admitted as a patient. Cox’s return following an episode like “My Best Friend’s Barbecue” suggested the penultimate episode would be an important one, and “My Odds” absolutely delivers on that, pushing J.D. and Cox both into new, uncomfortable and fascinating emotional places as they try to figure out what’s wrong with Dr. Cox. Although Cox doesn’t want any indie mope music as a backdrop, he’s definitely in a different emotional place, expressing regret to Elliot about how he nearly drove her out of the hospital in season one, and appearing genuinely nervous as J.D. prepares to read his test results, which reveal he’s in the early stage of renal failure.
What follows is one of the best scenes Scrubs has ever had – and one it could only have after ten seasons’ of episodes, of seeing the tension and growth that defined J.D. and Cox’s relationship over two decades of time. As Cox explains to J.D., we all fool ourselves that we are in control of the arc of our lives – even doctors, whose entire jobs are built around the real, inevitable moments where fantasy meets reality; day after day, they observe the reality that the arc of a life is never resolved or satisfying, it simply ends, and being a doctor or a ‘good’ person does not offer you some kind of karmic immunity from avoiding the second, and final, experience we all share as human beings. It’s a beautiful moment – and doesn’t overly weigh itself down in simple misery around Cox’s diagnosis; in its best moment, Cox asks J.D. to keep him alive for as long as he possibly can, because, as he says, “I don’t want to be the one who makes you cynical, because I won’t be around here to enjoy it.”
It’s a stunning moment, one Scrubs could only conjure with the return of John McGinley’s performance; though J.D. remains the star of Scrubs, its soul lies within Perry Cox, rendering it mostly inaccessible with his absence since the season premiere. And that’s the frustrating thing about the end of “My Odds” and just how beautiful it is; without Cox being part of the main cast, Scrubs will probably never quite have the pathos it did in its best moments, as a character and performance who could snap the show out of creative doldrums with a single scene. It’s still an iconic performance that, 25 years in, still hasn’t become stale in its incredible, singular balance between humor and humanity. Seeing Cox truly scared is something truly new for Scrubs – and it is telling in just how strong a moment it is, and in how much gravity his mere presence pulls away from the new characters and stories the first season has tried to tell in the six episodes he’s been absent.
Regardless, the final scene of “My Odds” is good enough to warrant the entire nine-episode revival, a moment that piggybacks off the incredibly strong episode before it, re-grounding itself with the restoration of two of its original characters back into the narrative. Again, it’s very telling the two best episodes of the series have revolved around the characters who aren’t part of the main cast anymore – but if this is how they’re going to be integrated when they return, I’m willing to see where Scrubs takes this strange, Frankenstein experiment in its second season.
Other thoughts/observations:
- Friendship Sibby > Business Sibby.
- I don’t know if a “Virtualinsanity” joke ages Scrubs a bit too much – but who cares, it’s a great opening bit.
- The gay bar Blake worked at was called Night Riders.
- Been awhile since Scrubs had a good needle scratch; the indie mope music cut was a great one.
- Elliot becoming more of a reflection of Cox is a direction the series should embrace. Now just get rid of Wes.
- I still can’t get over the random “woman who died in the parking lot” reference. Why do we need to build SO MUCH mystery into Blake?