Second Look: Scrubs Season 1, Episode 5 – “My Two Dads”

Scrubs Season 1, Episode 5 “My Two Dads”
Written by Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan
Directed by Craig Zisk
Aired October 23, 2001 on NBC

“My Two Dads” is a strange episode of Scrubs; as the fifth episode of the series, it’s still finding the idiosyncrasies in the rhythm of its own formula – but after an episode like “My Old Lady”, one might expect more from an episode that eventually presents itself as a morality play for young Dr. Dorian. It’s not that “My Two Dads” is a bad episode of Scrubs; but it certainly fumbles its way to the finish line, struggling a bit to balance three individual plot lines whose allusive connections only become clear in the episode’s final moments. It helps all three of these stories, to some degree, are filtered through the larger fault line forming between Cox and Kelso (one of the bigger, more interesting running threads of the early seasons) – but ultimately, “My Two Dads” gets to its poignant moments a bit clumsily, making its big climactic moment land a bit softer than expected.

“My Two Dads” presents J.D. and Elliot with a fundamental question of what kind of doctors they want to be, a moralistic exploration Scrubs filters through business-minded Dr. Kelso, and Dr. Cox’s empathy for his patients. These two ideologies come in direct conflict with each other, usually over money; when Cox wants to do a procedure for a patient using a different, dead patient’s insurance (a scheme J.D. accidentally reveals), Kelso shuts it down under the vague guise of having to make choices to “keep the hospital afloat”.

After Cox swears off working with J.D. (after J.D. accidentally narcs on him trying to use a dead guy’s insurance for someone else’s procedure), Kelso invites him to his weekly golf game with Cox and Dr. Steadman, presenting J.D. with a challenging question on who he wants to be. Following Kelso means the easy track to success, but with all the soul-sucking decisions that come with it; though J.D. obviously already idolizes Cox, seeing the resident do-gooder who can’t get out of his own way is a reality check for J.D., on whether he wants to be an arrogantly successful doctor – or a belligerently benevolent one, one who can sink a putt to embarrass his boss, but when he gets suspended from Sacred Heart, has nothing to go home to except his weird furniture and television shows.

It’s an idea Scrubs would explore to great affect over the years; the problem with “My Two Dads” is it tries to strike a balance with two other, lesser stories. Carla and Turk’s little tiff over not having sex yet is a fun little story that strengthens their relationship, while not falling victim to the same rhythms and cliches that other young TV couples have (how Carla addresses them not sleeping together feels a little preachy, but it’s another strong monologue from Judy Reyes) – but, isolated as it is from J.D.’s story, it doesn’t quite have the same impact in presenting Turk with two different versions of himself. I like the dynamic that Scrubs is building out between the two, but the whole concept – Carla getting mad at Turk, so he gets her a nice pen that turns out to have come out of a patient’s ass – is too weightless and curtailed to find any sort of resonance between the two.

The other story – where Elliot shows her boobs to patients, in turn giving her brief confidence as a doctor – is one of the most ineffective, nonsensical Elliot plots of the series. It’s no revelation that Scrubs tried to use Sarah Chalke to titillate its audience at times – this iteration may be the least engaging, effective attempt of them all, a plot that tries to define Elliot’s willingness to do anything for her patients… but only uses it as a device to serve J.D.’s story. There isn’t any investment made on the cases Elliot is working on, which doesn’t give it an opportunity to show us how dedicated (and by the same token, desperate) she is to healing her patients – it also doesn’t take any steps to make that conflict feel like anything but a punchline for other characters (J.D. and Turk, specifically) to play off of. It is assumed that every doctor feels the way Elliot and J.D. do, but with the moralistic debate raging between Kelso and Cox, Elliot’s story was an opportunity to embody that journey through someone else besides J.D.; reducing it to ha-ha boob-flashing is a quick way to rob anything interesting out of the story, which leaves it with little impact on the actual story and emotional arc of the episode itself.

Scrubs doesn’t try to make this play for relevancy with Elliot’s boobs until the final moments, when J.D.’s realization about his own priorities as a doctor align him with Elliot’s own – a smart choice to delay the underwhelming reveal of Elliot’s purpose in this episode, but nonetheless a disappointing, head-scratching on. With J.D., however, the conflict is much more established: with Cox and Kelso both trying to lure J.D. into their philosophies, “My Two Dads” places J.D. in the center of a moral conflict he thought he’d never have to face as a doctor. Turns out healing people comes at a price, and privately-owned hospitals aren’t trying to compromise their goals in the good name of keeping people healthy. Ultimately, it’s that distinction that helps J.D. make a key decision about his own development, one that Cox gently guides him to in the way all great mentors do, by letting him survey the situation himself and make a decision (either way, he was going to do the procedure that gets him into trouble, with J.D.’s help or not; as he states, he was just seeing “what team he was playing for”).

The pathos in that final scene is strong, propelled by the amusing, low-budget Star Wars homage J.D. imagines Cox and Kelso’s showdown to be in that moment (bonus points for making Janitor Chewbacca). But is it enough to elevate it past the other underdeveloped elements of the episode? If we’re being honest, it’s not – Scrubs has already done a better job in the previous four episodes in using patient cases as a thoroughline between its leading trio of interns, something the jumbled nature of “My Two Dads” isn’t quite able to recover from, in time for its big final act moment (when Kelso suspends Cox) to land with the intended impact. It doesn’t even really land the inner conflict it supposedly brings about in J.D.; we know J.D. is never actually going to side with Kelso, which makes his eventual rejection of his philosophy a bit less meaningful – there’s just nothing unexpected or particularly resonant about it.

As a result it leaves large pieces of the episode feeling out of place, or simply undercooked in the pursuit of something more meaningful (in turn, demeaning the already-weaker material surrounding it). Though its still an episode with good cutaway gags, great jokes, and strong, consistent lead performances, “My Two Dads” is a prescient reminder that growth is not always linear, and Scrubs still has plenty of kinks to work out, even in the wake of the memorable “My Old Lady” just an episode prior.

Grade: C+

Other thoughts/observations:

• Fun fact: TIPS stands for Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt, and in 2025, is a procedure that can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $125,000! How fun! The cost of healthcare is certainly an angle Scrubs touches on, and it’s one I’m interested to see how it explores in the upcoming revival (if it does at all).
  
• Todd High Five Count: One successful of three attempted, during Turk’s brainstorming for Carla’s gift.
  
• “There’s no Lost and Found box… there’s an Ass Box, but no Lost and Found box.”
  
• Cox says beating Kelso at golf is “the most fun I can have without being forced to cuddle after”.
  
• Cox walking away without watching his winning putt… now that’s the kind of characterization I like.
  
• Elliot gets approached by a group of old patients who tell her they have a bad case of the “gotta see ‘ums”.
  
• The Janitor as Chewbacca will always be funny.
  
• The Family Feud cutaway is great: “Show me boobs!” The world misses you, Louie Anderson.
  
• It’s too bad we won’t see much more of Dr. Steadman: here, he humps Kelso’s leg, takes a golf ball to the face, and gets denied a tasty treat (which would’ve been his second of the episode) by J.D..
  
• Up next: Scrubs introduces a new dynamic into the ensemble with “My Bad”.