Second Look: Scrubs Season 1, Episode 20 – “My Way or the Highway”

“My Way or the Highway”, as its title suggests, is a Scrubs episode about egos – and more importantly, how those egos (or a lack thereof) can quickly become a point of personal and professional conflict. Though an episode that doesn’t really offer up a ton of surprises (especially in the leading Turk/J.D. and Cox/Kelso conflicts), “My Way or the Highway” feels like a series finally getting its rhythm down, mixing a couple strong leading storylines with some fun cutaways for one of the season’s more well-rounded efforts -and importantly, offers one of the best Elliot stories of the first season, with the debut appearance of one of my favorite Elliot love interests, Scott Foley’s Sean Kelly.

The J.D./Turk story that leads “My Way or the Highway” isn’t really packing any surprises – would anyone doubt the dynamic between the two is anything but Turk always beating J.D. at everything? – but its thorough line, of how a friendship sometimes becomes a delicate dance between two egos, is a strong one. Personal eventually bleeds into professional, when a patient under J.D.’s care instead takes Turk’s advice for surgery – and it sends J.D. on a bit of a spiral, as he immediately assumes this professional situation is not only a referendum on their friendship, but his ability as a doctor. It’s no surprise J.D. takes such offense to the moment; as usual, he’s unable to separate himself as a person from his job as a doctor, attempting to be amiable to the point he becomes a fleshy speed bump to Turk and surgeons like him.

Knowing that the patient (played by Fred Stoller) was either facing surgery or a life time full of colonoscopies helps give this debate some life. There are two distinct options J.D. and Turk can choose from, but there’s only one doctor letting his personal feelings get in the way, failing to recognize that a patient’s life isn’t the same kind of competition as games like Steak or Ankles. Turk’s ability to do that is one of the most mature things he’ll do all season – and series, considering his relationship with Carla slowly morphs his character into a needy man-child – the times where Turk asserts himself are not quite as frequent as you might think, which makes his decisions to not back off J.D. and his whining an important moment for his character, even if the story is mostly concerned with J.D.’s reaction to it all.

Kelso and Cox’s relationship is also explored in a similar way, giving their story a bit of a generational parallel, when Cox dresses down Kelso’s staffing decisions in front of the residents and interns. What’s interesting here isn’t the conflict itself – Kelso and Cox’s pissing matches in front of med students happens once every half-dozen episodes through the first six or seven seasons – but in how it reveals how much the two of them rely on each other around work, Kelso keeping the nurses happy while Cox annoys them with his demands and complaints about the way they make coffee. The two men both recognize they need the help of the nurses, but they go about expressing that in very different ways – and when their two signals get crossed, it turns into a contest to see how many nurses Kelso can fire before Cox gets humble and admits defeat (which he eventually does). “My Way” doesn’t really get into how much this hatred fuels Kelso and Cox’s respect for each other, but like the Turk story before it, it’s an integral moment in establishing a wrinkle within their relationship that would slowly become more prominent as Scrubs carried on through its nine seasons.

However, “My Way or the Highway” is probably best remembered because it’s the first Scott Foley episode, which is basically an excuse to watch Elliot out-neurotic her patient Sean, fellow nervous sweater and Elliot’s newest crush. And what a pairing it makes; watching the two openly fawn over each other while tripping on their words (“We talked about poo for ten minutes!”) is always charming, even knowing that Foley’s initial arc on the show was going to be quite a short-lived one: the chemistry between Foley and Chalke is fantastic and obvious, in a way that the first season’s frankly struggled to achieve with Elliot and J.D.. And though his presence basically separates Carla and Elliot from the rest of the plot and thematic material to tell an isolated story about a guy one of them likes (kind of undercutting the pathos of the episode in exploring the friendships around the hospital in new, more confrontational lights), the sheer power of personality in Elliot and Sean’s meet-cute is able to rise above what may initially seem like a dissonant third plot to the episode.

“My Way or the Highway” feels like another episode in the vein of many in this part of Scrubs‘s first season (like “My Student”), meant for its characters to reflect on the assumptions of self they’ve held for the first 15+ episodes, only to upend them with new and interesting wrinkles being found within those preconceptions – an onboarding for arcs of experimentation and growth, both of which would become more of the show’s DNA in its second season. So while “My Way or the Highway” doesn’t feel like particularly remarkable or formative upon first viewing, it is one of those Scrubs episodes that is clearly laying the track for where the show wants to go in future episodes and seasons – and in that, does a pretty good job in mixing its comedic and thematic elements into something assertive and meaningful.

Other thoughts/observations:

• Cox: “Oh, Laverne, honestly – when are we going to get it over with?”
• Elliot: “I’d let you put your foot in my mouth.”
• A bit of foreshadowing when Kelso chides Cox about “taking a swing” at him.
• “I’m having surgery right now, and loving it!”
• Gotta love the West Side Story bit about surgeons and doctors – I particularly like the ending, when it is reinforced that this cultural divide is generational, and J.D. is experiencing something Cox already has contended with for years.
• Did they really say “sherbet”?
• Todd High Five Count: There is some hand-slapping love following T-Dog’s race win. Todd now sits at 12 high fives, with 14 total across season one for the entire cast.
• Up next: Elliot makes a choice in “My Sacrificial Clam”.

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