J.D. is the funniest character on Scrubs. He can bring a chuckle with a 2 words, or send us to the ground with one of his classic imaginations. When he came back this season, he was just as funny and gave us more laughs than any other character, but his character was an overbearing mess that was unlikable to the fullest extent. His cries for attention and acceptance were something we've already seen and something we'd thought he'd gotten past.
J.D. exits, Elliot enters, and magnificently, it works. Without showing Elliot teaching, or trying to make people like her, the writers transformed her into a confident, competent doctor and mentor. Instead of having her her own problems, she helped others without being intrusive or annoying. At the same time, she was funny while helping Lucy and Denise in a way J.D. couldn't. She maintained some of the quirks we like, and was still the Elliot we could recognize and appreciate.
The Drew story shed light on who he was and was very run-of-the-mill. He used to be a crazy about being on top and is afraid of reverting to that. Finally we learned more about him, and shows the possibilities the show has. There's all these character we know little about.
The second episode of the night tried to justify the Lucy, Cole relationship and failed. For the first six episodes, Cole was a complete douche to everyone including Lucy who was sleeping with him the whole time. Now we're supposed to accept that he's a good guy that just wanted Lucy to acknowledge she is sleeping with him because he likes her that much?
There is still much work to fix the show. If the main story focusing on the main character wasn't strong, we used to be able to rely on the other stories. The rest of the coupling subplots weren't anything special and while amusing, got very few laughs from me. Denise and Drew pulling the prank on the security guys went on way too long. Turk and Dr. Cox was by far the most interesting and showed the new side to their relationship as more colleagues than Dr. Cox looking down on Turk. There is mutual respect between them, and there's great potential for them.
Score: 8.9/8.3
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