Scrubs: My Night to Remember

(S06E11) When I interviewed Bill Lawrence in January, one of the things he made a point of mentioning was how he and his writers like to try to avoid standard sitcom clichés when they can. "The one thing we're adamant about here is you can't do old hacky sitcom stories unless you do them and do a twist on them so it's not the same old story," he told me.

Nothing is more hacky in sitcomland than the clip show, is there? Up until now, Scrubs has avoided doing one, and I'm guessing it's because Bill and his writers probably didn't know how to do one in a unique and funny way. Well, apparently they came up with something. Unfortunately, it wasn't really all that unique. But it was a little funny.

First off, let's talk about the newly-smooth skull of John C. McGinley. My guess is that Johnny C. shaved it for a movie role. What's interesting is that no one made reference to the fact that Dr. Cox was suddenly clean bald; considering how easily the people at Sacred Heart single out and pick on each others' flaws (which was the topic of one of the clip montages), you'd think they would have zeroed in on Bald Cox immediately. He also looked like this when Kevin and I visited the set in January. Not to worry, though; from what I remember from the episode being filmed, that issue is addressed, and in a pretty funny way.

Anyway, there isn't much that I can say about an episode that was mostly clips. Having J.D. make self-referential statements about how he's thinking back on his life like he's in "a clip show from a bad sitcom that's too lazy to come up with a story" didn't make it any less disappointing. What's ironic is that the cold open, which had Cox torture the interns with a game of "Who's Going to Stay Here Forever?" and J.D. fantasize that Turk had udders and the ability to slice bacon -- Turk-y bacon... get it? -- off his body, had promise. Those two scenes and the scene where Elliot and Carla troll through the stuff of a woman they thought had died were all pretty funny. But after that? Well, what can you really do? Not even the "lesson," which is generated when the docs try to figure out hot to tell a man with amnesia that he tried to kill himself, wasn't even all that interesting

As you'd expect, Bill and company did a good job selecting the music behind each clip montage. And yes, I did laugh when J.D. said "There have certainly been a lot of odd moments around here. And whenever I think of them, The Fray is playing... No, not that Fray song, this Fray song." My favorite? A tie between using Billy Joel's "Sometimes a Fantasy" behind the fantasy montage and the song behind the dancing montage (if anyone knows what that is, let me know in the comments).

The montages themselves really didn't do anything for me, and I think it's mostly because I've seen the episodes so many times in reruns. My brother Rich had a theory that a clip show would have had more impact if they did it before the show started in syndication, which makes sense to me. Sure, the show's been out on DVD for a while, but the number of people who have the DVDs pales in comparison to the number watching the four-to-six-times-a-day reruns. Either way, the jokes are funnier in the context of each episode, and showing them in a montage, even one that utilized quick cuts like this episode did, really kind of blunted the impact.

The Simpsons is the only show that's been able to turn the whole clip show idea on its head, and it's because they made fun of the concept at every turn. Scrubs only went halfway, leaving us with only half an episode. Oh, well. Experiment over; thankfully, we'll be back to all-new material next week...