Scrubs: My Own Worst Enemy (season premiere)

(S07E01)

...and not much happened. Elliot somehow slipped out and ran across the room (and changed her hairstyle, miraculously enough). That seemed to be a good way to go, as far as I was concerned. I'd imagine this final season isn't going to be one where J.D. and Elliot become a couple in the first few episodes and then we see artificially-created couple-y ups and downs. No, I think we're going to be slowly building towards some sort of resolution of this issue, even if that resolution is that it looks like something's starting between them but we won't get to see it.

(By the way, this isn't some sort of amazing guess on my part; I've seen interviews where Zach Braff, Bill Lawrence and some of the cast have mentioned this "slow build" method. I'd imagine that they figure the ride is going to be better than the destination.)

So, we're at the first step: the application of Occam's razor (the principle that sometimes the simplest solution is the correct one) to make the crew see that a) Elliott can't stay with Keith, b) J.D. is only with Kim because he got her pregnant and he will never leave, c) that maybe that nice patient Joe really does have Lyme disease, and d) Turk likes Bit o' Honey more than he thought.

The last two storylines didn't really do anything for me. Except for Carla's "I want to shoot myself" looks she shoots as Turk explains the entire process of selecting the only candy bar he'll get to eat until the New York presidential primary, the Turk plot seemed to be a throwaway. Yes, we know Turk has diabetes. We get it. And the story where patient Joe charms Cox, Turk and even Kelso into going the extra mile to treat him was just... eh. It was only there to set up the Occam's razor tie-in; if I wanted weak medical cases that only served to sledgehammer home the parallels with the doctors' lives, I'd start watching Grey's Anatomy again.

One question: if, during their engagement, Keith had mustered up the same passion it took to call Elliot a "pig whore" after she dumped him, would they still be together? Anyway, Keith was never a good match for Elliot. And Kim wasn't a good match for J.D., especially after she did the unthinkable and let Mike Ausiello be her obstetrician... oops, I mean lie to J.D. about a miscarriage. So, in this case, is J.D.'s staying with her a sign of maturity? It seems like that's not what Bill and company are saying here. If he's to no longer be that "annoying whiny manchild" that Cox thinks he is, according to the writers, it looks like J.D. is going to have to drop the mother of his child. How they're going to do that and still make it look like he's grown as a person is beyond my comprehension right now.

The laugh-out-loud moments? Elliot's mussed hair after she sleeps with Keith again. The opening, when everyone looks down and is sad at Elliot's breakup, but is happy Snoop Dogg Attending and Bite Size Intern are getting together. Kelso thinking he had a stroke because he smelled eggs (which is really a sweaty Turk). "Take that, Tony Shalhoub." That's about it. The fantasy cutaway for Cox's awards for his self-absorbed colleagues was chuckleworthy (how can you not like "Dame Judy Dorian"?), but didn't deliver the way a good Coxian rant would have in that spot. And it's nice to see that Janitor has a girlfriend named Lady (whose brother is named "Him"), but for right now, Neil Flynn seems to be on the outside looking in, comedy-wise. Even the bits about Dr. Beardface -- pronounced "Beard-fa-CAY" -- weren't as good as they were in the past.

One last item: when Turk and J.D. were going over the list of women J.D. has been with, you knew that "Mole Butt" was code for "Elliot," right? We found that out two years ago in "Her Story II." She's got a mole on her butt, see, and... oh, just watch the episode and you'll find out about it.

I'm hoping that we get a replay of last year, where the episodes improved as the season went along. But given the fact that this season has only 18 episodes instead of the traditional 22, I hope the ramp-up time is a bit shorter this time around. There isn't enough time left to waste with mediocre episodes like this one.