Scrubs: My Princess (season finale)
(S07E11) Well, that was a little confusing, wasn't it? Kelso is still in charge of the hospital, Keith is still around, and J.D. and Elliot are talking about their almost-kiss from the 6th season finale, something we thought they had gotten past awhile ago.It was pretty obvious that, once NBC told Bill Lawrence that he couldn't make any more new episodes after the strike was over, there was a mutual decision to make "My Princess" the season (and, as it turns out, the NBC) finale. Problem was, since it was episode 709 (look it up at the NBCU Media Village site), some continuity problems would rear their heads.
Oh, well. Continuity was just a small problem with this episode. I will say this: any episode Zach Braff directs is going to be ambitious, and this was about as ambitious as Scrubs has gotten. But for some reason, I was expecting more from this Princess Bride homage than I got. It was funny in spots, but it could have been a whole lot funnier.
Why wasn't this funnier? Not sure... maybe it was because, between the introductory scenes that set up the fantasy, the scenes of Cox telling Jack the story, and the real-life scenes from the hospital that illustrated what Cox's story was all about, there just wasn't enough room to do a proper parody. What the writers and Braff were trying to do was not only transfer the characters from Sacred Heart to the medieval village of Sacred Heartia, but also try to parody the Rob Reiner classic at the same time. In trying to do both, they really didn't do either.
Hmm... it could have just been because the fantasy came from Cox instead of from J.D. You know J.D.'s fantasies are... um... a bit more colorful. And in them, he's not an idiot. I will give the writers credit for not having Cox save the day in his own story; it was the Village Idiot (J.D.) and the Princess (Elliot) thwarting the monster / finding the diagnosis. He also acknowledged that they were both being idiots for determining their almost-kiss meant nothing. Seems like Percival's old softie side is coming out more and more these days.
So, what parts of the fantasy did I like? We needed more Giant (Janitor) and Toadie (Ted). I mean, who doesn't like hearing about Giant's taste for toddlers and Toadie's self-esteem issues? Tarla (Turk / Carla) were OK, but the CGI used to paste on both their heads was a bit distracting (as you can see on the left, the body belonged to Donald Faison). Maybe it's because the Turkeltons' two-headed relationship-expert shtick hasn't been seen in a couple of years, and it was weird to bring it back just for the purposes of setting up the Tarla character (and, by the way, Tarla has one ball because they're sharing a body, I guess; we didn't know about Turk's damaged cajone until later... maybe it was supposed to be a hint). We also needed to see more Lord Oslek (Kelso), just because I always want to see more of Ken Jenkins.
More fun stuff:
- Kelso sitting in his office pantless. By the way, even if it was out of order, it was nice to see Mean Bob back for a week. We haven't seen nearly enough of that over the last few weeks.
- Idiot / J.D.'s secret hair care ingredient: "More manure!"
- Poor Keith. Where did he go, anyway? It seemed like he just disappeared after Elliot dumped him.
- Aloma Wright pops up again as Nurse Shirley. Are we going to find out about her in season eight?
- Telling line at the end of the episode. When Jordan asks Cox if the patient got a liver: "That's the way I'm tellin' it." We should know that there aren't always happy endings at Sacred Heart.
- Everyone now freezes until The Todd gets confused and walks away. I'm surprised they didn't think of that earlier.
- "My name is Percival Cox. You hurt my friend. Prepare to die." A classic line, remade Scrubs-style.
| The Giant (Janitor) | |
|---|---|
| Village Idiot (J.D.) | |
| The Princess (Elliot) | |
| Dark Lord Oslek (Kelso) | |
| Toadie (Ted) | |
| Tarla (Turk / Carla) | |
| Fairy (The Todd) |

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