'Grey's' Isn't Going Anywhere
'Red Widow' Gets The Axe
Memo from a Scrubs fan: please let the show die
by Joel Keller, posted Apr 28th 2009 1:02PM
(Update: Bill Lawrence himself responds to my plea in the comments.)Oy, not again.
First we heard, straight from Bill Lawrence's mouth, that Scrubs could get a ninth season. Then we heard it was definitely done at the end of this current eighth season. Now, The Hollywood Reporter is hearing that talks to renew the show are back on, with Lawrence and company trying to figure out how to bring back most of the cast, at least in a recurring fashion.
They have to be recurring, since Zach Braff has vowed that he's done with the show, and Neil Flynn, John C. McGinley, and Donald Faison are all attached to new pilots, with Scrubs being a second option in case they're not picked up. Heck, even Lawrence is busy on the new Courteney Cox show Cougar Town.
I'm here, as one of the show's biggest fans, to beg ABC and Lawrence to let the show die. Please. It's the best thing they can do for it.
This season has been a pretty good one, mainly because Lawrence and company have stripped down and gotten back to the hospital-related stories that made the show so good in the first place. When they go on flights of fancy, they don't spin out that far. Even a tricky episode like the cast's trip to the Bahamas turned out to be one of the funnier episodes they've done in many years.
But there's a reason why this season has been so good; Lawrence was leaving, Braff was leaving, and everyone was resigned to move on, even if the show came back in an intern-centric "next generation" form. So, everyone went for broke. Alan Sepinwall figures that a ninth season won't have the same kind of energy, a notion that I agree with.
I mean, to bring back another old TV reference (see my HIMYM review for the first one), when Magnum was unexpectedly brought back for one more season after everyone -- including the producers and writers -- thought the show was cancelled, the resulting final season did not have the energy and build that the previous season did. Something about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel makes people bear down and perform.
But, more than anything else, an intern-centric season with some recurring original characters just isn't going to cut it for me. The only intern introduced this season that I've enjoyed watching is Denise, played by Eliza Coupe. Problem is, Coupe is also attached to a pilot, so she may not return. The rest of the interns, at least from what I've seen of them so far, are not compelling-enough characters to get me to watch a re-formed Scrubs on a weekly basis.
What do you folks think? Is it about time for the show to go on its merry way or will you keep watching?
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