(S09E05) Sorry this one is late, folks. Sometimes life intervenes before you get to see your favorite shows...

Can you blame me? Given the low ratings and the fact that ABC has decided to blow out all 13 episodes by the end of January, it seems like this is the last we're going to see of the Scrubs: Med School gang, unless the show gets yet another last-minute reprieve. So it's tough for me to get too attached to this new set of characters.

But that may be a good thing. If what we saw last night was any indication of how things are going to be once the med students are carrying the show, it's in trouble.

Yet again, we get an episode whose laughs came more heavily from J.D. and his neediness than from anything that was going on with the med students. Sure, it was good for Cox to give J.D. yet another lesson in maturity before "Dr. D" ended his teaching job. But I thought it was a lesson J.D. had learned already, especially when he's on his way to having his second child. It all seemed like an excuse to have J.D. show really emotional slide shows to the students and to have he and Turk get to the bottom of the "bad evaluation" mystery as the interracial Hardy Boys.

Lucy's desire to get J.D. to help her pass her blood drawing test was nice, but it didn't feel much different than Elliot not remembering how to put in breathing tubes from one of the early seasons. Yes, a new class of students are going to have the same problems, but it's not like we needed to see another unsure and skittish student. It's probably the reason why Lucy so far hasn't been the right person to depend on for the show's narration. There's just not enough fun going on in her head to make us interested in what she's thinking.

If the show had gone narration-free, and just paused for flashback-style fantasies from all the cast (which is what we see now to an extent), the show might have worked a lot better. For instance, it would have allowed us to explore what's going on with Drew and Denise more, and see Cox play off both of them. I like this budding relationship -- as we saw, Denise determined that it was so when she neglected to clean out Drew's wallet after sex -- and I like seeing Cox's brand of misanthropy make the other two look like Dr. Sunny (whose return was fun to see, by the way. Even her clothes are happy).

A Cox/Drew/Denise focus would make for a bit of a negative vibe at first, but as we saw over the years with Cox, discovering his optimistic sides always makes for satisfying episodes. I'd say lose Lucy and Cole, concentrate on the misanthropes, and you might have a worthy spin-off.

More fun stuff:

• Kelso's love nest dorm room was pretty scary. Though it didn't look much different from previous love nests of his that we've seen. Cole's "can you be my grandpa?" was probably the best line Dave Franco has uttered to this point.
• I forgot... did we meet Keyshawn last year? Some of last year's intern-centric episodes are hard to remember, so I'm not sure if we already knew about the Sunny/Keyshawn pairing or not.
• Good to hear Denise acknowledge her "fatty phase" of last year and admit she's past it. It was a fun part of Intern Denise's character, but Resident Denise, Who Might Have to Carry the Show needed to be a bit more normal.
• Cox's description of Sunny is pretty accurate: "A wicker basket of adorable kittens sliding down a shimmering rainbow."
• Cox in a ponytail must have been a sight to see. If Jordan did one thing right in their relationship (besides giving birth to both their kids), making him cut that off was probably it.

[Watch clips and episodes of Scrubs on SlashControl.]