Scrubs – Saying goodbye to Sacred Heart

Bob Kelso has received his last muffin and J.D has left the building. As a season finale, it was almost too much. As a series finale, this one-hour episode was excellent. As a series finale that may be a season finale which also happens to be the last episode of our principal cast member who won’t be returning in a regular capacity next season should we be coming back … whew … it was masterful!

There were so many beautiful moments in this episode, it’s hard to run down them all. J.D. was so perfect in wanting those dramatic hugs and goodbyes, because he’s always been that. And it was great that Bill Lawrence didn’t give them to him; at least not in the traditional sense. Scrubs has always been an atypical show, and that continued here. We did get the classic “lights out” sitcom ending during the episode, but the end results were disastrous.

I loved how early on we got J.D. remembering his first days at Sacred Heart, offering up a brief montage of clips from the first season; God, everyone looked so young. And as usual, the “lesson” that J.D. picked up tonight came from a tough medical case on his last day at the hospital.

It was perfect that they interspersed that moment of sobering retrospective, because Scrubs has always been about mixing the absurd with painful reality and Huntington’s is pretty damned real.

How about that Glen Matthews. For eight years he’s been a thorn in J.D.’s side over a penny. I liked how J.D. finally admitted to the penny thing that lead to the Janitor torturing him all these years, and even better that the Janitor saw him do it and even made the penny into a necklace. The Janitor has long been one of the best characters on the show just because he’s ridiculously crazy.

The ad-lib rants the Janitor goes on, as we see in the post-episode production clips often, can be just as funny as what makes it onto the show. As for that name, I’m inclined to believe that Glen Matthews is his real name. I think he and J.D. both shared a moment and a special relationship, and after eight years J.D. actually asked him what it was so he was honest. Tony was the lie he told the other guy. Of course, they could both be lies; this is the Janitor we’re talking about.

Everything from Turk’s “too early” goodbye at the beginning of the episode, to the closing video speculations about J.D. marrying and having kids with Elliot splashed across the back of the giant “Goodbye J.D.” sheet Turk hung over the hospital entrance created perfect moments.

In fact, J.D.’s final walk through the halls of Sacred Heart stayed true to form, because no one walked him out, nor were they all crowding around or hanging out windows to say goodbye (they’d already done that for Dr. Kelso), but he did have a vision of virtually everyone who mattered over eight years of Scrubs in those halls.

It was a real test of your fandom, as well as your memory, scanning through all those phantoms of J.D.’s time at the hospital. And even more poignant was that the hall was empty. It was, as Dr. Cox said at one point, “just another day” at the hospital. And in big places like that, leaving is never as special as you’d like it to be.

At least he did manage to trick a sincere sentiment out of Dr. Cox about his leaving, and Cox’s face when he realized that J.D. had heard him call him a great doctor, a great person and (even worse) his friend, was priceless. Even better was his threat to the Intern who set him up. “He gets to leave. You have to stay.” Yeah, she hadn’t thought that through. Guess who’s on Dr. Cox’s shit list if the show comes back next year.

It was also appropriate that Ted didn’t get any sort of goodbye and remained the “Awwwww man!” guy to the bitter end. He was even available for Jordan to be mean to after she struggled and said nice things to J.D.

I don’t know who all might come back for a new season of the show, but without J.D.’s narratives, it’s going to be a completely different animal than it is right now. Even if Zach Braff comes back for a few episodes, we’re still looking at more of a spin-off with the Interns than a direct continuation, unless they keep almost everyone else. I guess they could dump the internal monologues, but then it might lose a lot of its charm. Can anyone else carry that torch regularly?

Clacked by Jason Hughes
on May 07, 2009 @ 13:06 EST5EDT