Warning: SPOILERS for the Scrubs revival’s premiere are ahead!
Scrubs is back on the airwaves after 16 years away, and the two-part premiere on the 2026 TV schedule earlier this week delivered two big twists. First, we learned that J.D. and Elliot are now divorced. Second, not only is J.D. working at Sacred Heart again, he’s taken over as the hospital’s chief of medicine from the retiring Dr. Perry Cox. So now a new era at Sacred Heart has begun under J.D.’s leadership, and CinemaBlend learned from showrunner Aseem Batra that the decision to have Dr. Cox step down was inspired by real-life doctors.
As anyone who watched the original Scrubs knows all too well, Dr. Cox’s sarcasm, rants and berating are one of the show’s main sources of comedic material. However, the character’s attitude and treatment of both staff and sometime patients would obviously not fly in real life. So when I asked Aseem Batra, who was seated next to Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence, why it was important for John C. McGinley’s character to leave Sacred Heart rather than have him stick around even if J.D. still took over as chief of medicine, she told me:
Well, we talked a lot to the interns and residents, your friend John Doris, who's the consultant for the show and has been instrumental in forming all of this. And we did a lot of interviews, and anytime we'd ask, ‘How would a Dr. Cox do in an environment today?’, they would laugh at us because he wouldn't do well. And I think we have to evolve that character into something else. And also we have to do that for J.D. So this was a way to do that for both of them.
While Dr. Cox has his good qualities as a doctor, he clearly didn’t vibe with the kind of work environment Sacred Heart now promotes when we reunite with him in “The Return,” which can be streamed now with a Hulu subscription. He laments to J.D. early on in the episode about how he can’t have the interns work long hours or abuse them anymore. Then, to provide an example, he spouts off a scenario to intern Sam Tosh where he murders her for sending him a video from a creator named Dr. Randy, resulting in him getting “the chair” because of the witnesses. This prompts Vanessa Bayer’s Sibby Wilson, Sacred Heart’s head of HR, to intervene, as seen below:
Obviously Dr. Cox’s would have been frowned upon in real life in the 2000s, but for the sake of the Scrubs revival, it was decided that the time had come for the character to close out his career as a doctor. At least he had the wisdom to recognize that J.D. would make a worthy successor because of his valuing of sensitivity and kindness, particularly when it comes to teaching the interns. The good news, however, is that this isn’t the last we’ve seen of John C. McGinley on Scrubs, with Aseem Batra adding:
That doesn't mean Dr. Cox won't be back, but we need him to come back in a different capacity to address that we're in a different time. So that's one of the reasons, and also we needed to give J.D. his chance to move into that role unassisted and make it his own. And so those were the decisions behind that.
Like Judy Reyes, who’s reprising Carla Espinosa, McGinley is listed as a recurring guest star on the Scrubs revival, so it stands to reason we’ll see him in at least a few more episodes this season. I’ll be interested to see how the show finds ways to bring him back, because unlike Dr. Kelso in Scrubs Season 8, I don’t see him hanging around the hospital’s Coffee Bucks every day. One thing we can count on is seeing him later in the season with his ex-wife/current partner Jordan, whom Christa Miller is confirmed to be reprising.
New episodes of Scrubs air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. The revival’s first season will be comprised of nine episodes, but considering how much positive critical reception the show has already received, that likely boosts the chances of another season being ordered. If that happens, this in turn can provide more opportunities for Dr. Cox to appear.
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