16 years ago, Scrubs ended on ABC with its polarizing ninth season, which was ordered after it was originally assumed Season 8 would be the last hurrah. But in this age of older TV shows frequently being revived, now JD, Turk, Elliot and many other familiar faces from Sacred Heart have been given another shot at shining on the small screen. The Scrubs revival premieres next week on the 2026 TV schedule, and for the fans who’ve been wondering what this next iteration is like, the first reviews for this new addition to ABC’s programming block are in.
Let’s kick things off with TVLine’s Ryan Schwartz, who gave the more grounded Scrubs 2.0 (not the official title) a B+ grade. He wrote that for all the reasons Scrubs Season 9 “didn’t work,” this revival’s first season “does,” especially when it comes to it doesn’t erase the growth of Zach Braff’s JD like the original show’s last season did. After commending both the returning cast and new additions (who’ve already won an award), Schwartz concluded his review by saying:
This is a revival with real purpose — and, for the most part, the one fans have been hoping for ever since Lazlo Bane's "Superman" last kicked off an episode of "Scrubs." Yes, the original theme song is back. But more importantly, so is the heart.
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong from The Wrap was similarly impressed with how the Scrubs revival has turned out, saying that it “feels like a medical miracle.” She enjoyed how “the main cast slips right back into their roles effortlessly,” though this results in the newcomers having “to work extra hard around the edges of all this familiarity” to varying degrees of success. Though Armstrong found the fantasy sequences to be “mostly unnecessary,” she added:
Still, this “Scrubs” hits the right combination of nostalgia and update, standing among the few reboots that do justice to their originals without marring their legacy.
But not every Scrubs review is skewing positively. Over at Variety, Alison Herman called the revival “millennial cringe” and pointed out how more recent medical shows like The Pitt and St. Denis Medical handle certain types of plot points better. Scrubs 2.0, however, just offers more of the same from the original show. In Herman’s opinion:
That might be good enough for longtime fans, apart from the existence of an extensive back catalog just a few clicks away on Hulu. Why watch a season that tries to stick as closely to the original as possible, apart from the inescapable effects of time, when you can just watch the original itself?
Collider’s Greer Riddell delivered a mixed reaction to the new Scrubs by calling it an “imperfect revival.” From her perspective, the show succeeds most with the original cast’s chemistry, but falters when it comes to trying to make the humor more acceptable within today’s political and social climate. Riddell said at the end of her review:
Perhaps most impressively, the Scrubs revival retains the original series’ unmistakable style. Surreal cutaways, musical moments, and J.D.'s iconic dream sequences remain, balanced with heartfelt human drama. Patients continue to feel like fully realized characters, while J.D.'s sentimental voice-over provides the diary-like reflections that anchored the original, encapsulated in his line about doing “the most good we can in a single shift.” The callbacks feel equally sentimental and subtle…
These are just a handful of the Scrubs reviews now circulating, but overall, reception has been skewing largely positive for the revival. That’s not to say there aren’t kinks to be worked out or that the show will appeal to all fans of the original, but it sounds like ABC is off to a good start with the series. So hopefully enough people tune into this nine-episode first season, or stream it with their Hulu subscription, to improve the odds of Scrubs 2.0 returning for a second season.
You can judge the revival for yourself when it premieres next Wednesday, February 25, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. And as mentioned in the Variety review, all of the original Scrubs’ seasons can be accessed on Hulu as well in case you want to revisit those old days.
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