In the midst of working on Warner Bros. Television-produced shows like Ted Lasso, Shrinking and Bad Monkey (all of which can be streamed with an Apple TV+ subscription), producer, director and writer Bill Lawrence is also revisiting one of his earliest television successes. Last December, Lawrence signed on to develop a Scrubs revival for ABC, and last month, the network ordered it to series. However, don’t go into the new Scrubs thinking it’ll just be a repeat of the original series, as Bill Lawrence referenced an old Zach Braff quote to make this point about that.
It’s been 15 years since since Scrubs wrapped its nine-season run on ABC, and the TV landscape has changed a lot since then, both with the rise of streaming and different approaches with small screen storytelling. Lawrence mentioned in an interview with THR that one of the things that’s been important for him to do with his more recent shows is to make it “feel like the characters are going on new adventures.” When the interviewer brought up how they think The Bear hasn’t really pushed Carmen’s storyline forward, even though they didn’t want to “slam” the FX on Hulu show, Lawrence responded:
I swear, I’m not trying to slam it either! Here’s one of the ways we look at things: We’re rebooting Scrubs, and I don’t get to work on it a ton because I’m at Warner Brothers and it’s a Disney show, but a lot of the original writers and cast got to help out on the pilot. One of the first things Zach Braff said was, I cannot be a 50-year-old doing the same things. I have to be older, I have to be more mature.
Zach Braff was the first actor to sign onto the Scrubs revival, which isn’t surprising consider his character, JD, was the original show’s leading character its first eight seasons, followed by having a supporting role in a portion of Season 9. But a lot can change in a decade and a half, and in early June, Braff said the revival needed to ensure that its exploration of JD as an older doctor who’s been “beaten down by the system” doesn’t just rehash what we went through when he first started working at Sacred Heart. It sounds like Bill Lawrence is in agreement.
This is a far cry from when Scrubs 1.0 was still on the air, as Lawrence recalled the following moment from when Braff was doing press during what was originally supposed to be the final season:
I remember once during like the eighth season of the original show, a journalist asking Zach how do you think your character has changed since the first year? He goes, I think I have a beard now. Television can’t do that anymore.
To be fair, Scrubs aired at a time when episodes of comedy shows were oftentimes more standalone, making it easier for people who caught said shows in reruns to follow along. But Scrubs 2.0 will make more of an effort to show noticeable character development, and thankfully, Zach Braff won’t be the only alum back for this next round. Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke are confirmed to be respectively reprising Turk and Elliot. John C. McGinley and Judy Reyes are reportedly also having talks about coming back as Dr. Cox and Carla, respectively, but there’s been no word about if Ken Jenkins and Neil Flynn will be back as Dr. Kelso and The Janitor.
While it’s unlikely that the Scrubs revival will be ready to premiere on the 2025 TV schedule, there’s still plenty of time to prepare it as a midseason offering in 2026. For now, you’re welcome to revisit the original series with your Hulu subscription.
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