Two Of Scrubs' New Characters Are Winning Me Over Way Quicker Than The Rest

Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet tuned into Scrubs’ revival season on ABC, or streaming via Hulu subscription

While shows like The SImpsons and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are engineered to keep mostly the same status quo upheld for decades on end, the same rule doesn’t apply to everything else. Scrubs, for instance, returned to audiences after 15 years with quite a few noteworthy changes embedded, from JD and Elliot’s splitting up to John C. McGinley’s Dr. Cox bowing out in retirement to a slew of new cast members walking up and down the hospital’s halls.

For the most part, the changes and new details are growing on me from episode to episode, though I feel like it’s going to take at least a few more weeks for the bulk of the new characters and cast members to make a dent. That’s not the case for everyone, however, and I can definitely already start playing favorites with this show.

Nurses Frances And Pippa Are Easily Scrubs' Best New Characters

Charge nurses in hospital TV shows are always top-tier characters — see Katherine LaNasa’s Dana Evans on The Pitt — and Scrubs added a pair of bangers for Season 10 in Nurses Frances Dubois and Pippa Raymond. They both appear to be incapable of letting others shine the brightest in scenes, as they steal literally every one they appear in. As such, way more characters need to walk and have more conversations around their desk.

Nurse Frances is portrayed by theatre vet Michael James Shaw, who has graced both Broadway and off-Broadway audiences with performances for the past 25 years. This appears to be his biggest on-screen role to date, and I'm agog that it's taken this long.

Nuse Pippa, meanwhile, is played by comedic actress X Mayo, who's known most recently for co-starring in Wonder Man and Loot, as well as for roles in American Auto and The Blackening. She's trained in improv, which definitely helps make her character's bond with Frances feel all the more natural.

From their snappy jabs at coworkers to...well, their other snappy comments about more things, this duo is already on the path to becoming the most logical successors of the buddy-comedy mantle from Zach Braff's JD and Donald Faison's Turk. Not yet or anything, but one day.

I'm Far Less Sold On Any Of Sacred Heart's Interns

Beyond the charge nurses, however, I'm notably less won over by the rest of the new additions, and there are a lot of them. The quintent of newbie interns above could easily have come from a '90s Saturday morning live-action comedy paired with Saved by the Bell, both in terms of their looks and personalities. Growing pains are already at play here.

• Asher Green (Jacob Dudman) - He's British, and he has the hots for another intern, but none of the willpower to address it. Given that's most of what he's talked about so far, he feels more stalker than charmer.
• Blake Lewis (David Gridley) - He's the pompous intern who thinks he knows more than his superiors, and I'm guessing he's this insufferable early on to give him room to redeem himself. If not, oh boy.
• Samantha Tosh (Ava Bunn) - Anytime a character's biggest trait is being a social media influencer, that just makes me stop listening to everything else. Maybe she's funny?
• Amara Hadi (Layla Mohammadi) - Not much to talk about in regards to Amara's personality and arcs, beyond some self-confidence hiccups. Nothing so awful to bring up yet, thankfully.
• Dashana Trainor (Amanda Morrow) - A more likable version of Blake, Dashana's confidence feels more based in a love of the job as opposed to a love of looking the smartest.

I'm sure I'll be fine with each of these characters by the time the current season is over, but there is very much a chance that this squad could wind up being as forgettable as Season 9's new recruits.

I Love Vanessa Bayer, But Her HR Character Is A Grind So Far

Saturday Night Live vet Vanessa Bayer is always a hoot when she pops into projects for limited spurts to spread some bizarre and often filthy humor around, all while beaming her signature smile. (The rest of the cast loves Bayer, too.) But setting her up as the overly meticulous HR boss Sibby Wilson does not make for the best match-up, as she's like a low-tier antagonist for JD & Co. and is purposefully annoying about everything that isn't perfectly down the line.

Granted, she's become slightly less annoying with each episode, so it's entirely possible that by the time Season 1 is over, Sibby will be approaching "mostly serviceable" on the way to becoming legitimately enjoyable in Season 2 and beyond. If that second season doesn't happen, though, the writers need to figure out how to make her work without reminding audiences every few seconds that things are different now.

Scrubs airs Wednesday nights on ABC at 8:00 p.m. ET.