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Scrubs is technically a sitcom. It certainly has enough goofy storylines, fantasy sequences, and gags to be classified as a sitcom, anyway. But fans of the show know that it also delivers serious emotional punches, band-for-band. For every upbeat bit of nonsense, Scrubs consistently used its hospital setting to explore themes of grief and death right up to the end.
With the show returning to our screens soon, we’re looking back at some of the episodes in the original run that brought deeper meaning to the stories inside Sacred Heart Hospital.
“My Old Lady”
Season 1 Episode 4
J.D. (Zach Braff) provides statistics for Sacred Heart: one in three patients will die. So, when J.D., Turk (Donald Faison), and Elliot (Sarah Chalke) each get patients who need various treatments, we suspect that one of them will kick the bucket. Turk’s patient seems like he’ll be ok, as he’s there for a simple hernia surgery. Elliot’s patient has shortness of breath, which puts her at risk. Meanwhile, J.D. is trying to convince a patient in her 70s that she needs dialysis to prolong her life, but the patient isn’t interested, saying she’s lived an amazing life and doesn’t have anything left to do.
This very early episode proved that Scrubs wasn’t just here to joke around. All three patients die. J.D.’s patient passes away after refusing treatment, Turk’s dies on the operating table, and Elliot’s doesn’t respond to anything she tries. Yes, these deaths teach the young doctors a thing or two about themselves (Turk starts getting to know his patients instead of wheeling them through like cars, etc.), but they also show us that Scrubs will not always be trotting out slapstick and happy endings. There will be episodes that hurt.
“My Philosophy”
Season 2 Episode 13
In “My Philosophy,” Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley) diagnoses a heavily pregnant woman with a heart valve defect. Though he and J.D. suspect that the woman’s husband will have to choose between saving his wife’s life and their baby’s, both end up surviving the procedure. Meanwhile, J.D.’s favorite patient, Elaine, is back at the hospital in need of a heart transplant, and the two end up getting existential about the balance of life at Sacred Heart. The balance, it turns out, isn’t between choosing to save the pregnant woman or her unborn child – it’s Elaine who doesn’t make it.
This all leads to a genuinely sad and touching moment between Dr. Cox and J.D., who is clearly taking Elaine’s death badly. Cox, typically dismissive of J.D.’s thoughts and feelings on literally any matter, takes a moment to reach out and ask if he’s okay (he isn’t). Tissues at the ready.
“My Screw Up”
Season 3 Episode 14
Weew, well. This is the one. The one. Arguably, the saddest ever episode of Scrubs. Feel free to skip to the next entry if you don’t want to relive it!
Dr. Cox and Jordan (Christa Miller) are planning a birthday shindig for their son, Jack, but there’s a lot going on at Sacred Heart. Jordan’s wonderful brother Ben (Brendan Fraser) has returned, having successfully beaten his cancer back into remission, but Cox wants to perform some tests to check that he’s really okay. Cox leaves J.D. in charge of both Ben’s tests and caring for another patient while he steps out for half an hour to deal with a party juggler. When he returns, J.D. has been swamped and delivers the news that the patient has unfortunately died. Cox goes ballistic, dismissing J.D. from the hospital.
Later, we see that Cox is in a terrible state, but Ben calms him down for the party and helps him apologize to J.D., who had been doing his best in a difficult situation. As Ben and Cox take a stroll outside, Cox discusses his guilt over the patient’s death while he was away and tells Ben that he doesn’t want to go to the party. When J.D. arrives, he hears Cox talking only to himself. In a devastating twist, it’s revealed that Ben was the one who died that day, and they’re actually attending his funeral.
If you’re not hearing “Where do you think we are?” in your head right now, you’ve probably never sat through “My Screw Up.”
“My Last Chance”
Season 4 Episode 8
Another Dr. Cox-centric tearjerker pops up unexpectedly in season 4 when, thanks to Kelso, he’s forced to do 24 hours of community service in an ambulance. Riding along with EMT Denise Lemmon (Molly Shannon), it feels to Cox like she’s been created specifically to annoy him, and he realizes he will have to endure her incessant babbling for two 12-hour shifts without losing his mind or his temper.
Hearing that Cox has a young son, Denise talks happily about her own throughout the first shift, showing Cox a picture of him and, later, his favorite Ken Griffey Jr. baseball card, suggesting that her son never goes anywhere without it. When Cox and Denise get into an accident, she breaks her collarbone and Cox uses the opportunity to get Denise to sign off on his community service.
Finally free of Denise, he launches into a tirade, telling her just how annoying she is. Leaving the room in triumph, a nurse hands him the baseball card from the wrecked ambulance. It’s then that Cox realizes Denise’s son died long ago. He returns to Denise, quietly listens to her story, then brings his son to visit her in the hospital. I’m literally crying as I’m writing this! Dang it, Scrubs!
“My Lunch”
Season 5 Episode 20
Look, a lot of the saddest Scrubs episodes revolve around Dr. Cox for a reason. He’s an absolutely brutal character who often makes the younger doctors in the hospital feel terrible for no other reason than it simply delights him. So, when bad things happen to Cox and we see there’s a vulnerable person under all his bullshit, it hits like a sledgehammer.
After J.D. and Dr. Cox run into a cheery former patient, Jill, who’s been stood up on a date, they’re surprised when she appears to die by suicide several days later. Cox tells J.D. he shouldn’t blame himself for not seeing signs of depression in Jill, and they manage to find a positive angle to her death, as they can now use her organs to save three other patients’ lives. Unfortunately, Jill actually died from rabies, and the decision to implant her organs in the three patients leads to their deaths from the same disease.
“My Lunch” becomes one of the darkest and most tragic episodes of the show when Cox can’t take his own advice to not blame himself. He spirals hard until he completely breaks, behavior that J.D. struggles to witness from his mentor.
“My Fallen Idol”
Season 5 Episode 21
J.D. realizes just how flawed and traumatized Dr. Cox is in this episode covering the fallout from “My Lunch.” It starts with Cox showing up to work drunk, and J.D. is absolutely appalled. Everyone then takes turns trying to pull Cox out of his depression except J.D., who eventually admits to Cox that he’s found it hard to see his mentor’s superheroic image crumble, but that he now understands that it’s his issue to deal with, not Cox’s.
J.D.’s support helps Cox back from the brink after he assures Cox that he still thinks of him as a role model. “I guess I came over here to tell you how proud of you I am,” J.D. says. “Not because you did the best you could for those patients… but because after 20 years of being a doctor, when things go badly, you still take it this hard. And I gotta tell you, man, I mean, that’s the kind of doctor I want to be.”
Sniff.
“My Long Goodbye”
Season 6 Episode 14
As a longtime supporting character in the show, it’s extremely hard to say goodbye to the deadpan Nurse Laverne Roberts. Carla is all of us, in denial that Laverne won’t pull through after she falls into a coma after a car accident. Even as everyone says their final farewells to Laverne, Carla resists until the last minute when she realizes that if she refuses to let go of Laverne and misses her chance to say goodbye, she won’t get another one.
An episode like “My Long Goodbye” would simply be too sad without a B-plot that brings us all a little levity, so Laverne’s heartbreaking death is accompanied by the actions of a reliably selfish Jordan, who doesn’t understand why no one is congratulating her and showering her with gifts after the birth of her daughter. Unbeknownst to Jordan, Dr. Cox hasn’t told anyone that their baby was even born because he doesn’t want to take any attention away from Laverne’s passing. A raging, attention-seeking Jordan decides to do the one thing she can think of that will piss Cox off the most: name their daughter J.D..
“My Last Words”
Season 8 Episode 2
There’s very little that besties J.D. and Turk love more than their annual Steak Night, so they’re both excited to wrap up their shifts and start slopping ‘em up. Nothing about this scenario seems to indicate that we’re about to experience a really heavy episode about mortality, but we certainly are!
As they prepare for a night of meat sweats, J.D. is reminded that young doctor Denise Mahoney (Eliza Coupe) has a terrible bedside manner. He encourages her to work on it, but J.D. and Turk are also asked to check on one of her patients, since he’s dying and the abrupt Denise might not be cut out to deal with his final hours.
The two swing by George’s room and make him comfortable. They honor his request for one last beer. They also assure him that his family will be there soon. However, when they find out that George hasn’t got any family, they abandon Steak Night and stay by his side until he dies, admitting that they’re both still afraid of death even though they see it every day.
Do any other episodes of Scrubs have you sobbing your guts out? Let us know in the comments!
Scrubs season 10 premieres Wednesday, February 25 on ABC.
The post The Saddest Episodes of Scrubs appeared first on Den of Geek.
