Scrubs/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Award Snub: Other than Zach Braff, none of the cast were nominated for an Emmy or Golden Globe. Particularly infuriating since John C. McGinley has had some of the most phenomenal, intense scenes on the show.
    • Case in point: The ending of "My Lunch". How the HELL did that not get him an award?
  • Awesome Ego: Dr. Cox is the absolute epitome of this trope; each and every one of his bragging rants is a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Carla becomes this due to Flanderization, it's not certain when it started, but it wasn't after Season 5.
  • Continuity Porn: The Grand Finale. Nearly every minor character who lasted for more then one episode (and even some of the one-episode ones as well) showed up. A few of them had even died during the course of the series.
  • Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: In My Finale, Dr. Cox telling Sunny that J.D. was "the best to ever come through here", "an exceptional physician", and his friend. Of course, J.D. is right there...
    • My Last Words, when J.D. and Turk spend the entire night talking with George, a man with no family who's dying.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Come on, you know it's there.
    • Dr. Cox's breakdown set to The Fray's "How to Save a Life."
    • "Somewhere...over the rainbow. Way up high..."
    • The ending of "My Philosophy" where most of the cast joins in for the song "Waiting For My Real Life to Begin".
    • In one episode, a patient wants desperately to be able to perform with his band, which the doctors assume is some drunken garage metal band. At the end of the episode, it turns out his "band" was The Polyphonic Spree.
    • Ted and his band singing the theme song to "Underdog" during the last moments of "My Hero".
    • Ted and his band singing "Eight Days a Week" at Turk and Carla's wedding. Awesome.
    • Ted's acoustic cover of "Hey Ya" in "My Soul On Fire".
    • To make it easier: ANY time Ted and his band (The Worthless Peons) sing.
    • Colin Hay in "My Overkill". Awesome.
    • The air band version of "More Than a Feeling" by Boston, with Turk, the Janitor and Ted rockin' out on invisible instruments.
    • The entire episode "My Musical".
    • The finale's "Book of Love" montage.
    • "Sesame Street"
    • Alive with the Glory of Love. Nuff said.
    • 6x11 : Flashback to everyone hilariously dancing to "Diner".
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Hooch, Laverne, Ted, Doug etc.
  • Fan Disservice: Which could easily be regular Fan Service to others but there is The Todd's love of Banana Hammocks, he is shown to be in one at least 5 times a season.
    • Two words: Any time Ted's skin is shown.
      • The instance where Carla has a bizarre sex dream about Ted is hilariously lampshaded by Judy Reyes in one of the commentaries, saying she was jealous that Donald Faison got to have a hot girl (Sarah Chalke) crawl all over him during Turk's sex dream.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: JD/Cox is the most popular ship in the fandom, despite the fact that JD and Elliot end up together and Dr. Cox has been in a stable relationship with his ex-wife since season 2. It's also kind of ironic because canon-wise, JD and Turk are the ones who have a lot of Ho Yay.
    • Believe it or not, JD/Elliot fell under this for a time. Bill Lawrence has stated that the end of the third season was supposed to definitively shut down that relationship. He eventually caved under fan pressure, adding more Ship Tease between the two in later seasons and having them get back together in the eighth season.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Many fans weren't happy with Season 9.
    • Even more fans were unhappy with the implication that Gooch had left Ted in one episode of Cougar Town.
  • Flanderization: Everyone.
    • Turk (minus the Ho Yay between him and JD) and Jordan are probably the two that are least effected.
      • Your mileage may vary on Jordan. She went from an independent character with her own agenda and life to a hanger-on to the gang who spends all her time either cooing over Jack, snarking at Perry, or making a simple joke about plastic surgery or other aspect of her shallow lifestyle.
      • On the other hand, you could argue that the even before she got pregnant with Jack and restarted her relationship with Dr Cox as "Happily Divorced", she frequently showed up to steal him away from his Girl of the Week and its implied that their infrequent booty-calls were occuring even before Series 1 started. Overall, her Tsundere with Dr Cox hasn't really changed that much.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: John Ritter's line in his guest-star appearance: "I'd love to go to your lecture on heart murmurs! I'm a big fan of those things!"
    • One wonders how comfortable Phill Lewis felt about having to read Hooch's line where he threatened to mow people down in his car. Lewis himself in the early 90's had spent a year in prison for accidental manslaughter after causing the death of a young woman whilst driving intoxicated.
  • Gratuitous Special Effects: There was an Imagine Spot Once an Episode that often featured somewhat elaborate special effects. For instance, in an early episode, JD imagines that his head blows up in a scene that would be more appropriate in a horror film, not a comedy/medical drama.
  • Growing the Beard: Season 8 was almost universally praised as better than the previous seasons. Better plots, stronger acting, and some really great episodes made this season a great end to the show, despite what season 9 may say...
    • Also, in season 8 JD did in fact grow a beard.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: The season 1 episode "My Old Lady" is already a Tear Jerker. But Kathy Joosten, now passed away, makes it an additional punch in the gut.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The Janitor suggested in the episode concerning the Iraq war that they should look for Bin Laden in Pakistan. Lo and behold, several years later...
    • This Troper never got the impression the Janitor was being anything other than serious about that, he was trying to show JD he was intelligent and knew more about the situation than JD did and it was his educated guess that that was where Bin Laden was hiding. It wasnt a joke by the Janitor.
    • In "My Hero", JD sings the praises of Tony Shalhoub for his performance in Wings. Shalhoub later went on to win an Emmy for Best Leader Actor in a Comedy Series for his role in Monk, beating Zach Braff who was also nominated for that category. This lead to his declaration in "My Own Worst Enemy".

"Suck on that, Tony Shalhoub!"

  • Ho Yay: JD and Turk, Elliot and Carla, JD and Dr. Cox, JD and many male guest stars, Elliot and many female guest stars.
    • With JD and Turk, the Ho Yay is so blatant that some characters initially thought they were gay.
    • Dr. Kelso has the occasional mention of his days in the military. The name Johnny is tattooed on his arse (but he insists it's "a Navy thing, you wouldn't understand")
    • The Todd has more than a few elements. Especially his love for banana hammocks.
    • Don't forget that The Todd appreciates hotness. Regardless of gender.
    • There was one occasion when JD narrated about the hot new male OB-GYN all the nurses were swooning over. (Jordan got a lot of Pap Smears.)
    • Given how much J.D. disliked Keith early on, a surprising amount with the two of them. Started with J.D. admiring Keith's rock hard abs and dynamite areolas (in a double Shirtless Scene), admitting Keith's a decent kisser after waking up in the same bed on several occasions, applying "lotion" to his back, and having shirtless photo sessions.
    • In the episode where everyone imagines being married to Elliot; Turk and Carla have a disagreement and Carla imagines drinking wine with Elliot who wants to lay off some steam by going shoe-shopping, Carla however wants to have tender emotional sex and then cuddle and THEN go shoe-shopping, they share a kiss before the scene cuts back to Carla saying "Life would be so much simpler..."
    • Elliot would go gay for Jamie in Pediatrics, as would (apparently) all the other women at Sacred Heart.
    • At the end of the show, The Janitor was right about the penny in the door.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Kelso in "My Jiggly Ball".
  • Magnificent Bastard: The Janitor and Dr. Kelso.
    • Turk dips into this during My Turf War.
  • Marty Stu: Massively deconstructed with Dr. Kevin Casey, whose general Stu-ish-ness in all fields, from medicine to surgery to knowing what's wrong with the oatmeal, comes from the fact that he has OCD so severe that he can't stop himself from compulsively obsessing about everything and re-reading things hundreds of times over until he knows everything about everything, which comes at the cost of being able to function normally.
  • Mary Sue: Kim could be considered a parody of one due to how she was inserted into scenes that happened before we even met her character; a series of flashbacks showed her with JD and the others at various important plot points throughout the series. The fact we didn't see her the first time around was explained by the fact that JD apparently can't see women who are wearing wedding rings.
    • Played Straight with how apparently 'everyone' in the hospital loves her, including the men, the women, and the greasers. Then there's the fact she only wore her wedding ring because she was tired of getting hit on all the time. It's hard to believe that she could have been such a popular character when we've never heard of her before.
    • Kim even fixes the x-ray image at the title screen, because it was the wrong way around and had been 'bugging her for years'.
    • And then subverted again when she [[[Manipulative Bastard]] lies to JD about miscarrying their child]].
  • Plot Tumor: JD at the beginning of season 9. While him being there is justified with him Passing the Torch, he is too prominent and takes important screen time away from the new characters in need of Character Development, only to rehash old plotlines with Turk and Doctor Cox, which we have seen done better already and in turn also keeps these two characters from forming relationships with the new cast members.
  • Retroactive Recognition:
  • The Scrappy: Carla isn't well liked in some fandom circles because of how bossy she is, and how demeaning and unfair she can be to Turk. In fact both her and Elliot are often disliked because they get away with anything and everything with little consequences.
    • For some, JD in later seasons.
    • Kim. Mostly due to the fact she lied to JD about miscarrying their child just because she didn't think a relationship would work between them. The fact everyone seems to sympathise with her over JD doesn't help.
    • Ed the intern. Many were relieved when he was pulled from the show due to his actor having commitments with another network.
  • Seasonal Rot: Arguable, of course, but even the die hard fans have to admit the Flanderization of all the characters morphed the original intent and impact of the show. Everything after Season Five pretty much just went downhill by focusing only on humor rather than character development or sympathetic plotlines. Amazingly this actually reversed quite a bit in Season 8.
    • Most people considered it hit its stride in the second season and while constantly funny it was back and forth in originality.
    • And of course, some fans claim that Season 9 is so awful that they're willing to defend seasons 5 to 7 despite having ragged on them earlier.
  • Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: No one is perfect and even the best of us mess up in a while. The show is in no way subtle about its Aesop, but it's pulled of with the right blend of pathos and humour that it never becomes grating.
  • The Woobie: Elliot in the first four seasons. Ted in all of them.
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