16 years on, and I’m hooked on Scrubs again

Luca Fontana

25-3-2026

Translation: Natalie McKay

A Scrubs reboot? Sounds like a nostalgia trap. Old jokes that don’t work anymore. Characters who’ve passed their expiration date. But the tenth season proves that some stories actually age better than we do.

Don’t worry, this review contains zero spoilers. I won’t be revealing anything you haven’t already seen in trailers. The tenth season of Scrubs started on 25 March on Disney+, with new episodes being released every week.

I was so looking forward to the tenth season of Scrubs, yet dreading it at the same time. The reason? Reboots of old series often make a promise they find it hard to keep: they aim to take us back to a time when everything was simpler and more manageable. Maybe also more innocent. Comfort food for the soul, basically.

But what if this world no longer exists? Will my nostalgic love survive if what used to be true and funny suddenly seems outdated today – and in doing so destroys the legacy of a series that means something to me?

«Maybe,» I think to myself, «they should’ve just left Scrubs alone.» It was the same story once before. Let me give you a quick reminder: the eighth season ended in 2009 with a dignified finale that truly lived up to its name – My Finale. But ABC wanted more, and tried to continue the series with a ninth season that was based on a new cast and almost completely phased out the original main characters.

Viewers abandoned the show in droves. Med School, as the ninth season was unofficially called, wasn’t a continuation. It stumbled its way into insignificance. That was exactly what I was most afraid of going into this tenth season. That it misses the mark again and has even turned into a cringe-fest. But this time with the original cast.

And then I watched it.

The last of its kind

What a relief! The tenth season doesn’t tarnish the legacy – it preserves it. Yes, really. I was even surprised myself. With the original cast, it’s almost uncanny how everything feels the same as it always was – the chemistry, the jokes, JD’s daydreams and his quirky sense of humour. Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, Judy Reyes, Donald Faison and John C. McGinley slip back into their roles as if they’d never left them. It’s as if time has simply… stood still. That’s the real Scrubs. No question about it.

And yet it would’ve been so easy to get it wrong. Take nostalgic comedies, for example, where every other joke is about how sensitive the world has become, and how you can’t say anything to anyone these days because the feelings police would be at your door in a flash.

With Scrubs, the temptation to fall into this exact trap must’ve been particularly strong. Many jokes from back then would be borderline offensive today. It’s the same with many of the characters. Take Dr Todd «The Todd» Quinlan, for example, with his blatantly sexist jokes. Or Dr Perry Cox: few characters from that era are as much a product of their time as he is.

Cox was always a complicated character. He yelled at, humiliated and mistreated his residents, even going so far as to actually bully Elliot. Back then, it was exaggerated and presented as a joke – and we laughed along, even though deep down we knew it was out of line. But Cox also stood by his people when it mattered most. He never asked anything of them that he wasn’t willing to do himself.

Sure, he was a jerk. But one you would’ve followed into battle. That was his contradiction – and his charm.

His character can no longer exist in the same form today. The world’s a different place. And that’s a good thing. Isn’t it? The tenth season recognises this, and doesn’t turn it into a cheap jibe about culture wars, but instead poses a genuine question: what becomes of a man like Cox when the methods he believes in no longer work? When he complains to JD that he’s no longer allowed to «abuse» his residents, JD asks him, «And that’s a bad thing?» Cox acts as if it’s a statement: «Yeah, exactly.»

It’s a good joke that works because Cox knows full well he’s wrong. That’s what sets it apart from cheap nostalgic comedy. And the conclusions Cox draws from this are transformational.

«Welcome back, oldie.»

But JD, played by Zach Braff, is still at the heart of it all. And thank goodness for that. Because JD’s no longer the idealistic resident who struggles with life and death every day. He’s now a concierge doctor, treating wealthy patients in the suburbs and writing prescriptions for people whose biggest problem’s a stiff back. Turk, who stayed and is slowly burning out, sees this as nothing less than a betrayal of everything they once hoped to become together.

But when one of these private patients is admitted to Sacred Heart, JD also returns to his old stomping grounds. He soon realises that what he’d planned as just a trip down memory lane is turning into a confrontation with the place that shaped him. With the people who knew him before he even knew himself. And with the uncomfortable question of what became of the young man who once wanted to save the world – and instead stayed in his comfort zone.

What makes this season so clever is that JD doesn’t come across as a prodigal son seeking forgiveness. He brings warmth where Cox brought harshness. He acts as a bridge between an old world that’s outlived its usefulness and a new one that doesn’t yet know where it’s headed, because so much has changed. But not everything. Because some things never change. That’s something else Scrubs tells us, on the roof of Sacred Heart, sitting on camping chairs, surrounded by two square metres of artificial turf, and – of course – with a beer in hand:

«I can’t do this all on my own.»

Sometimes you need help. Those were the words we heard in the intro at the start of every episode, every season, every year. It was the lesson that inspired a generation of idealists to work in hospitals. The most surprising thing is that this lesson still holds true. In your mid-40s, perhaps even more so than in your mid-20s. I felt it. Not just as a viewer rediscovering an old series, but also as someone who’s currently learning that same lesson all over again.

Out the other side

What remains is a question every reboot has to grapple with sooner or later: does it work even without the nostalgia factor? The answer is: for the most part, yes. The new additions who join the original cast are actually (still) a bit flat. But I find it bothers me less than I expected, and I think I know why.

At its core, Scrubs was never really a medical drama. It was a coming-of-age story. Young idealists who learned what it means to grow up, along with all the illusions they have to sacrifice in the process. I was in their position when I watched the show back then, because I was in the process of learning the same lessons myself. Just in a different way.

Today, 16 years later, I find myself in the same situation as JD, Turk and the rest of the gang. We’ve all come out the other side now – where, supposedly, you no longer learn, but you’re expected to know. To have answers. To have found your place in life.

But have I? Has JD? He’s a concierge doctor in the suburbs, having traded the great struggles and the big questions for a quiet, secure life. Still, he doesn’t seem like someone who’s found what he was looking for. Perhaps that’s the real lesson of the tenth season: arrival’s not the destination. It’s a state you have to constantly renegotiate with yourself, with the people you love and, above all, with the world that keeps turning – whether you want to or not.

That’s why it’s still the old cast I identify with. Having said that, the new generation does have its own real-world problems. Social media addiction, unhealthy TikTok diets and stuff like that. But that’s a world I now know only from the outside.

That’s not a criticism of the show. It’s actually a rather beautiful realisation: Scrubs may play on nostalgia, but in reality, it shows me where I stand today.

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.

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