Scrubs

The number of men in nursing schools is growing (slowly)

After Alan Sepinwall posted this interview with Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence, there was some discussion of whether any show had done this before: make so many drastic changes — in cast, premise, and setting — that it’s essentially a spin-off show with the same title. There are very few, it turns out. Jason Mittell came up with The Practice, whose final season David E. Kelley basically turned into a season-long backdoor pilot for Boston Legal. Apart from that, nothin’. There have been other shows that re-vamped as drastically as Scrubs, but they always changed the title to indicate that this was not the same show. So when everybody had left All in the Family except Archie and it became the story of him running a bar with a bunch of new characters, it became Archie Bunker’s Place. Three’s Company married off Jack Tripper and dumped his two roommates; it became Three’s a Crowd. Even with three out of four Golden Girls running that hotel with Don Cheadle, it had to be retitled The Golden Palace. But though Lawrence says he wanted to do the same with Scrubs, calling the new season “Scrubs Med,” ABC said no. Stephen McPherson, head of ABC, said it had to remain under the same title because “he wants to keep the brand.”

With the news that ABC may keep Scrubs on for a ninth season, even though Zach Braff and other actors won’t be able to appear in more than a handful of the episodes, there are two questions: 1) Is this a good idea for the network? 2) Is this a good idea for the show? The answer to 1) is probably a “yes.” Scrubs is not a high-rated show, but because of its desirable demographics, it does better than any comedy ABC could put in its place, and if the network wants to bring back Better off Ted, they will need to keep Scrubs as a lead-in. If they try to renew Better off Ted and put it after a new comedy, or have it lead off the hour, it will probably die almost immediately. The main reason for renewing any show is that the network has nothing to put in its place — nothing that would get better ratings, I mean. Even if a show is missing a key element, like its lead actor, the brand name of a long-running show may be enough for it to out-perform anything new, and keeping the show on allows the network to plug a hole. I know I use baseball analogies too much, but it’s a bit like signing a veteran player. The team knows the player is not as good as he was, and that he won’t be able to contribute even at his current level for more than another year or so, but having him on the team allows them to have at least acceptable performance in that spot for a little while longer. If ABC brings back Scrubs without Braff, they’ll be able to put off worrying about that time slot, concentrate on the other holes they have to fill (after mistakes like the remake of Cupid, they’ve got plenty), and come back for that slot in a year.

Near the end of another article about the problems of the American TV business (well, lots of American businesses have problems these days), the creator of Scrubs, Bill Lawrence, has this to say: