Scrubs: “Our Dear Leaders”

It is “hell week” for the med students. This means that they will face a week even more brutal than the rest of their already grueling year. Naturally, Dr. Cox is ecstatic to see his students suffer.

However, he gives Drew an assignment. He tells him to step down as the unofficial, yet obvious leader of the med student study group (consisting of Drew, Lucy, Cole, Trang, and Maya) and focus on becoming the “awesome doctor” Dr. Cox knows he can be.

This leaves Lucy, who was second in command, as the new leader.

Unfortunately she does a rather poor job and ends up trying to take down Trang, who questions her authority. Their fight actually comes to physical blows, as Lucy jumps on and attacks him.

Lucy and the others plead for Drew to come back and help them to organize their study sessions, but he refuses, trying to follow Dr. Cox’s orders. Eventually, however, he is unable to resist helping the group of misfits actually get themselves together and learn something. And, of course, this is what Dr. Cox knew would happen all along. He just wanted Drew to realize that he is a natural-born leader. Meanwhile, Turk is facing trouble of his own when a hopelessly pretentious new surgeon named Russell Vaughn shows up at the hospital. He proceeds to beat Turk in absolutely everything, from taking his patients to dancing. He even parks in Turk’s beloved parking space, and causes Turk to pull a muscle in his leg in an attempt to out-dance him.

Russell also counsels Denise and Drew, who are temporarily on a break, as Denise is disgusted with the fact that they both recently confessed their love for each other. This upsets Turk, because being Denise’s advisor was his thing.

However, when Russell explains to Denise and Drew that sometimes silence is the key to a good relationship, the two are instantly happy.

The final straw comes when Turk is asked to assist Russell in surgery for a patient who was originally Turk’s. Still, Dr. Kelso sweeps in as usual and teaches Turk a lesson—he just needs to suck it up and deal with it.

And so Turk graciously assists Russell, unwilling to continue with the petty competition.

This episode was mildly entertaining, but nowhere near as good as last week’s. Nothing very exciting happened, and everything pretty much went back to how it was before the episode began. Frankly, I’m getting a little tired of the same old Scrubs format. Nine seasons of an older, wiser doctor teaching the young and inexperienced doctors all about the hospital gets kind of old.

Also, where is the great music that used to be on Scrubs? After most episodes, I used to go on Youtube and search for the music from the show. They’ve had Collin Hayes, Journey, Ted’s a cappella group, and a lot more, but now, they have nothing. Music used to be a huge part of the show and that was what made Scrubs great. So why take it out?

Even though this season has been better than I expected, I still miss what Scrubs used to be. Maybe next week will prove to be better than this one.

Charlotte Hagerman can be reached for comment at [email protected]