I love Scrubs. When all my friends were coming home from school to watch classic sitcoms like Friends or The Simpsons, I was clocking in for a shift at Sacred Heart. I fell in love with characters like JD, Turk, Carla, and Doctor Cox, while my siblings and I memorised way too many lines and scenarios over the years.
The show was a huge part of my childhood for so many reasons, and I’ll never forget watching the final season unfold week by week before culminating in a perfect ending. I thought that was the case anyway, but then the show was brought back for one final, awful season known as Med School. Stars like Zach Braff and Donald Faison made cameos, but this new generation faded away thanks to poor writing and forgettable characters.
Years later, most fans pretend this final season doesn’t exist, and that JD left Sacred Heart behind before eventually building a beautiful life with Elliot Reed by his side. But now, like a number of properties from decades ago, Scrubs is returning. But not just for a cute little reunion special, it’s returning to our screens for an entire season.
Why Is Scrubs Coming Back For Season 10?
ABC recently released the very first teaser trailer for the upcoming tenth season, set to debut in February 2026, and which will see most of the original cast return for another tough year at Sacred Heart. From the opening seconds, it’s clear that we are all pretending that the very last season didn’t happen, and we’re all back at the hospital that started it all. Screw character development, we have nostalgia to pander to!
The layout of the hospital feels almost identical as JD, Turk, and Elliot waltz through a ward we have spent hours and hours in over the years, all to the backing track of music designed to let us know these classic characters are back and better than ever. Except everyone looks really old.
Zach Braff is sporting incredibly obvious hair plugs, John C. McGinley appears to be monstrously buff, while Sarah Chalke has piled on the make-up to make it seem like it hasn’t been more than a decade since she last played this character. The only characters in the cast who haven’t aged a day are Donald Faison and Judy Reyes.
I’d love to see the revival embrace how these characters are older and have moved forward in their careers, but it might be difficult to balance that narrative journey with what appears to be an obvious capitalisation on nostalgia.
I’m excited to see these characters again, and with so much returning talent coming back to the fold, I feel relatively confident that the revival will do a great job of recapturing the vibe of Scrubs’ golden era.
But the potential quality isn’t the issue I have, but the fact that it is only being brought back because we have settled into a comfortable reliance on corporate nostalgia when it comes to the media we consume. Why tell new stories or take risks with a game, show, or film when you can simply dredge something up from the past and keep the party going? It cheapens storytelling and blatantly admits we don’t want to take chances.
Scrubs Had The Perfect Ending, But Now It’s Being Sullied
As I said earlier, Scrubs originally had a perfect ending. JD makes the tough decision to leave Sacred Heart behind for a new job where he can be closer to his infant son. His life changes in a significant way that causes both his character and the viewer to remember everything we’ve been through over the past decade.
All the people JD has met, lost, or fallen in love with in some way or another. I’ll never forget when a video package starts to play outside the entrance to Sacred Heart, showcasing a potential future where he finally marries Elliot, has children, and does everything in his power to keep the people who truly matter in his life. Throwing that away for a revival that wants to recapture everything JD was once forced to abandon feels like a narrative betrayal.
You might argue that Med School already ruined this ending — and to an extent it did — but at least that bizarre continuation decided to take on a new setting and new characters instead of returning us to a status quo that wants to convince us that nothing has changed over the past decade.
The teaser features several new characters, some of which I’m guessing are interns — cringing at JD, Turk and Carla trying to look cool, so I have to imagine they will be big players in the upcoming season. But I want them to force our main characters to try and reconcile with where their personal lives and careers have gone, instead of acting like Scrubs exists in a vacuum and must remain untouched in service of nostalgia.
Maybe I’m being cynical over nothing, but I care about Scrubs too much to not feel worried about its legacy being tarnished more than it already has.
