“Scrubs”: My Bad Too

Posted by SH

Undeterred by a three-month long break brought on by the writers strike, the gang at Sacred Heart returned with a pretty funny episode that introduced two notable terms into the “Scrubs” lexicon — “Amigoville,” a fantasyland J.D. conjures up where Mexican day laborers take white people who are nice enough to learn Spanish (they have guacamole lakes and HUGE churros there); and “brinner,” Turk’s idea of nirvana in which you eat breakfast food at dinner (wine with pancakes is his preferred combo).

While J.D. still narrates and helps a burn victim attend his high school graduation, the episode belongs to Turk. He and Carla are celebrating an anniversary (six years since their first date), so as his present to her he is going to reveal that he has learned Spanish. Problem is, after listening in on a few phone conversations that Carla conducts in Spanish, he decides the gift might have better uses. For himself. He eventually is conflicted about it, despite Cox and Kelso telling him that spying on their wives is the key to marital happiness — Cox reads Jordan’s diary to know her hopes and dreams, making it easier to crush them. Sorry, can’t remember what Bobbo said, if anything. He was more memorable for what went into his mouth than what came out of it, but more on that later.

Turk maintains his ruse until a vengeful Cox rats him out through some vintage “Scrubs” trickeration. He tells Carla, in Spanish, that Turk thinks she’s overbearing, prompting Turk to retort. Oops, jig is up! But Turk’s good deed earlier in the episode, when he reassured Carla that she is a good mother despite having missed one of their daughter’s appointments, earns him quick forgiveness — and a quickie in an ambulance driven by new EMT Lloyd.

When Cox isn’t sabotaging Turk, he’s enforcing a strict diet on behalf of Kelso, consisting entirely of swiping the man’s junk food before he can eat it. The muffin becomes a tennis ball, that pizza is replaced with a stack of folders, etc. Turns out Kelso has come to rely on Cox’s maneuvers, and enjoys now being able to use the real holes on his belt instead of ones he made himself. But Cox abandons him when it comes to a huge, fudge-filled chocolate cake that Kelso can’t bring himself to throw away until he’s eaten half of it. The episode ends with him digging it out of the trash and eating the other half. His “Don’t look at me” plea is haunting.

Janitor is quiet this episode, too busy off-camera curing his Lady friend of her fears. He’s so generous that he arranges to have her parents kidnapped to allay Lady’s irrational fear of losing her loved ones.

Turk and Carla start using their Spanish to talk about people behind their backs right in front of them. Spying a cozy encounter between J.D. and Elliot at a lunch table, they speak knowingly, and the show neglects to subtitle their discussion. My wife, who remembers a bit of Spanish from high school, seems to think she heard the phrase “friends with benefits” pop up. We’ll see.

Episode highlight: a set piece early on where Turk and J.D. force the interns to line up like Space Invaders, only to be pummeled from the rooftop by water balloons. One of the interns, whose father happens to be a lawyer, suffers a concussion.

The title refers to a first-season episode, titled “My Bad,” or, the one where J.D. sleeps with Jordan.