Scrubs: My Absence and My Comedy Show

Posted by SH

That whole idea about Scrubs carrying on after Zach Braff’s departure at the end of this season just got a little more real. In tonight’s twofer, J.D. was nowhere to be seen during the first episode, and the second put a big focus on the new crop of interns. It was all pretty seamless, as a onetime thing, but it’ll take awhile before I warm up to it fully.

“My Absence” has Elliott pining away for J.D. while he takes a few days off. Where he goes is never explained, but he must not be too busy, since he spends much of the time on the phone with her. While she’s blissfully in love, she’s troubled by the idea of being too dependent on the relationship. Like the patient she saw die while still in relatively good health, shortly after her husband of 53 years passed. Kelso explains that when your soul mate goes, sometimes the body just gives up.

The big news, though, is that Carla is pregnant … again. Turk is excited, but bummed that no one else seems to be joining in. He finds solace in The Gooch by lying to her and saying it’s their first. She writes a song for the “first-time dad,” only to have it blow up in his face when Carla tells her the truth. And the wrath of The Gooch comes raining down on him in the form of a furious ass-chewing. Ted understatedly says, “The Gooch does not like to be lied to.”

Carla, meanwhile, worries that she’s losing her empathy after blowing off an intern who needed help. Cox gives her hell about it, then thinks differently, telling her that eventually everybody stops caring about hopeless cases, and that she was able to hold onto that part of herself a lot longer than most people.

One big highlight is we finally got to see that chick who’s been heading up those online Interns shorts. Her name is Sunny Dey, and she’s happy happy happy all of the time. This doesn’t sit well with Denise, the sourpuss hot chick who wants to smash her face in when she’s not scoping out fat guys in the cafeteria.

J.D. does manage to be funny, even in voice form. He pines for Elliott to put the phone in Cox’s pocket (“I WANT this!”), and gets in trouble with Turk when, while unknowingly on speakerphone. He says the new baby is no big deal, which hurts Chocolate Bear to no end. The credits bump features a disembodied J.D. torturing Cox in his office, the phone hidden in an undisclosed location, threatening to go through a deep analysis of their relationship.

In the next episode, J.D. is back in the flesh, planning an annual hospital sketch show with Turk. When he’s thinking of sketch shows past, we get a nice flashback of Laverne, beating the crap out of J.D. for his blasphemous portrayal of Jesus. “Let’s do this for her,” he says.

Sunny and Denise are troubled by a patient whose immune system shuts down every few weeks, and they want to confront the mother, whom they feel is too overprotective. Elliott tells them to back off, and tells Denise to get out of the hospital and socialize with the other interns. She says she will, but continually does otherwise. When they take it upon themselves to confront the mom, with some urging by Carla, the mom shoots them down and informs them that Elliott had already spewed the same crap. Elliott was trying to prove a point about breaking promises, or something or other, and Denise eventually goes out with her new crew.

At the sketch show, Jimmy the Overly Touchy Orderly does some so-so impersonations of Dane Cook, Owen Wilson, Brad Pitt. But Sunny and Denise bring the house down with their take on the bromantic relationship between J.D. and Turk. In short, they make out. Big time. In a normal situation, this would probably be something they’d encourage. But here it just raises the fear that not everyone around the hospital understands their “guy love.”

They try to hide it, but when Turk hears he’s getting a paper published, it’s no use. They run and hug, then engage in their longstanding tradition of commemorating the anniversary of the time they saw David Caruso at the mall. They do this by having J.D. jump on Turk’s back and yell “Eagle!” as they run down the hallway.

Of course they do.

There’s also a really stupid plotline about Carla plucking a boob hair, then trying to make the Janitor, who was a witness, believe he imagined it, but the less said about that, the better.

OK, this will be it for a while. Scrubs is changing nights yet again (et tu, ABC?) when it returns on Wednesday beginning March 18.