I'm no Superman

As much as I despise conventional teenage Internet lingo, this post demands a hearty preface of 'WTF?'.

There's a lot I could be blogging about. There's new developments in the ongoing reconstruction of downtown Brantford. There's the half-dozen good blog posts I've been putting off and putting off. There's several things I've stumbled across over the last few days and wanted to write about.

I was planning on putting up a post tonight, after watching Scrubs - or if not tonight, definitely early tomorrow.

Then I watched Scrubs.

To reiterate, wtf?

Let me state this as simply as possible. Acknowledging that the episode is cliché does not make it any less cliché.

Yes, many of us remember seeing the Brady Bunch two-parter where they went to Hawaii. Yes, we liked it and even people of my generation can recall it with nostalgia (provided you're the type of person who watched The Brady Bunch). Yes, JD and Turk having the pendants that the Bradys wore in those episodes when all the horrible stuff happened to them was kind of funny, and so was the cameo from the Brady Bunch bad guy.

But you do NOT do that stuff and have all the main characters travel to the Bahamas and have stuff go horribly wrong for all of them!

I'd really like to know how this episode was conceived. Did the producers deliberately set out to copy the Brady Bunch episode and then worry people wouldn't like it if they didn't understand the homage? Or did they write an episode unconsciously similar to the Brady Bunch plot, and then work in some references to make it seem like it wasn't a ripoff? Which came first, the disease-ridden chicken or the rotten egg?

But let's go to the plot. Or at least an aspect of it. Janitor giving out wedding invitations and making it inconvenient and short-notice enough that nobody will show up, thus he doesn't even need a ceremony? Good. In-character, at least. The rest of the main cast deciding to go to the Bahamas anyhow, thus depriving the hospital of seemingly half its administration for three days on a moment's notice? A little farfetched.

Carla suddenly becoming an uber-mom who is obsessed with her kid and can't leave it behind, even mentally? Not impossible, given what we know of her, but it came completely out of nowhere and runs contrary to the fact that Izzy's been completely ignored all season long.

Elliot getting mad at JD over his annoyance with one of her neuroticisms? It's happened before. A few times. And before Scrubs came back this year, Bill Lawrence claimed he'd listened to the fans - well the one thing fans were saying, louder than anything else, was that they didn't really care if JD and Elliot were together or not, they just didn't want drama between the two to be a focal point. And up until tonight, it looked like Lawrence and the rest of his team were abiding by this - if memory serves, they even poked fun at the original nature of that relationship once or twice!

Plus there's the problems of things allegedly going haywire between Cox and Jordan even though their relationship didn't really seem any different than usual, characters like Ted and Todd essentially reverting to the one-dimensional one-joke characters they originally were (a problem that's been ongoing all year, admittedly), and, oh yeah, THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN IN THE FREAKING BAHAMAS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all bad. The Brady Bunch references were good, it was the homage that put it over the line. It was nice to see Doug and Lloyd again. Cox was his usual cocky-in-a-way-that-makes-you-almost-believe-he-deserves-to-be self.

Something else I realized while writing this - all of a sudden, Scrubs is back to being a show about relationships? The new interns introduced this year have been making for awesome television, and I've said before - maybe not here, I'm not sure - that they could easily hold a show by themselves (as is rumoured to happen). The stories have been taking place primarily in a hospital, and primarily dealing with things you'd expect to have happen in a hospital. Now the overarching theme of an episode (beyond that it's ripping off The Brady Bunch of all things) is that every couple is going through problems? I thought it was finally out of this stage.

Alright. Rant over. There's a part two next week (OH HOW CLEVER, JUST LIKE THE BRADYS DID!). Maybe it'll all turn out to be a dream. That's really the only thing I can think of that will save it.

One last time: wtf?

--Ryan

(Last-minute thought: They should replace the standard opening sequence next week with a Scrubs-isized version of the Brady Bunch opening. That would be good.)