Look, reboots have a brutal track record. For every successful revival there are five others that broke your heart and made you wish they had just left the original alone. But the Scrubs reboot? I genuinely cannot stop smiling about it, and I refuse to apologize for that.
The show premieres tonight on ABC, and I have been counting down the days like a kid on Christmas morning. What has me so thrilled isn’t just nostalgia, though there is plenty of that flooding back. It’s the fact that this revival is actually doing everything right. Zach Braff, Donald Faison, Sarah Chalke, John C. McGinley, Judy Reyes all coming back? The whole Sacred Heart family is reuniting, and that alone feels like something magical.
What really fires me up is that creator Bill Lawrence is back as executive producer. This is the powerful mind behind Ted Lasso, one of the most warmhearted and beloved shows in recent memory. He knows how to mix humor and raw emotion in a way that shocks you every single time. That soul that made Scrubs so irresistible in the first place is in brilliant hands.
The early reviews are stunning too, sitting at 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics are raving that it feels like the show never left, and that JD and Turk’s friendship hits just as hard as it ever did.
On top of all that, they are honoring the late Sam Lloyd by naming a bar in the show Lloyd’s Tavern. That one detail shattered me in the best way possible, and it says everything about the love this cast and crew are pouring into this thing.
Tonight’s premiere might be the most desperate I have ever been to sit down and watch television. Sometimes your gut screams at you, and mine is screaming that this one is going to be something special.
