The Saddest Episodes of Scrubs

Scrubs is technically a sitcom. It actually has sufficient goofy storylines, fantasy sequences, and gags to be labeled as a sitcom, anyway. However followers of the present know that it additionally delivers severe emotional punches, band-for-band. For each upbeat little bit of nonsense, Scrubs persistently used its hospital setting to discover themes of grief and loss of life proper as much as the top.

With the present returning to our screens quickly, we’re wanting again at a number of the episodes within the unique run that introduced deeper which means to the tales inside Sacred Coronary heart Hospital.

“My Previous Woman”

Season 1 Episode 4

J.D. (Zach Braff) gives statistics for Sacred Coronary heart: one in three sufferers will die. So, when J.D., Turk (Donald Faison), and Elliot (Sarah Chalke) every get sufferers who want varied therapies, we suspect that certainly one of them will kick the bucket. Turk’s affected person looks like he’ll be okay, as he’s there for a easy hernia surgical procedure. Elliot’s affected person has shortness of breath, which places her in danger. In the meantime, J.D. is making an attempt to persuade a affected person in her 70s that she wants dialysis to lengthen her life, however the affected person isn’t , saying she’s lived an incredible life and doesn’t have something left to do.

This very early episode proved that Scrubs wasn’t simply right here to joke round. All three sufferers die. J.D.’s affected person passes away after refusing remedy, Turk’s dies on the working desk, and Elliot’s doesn’t reply to something she tries. Sure, these deaths train the younger docs a factor or two about themselves (Turk begins attending to know his sufferers as a substitute of wheeling them by means of like automobiles, and many others.), however in addition they present us that Scrubs is not going to all the time be trotting out slapstick and completely happy endings. There will likely be episodes that harm.

“My Philosophy”

Season 2 Episode 13

In “My Philosophy,” Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley) diagnoses a closely pregnant girl with a coronary heart valve defect. Although he and J.D. suspect that the girl’s husband should select between saving his spouse’s life and their child’s, each find yourself surviving the process. In the meantime, J.D.’s favourite affected person, Elaine, is again on the hospital in want of a coronary heart transplant, and the 2 find yourself getting existential concerning the stability of life at Sacred Coronary heart. The stability, it seems, isn’t between selecting to save lots of the pregnant girl or her unborn youngster – it’s Elaine who doesn’t make it.

This all results in a genuinely unhappy and touching second between Dr. Cox and J.D., who’s clearly taking Elaine’s loss of life badly. Cox, usually dismissive of J.D.’s ideas and emotions on actually any matter, takes a second to achieve out and ask if he’s okay (he isn’t). Tissues on the prepared.

“My Screw Up”

Season 3 Episode 14

Weew, properly. That is the one. The one. Arguably, the saddest ever episode of Scrubs. Be at liberty to skip to the following entry in the event you don’t wish to relive it!

Dr. Cox and Jordan (Christa Miller) are planning a birthday shindig for his or her son, Jack, however there’s loads occurring at Sacred Coronary heart. Jordan’s fantastic brother Ben (Brendan Fraser) has returned, having efficiently overwhelmed his most cancers again into remission, however Cox needs to carry out some assessments to verify that he’s actually okay. Cox leaves J.D. answerable for each Ben’s assessments and caring for an additional affected person whereas he steps out for half an hour to take care of a celebration juggler. When he returns, J.D. has been swamped and delivers the information that the affected person has sadly died. Cox goes ballistic, dismissing J.D. from the hospital.

Later, we see that Cox is in a horrible state, however Ben calms him down for the social gathering and helps him apologize to J.D., who had been doing his finest in a tough state of affairs. As Ben and Cox take a stroll outdoors, Cox discusses his guilt over the affected person’s loss of life whereas he was away and tells Ben that he doesn’t wish to go to the social gathering. When J.D. arrives, he hears Cox speaking solely to himself. In a devastating twist, it’s revealed that Ben was the one who died that day, they usually’re really attending his funeral.

Should you’re not listening to “The place do you suppose we’re?” in your head proper now, you’ve in all probability by no means sat by means of “My Screw Up.”

“My Final Likelihood”

Season 4 Episode 8

One other Dr. Cox-centric tearjerker pops up unexpectedly in season 4 when, because of Kelso, he’s pressured to do 24 hours of neighborhood service in an ambulance. Using together with EMT Denise Lemmon (Molly Shannon), it feels to Cox like she’s been created particularly to bother him, and he realizes he should endure her incessant babbling for 2 12-hour shifts with out dropping his thoughts or his mood. 

Listening to that Cox has a younger son, Denise talks fortunately about her personal all through the primary shift, exhibiting Cox an image of him and, later, his favourite Ken Griffey Jr. baseball card, suggesting that her son by no means goes anyplace with out it. When Cox and Denise get into an accident, she breaks her collarbone and Cox makes use of the chance to get Denise to log out on his neighborhood service. 

Lastly freed from Denise, he launches right into a tirade, telling her simply how annoying she is. Leaving the room in triumph, a nurse fingers him the baseball card from the wrecked ambulance. It’s then that Cox realizes Denise’s son died way back. He returns to Denise, quietly listens to her story, then brings his son to go to her within the hospital. I’m actually crying as I’m penning this! Dang it, Scrubs!

“My Lunch”

Season 5 Episode 20

Look, lots of the saddest Scrubs episodes revolve round Dr. Cox for a purpose. He’s a completely brutal character who typically makes the youthful docs within the hospital really feel horrible for no different purpose than it merely delights him. So, when dangerous issues occur to Cox and we see there’s a weak particular person underneath all his bullshit, it hits like a sledgehammer.

After J.D. and Dr. Cox run right into a cheery former affected person, Jill, who’s been stood up on a date, they’re stunned when she seems to die by suicide a number of days later. Cox tells J.D. he shouldn’t blame himself for not seeing indicators of melancholy in Jill, they usually handle to discover a constructive angle to her loss of life, as they will now use her organs to save lots of three different sufferers’ lives. Sadly, Jill really died from rabies, and the choice to implant her organs within the three sufferers results in their deaths from the identical illness.

“My Lunch” turns into one of many darkest and most tragic episodes of the present when Cox can’t take his personal recommendation to not blame himself. He spirals onerous till he fully breaks, conduct that J.D. struggles to witness from his mentor.

“My Fallen Idol”

Season 5 Episode 21

J.D. realizes simply how flawed and traumatized Dr. Cox is on this episode masking the fallout from “My Lunch.” It begins with Cox exhibiting as much as work drunk, and J.D. is totally appalled. Everybody then takes turns making an attempt to drag Cox out of his melancholy besides J.D., who ultimately admits to Cox that he’s discovered it onerous to see his mentor’s superheroic picture crumble, however that he now understands that it’s his difficulty to take care of, not Cox’s.

J.D.’s help helps Cox again from the brink after he assures Cox that he nonetheless thinks of him as a task mannequin. “I assume I came to visit right here to inform you how pleased with you I’m,” J.D. says. “Not since you did the very best you can for these sufferers… however as a result of after 20 years of being a physician, when issues go badly, you continue to take it this difficult. And I gotta inform you, man, I imply, that’s the sort of physician I wish to be.”

Sniff.

“My Lengthy Goodbye”

Season 6 Episode 14

As a longtime supporting character within the present, it’s extraordinarily onerous to say goodbye to the deadpan Nurse Laverne Roberts. Carla is all of us, in denial that Laverne received’t pull by means of after she falls right into a coma after a automobile accident. Whilst everybody says their remaining farewells to Laverne, Carla resists till the final minute when she realizes that if she refuses to let go of Laverne and misses her probability to say goodbye, she received’t get one other one.

An episode like “My Lengthy Goodbye” would merely be too unhappy with no B-plot that brings us all just a little levity, so Laverne’s heartbreaking loss of life is accompanied by the actions of a reliably egocentric Jordan, who doesn’t perceive why nobody is congratulating her and showering her with items after the delivery of her daughter. Unbeknownst to Jordan, Dr. Cox hasn’t instructed anybody that their child was even born as a result of he doesn’t wish to take any consideration away from Laverne’s passing. A raging, attention-seeking Jordan decides to do the one factor she will be able to consider that may piss Cox off essentially the most: identify their daughter J.D..

“My Final Phrases”

Season 8 Episode 2

There’s little or no that besties J.D. and Turk love greater than their annual Steak Evening, in order that they’re each excited to wrap up their shifts and begin slopping ‘em up. Nothing about this state of affairs appears to point that we’re about to expertise a extremely heavy episode about mortality, however we actually are!

As they put together for an evening of meat sweats, J.D. is reminded that younger physician Denise Mahoney (Eliza Coupe) has a horrible bedside method. He encourages her to work on it, however J.D. and Turk are additionally requested to verify on certainly one of her sufferers, since he’s dying and the abrupt Denise won’t be minimize out to take care of his remaining hours.

The 2 swing by George’s room and make him snug. They honor his request for one final beer. In addition they guarantee him that his household will likely be there quickly. Nonetheless, after they discover out that George hasn’t received any household, they abandon Steak Evening and keep by his aspect till he dies, admitting that they’re each nonetheless afraid of loss of life although they see it daily.

Do every other episodes of Scrubs have you ever sobbing your guts out? Tell us within the feedback!

Scrubs season 10 premieres Wednesday, February 25 on ABC.

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