Scrubs: The End of an Era

Scrubs. Ever since the “series” finale in April, I have wanted to write about the show. I will not pretend to be someone who has watched the show since it was created in 2001, but it certainly feels like I have. My brother introduced me to scrubs during winter break of 08-09. I was skeptical at first, but with comedy central airing two episodes a day during dinner time, I was forced to watch. Four months and eight seasons later, I knew everything there was to know about Scrubs. I’ve seen most episodes two, three, even four times, and I do not know how many youtube videos I have watched. So by the time the series finale came around, I was emotionally invested. I want to use this article not only discuss the series finale but the show as a whole.

The series finale of Scrubs was the perfect hour of television and perhaps the greatest series finale of all time. Why do I say that? Because it encompassed everything that made Scrubs great, it was not cheesy, and it perfectly wrapped up a number of storylines while still leaving hope for the future. The future was what the episode was all about. Whether it was JD and Elliot’s future or a patient’s son wanting his future to remain his own by not taking the test to find out if he has Huntington’s Disease. The episode gets everything right. The opening scene of flash backs to season one, the Todd high five, the book of rants with two old Cox greats, and JD’s final “eagle” with Turk. But I think what the episode gets even more right are the subtle things and its refusal to compromise. We do not get some soap opera ending; in fact the episode makes fun of that with JDs daydream of turning all the lights off in the hospital with one switch. Cox does not compromise and tell JD how he really feels, although in hilarious fashion JD does end up finding out. Most importantly, the episode does not focus on JD and Elliot by turning it into a sappy love fest. No, the season finale of Scrubs is just another day at Sacred Heart Hospital: there are patient’s to be treated and work to be done. JD gets fired by a patient and he has to give terrible news to another. He doesn’t get to stop being a doctor because it is his last day.

What made this episode really stand out to me were the three things that have made Scrubs great. The first is its ability to seamlessly combine laugh-out-loud comedy with heart-wrenching drama. The second is its ability to give meaningful messages and provide people with hope. The third is Scrubs use of music. Let me start with the first. There are two scenes that come to mind. The first is JD and Carla which is probably the most touching moment of the episode. You want to tear up as JD thanks Carla for being his teacher, only to laugh through the tears as he says that Turk loves JD about the same as he loves Carla. The second is as JD walks through the hallway and sees all the faces from his past. Again seeing all these people from the last eight years of your life wants to make you tear up, but then laugh as Lonny says “I hate you so much JD” or as Hooch says “Hooch is crazy.”

Scrubs uses every episode to give a message. Sometimes it is a harsh reality other times it’s a message of hope. I’m reminded of episodes like “My Lunch” with the Fray’s “How to Save a Life” and the emotion you see Dr. Cox go through or when Dr. Kelso tells Turk and a patient that “Turkleton I have no idea why you are chiming in but I will say this to the both of you, nothing in this world that’s worth having, comes easy.” Whether it was a word from Cox or Kelso, or JDs trademark inner monologues at the end of episodes, Scrubs always had a message to tell. The same was true about the finale. It was all about making the future your own. But I thought JDs monologue as he walked down the halls one last time was the best, “Endings are never easy, I always build them up so much in my head they can’t possibly live up to my expectations and I just end up disappointed, I’m not even sure why it matters to me so much how things end here. I guess it’s because we all want to believe that what we do is very important, that people hang on our every word, that they care what we think, the truth is, you should consider yourself lucky if you even occasionally get to make someone anyone feel a little better, aft that it’s all about the people that you let into your life.” I think that is the perfect message for Scrubs to end on because as a show it was always about the people.

When we finally get to the end we are basket of emotions and Scrubs decides to really pour it on. As JD watched the Montage of his future, I knew I was watching one of the greatest endings in television history. It had it all. It started with the perfect song: The Book of Love by Peter Gabriel, which is beautiful and so appropriate. The montage again made you want to cry and laugh at the same time with moments like JD and Turk showing Cox their sweaters, or as JD and Turk find out that Sam and Izzie are engage. It was perfect.

And then Scrubs did something that I bet 75% of the viewers missed. The Janitor who pulls down JD’s goodbye sign is actually Bill Lawrence the man who created Scrubs. So as the unknown janitor says goodnight to JD, Bill Lawrence says goodnight and goodbye to the character and who he created eight years ago.

I could go on and on about this episode: learning the Janitors real name and then having an orderly call him Tommy (probably a nod to the fans who thought they heard that Janitor called Tommy a few season back), Kelso stealing the Table and chair, Ted getting stuck on a thought, it was all genius. But what I want people to remember about Scrubs is this: it was a show that could make you laugh and make you cry so seamlessly, it was the first show to really use music to enhance a scene and its meaning, and through JDs monologues it showed viewers the values of friends and family and just maybe it guided each of us through a dark time or two in our lives. Scrubs was always ready to provide you with hope for a better day. That’s what the series finale was all about: the idea that the future can be whatever we want to make it. Now there is a hopeful thought.

Below are just a few of my favorite scenes from the last eight years of Scrubs.

The World’s Greatest

I wrote extensively in my first post on this blog about Tiger Woods’ amazing victory at the U.S. Open in 2008.  On this night, the eve of his return from surgery, I thought it would be pertinent to write a post about his career thus far.  Tiger Woods competes in a sport that rarely gets the publicity or attention of the NFL, MLB, NBA, or even NASCAR.  But Tiger has slowly changed that, at least for many people like me.  I will admit, I am a fan of the game of golf in and of itself.  I play golf (not well), and I cover the men’s and women’s golf teams for my university’s sports publicity department.  But until Tiger came along, I really did not enjoy watching golf.  Tiger makes the game of golf exciting.  When Tiger hits a huge putt and does his signature fist pump, I get jacked up, sitting in my room.  Perhaps what makes Tiger so exciting is his ability to hit amazing shots from impossible lies.  Tiger gets himself into trouble on the course more often than almost anyone else, but he also gets himself out of trouble better than anyone else.  For instance, to watch Tiger hit out of a fairway bunker from a different hole than the one he is playing, during the Monday playoff of the U.S. Open, and hit the ball on the green inside Rocco Mediates’ is unbelievable.  No one hits shots like that.  But perhaps more exciting then his ability to recover is his ability to come up with the big shot when he needs it.  I will give you two such examples.  At the U.S. Open on Saturday, Tiger was two strokes down heading into the final two holes.  Watch what he does:

No one puts together runs like Tiger does.  Watching that round live, I remember everyone was just waiting for Tiger to turn it on.  He had been struggling, but hanging around for two consecutive days, and the fans, announcers and other players were just waiting for Tiger to flip the switch.  Not because they wanted him to (though the fans and announcers certainly did), but because they expected him to.  When Tiger needs to turn it on, he somehow manages to do so, no matter how poorly he has been playing.  That Saturday it began on 13 when he sunk a huge eagle putt and culminated on 18 with an eagle and the outright lead heading into Sunday.  Speaking of outright lead’s perhaps Tiger’s most staggering statistic is the following: Woods has never lost a major heading into Sunday with at least a share of the lead and he has never lost any tournament when leading by more than one shot after 54 holes.  Woods gets out in front and he never looks back.  Not only that, but players crumble around him.  No other golfer and very few other athletes have had that kind of effect on their fellow competitors.

I could sit here and rattle off all of Tiger’s statistics and all the honors he holds, but there is a Wikipedia page for that (located here in case you were wondering).  Instead, I will another reason he is my all-time favorite athlete (perhaps in a tie for first with Michael Jordan but that is a discussion for another time).  For a man who portrays such a serious expression on the golf course, off the course he is a man with a sense of humor (or just someone who likes to get pay-checks, but I like to think he has a sense of humor).  Last year, Electronic Arts released their annual Tiger Woods video game, entitled Tiger Woods ’09.  Now, apparently there was a glitch written into the game where you could hit the ball into the water and still play it while walking on water.  Once this was discovered EA and Tiger released the following television advertisement:

While this advertisement is obviously EA’s attempt to cover its own butt for putting a glitch in the game, it is also proof that companies (and hopefully Tiger) have a sense of humor about these things.  If that advertisement didn’t convince you then I present the following ad of Tiger bloopers that Nike converted into a commercial

Tiger will return to competition tomorrow at the Accenture Match Play and the biggest question on everyone’s mind is how is he going to play?  Personally, I would not be surprised if he won the tournament and if not this one, one shortly hereafter.  Tiger won the U.S. Open on a torn ACL and a pair of stress fractures.  If that’s what he can do when he is grimacing and limping his way through five days of golf, then I would not want to be the rest of the PGA Tour after he has surgery to fix it.  In fact, Woods won four out of his last five events after tearing his ACL.  Nevermind, I would just retire now if I was the rest of the PGA Tour and watch Tiger rewrite the rest of the history books.  Tiger will break Nicklaus’s record of 18 majors and he will break Sam Snead’s record of 82 wins.  And to be quite honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if after this surgery he broke Byron’s record of 11 consecutive wins.  He has separate streaks of five, six, and seven, so who is to say he can’t get to 11 on a healthy knee.  To say Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer in the history of the sport is an understatement (no offense to Nicklaus, Palmer and Hogan all of whom I greatly respect), but Woods has dominated golf like Jordan dominated Basketball and like Phelp’s dominated swimming.  They are in a league of their own.  And if you don’t believe me, watch the following video. 

One last thing, enjoy tomorrow’s match play.  It could be the start of something special…again.

The Passion of Yale Athletics

The following is a response to an opinion piece that ran in the Yale Daily News last week (View Article Here).  I decided not to submit my response, and instead posted it here:

The interesting thing about the discussions of Yale athletics that have raged in the YDN’s opinion section over the last year is that no one seems to be able to hit on exactly what the real value of athletics at Yale is.  Some non-athlete submits a piece about how Yale athletics should be abolished or turned into something bigger, and then the athletes of Yale respond with their sometimes sarcastic, often insightful articles.  But, the one argument I have yet to hear clearly made, though it is there if you can get past the outrage and sarcasm, is the one that I think is most important: Yalies play sports because it is their passion. 

 It is often said that college football and basketball are much more exciting than their professional counterparts, since college athletes play for the love of the game.  But it is no secret that big time college sports programs generate huge streams of revenue for their universities, and that their athletes are essentially paid through scholarships.  And who is to say that those athletes are not simply playing because they intend on making a career of it.  Now, I do not mean to suggest that those athletes do not love their sports, simply that there are outside incentives as well.  The same could be said of high school athletics.  Many athletes play sports in high school because their school requires them to or because they think it will help them get into college. 

 Now tell me, what incentives are there for Yale athletes?  Sure some of them might not have gotten in to the university without sports (as Mr. Fulmer so eloquently stated last April), but what is to stop them from quitting the second they step on campus, nothing.  There is no risk of losing scholarship or financial aid money.  And sure a handful may be able to continue their sport at the next level, but those spots are reserved for the Righi’s, Lavarnway’s, and Lee’s of the university.  So again I ask, why do Yale athletes play sports here?  The answer is, truly, the love of the game.  I would argue that at no other level is the game played for pure passion, then at a university like Yale.

 Sure, Yale athletes do not have time for other extra-curriculars, but to say that is to miss the point.  They do not care.  Some students run around this campus involved in multiple activities never fully committing to one.  You would think that they would have learned their lesson from the numerous admissions talks they went to when applying to college.  “Don’t just fill your resume with activities, find one, maybe two things that you are passionate about, whatever they may be, and pursue them.”  Well guess what, that is exactly what Yale athletes are doing and that is exactly why they got admitted here.  They have found their passion and they will continue to pursue it for as long as they are students here, even if the only incentive for doing so is the simple love of the game.

So let’s once and for all put an end to these pointless discussions.  Yale athletics is not going to change regardless of how many opinion pieces show up in the YDN.  Yale athletics is here for the same reason academics, drama, music, and debate are here.  Everyone has their own passion and that is why people come to a place like Yale, to pursue it.

Clutch Performances: A Look Back at the Greatest Year in Sport's History

Professors and writing tutors will tell you that superlatives should, for the most part, be avoided at all costs.  To describe something as the greatest or the worst is dangerous, because those moments are fleeting, and the next one can come all too quickly.  However, as I sat in the United Center just two days into the New Year, staring up at the Bulls six championship banners and Michael Jordan’s retired number, all I could think of were superlatives.  Michael Jordan won six NBA Championships and five regular season MVP awards, while being selected to fourteen all star games.  Few have ever dominated their sport and racked up the accolades like Jordan did. But perhaps the most important characteristic of Michael Jordan is something that often gets overlooked when talking about great athletes, how clutch he was.  Watching Michael Jordan was like watching an Oscar worthy movie when you already knew the ending.  When a shot needed to be hit, everyone in the entire arena, including the opposing team, knew that he was getting the ball, and yet somehow he managed to score every time.  It was not so much that he scored, but the fact that everyone knew he was going to score before he actually did.  I have often said that I wish I had been just a few years older in the 90s, so I could have truly appreciated what I was witnessing.  But instead, I simply had to be told that as I sat with my family inside the United Center, I was witnessing history and the greatest man to ever play the game of basketball.

Flash forward to 2008 and at age 21, I am now more than capable of comprehending exactly what I have witnessed.  And what I have just witnessed is the greatest year in sports history. Moments that in other years would have defined that year, have been relegated to the back burners in 2008.  Will anyone remember that Danica Patrick became the first woman to win an Indy event?  What about the Tampa Bay Rays astonishing turn around which led them to the 2008 World Series?  Or the Boston Celtics turn around, who after winning just 24 games in 06-07, won 66 in 07-08 and the NBA Title.  But will anyone remember outside of Boston?  What about Tom Glavine’s 300^th career win, followed by his retirement?  These were all amazing moments in sports, but they will struggle to be remembered in a year that saw four sporting moment come together to form a year for the ages.  The thread that weaves in-and-out of these moments is the same quality that Michael Jordan possessed: clutch.

It all started on February 3^rd in Glendale, Arizona.  2007 had been a disaster for sports.  It was a year marked more by the players’ antics outside the playing arena, then their heroics during competition.  But the hangover of 2007 was quickly forgotten with a few missed tackles and a catch that has become known simply as “the helmet catch”.  With one minute and fifteen seconds remaining in Super Bowl XLII, the New York Giants faced a 3^rd-and-5 from their own 44-yard line.  Manning took the snap and managed to spin away from the grasps of just about every New England Patriot defensive lineman.  He found an opening and heaved the ball downfield to a well covered David Tyree, who out-jumped the Patriots Rodney Harrison and caught the ball, pinning it against his helmet with one hand as he fell to the ground.  The Giants would go on to score and win the game 17-14, spoiling the Patriots bid for a perfect 18-0 season.  Tom Brady got one last shot at driving down the field.  All the Patriots needed was a field goal to send it into overtime. Many believed that Brady would lead a game-winning miraculous drive.  In fact, they saw it as inevitable.  He had done it so many times before, 28 to be exact.  But four incomplete passes later, the team that won 21 straight games and every game in the 07-08 season, had fallen.  The wild-card David had defeated the No. 1 Goliath.  And thus the stage was set for 2008.

Four months later in northern San Diego, the world bore witness to one of the gutsiest, and perhaps greatest, sporting victories of all time.  Many dismiss golf as merely a pastime.  Others will tell you that golfers are not real athletes.  But even the biggest of disbelievers had to at least show some respect after what Tiger Woods accomplished at the U.S. Open in June.  In April of 2008, Tiger Woods had undergone arthroscopic knee surgery.  During his rehab, he sustained a double stress fracture of his left tibia.  While undoubtedly painful, Tiger was still able to play.  As Tiger made the turn onto the back nine of Saturday’s third round, he was grimacing in pain and struggling on the course.  Critics questioned whether Tiger was simply playing up his stress fracture to atone for his performance on the course.  But in just nine holes, Tiger managed to shoot five-under par, create three highlight reel shots (which combined to hold the number 3 spot on SportsCenters top 10 plays of the year), and catapult himself into first place heading into the final round.  As Woods approached the thirteenth hole, he was five shots behind Rocco Mediate.  But a 70-foot eagle putt, followed by the biggest fist pump of his career, was all Tiger needed to get the momentum rolling.  He chipped in for birdie on 17 and could do nothing but laugh at himself, perhaps questioning whether he really was that good.  He finished the day with a 40-foot curling putt for eagle on 18.  Woods would go on to win in a playoff as many expected he would.  And that’s what makes Tiger Woods so dominate.  As people watched Tiger struggle, many were just waiting for that inevitable moment when Tiger would turn it on.  That moment when he needed a putt and you did not even have to watch it, because you knew it was going in. Just like when Jordan would get the ball in his hands for a game winning shot, you knew Tiger was going to make it.  For me the defining moment of what Tiger had accomplished came as I was driving into Chicago on the last day of the tournament, listening to Mike and Mike on ESPN Radio complain about how golf is not a grueling sport and that people were blowing Tiger’s double-stress fracture out of proportion.  At one point during the discussion Mike said, “It’s just not a serious injury.  Now if we were talking about a torn ACL, Tiger’s performance would be one for the ages.”  Funny, two days after Tiger won the U.S. Open, he announced that he would have to miss the rest of the 2008 season, due to the fact he had been playing on a torn ACL, which he had been concealing from the media.

There is another man who like Jordan and like Woods has completely dominated his sport, Roger Federer.  But on a rainy evening on the grass courts of Wimbeldon, David struck again conquering Goliath.  To say Federer has dominated tennis in recent memory would be an understatement.  There is a reason that Federer and Tiger Woods have developed a close friendship: they are in a league of their own.  Indeed, for the past two years Rafael Nadal had lost to Federer in the finals of Wimbledon, while Federer had accumulated 65 straight victories on grass and five straight Wimbledon titles.  He was going for number six and the record books. Nadal and Federer could not have been set up as bigger polar opposites.  Nadal from Spain is scrappy, muscle-shirt wearing, and known for his clay court brilliance.  Federer from Switzerland is calm, classy, and methodical in his dispatching of opponents.  The two battled through rain delays and the longest match in the history of Wimbledon, clocking in at four hours and 48 minutes.  Nadal took the first two sets and managed to get the third into a tiebreak, but Federer would win the third set.  Nadal would have two shots at championship point in the fourth set, but again Federer would prevail.  It seemed at this point that the tides had turned. Momentum was on Federer’s side and has he had done so many times before; it appeared he would defeat Nadal.  Federer just simply never lost, especially on grass.  The two players both squandered break points in the fifth set until all was square at 7-7.  With Federer on serve in the 15^th game, he would fight off three break points before eventually falling.  Nadal would serve out the match and end the reign of the undisputed king of tennis.

So with two wins for David and one for a badly bruised Goliath, we move into August.  While Jordan and Woods both dominated their sports, perhaps the single most dominating performance of all time has been saved for last, and saved for a venue that, until this year, would probably never have been mentioned in the same breath with the greatest sports performances of all time.  What Michael Phelps accomplished in Beijing, though, was nothing short of breathtaking.  The hype surrounding Beijing would have been impossible for Phelps to surpass, only meet.  It was as if Beijing and NBC were attempting to write history.  They put swimming on primetime in the U.S., built a swimming cube that was designed to break world-records, and all that was left was for Phelps to live up to his end of the bargain.  It was a task that seemed Herculean.  Watching Phelps’s eight races, however, was like watching pre-ordained greatness. No matter what happened Phelps would get his eight medals, even when it seemed like he was down and out.  When Alain Bernard had half a body length on Jason Lezak during the last 15 meters of the 4x100m freestyle relay, it seemed like Phelps’s quest for eight would be over before it even got started.  And yet Jason Lezak swam the fastest 100 meters that any human being ever has, to complete the most unexpected comeback a swimming pool has ever seen. That is until Michael Phelps took the pool to try and win his seventh gold medal of the Beijing Olympics.  Four years earlier in Athens, Phelps had completed one of the greatest swimming comebacks in the 100m butterfly, over his teammate Ian Crocker.  In 2008, lightning would strike again, but this time it was Milorad Cavic who fell victim to the unstoppable Phelps train. Phelps who was in seventh at the turn, closed in the last 50 meters and took what was technically a mistake stroke.  But this is the Phelps fairytale and what would have cost any other swimmer, in any other race, turned out to be the deciding factor in a race that Phelps won by one one-hundreth of a second, the smallest margin a swim race can be decided by.  At the end of the day, Phelps had accumulated eight gold medals and seven world records, making him the most prolific Olympian, in terms of gold medals, of all time.  ESPN named Phelps’s race the number one play of the year, Sports Illustrated named him the Athlete of the Year, and many have called him the greatest athlete of all time.  Whatever title you may or may not think he deserves, without question this was the greatest sports moment of 2008.

Clutch is not something you teach and it’s not something you can buy, but it is something that all great athletes have.  Some players are lucky enough to make one, maybe two clutch plays in their careers, but the truly great ones are so clutch that they do it every time and you know they’ve made the shot or won the race, before it even begins.  So, it is fitting that Michael Jordan’s final act as a Chicago Bull was a game winning shot to win his sixth NBA Title.  You could not have written a better ending to his storybook career with the Chicago Bulls.  It had to end that way, just in the same way that Tiger Woods had to win that U.S. Open and Michael Phelps had to win all eight gold medals.  Tom Brady and Roger Federer will be remembered as two of the greatest athletes in their sports, but will they be considered the greatest after their crushing defeats?

So in closing, let me apologize for all the superlatives in this post.  As an English major, my professors would surely be disappointed.  But as we begin to add the names of Woods, Federer, Nadal, Phelps, and the New York Giants to the pantheon of athletic greatness, superlatives become a necessity.