Zach Braff thought he understood what it meant to be a doctor. He was not one, but he played one on TV for eight years until 2010.
In the years that followed, people kept telling him Scrubs had inspired them to become a medic. It felt good. He thought he got it.
Then, in 2018, as tragedies hit in quick succession, it became clear he didn't. Overnight, hospital rooms became part of his real life, and the doctors and nurses became his only lifelines in moments of desperation.
“You know, it’s funny, I didn’t realise – I was 25 years old. I didn’t have hospital experience,” Braff tells The National.
“In the years since I lost my sister to an aneurysm, I lost my father to cancer, I’ve had life-and-death situations in hospitals where a brilliant doctor made all the difference, where a kind nurse made all the difference in my father’s case.”
That is the experience he now brings back to JD in the Scrubs reboot, available on Disney+ in the Middle East. And it's probably why the show is garnering so much praise from audiences and critics alike for recapturing the magic while also moving its characters forward. The weight of life that rests upon Braff brings weight to the drama.
Warning: this article contains spoilers
That weight is all over episode eight, My Odds. Dr Cox, JD's mentor, collapses at the nurses’ station and receives a diagnosis of microscopic polyangiitis, a rare autoimmune disease that can lead to renal failure and other complications.
He asks JD to keep him alive for a very long time, then admits something he rarely says out loud – that he is scared.
For Braff, that bedside scene with John C McGinley landed with a force he did not see coming.
“[Episode] eight was really pretty magical, man, I didn’t know that I was going to get emotional in that scene,” he says. “John was so wonderful in that, and I just naturally started crying.”
Moments like that happen only rarely for Braff. The camera disappears. The crew disappears. Two actors who have known each other for decades are simply sitting across from each other and talking. That is what he remembers from the scene, and it is what gives the revival some of its heft. The medicine matters. The jokes still matter. So does the history between the people in the room, he says.
It also speaks to how Braff now sees JD. He's no longer the anxious young doctor trying to keep up with everyone around him. Now, he's the leader that Dr Cox shaped him to become – a gifted doctor, yes, but also the person now expected to steady the room and teach the next generation how to do the same.
“JD is not supposed to be just a doctor. He’s supposed to be – because Dr Cox was his mentor – he’s supposed to be the chosen one,” Braff says. “He’s supposed to be brilliant. And not only is he brilliant, he’s supposed to be an amazing teacher.”
Their role-reversal continues into episode nine, the finale. Dr Cox tries to put off his tests, then tries to hide the bad results from Jordan when the treatment is not working as hoped. By the end of the episode, JD is the one he reaches for, texting him that he could really use a friend.
For a show beloved for its daydream flights of fancy, Scrubs has always known that none of that lands unless it's firmly grounded in reality. Braff knows that, too.
“That’s what I love about Scrubs,” he says. “You can’t believe some of the stuff we do. We go from the wrestling fantasy, which was just insanity and took three-quarters of a day to execute, and then you go do a scene with just two actors sitting across from each other, having a heart-to-heart, and we’re both crying. It’s a pretty magical job.”
There is a reason that still works – and why, Deadline reports another season is “very likely”. The revival has the old rhythms, the quick jokes and the familiar faces, but Braff is playing JD with a different understanding of what sits underneath all of it.
Since Scrubs came back, strangers are once again telling him he inspired them to become doctors, but it lands differently this time. This time, he gets it.
Scrubs is streaming on Disney+ across the Middle East
