Who’s Back, Which Couples Survived, Big Changes

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the Season 1 (or Season 10? Season 9?) premiere of “Scrubs” (2026), which premiered Wednesday night on ABC.

When the cast and producers of hit early 2000s comedy “Scrubs” reunited for a panel at the ATX TV festival in 2022, the question naturally turned to a series revival. Most of the cast loved the idea — but figured it was a non-starter. “It can’t be a full season of a show,” said star Donald Faison (Turk), who suggested a TV movie instead. “Everyone is doing things.”

But creator Bill Lawrence — who’s pretty busy at the moment (“Shrinking,” “Rooster,” “Bad Monkey”) — nonetheless was eager to get the gang back together again. “I just thought it would happen,” he says. “People often go, ‘why would you reboot this?’ If you enjoyed spending time with and working with people you know, I would think you would be crazy to not take a shot. Even if the worst thing that happens is that you get to spend some time again with people you love. We had reached points in our lives that we weren’t getting to spend as much time with each other — because everybody’s successful and doing their own thing — that everybody would ultimately be receptive to giving another spin and seeing if we had fun again.”

Star Zach Braff (J.D.) noted that the “Scrubs” rewatch podcast that he and Faison hosted over the pandemic, “Fake Doctors, Real Friends,” helped garner interest in a revival. And then there are those T-Mobile ads, where Braff and Faison play themselves — but remind viewers of their “Scrubs” characters’ chemistry. “I think that kicked it into even a higher gear,” he says. “I think that that’s when Bill started actually trying to figure out how to make it work.”

Because Lawrence is obligated to produce his other shows — and he’s under contract at Warner Bros. TV, whereas “Scrubs” is produced by Disney — he tapped “Scrubs” alum Assem Batra to showrun the revival. “I feel this show in my soul,” she says. “The balance of heart and funny. Bill gave me a lot of leeway of what will this be. It feels like we’ve been talking about it for years, so it’s exciting that it’s finally happening.”

Now that the “Scrubs” revival has officially premiered on ABC (next day on Hulu), here are some things to know about the show’s return:

The new “Scrubs” opens with a bit of an homage to “The Pitt” before revealing it’s all a J.D. fantasy, and he’s really working as a successful, but bored, concierge doctor.

“I’ll tell you right now, my favorite medical show on TV is ‘The Pitt,’” Lawrence says. “I’ll put Scrubs as a close second, but I’m obsessed, and it kind of represents that world of what it means to be dropped into a place that you know, on some level, just by the very simple act of being there. It’s because you want to be of service and do things that matter for the world. Man, that’s the kind of a storytelling arena that always hooks me.”

But as J.D. visits Sacred Heart, he realizes he misses the calling of being in the middle of the action. And so when Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley) offers him the job to replace him as chief of medicine, he accepts.

Says Braff: “That’s in him, that passion, and that’s when Cox says, ‘what are you doing?’ He has the attitude of, ‘I trained you to be far more than what you’re doing, and you’re better than just being a concierge doctor. You should come back and make a difference.’ I think that really lands with JD, especially when he sees what a difference he can make. In that two days he spends at the hospital, he gets a little glimpse of what it’s like to be a teacher, to share your knowledge. It just kind of comes back into his system. Like, ‘I miss this. This is a lot harder, and the money might not be as good, but I want to make a difference again.”

The decision by Dr. Cox to retire was also out of necessity — McGinley was busy shooting Lawrence’s new HBO Max series “Rooster.” But that Dr. Cox/J.D. relationship is still front and center in the first episode. “We always kept that dynamic where Cox did not let him in, and he’s letting him in a little bit more now,” Aseem says.

As “Scrubs” returns after 15 years, its characters are now the veteran doctors teaching a whole new generation of “newbies.”

New cast members include Joel Kim Booster as Dr. Eric Park, J.D.’s new rival (and someone who was expecting to replace Dr. Cox in charge) and Vanessa Bayer as hospital HR director Sibby. Ava Bunn, Jacob Dudman, David Gridley, Layla Mohammadi and Amanda Morrow play the new generation of interns.

“It’s 21 minutes and 30 seconds, and you almost feel like you’re doing two shows,” Batra says. “You’re doing a show with our legacy cast, and you’re doing a show with the new cast. So it is tricky, but we hope there’s enough for old fans and new fans to hook into this.”

Among the themes for the returning “Scrubs” characters: What it’s like to be getting older.

“In healthcare, you’re dealing with humanity so much every day, and part of humanity is aging and getting older, and what that means emotionally and spiritually and physically,” Batra says. “It’s almost organic to see our cast go through these issues in a hospital setting. We’re actually talking head on about, ‘what does it feel to get older?’ And we have an episode of that coming up.

Fans quickly learn that J.D. and Elliot (Sarah Chalke) have divorced.

“The Elliot/J.D. relationship was always tricky, because people root for them so much,” Batra says. “But if you go back and look at their dynamic in the first season, it was a hot mess. There was something we felt we could get out of them not being together that would be more complex and layered than if everything had worked out. It felt like Turk and Carla were always the core, the solid couple. We were actually excited to do this, because even being split for Elliot and J.D. didn’t mean they don’t love each other. And being able to have that arc for them of how do they come back together, even if it’s not romantically, we don’t know. But seeing them rebuild something together is also gives us so much to do.”

Says Chalke: “Elliot and J.D. figuring out who they’re going to be to each other in this new iteration, that was really, I thought, such a smart way in. I thought it just leaves so much room for story lines and for conflict and interest. It’s such a unique experience to get to come back and play a character that you spent eight years doing. It’s unique to get to do it once, but then to get to do it again, feels really lucky.”

Batra and Braff, who directed the pilot, say they wanted to keep the return of “Scrubs” more grounded vs. the flights of fancy the show was famous for later in its run.

“I think what we both understood and agreed on was we had to keep it tonally grounded,” Batra says. “We couldn’t start at the ‘Scrubs’ 10 at goofiness. We had to give people a way in, to hook in emotionally. We know it’s going to get pushed more toward the comedy, but we really wanted to connect with our audience, and so we have grounded it more in that for now.”

Says Braff: “Outside of the fantasies, we really wanted to ground the show back to where it was in Season 1 of the original show. We got broader and broader over the years, and it almost became cartoonish at points. And we want to be real. When I was directing, I  would catch myself and the other cast and go, ‘that’s kind of a heightened version of that. How would you really say it in the real world?’ And I just kept trying to ground it.”

That’s not to say there isn’t some fan service. Eccentric surgeon Hooch (Phill Lewis) — seemingly fired in Season 8 — is back, as is bro doctor The Todd (Robert Maschio).

“The Todd was a tricky one, because we’re like, ‘well, the Todd in this day and age, it’s so problematic,’” Batra says. “So for the spin on the Todd, he thinks he understands what’s going on, and he’s kind of like, ‘you get consent.’ So he’s not a bad guy. He’s just a dated guy, and he’s trying very hard to understand the rules, but probably getting them wrong. So that’s how we decided to address Todd in this day and age.”

Also making return appearances: Judy Reyes as Carla, Christa Miller as Jordan and Neil Flynn as The Janitor. “It is difficult to thread that needle of giving the fans everything they want, even just with availability and being able to introduce a new cast, versus putting emphasis on older cast,” Batra says. “After the pilot, we got eight episodes, which I think also determined what we can do. Hopefully in success and a Season 2, we’ll be able to bring back a lot more fan favorites and address some of the things. Sam Lloyd [who played Sacred Heart lawyer Ted] passed away, and we wanted to do a memorial to him. Something like that may come up next season, because we really feel his absence in the show.”

And yes, Turk and J.D. revive their “eagle” lift in the season opener — but soon realize that their bodies aren’t cut out for it anymore.

“We just didn’t want it to be a greatest hits nostalgia session,” Braff says. “Although we do have characters that people like, and of course, we do our probably first and last ‘eagle’ at 50 years old in the pilot, I think mostly it’s like, we want to introduce a new audience that doesn’t know ‘Scrubs’ to this world and have it be the case that you could just start the show anew without having known anything about ‘Scrubs.’ In that case, it’s about a doctor who returns to work at a hospital after being gone for many years.”

ABC is branding this as “Scrubs” Season 1, even if it’s technically Season 10. But Lawrence prefers to call it Season 9.

“I would say that this is the ninth season of Scrubs, and it just takes place 20 years later,” Lawrence says. That’s because the previous final season of “Scrubs” was actually a bit of a different show, as attention turned to new characters played by Eliza Coupe, Kerry Bishé, Michael Mosley and Dave Franco.

“The ninth season of ‘Scrubs’ wasn’t supposed to be ‘Scrubs,’” Lawrence notes. “It was called ‘Scrubs Med,’ and it was supposed to be a fun spin off. And as a spin off, I don’t regret it at all. I think a lot of those actors and actresses, Mike Mosley and Eliza Coupe and Kerry Bouche, Dave Franco, they were doing really funny, cool stuff. And if it would have been interesting to see where it went. But for me, the show ‘Scrubs’ ended the eighth year, and this is kind of picking it up 20 years later.”

Adds Braff: “In terms of going back to the Bill Lawrence vision of ‘Scrubs,’ it’s Seasons 1 through 8. And if you look at eight the way it ends, when all those images are projected on that sheet, that’s just what J.D. hopes will happen. That’s what he daydreams will happen. It’s not saying necessarily that any of those things actually occurred.”

That means some of what happened in Season 9 is no longer canon, and the new “Scrubs” instead picks up after the events of Season 8.

 “It doesn’t mean that we don’t respect Season 9, but we feel like that was more of the spin off thing,” says Batra. “So we really decided, let’s follow after Season 8. We knew we would annoy some people with that, people who are hardcore about all that, but we decided that just felt right to us tonally and everything else.

Adds Faison: “For all my nerds out there, just look at Season 9 as a ‘what if.’”

The cast and producers are on board to keep the “Scrubs” revival going.

“We definitely want to keep going and tell more ‘Scrubs’ stories,” Braff says. “This is sort of like an audition, if you will, to see if people like it. And I think if people like it, I know that we and ABC would like to do more.”