St. Denis Medical has consistently overperformed expectations, becoming a reliable Monday night sitcom for NBC. The cast of St. Denis Medical is full of faces you’ll recognize, even if they aren’t household names. The series has the same winning combination of humor and heart in a medical setting that made Scrubs such a success in the 2000s.
NBC is quietly building a great original comedy lineup, including Stumble, the best sitcom you haven’t heard of, and the upcoming Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, a sports mockumentary starring Daniel Radcliffe and Tracy Morgan. However, the goodwill for St. Denis Medical could actually be a hindrance to the Scrubs reboot, set to premiere on February 25.
Scrubs already has to win fans back after its universally disliked final season. Having a fresh medical sitcom that already has two seasons of positive momentum leaves Scrubs season 10’s prognosis even less clear.
How St. Denis Has The Same Appeal As The Scrubs Reboot
What made Scrubs endure weren’t its jokes or fantasy cutaways, but its ability to pull comedy out of life-and-death situations without ever trivializing them. St. Denis Medical taps into that same balance.
Both shows understand that hospitals are emotionally intense workplaces filled with absurd routines, professional hierarchies, and interpersonal friction that can be funny precisely because the stakes are so high. Like Scrubs, St. Denis Medical is a true half-hour network sitcom that thrives on the rhythms of a working hospital.
St. Denis Medical also shares Scrubs’ interest in the healthcare system itself. The show regularly highlights modern frustrations like underfunding and institutional inefficiency, grounding its comedy in problems audiences recognize. Scrubs did this in the 2000s with insurance disputes and impossible patient loads. St. Denis touches on contemporary issues, making it feel current without becoming preachy.
Many of the storylines in St. Denis could easily work in a contemporary version of Scrubs. Matt and Ron spiraling over a child refusing a tetanus shot, or Val lying about jury duty to hide the fact that she needed time off to save her marriage, feel spiritually aligned with the kinds of stories Scrubs once told.
Both shows are anchored by deeply grounded characters. Even the grumpiest personalities are written with empathy, allowing humor and emotion to coexist. You laugh more than you expect, then suddenly find yourself moved. That combination is exactly why St. Denis Medical feels a spiritual successor to Scrubs in a way that negates the need for an actual reboot.
The Scrubs Reboot Needs To Happen For 1 Specific Reason
The Scrubs reboot needs to undo the season 9 damage. The final year of Scrubs didn’t just stumble creatively; it fundamentally misunderstood what viewers loved about the show. By introducing a mostly new class of medical students and sidelining or outright removing core characters, season 9 felt like a different series awkwardly wearing Scrubs’ name.
After NBC canceled the show, ABC picked up Scrubs for season 9 and wanted to inject fresh energy, even changing the setting from a hospital to a medical school. Season 9 broke the audience’s trust, playing more like a soft reboot with an ending that felt more like an asterisk than a real conclusion. This official reboot gives Scrubs the rare opportunity to course correct season 9, and few sitcoms are better positioned to retcon a misstep.
The series famously leaned into surreal fantasy sequences, internal monologues, and heightened reality. Pretending Scrubs season 9 never happened, or reframing it as a misguided detour or even a bad dream from J.D., would fit comfortably within the show’s established language. Fans would welcome the retconning.
There is warm nostalgia because most of Scrubs remains deeply beloved and endlessly rewatchable. Despite being old enough to be in med school itself, the series still feels emotionally fresh.
Much of that comes down to Zach Braff and Donald Faison’s real-life friendship, which was lightning in a bottle. Their dynamic was so effective that they’re still trading on it decades later, essentially playing heightened versions of themselves in commercials and podcasts.
There’s also an ironic industry wrinkle. NBC appears to have developed St. Denis Medical as its own answer to Scrubs, after canceling the sitcom after eight seasons. Now ABC has to find out whether nostalgia for Scrubs extends beyond reruns. It deserves a better ending, focused on the fan-favorite Scrubs characters from the first eight seasons returning for the reboot.
How The Scrubs Reboot Can Differentiate Itself From St. Denis Medical
If a Scrubs reboot is going to succeed, it has to lean on what made the original run so singular. Scrubs thrives on surrealism and heightened reality in ways St. Denis does not. J.D.’s elaborate daydreams, the occasional musical episode, and visual gags in Scrubs‘ best episodes pushed the comedy into territory that feels unique to the sitcom.
While St. Denis Medical uses the mockumentary format to deliver its humor and create immediacy, Scrubs can exploit its narration and fantasy sequences to do things no mockumentary can. Reclaiming the first-person, deeply subjective perspective allows the show to play with timing, visuals, and absurdity in ways a straight-ahead ensemble sitcom cannot.
Stylistically, Scrubs should embrace these tools to differentiate itself from St. Denis’ documentary-style lens. While St. Denis funnels much of the audience perspective through the harried charge nurse Alex, Scrubs was viewed almost entirely through J.D.’s lens, with Turk and other relationships increasingly central to the emotional core.
That unique narrative voice combining humor, heart, and occasional melancholy is the magic that made the original show resonate. Scrubs could pair nicely with Abbott Elementary, another workplace sitcom on ABC’s slate.
The real question isn’t whether St. Denis Medical and Scrubs can coexist, but whether the latter can compete with its own legacy. Leaning into its surrealism, narration, and deeply personal point-of-view storytelling is the clearest way to remind audiences why the original run captured hearts in the first place.
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