This past Thursday NBC unceremoniously said goodbye to the medical sitcom Scrubs after seven seasons. The series, which introduced Zach Braff to most of the world (before he moped his way through Garden State), gave John C. McGinley the fame he so well deserves, and resurrected the career of Sarah Chalke, has been a critical darling since it went on the air in 2001. For a brief time, it gained a mass audience — that is, until NBC began shuffling its time slots. Pretty soon, that mass audience became a small, loyal group of fans. Seriously, when are executives going to learn that people follow routines when they watch television? They are called viewing habits for a reason. When you move a show around two or three times, people are going to give up trying to find it, even if they do have a DVR. I do give NBC credit for keeping the show on the air for so long. Scrubs lost some of its charm as it evolved from a dramedy with some cartoonish elements into a silly sitcom trying to make us laugh every 30 seconds. By trying too hard for zaniness, the writing became inconsistent and predictable. This inconsistency was frustrating for those of us who latched on to the show in the early seasons.

This past winter, during the writers’ strike, NBC had the perfect opportunity to lure more viewers back into Sacred Heart Hospital; they promoted new episodes and aired them back to back. With nothing but reruns on the other channels, you’d think people would have tuned in. They didn’t. When NBC announced their new schedule for the coming year, Scrubs was … scrubbed. A couple weeks ago, NBC switched time slots between Scrubs and Tina Fey’s 30 Rock, giving the latter the choice placement behind The Office at 9:30 pm. When the season finale rolled around last week, there was little fanfare and little sentiment from the network. What a shame. Even if Scrubs wasn’t as great as it once was, it still deserved a nice sendoff after seven years.

However, fair viewers, this is not the end of the show. (more…)