Why I Watch Scrubs

As everyone at the playhouse knows, Scrubs is pretty much my all-time favorite show. I only own two TV series: Scrubs and M*A*S*H. My mother started sending me a new season of Scrubs every month or so; at this point I have three seasons, one of which I received this past Wednesday. This was the first season (Mom sent the 5th and my brother sent the 6th earlier this year). The first season is when all the characters are still interns. Now, I've loved this show for years because as someone who has not yet stepped out of the academic world, it is easy to relate to these characters, who are learning real world lessons the hard way: by screwing up. As an intern myself now, it is even easier!

I think everyone can relate to the world of Scrubs, and even M*A*S*H. We all have our world, our little cosmos which absorbs us; our hospital, our war, our inescapable situation. We all feel stuck, sometimes. We all have a love-hate relationship with our work, because we are married to it. We all have moments of side-splitting laughter followed, sometimes too closely, by moments of total humiliation or even heartache. In spite of pain and suffering and even death sometimes, on whatever level, we continue to live our lives because, I don't know, we have to? We need to? We want to? Because despite the emotional toll, we don't know how to do anything else? No, we don't want to do anything else. We'd rather go through the mania and depression than wallow in monotony for the rest of our lives. Any of us could get desk jobs. Any of us could make more money working as, I don't know, telemarketers or salespeople for a paper company (intentional reference). This may be why I get more into Scrubs than The Office. The Office is hilarious, don't get me wrong, but the environment is different. It does as much to affect the characters, but in an opposed fashion: they are all mostly apathetic about their jobs. No one is passionate about paper. That's probably why hospital shows work as well as they do: it takes a certain fortitude to even want to be there. M*A*S*H (since I've brought it up) seems to take both these atmospheres: the one no one wants to be in and the one they can't help but care about, and mush them together until the very environment is a spiritual conflict.

I guess I watch Scrubs and M*A*S*H because the humiliation and pain can feel real, but you always feel like things will be OK in the end. It shows me that what makes me ME is not just the mistakes I make, but how I deal with them, and that if I let them, they can destroy me....

...but only if I let them.