Could There Be a Next Generation of Scrubs?

I caught up with Scrubs boss Bill Lawrence yesterday at a charity luncheon, and he was kind of enough to talk about where he's going, where Zach Braff is going and where the show is going as it heads into its eighth (but perhaps not final) season.

Click in to find out what's next for the boys and girls of Sacred Heart and how J.D. and Elliot might finally get together...

Scrubs is coming back on ABC next season for 18 more episodes. Congratulations!
Thanks. Yeah, Scrubs is like a cockroach—it can't be killed.

It's fantastic that you got everyone back for the eighth—I know casts can just get tired as shows go along.
We actually all like our jobs. We work in this creepy hospital, and we're all friends; we all spend time together—we work on each other's projects, and we direct each other's commercials.

it's a group of people who have known each other for years, so we all sat down, actors, writers, directors, everybody who is involved in the show and said, "All right, we'll do it for one more year, but if we're just doing it for a paycheck, we shouldn't do it because we'll be embarrassed by it, and it'll be hacky."

So what made you do it?
It was like, then again, it's only 18 episodes, and we were going to do seven more episodes anyway. If we have the stones to suck it up and actually make this show really good and not as goofy again, we should go for it. I've really wanted to try it.

I agreed with some of the [criticism we've gotten], because our show has gotten very broad and cartoonish. So, I contacted a lot of these guys and said, "Look, the show has returned to its roots, and I think it's really good. I'm going to send you a bunch of episodes early, and if you think I'm wrong, go ahead and write it."

Nicely done. Is there an arc for the 18 episodes that are presumably the show's last episodes? Is there a mission statement?
Yes, there is a mission statement. I don't know if it's the show's last season, but I know it's my last season, and I know it's Zach's last season, but part of the thing with [ABC] is we had to agree that if the show does well, it's such a reasonably priced show in this environment, that Steve McPherson is able to go forward with another season if he wants to.

But I would only think they would go forward if it was a completely different show with different castmembers.

Scrubs: The Next Generation.
[Current ABC president and former Touchstone Television boss] Steve McPherson always pitched that Scrubs could be ER as a comedy, a show where the castmembers revolve through. So the arc of this show, this year, is to finally truly move on from the old dynamic of our main castmembers learning lessons—because they're all in their 30s now.

So we brought a bunch of new, young interns on the show and new castmembers, and I think when you watch the initial shows, it really does feel like everything has shifted.

There will be a new energy to it all.
You can print this if you want: One of the cheats for us as writers is that we can essentially do some of the same stories we did the first two years, but with the old students acting as the teachers.

But we'll still have all our old faves, right?
Here's the basic arc of the year: We have to earn the character J.D. leaving and all the loose ends of the show being wrapped up.

This isn't The Sopranos; I just want people to be left with a good feeling. And the advantage we have over other television shows is we've had the finale of this show written for three years.

Because you're always on the knife edge. Nicely done. Last question is about J.D. and Elliot: I've heard you're opposed to them being together, that it's too Ross and Rachel.
The only problem is this show can't handle J.D. going to the airport to stop her from getting on the plane, that's not our show. It's Friends and Moonlighting and Cheers, right, so everybody's been fighting about it constantly. If they do end up dating again, it will happen when people don't expect it, and it won't be the main part of the show.