"Scrubs" Repeat Recap & Review - "My First Day"

Scrubs
"My First Day"

Original Air Date: October 2, 2001

Rachel - TwoCents Staff Writer

[editor's note: Speaking of First Day, I would like to welcome Rachel to the TwoCents Staff. Rachel will be covering Scrubs for us all season long and has submitted this Repeat Recap & Review to introduce herself to our readership. Welcome aboard Rachel.]

In honor of the premiere of the rumored last season of Scrubs on September 27, 2007, we here at The Two Cents thought we’d quickly go back to the beginning: back when we thought Dr. Kelso was the good guy, when Carla and Elliot hated each other, and when The Todd wasn’t a caricature. Sort of.

We meet J.D. (John Dorian played by Zack Braff) on his first day as an intern at Sacred Heart Hospital. J.D. is a quirky, extremely insecure guy, prone to self-narration and falling into his day-dreams (which, by the way, is my favorite gimmick of the whole series).

Throughout the episode, we meet the other main players in J.D. little comedy: Chris Turk (Donald Faison), J.D.’s self-confident BFF and surgical intern; Elliot Reid (Sarah Chalke), fellow medical intern and crazy as all hell; Dr. Robert Kelso (Ken Jenkins), the Chief of Medicine and seemingly a father-figure to the new interns (or, is he?); Dr. Perry Cox (John C. McGinley), the Resident Advisor and the intern’s worst nightmare; Carla Espinoza (Judy Reyes), a nurse with a heart of gold; The Janitor (Neil Flynn), J.D.’s future arch-nemesis; and Ted Buckland (Sam Lloyd), the pathetic hospital lawyer and my personal favorite character.

As J.D. stumbles through his first week, he slips deeper and deeper into the knowledge that this whole being-a-doctor-thing is not what he thought it would be. He is alone, scared, intimidated, and can’t perform a procedure to save even himself. In the end, J.D. discovers that nothing is what it seems at first: from the way he views life and death, to the people around him. He also learns that he’s gonna be just fine.

So now that we remember where it started, bring on the end. Our hopes for this final season? That all remember what J.D. discovered in that very first episode: It is all about the little victories and continually moving forward one newbie step at a time.