In the hall of TV show bands, The Blanks are The Rolling Stones. Definitely The Who, tops.
The a cappella quartet made their small screen debut on Scrubs as Ted's band The Worthless Peons, played by Sam Lloyd, Philip McNiven, George Miserlis and Paul F. Perry (not to be confused with Ted's air band The Cool Cats that was just a brief side project when they probably failed to win those water park tickets) and have since become a hard-working touring band that has gone back and forth between both sides of the U.S. coasts. But they were a band long before Scrubs was even an afterthought in Bill Lawrence's skull, assuming that Lawrence didn't come up with the idea for Scrubs when they all met at Syracuse University.
Lloyd and McNiven (the completely bald one that looks like Professor Wonder Bread) were nice enough to dish out all the backstage dirt that comes from the hard and edgy road life of an all-male vocal band.
Figured today was going to be a good day to publish the Scrubs-centric part of my conversation with Bill Lawrence last month. Here we talk about what's going to happen during the first episode or two of the new season of Scrubs.
The biggest piece of information? That Judy Reyes, who played Carla during the first eight seasons, won't appear at all in this new-direction ninth season. She's the only regular of Scrubs Classic (my name for it) who won't appear at least once during the upcoming season. "I think she was either going to be a regular on this show or looking to go do other things with her career," Lawrence told me, citing that he "totally respect(s)" her decision.
Other info from Bill: How the season premiere will open, how the transition from Zach Braff's voiceover to another voiceover is going to work, and more about the new character directions for Classic regulars John C. McGinley, Donald Faison and Eliza Coupe.
One of Scrubs' minor but more memorable characters will become a memory this season.
Actor Sam Lloyd, who plays the hopelessly pathetic attorney Ted, will leave the show in the upcoming season. Lloyd said he just finished filming his final episode and called it a "bittersweet moment."
"It was a nice episode, but it was very bittersweet for me," Sam said. "It was basically my choice and I just decided I should move on at this point."
I sat down with Lloyd and fellow band member Philip McNiven to talk about their a cappella music group The Blanks for a feature interview that we'll post soon. In the meantime, enjoy their famous rendition of "Over the Rainbow" to give this sad moment the solemn tone it deserves.
The latest celebrity death rumor that turned out to be false was the one about Scrubs star Zach Braff. He didn't kill himself by taking pills. To prove it, Braff has made the video below. He calls the guy who started the fake rumor (he even created a fake CNN page to make it more believable) a "douchebag" because the story upset his mom.
Here's the full transcript from the phone interview I did with Bill Lawrence a couple of weeks ago... minus the part where we talked about Scrubs. That's an interesting bit in and of itself, and I'll publish that in full sometime during the early part of October.
This goes on for about 5700 words, but if you hang in there, you'll find a lot of good conversation about Cougar Town, the state of the sitcom, why Bill thinks NBC is shortsighted in its dependence on Jay Leno, and why Courteney Cox let him talk our ears off at the Cougar Town TCA session.
You can either leave comments here or at the bottom of the edited version.
I guess even J.J. Abrams needs to lighten things up now and then. With shows like Fringe, Lost and Alias, and movies like Star Trek, Cloverfield and Mission Impossible III on his impressive resume, maybe he needs a break from the sci-fi / action / drama genres.
Now he's exec producing an untitled, half-hour comedy for Fox. It's written by Mike Markowitz (who's worked on Becker and It's All Relative), but other than that, details are few and far between. The tagline is that it'll be "a comedic medical show." Hmmm, so maybe like Scrubs?
Scrubs is going into syndication, which means you can now catch J.D., Turk and the rest of the Sacred Heart gang five nights a week. Visit www.watchscrubs.com to find out when it airs in your neighborhood.
To celebrate, theScrubs folks are offering some very cool "Scrub in and Win" prizes:
One (1) Grand Prize winner will receive a $150 Visa Cash Card (because as we all know, cash can cure anything!)
Five (5) runner-up winners will receive a prize pack that includes a Scrubs Hat, T-Shirt, Pen and Clipboard.
To enter, leave a comment below before 5 PM Eastern, Friday, Sept. 25, 2009 telling us what you love about Scrubs. As always, we'll randomly choose six winners amongst the eligible entries. Some other details:
To enter, leave a confirmed comment below stating what you love about Scrubs.
The comment must be left before 5 PM Eastern, Friday, Sept. 25, 2009.
You may enter only once.
Six winners will be selected in a random drawing.
One Grand Prize winner will receive a $150 Visa Cash Card.
Five runner-up winners will receive a prize pack that includes a Scrubs Hat, T-Shirt, Pen and Clipboard.
Open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older.
Click here for complete Official Rules. Good luck!
Several DVD sets came my way this week, so I did some marathon viewing sessions for Jane After Dark. I'm brand new to some of these, so you'll get the stark, raw newbie version. But I'll start with one I've watched since the beginning ...
Dirty Sexy Money: The Complete Second and Final Season. I really liked this show at the beginning. It had all the elements of a great series, including excellent actors (starting with Donald Sutherland, Jill Clayburgh, and Peter Krause) and intriguing storylines with rich people, sex, murder, and mystery. But by the time they got to season two, the storylines just seemed to fizzle out. I would love to hear your thoughts on why Dirty Sexy Money didn't work. Crummy writing? Poor use of great actors? Too many characters to keep track of? Poor timing with the writer's strike occurring in the middle of its run, resulting in ten months between seasons?
Bonus features: Directing the Darlings (behind the scenes with director Jamie Babbit); A Total Knockout (a day in the life of Natalie Zea, who played Karen); Dirty Sexy Crafty (a featurette about the food on the set); Faux Pas (bloopers); deleted scenes.
In Bill Lawrence's interview with our own Joel Keller, he said: "There's going to be a new young lady with a voice over and she's either going to be funny and talented and great, or the show's gonna crater."
Well, now we know who that young lady is and I'm sure Kerry Bishe (Virtuality) will be thrilled to find out that Lawrence is hinging the entire success of Scrubs 2.0 on her. No pressure! She joins Dave Franco, cast earlier this week, and Michael Mosley to complete the new faces of Scrubs (Med School?).
Besides being the new narrative voice for the show, and presumably the lead, Bishe will be a 22-year old first-year med student. She's the first in her family of fisherman to go to college. Mosley, the other new cast member signed today, is ten years older than the rest of the students, the result of a major meltdown a decade earlier when he was at Harvard. So this is his second chance.
On the last day of the TCA press tour, as the stars of ABC were yukking it up at a crowded party at the Langham Huntington in Pasadena, Bill Lawrence and I were out in the courtyard talking about what the new season of Scrubs -- or as I'm calling it, Scrubs 2.0 -- is going to look like.
Essentially, it's going to be like a medical version of The Paper Chase, with Turk and Cox being the professors. We'll be following the lives of young medical students who will shuttle back and forth between classes and their rotations at the "new" Sacred Heart, which is being rebuilt on the med school's campus. While in the hospital, they'll run into a lot of the characters from Scrubs 1.0, including J.D., as Zach Braff is scheduled to be in the first six episodes.
It all sounds a bit confusing, so I'll let Bill lay it out for you folks. An edited transcript is after the jump. The full transcript can be found here. And I'll be getting on the phone with Bill to talk Cougar Town sometime next week, so stay tuned. Oh, and at the end of the interview, we talk about the role Bill's wife, Christa Miller, had on Scrubs that didn't involve any acting.
Here's the full transcript of the interview I did with Bill Lawrence on the last day of the TCAs. It's goes into some of the financial nitty-gritty of the Scrubs deal and drops a few other details. I also asked him to repeat what was going to go on in the new Scrubs a few times, just so I could understand completely what was going on. Enjoy! The main post, where you can leave your comments, is here.
Well let's start with the obvious. You've been thinking about doing another season of Scrubs for like a year now. (laughing)
Because you told me...when'd you talk to me about that? About a year ago? We're the only people who shot the shit about it. I thought there was a chance it would happene. I just saw the landscape, you know.
Casting like this makes me hopeful that the new iteration of Scrubs might have a chance. After all, you can't put the entire weight of the series on Cox and Turk. Dave Franco's role in Scrubs is described as charming, conservative, confidently stupid and incredibly entitled."
Now I never saw Superbad, but due to my esteemed position here at the Squad, I did get to review the awful Do Not Disturb, that featured Franco as well. In that, he was arrogant and cocky and lazy, which sounds pretty similar to what he'll be getting up to in Scrubs. More importantly, he played that role very well. I found myself wanting to slap him across the face several times. Partially because he was in such a terrible show, sure, but also because of his portrayal.
We never really got the background of that character, but his entitled whining here is because his family donated a wing to the school. I can already see the friction between him and Dr. Cox. On Scrubs 1.0, he'd have been fired immediately like Aziz Ansari (Parks & Recreation) was, but now Cox will have to put up with his crap.
With ABC's Scrubs transforming into a teaching show instead of a hospital show, it seemed a pretty safe bet that most, if not all, of the new interns we met during the last season wouldn't make the new format. Throughout the season, only one of those characters really grew into a character that anyone gave a damn about: ice queen Denise.
The Outstanding Comedy Series category is one of the toughest of the big Emmy categories to predict. Why? Well, if you look at the list of nominees the last few years, you'll see why: What's considered a comedy? In 2005, Desperate Housewives was nominated; with what's gone on during the show this year, you'd be hard pressed to nominate it as a comedy this year. Same could be said of Ugly Betty, which got a nod in 2007.
In addition, the Emmy committee has a tendency to nominate the same shows repeatedly despite signs of decline -- Two and a Half Men is still funny, but does it deserve a nod every year? -- leaving less slots open for new blood.
So, between Men, 30 Rock, and The Office, all of which should get nominated, that leaves two (or three?) slots open. Who should go in there? Well, I can think of two right off the bat... and they're both on CBS.
Confirmation has finally arrived and the show will indeed go through an extreme makeover that will take the action from the hospital to medical school. Slight spoilers coming up!
Figured today was going to be a good day to publish the Scrubs-centric part of my 
Here's the full transcript from the phone interview I did with Bill Lawrence a couple of weeks ago... minus the part where we talked about Scrubs. That's an interesting bit in and of itself, and I'll publish that in full sometime during the early part of October.
I guess even J.J. Abrams needs to lighten things up now and then. With shows like 
Scrubs is going into syndication, which means you can now catch J.D., Turk and the rest of the Sacred Heart gang five nights a week. Visit 
Several DVD sets came my way this week, so I did some marathon viewing sessions for 
In 
Casting like this makes me hopeful that the new iteration of 
With ABC's 
The Outstanding Comedy Series category is one of the toughest of the big Emmy categories to predict. Why? Well, if you look at the list of nominees the last few years, you'll see why: What's considered a comedy? In 2005, 
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