Way back in 2008, Scrubs Season 8 was supposed to conclude the popular medical sitcom, with “My Finale” doing an admirable job of hitting those series finale beats. Then ABC decided to renew Scrubs for an additional season, which wasn’t nearly as well received as the rest of the show’s run. However, more than a decade and a half after the original Scrubs came to an uneventful end, and just days before the revival premieres on the 2026 TV schedule, show creator Bill Lawrence explained to CinemaBlend why he’ll never "talk s—" about the polarizing Scrubs Season 9.
Lawrence immediately went into protective mode during my interview with him alongside Aseem Batra, who was a writer and producer on the original Scrubs (as well as played the high-pitched Josephine in Seasons 7 and 8), and is now the revival’s showrunner. When I pointed out how Scrubs had already tried a relaunch of sorts with that ninth season, he quickly said:
First of all, I'll never talk shit about the 9th year because I thought it was a cool spinoff. It was supposed to be called Scrubs Med. I thought Mike Moseley and Dave Franco and Eliza Coupe did some super cool work, and Kerry Bishé and stuff. I think if it was called Scrubs Med, it would have been viewed under a different magnifying glass. But Aseem was definitely passionate about moving forward as if the 8th year was the finale of the show.
Scrubs Season 9 definitely fit the spinoff mold more than it did being part of the main series. While Zack Braff, Donald Faison, John C. McGinley and Sarah Chalke were among the familiar faces who reprised their roles in series regular or recurring capacities, the show’s focus had very much switched to the medical students. That included Kerry Bishé’s Lucy Bennett, Dave Franco’s Cole Aaronson and Michael Mosley’s Drew Suffin, and Eliza Coupe’s Denise Mahoney, who was introduced in Scrubs Season 8, was given an expanded role as a teaching assistant.
I agree that it would have been preferable for Scrubs Season 9 to have been a separate show rather than a continuation the original one. Maybe Bill Lawrence is right that it would have been evaluated differently through that lens. Regardless, he has nothing bad to say about Season 9, which is fine. I am, however, glad that Aseem Batra was insistent on acting as though “My Finale” was the end of Scrubs in its original form. With that mindset, it deserves to be counted as one of the TV shows that actually ended well.
You’re welcome to revisit Scrubs Season 9 with your Hulu subscription and see if it plays better in your head by imagining it as a spinoff instead. Otherwise, remember that the Scrubs revival will drop its first two episodes on Wednesday, February 25 on ABC. Additionally, along with his Apple TV+ subscription-exclusive shows Ted Lasso, Shrinking and Bad Monkey, Bill Lawrence also has a new series called Rooster that debuts next month on HBO.
