Scrubs/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• One can see the main characters (J.D., Turk, Elliot) as undergoing some severe Flanderization as the show moved on. At the start of the show they had their own quirks but were otherwise Straight Men compared to the overall wackiness of Sacred Heart. But one could interpret that their exaggeration is actually a part of their overall assimilation to the hospital: in the beginning they were interns and outsiders, but once they actually became respected and important doctors they also became a large part of the quirkiness that is Sacred Heart.
  • Doctor Cox not caring about the interns complaining about how 'awful' their parents were makes a lot of sense when you consider how physically and emotionally abusive his own parents were.
  • In the episode My Own Personal Hell, Elliot, Carla, and Jordan discuss the less manly qualities of their significant others. Keith knits throw pillows, Dr. Cox waxes his chest, and Turk might be sterile, which makes Carla the "winner." Later in the episode, however, we realize that Turk is not in fact sterile, thereby making him just about the manliest man in the hospital.
    • Except for all of his Ho Yay with J.D., of course.
• I used to really hate Elliot from Scrubs, because I thought she had no flaws and was boring and whiny and less fun than everyone else. Then I realized how insecure and strange she really is and I like her a lot better now.
  • In the Scrubs finale, I had finished watching it, showered, ate breakfast, dressed for work, and had just stepped out the door when he realized the only way Cox could express his feelings for J.D. was if he was using them to chew someone else out. And J.D. realized that, and used it for his own benefit!
    • Speaking of Scrubs, I just now realized that the same actress in different seasons played Laverne and Shirley. TV show reference much?
    • Kind of a bad point on your part there, since the two being played by the same actress was actually a big point in a few of the episodes, it gets lampshaded to hell and back.
    • It wasn't the fact that the same actress played these characters, it was their names being a TV show from the 70s.
    • Quoth Harvey Korman: "Hello Laverne! Shirl!"
    • All four of the above comments showcase the Fridge Brilliance inherent in the actress' inclusion.
    • Or they completely missed the joke until well after the fact.

Fridge Horror

• Fridge Logic/Fridge Horror: In the seventh season finale, Cox translates his day at the hospital into a kid-friendly fairytale he tells his son. Most of the episode is thus depicted in the style of The Princess Bride, with occasional scenes at the hospital establishing the metaphors within Cox’s story (eg. the mystery disease J.D. and Elliott investigate becomes a shadowy monster). Eventually, Cox’s Knight in Shining Armor informs J.D. and Elliott’s fairytale versions that they must find the answer to defeating the monster (ie. be able to identify the disease) by thinking back to “when you weren’t even listening.” Within the context of fairytale fiction, this advice is all fine and good and makes for a fun story; within the context of the hospital, where Cox’s advice causes J.D. to remember two interns quizzing each other on Wilson’s Disease in the background of an earlier scene, the heavy implication is that Cox knew and withheld the diagnosis from J.D. and Elliott just to teach them a lesson in paying more attention.
  • I saw that more as Dr Cox rewriting the story to make himself the hero. More likely J.D. figured it out but took a while to do so.
    • However, JD asks what Dr. Cox meant by the line back in the real hospital setting.
    • His advice amounted to, "Come on, you guys know this, you just don't realize it." It doesn't mean that Cox knew what the answer was--he wasn't the one looking at all the data, after all. "When you weren't even listening" can refer to anything. Sure, in the episode it applies to JD overhearing something in the background, but it could just as easily mean "when you were half-asleep in med school" or "when you were cramming for rounds years ago."
  • More Fridge Logic. In one episode, J.D. fantasizes that Eliot and Carla's friendship was cemented when they met Eric Estrada at a convention. Estrada was delighted by the ladies' over joyous reaction to see him with a cocky, "I still got it." However, Turk brings J.D. back to earth by reminding him that it was the two of them who had that moment, not Carla and Eliot. So, then, why would Estrada be happy to see that he made two male fans all giddy?
    • Because it's J.D.'s imagination-memory and an exaggeration, maybe?
  • Another slight bit of Fridge Horror courtesy of Dr. Cox: at the end of "My New God", he tells his sister Paige that he doesn't see why she can't be there for the major events in his son Jack's life—with one said major event being his funeral. He's obviously being facetious and tends to be pretty blunt most of the time anyway, but a parent saying with any degree of either humour or seriousness that their healthy toddler will be outlived by their middle-aged sister is uncomfortable at best.
• In Scrubs, the supporting character Doug disappears partway through the eighth season. He is notable as the only frequently recurring character who is absent from the Grand Finale as well as the Post Script Season. What happened to him? Well the last scene of the last episode he was in, "My Soul on Fire", he was depressed that Janitor didn't invite him to Hawaii for the wedding and had gotten into one of those autopsy drawers for dead bodies, having someone push him in. The implication seems to be that he's going there to be alone to sad, but his never appearing again raises the possibility that he was never let out...
  • Doug himself is essentially a Fridge Horror Station Attendant. Consider that it was a few years after the beginning of his internship that he became a mortician. A few years in which his incredible incompetence directly caused the deaths of dozens of patients. That Doug long ago crossed the line between "malpractice" and "murder" was only ever hinted at once, and it was Played for Laughs.
  • Also on Scrubs, on the Episode "My Musical", If the patient hadn't begged (in song) Dr. Cox to do another test, he would have passed her aneurysm off as the common crazies, and she probably would have died...

• Fridge Horror: Carla lampoons Turk for not knowing his ancestry. Being black, his ancestors were most likely not allowed to know their ancestry.
  • JD later claims that Turk is one eighth Japanese.