ABC Studios
You know, it’s a little depressing looking at these DVD sets for the 2007-2008 television season. Because of the writer’s strike, most of our favorite shows had really short runs, truncating plans and creating pretty uneven presentations. This was especially difficult for Scrubs, because the seventh season was supposed to be their final season. And it was. On NBC.
So we only got 11 episodes, which creates for a pretty lean DVD experience. Clocking in at 236 minutes, it’s shorter than the 1993 film Gettysburg and Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. So what do you do when your entire season is shorter than some theatrical films? Pack that bad boy full of extras, and that’s exactly what ABC Studios almost did.
My Likes
–I’ll give props for giving us audio commentary on every single solitary episode in the set again. That doubles your playing time right there. And they got a wide variety of people for these, from costume and set designers to show creator Bill Lawrence and star Zach Braff.
–I enjoyed “My Making of II: My Princess.” Even though I found the episode itself to be a little uneven, it was still cool to see just how much work went into it. And we got to sample a bit of a table read with the cast, which according to Bill Lawrence is a pretty rare thing.
–The Deleted Scenes were a lot of fun to watch. It’s always interesting to see what doesn’t make the final cut of a television show, to see if the joke just didn’t work, or if it was too naughty. I would have liked some commentary here, though, maybe explaining why the decisions were made to cut these scenes.
–Call me old-fashioned, but I love bloopers. I loved it when they had their own show and I love them on DVD sets — there’re some good ones here.
My Dislikes
–The Alternate Lines segment got boring pretty quick. I get that these guys ad-lib a lot of their stuff, but replaying scene after scene with just one line different got surprisingly old pretty damned fast.
–The interview with Ken Jenkins. Sorry Dr. Kelso, but this put me to sleep. I understand that Bob had a pretty big year what with his retirement and all, but there really wasn’t anything revelatory or overly funny in this piece.
–As always, the damned blooper reel was way too short. Come on, I know there is a ton of funny stuff they could have added to this set. Hell, I would have taken a third disc of nothing but the funniest outtakes of the past season.
My Wishes
–Why couldn’t we have had a big sit-down with the entire cast? With this having been planned as the show’s last season, but then jumping ship to ABC for season eight, surely the actors have some thoughts on that. What did they think of the ABC pick-up? Do they think this will be the last year, or do any think they would keep going?
–As this is the end of the NBC years, maybe a retrospective of how each character has grown over the years. It would be a great way to promote the earlier season DVD sets (by showing us how funny they were). Or save this one for the real last season. It’s cool. I can wait.
–Put a little more effort into your packaging. Get creative. The show is known for being off-the-wall and crazy and we got a 100% standard DVD plastic package. These TV sets need to stand out from their film brethren on the shelf. Make it pop! Make the packaging out of real scrubs materials and give us name tags. Do something!
My Final Thoughts
The bottom line is that “Season Seven” was a good year for Scrubs. Yes, it was strike-shortened but what we got were some pretty damned solid installments. If you’re a fan of the show it’s worth checking out. If you’re on the fence, hell, it’s shorter than Hamlet. And because of that it’s ten bucks cheaper than any other season.
What a great opportunity to sample a show for only twenty bucks (at Amazon!). In fact if you buy it by clicking the link right here at the bottom of this article, the writer of this article will personally come to your house, cook you a lavish dinner and hum “Superman” gently in your ear until you fall asleep. [writer will not actually cook you dinner or hum in your ear but will think happy thoughts in your general direction from time to time.]
Clacked by Jason Hughes 
on Nov 14, 2008 @ 14:00 EST5EDT
