I knew the first Zach Braff-free episode of this new version of Scrubs was going to be a bit of a bumpy ride, but I didn’t think things would be this bad.

It’s not just that the episode was lacking in funny. The established characters were mostly written wrong, exhibiting characteristics we’ve never really seen before. And the med students — except for Drew — were so broadly written that they could have been played by anybody.

No wonder why this episode was buried on New Year’s Day.

First of all: Elliot. Was that the same person we left at Sacred Heart last year? Granted, she was a much more confident doctor and person at the end of season eight than she was at the beginning of the series. But I didn’t recognize this Elliot. She was almost cocky, a characteristic even season eight Elliot never had.

Could she have developed it after getting married to J.D. and getting pregnant? Maybe. But it felt like the writers had another doctor in the original draft and just decided to make the doctor into Elliot. Really, Lucy could have been marveling at any doctor who seemingly “had it all,” then called that doctor a “munch” when the doctor left her with her patient. The way it was written, we didn’t really see much of what made Elliot such a compelling character all these years. And, if all Bill Lawrence could afford was a couple of full episodes with Sarah Chakle, he and his crew pretty much wasted an opportunity.

On to Turk. Jeez, the guy’s got to sack up. He worked for an entire year without J.D. You’d think he’d be used to it. He never seemed to be the needy half of the couple, so having him essentially whine and pout throughout this entire episode was a little off-putting. We like Turk because he’s a cocky bastard, comfortable enough in his own skin to be able to dance to “Poison” and feel fine about it. Whiny Turk is not a fun Turk. Maybe palling around with Denise will give him back his mojo.

Oh, and Denise. Didn’t she kind of not like Turk? Or was she just disdainful of the whole weird thing he had with J.D.? Now all of a sudden she’s liking him? Seems convenient that Turk is turning to her to find people like the Korean Helen Hunt and steal birthday cake from too-chipper employees.

And why would Cox conspire with a med student, even if the med student was his designated #1, to get another med student to do all the scut work? Is that really something Cox would even bother with? Cole is barely worth his time, much less the effort to tell him about some fake ranking system.

Finally, Lucy. Dull as usual. Nothing about her character makes me want to follow her as she moves on in her medical career. And screw-ups like mixing the bachelorette photos for the class slides didn’t give me any more reason to sympathize with her.

Download “Our New Girl-Bro” Episode here

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