To wrap up many of the long-running character plots from the show, Scrubs: The Complete Eighth Season will do everything from have The Janitor (Neil Flynn) get married to his long-time girlfriend Lady, have Ted (Sam Lloyd) find a girlfriend of his own and even elevate Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley) to Chief of Medicine.
When last season ended, Dr. Kelso (Ken Jenkins) was forced into retirement and Cox had to step in for a little while as interim Chief of Medicine, but Sacred Heart has hired a new person for the role in Courtney Cox as Dr. Taylor. While this new doctor seems to be just what the hospital needs at first, it soon becomes apparent that she is even worse than Kelso. It's only when the crew are able to band together and get Taylor fired that Dr. Cox decides to throw his name into the hat and take on the top position full time. Unfortunately for him, most of his day is spent sitting behind a desk and not out on the floor helping patients. While Dr. Cox fills in the role left by Kelso, Cox's old position of badgering the Chief of Medicine into doing what is right for the people and not just the Board becomes vacant, and that is a role that J.D. (Zach Braff) slides into with ease.
While J.D.'s new informal role has him butting heads even more with his former mentor, that isn't all he has to deal with. Outside of work, J.D. and Elliot's (Sarah Chalke) relationship starts up yet again, but this time the couple is much more self conscious about what went wrong in the past. Meanwhile, J.D. is also playing part-time dad to his son, and when Elliot and J.D. learn who Kim's (J.D.'s baby's mama) new boyfriend is, things get really awkward in that particular quartet of former lovers.
While a vast majority of the show is the same standard, and funny, shtick the show has been offering for years, there is also a new and fresh injection of interns that play quite a bit more than the standard out-of-sight, out-of-mind roles as before. These new characters, the tomboy Denise (Eliza Coupe), the girly-girl Katie (Betsy Beutler), the way too happy Sunny Day (Sonal Shah), Howie (Todd Bosley), and the new surgical intern, Derek (Lee Thompson Young), take the limelight quite a few times. They even get an episode that gets into their minds in "Their Story II." As the season progresses, these characters become more and more predominant, which makes sense considering the new format of the show will focus more on the educational side of Sacred Heart.
As for how it all ends, it is obvious that the torch gets passed on rather well in the two-parter "My Finale" which has J.D. leaving the hospital for good and transferring to the other side of the city. While this was only a season finale, it felt much more like one that would end a show, and since many of the main characters won't be returning, I guess it kind of is. I almost wish this new round of Scrubs would have a slightly different name (i.e. "Scrubs: The Next Generation" or "Scrubs: The New Class") and let Zach Braff's final scenes put a nice cap on the show.
What I don't get though, is why Scrubs: The Complete Eighth Season needs to be on Blu-ray. Sure, there is a crisper sound to it and the video is a lot cleaner (you can really see J.D.'s new patchy beard really well), but since no other season has come out on Blu-ray, it just feels odd to decide to put this one out in the new format. I could understand it if there were a ton of added special features exclusive to this version, but all it really offers is a montage called "It's All In A Name" and SeasonPlay. For those unfamiliar with SeasonPlay, it's a great feature found on many Disney/ABC Blu-ray TV series. It lets you watch the entire season without having to go to the menus between discs. Unfortunately, this feels quite wasted since Scrubs: The Complete Eighth Season has only two discs. As for "It's All In A Name," this was an amusing and lengthy montage of every name Dr. Cox has called J.D. throughout the series. While amusing, I don't really see why this needed to be exclusive to Blu-ray unless it just wasn't put together until after the DVD release. Besides those few Blu-ray exclusives, Scrubs: The Complete Eighth Season also comes with the standard Scrubs fare of bloopers, alternate lines, deleted scenes and Scrubs: Interns webisodes.
While Scrubs: The Complete Eighth Season is a really strong season for the show, the fact that it is on Blu-ray baffles me and quite frankly, there is no reason to pay the extra cost in this case. If there were more seasons on Blu-ray already, then okay, it might be worth it for fans. But let's face it, fans who will be willing to pay for the Blu-ray version of this season will, most likely, already have the past seven on DVD and might be reluctant to upgrade on one season. Things might be different if there were more added features to this release, but what's here definitely doesn't cut it.
