People talk about the songs of “Scrubs” plenty. But the night they went nuclear they turned to one song in particular, “Alive With The Glory Of Love” by Say Anything.
“There’s no escaping this one, the gifts are all here. People bought plane tickets.”
Holy shit. Oh, man.
“I’m getting married,” Elliot says. “I’ve reached the point of no return.”
J.D. responds: “You and me both.”
They, somehow, are laying next to each other in the on-call room of Sacred Heart Hospital. Oh fuck. Oh, man.
“I mean, to get out of this…”
It’s May 17, 2007. There’s a 99.9 percent chance I was playing Snood on the family desktop computer, waiting to talk to nobody in particular on AIM when my dad yelled from the other room. He was about to remind me that Scrubs was on. I remember this because it was very likely the last time I felt I needed to catch anything fictional live on TV when it aired.
I don’t remember any single AIM conversation. I just remember the Gateway 95 I typed on. I was finishing up my junior year of high school in May 2007, and I’m pretty sure by that point the computer would have been eligible to vote. If I’ve ever put 10,000 hours into anything, it was playing Snood, talking to no one on AIM, and listening to my Windows Media Player sample clip of “Hey Ya!” by Outkast. I’d have to double-check with Malcolm Gladwell, but I’m pretty sure this doesn’t mean anything.
I recall actually sprinting to the living room. It was that kind of bastardized triple-jump a person does when they’re trying to scramble into bed after turning the lights off. (In case a demon tries to reach out from under the bed and drag you to hell.) This was the Season 6 finale of Scrubs after all. There’s probably a Family Guy joke about it floating around on YouTube, but as a Scrubs fan, it felt like there were no guarantees as to when or where the show would continue at any point during its run.
Here are a few Wikipedia bullet points to catch everyone up:
Kim (Elizabeth Banks) moves in with J.D. so they can raise their child
Elliot continues to plan her wedding to Keith
The Brain Trust tries to help Keith be a good potential husband because the janitor had that whole thing with Elliot
Dr. Cox’s daughter, Jennifer Dylan, is baptized
At the end of the episode, J.D. and Elliot try to comfort each other in the on-call room as they are each questioning their commitments
By Season 6, Scrubs fans were acutely aware of the role the show’s music played in each episode. Being good at playlists felt like a valued skill. iPods were still new. I’d be surprised if Zach Braff’s professional career to this point didn’t have something to do with “Nick and Norah” becoming a movie.
If felt like people talked — or did talk — a lot about the “Garden State” soundtrack at the time. I’m sure The Shins are grateful for this. People also seemed to talk about the music featured on Scrubs, something Colin Hay may or may not be grateful for.
When “Garden State” was released in 2004, Say Anything had been touring for a little while, with bands like Straylight Run, Saves The Day, and The Early November. During its initial release Is a Real Boy managed to sell 20,000 copies independently, attracting major label attention. The album was reissued in February 2006, and “Alive With The Glory of Love” was released to radio that June.
I’m certain it took a few months longer for the song to make its way to my hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, but pound-for-pound, “Alive With The Glory Of Love” was the best thing I’d heard up to that point. It wasn’t close. It felt like someone was letting me in on a secret. It was almost deja vu. I guess some songs are just like that.
I wasn’t cool enough to have been aware of it alone. Someone had to have tipped me off, knowing it would take 10 words, 15 tops to hook me entirely into Say Anything’s orbit.
“When I watch you, I want to do you, right where you’re standing,” Max Bemis sings after a lengthy intro.
Scrubs was a lot like that for me. It felt like deja vu. The daydreams, all of it. Sillyness was the only currency I knew to that point, spending week after week studying “The Red Green Show,” “MadTV” and “SNL” on Saturday nights with my dad. Years later “Community” would make it funny to take pillow forts seriously, but I’m not sure that would have been possible without “Scrubs” spending so much time on air-bands and taxidermy.
It didn’t take long. Scrubs just made sense. I guess some shows are just like that.
You can imagine how little I was blinking while watching J.D. and Elliot in the on-call room.
“You ever think we’re perfect for each other, we just have the same fatal flaw?” J.D. asks.
“You mean whenever we get to close to a commitment we totally freak out and try to escape?”
“That’s what we’ve been doing here all night, right?” J.D. asks.
“OK, OK,” I probably thought to myself. If there ever was a “will they won’t they” show, it’s Scrubs. We’ve seen this before. This is probably nothing.
“Besides, I’ve thought about it,” Elliot says. “There’s no escaping this one. The gifts are all here. People bought plane tickets. I’m getting married. I’ve reached the point of no return.”
“You and me both,” says J.D.
Right? It’d be insane. There’s no reason to—
“I mean, to get out of this I’d have to do something huge,” Elliot says, as music begins to play.
That’s fucking Say Anything.
“I’d have to go nuclear,” says J.D.
Freeze frame. Elliot and J.D. are laying next to each other, looking older than they did in Season 1 but just as willing to fuck everything up. “They can’t, they won’t,” I probably thought to myself at the time. “Not to Alive With The Glory of fucking Love.”
Max Bemis: “When I…”
Fuck.
Sometimes people play that game where they ask each other who’d they have lunch with if they could pick anybody (alive or dead). I wouldn’t pick Abe Lincoln or Nikola Tesla. I’d pick Bill Lawrence, the creator of Scrubs, possibly for this scene alone.
“The episode ends with a montage,” states the Wikipedia entry for the episode, titled My Point Of No Return. “First of Turk and Carla together, then Cox and Jordan together, then Keith alone, then Kim alone, with J.D. and Elliot leaning in for a kiss, although the episode (and season) ends without showing if anything actually happened, leaving the conclusion for the beginning of next season.”
I’m not so sure there should have been a next season of Scrubs. No disrespect to the fairy tale episode, ABC, or Dave Franco (although anything without Judy Reyes/Carla feels unimportant). Some shows, like Fleabag or maybe even Freaks and Geeks, benefit from brevity. It’s kind of like the college football playoff — each extension takes away from the regular season games that were supposed to mean something. Every Todd high five became clutter, boxed away to make room for new storylines that may not have been necessary.
This is the last time I’ll mention Community, but fans used to take to Twitter and plea for “six seasons and a movie.” In hindsight, I think six seasons would have suited Scrubs. Who are we to know whether J.D. and Elliot got together? If you take all eight seasons of work, I’m not sure the viewer is left thinking either of them should end up with anyone.
Season 6 came to a close on May 17, 2007. It may have been the greatest night of my life to that point. It might as well have been. I don’t know a lot about art, but I know how it makes me feel when I really like it. When they went to the bullpen and called Say Anything’s number, it felt like deja vu. It made sense.
It was nuclear.
-download or stream the full ‘Alive With The Glory Of Love’ episode below-
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