Scrubs 2026 season 10: Is there anything left to play out in Zach Braff revival?

Last week, when Zach Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke were on the promotional trail for the revival of Scrubs, Braff made an interesting admission about how the show ended the first time around.

“That’s not really part of the canon of this story, and we’re staying with season eight as the finale,” he said.

What he’s referring to is Scrub’s ninth season, which focused primarily on a new cohort of medical students and only sparingly featured the show’s main characters of J.D., Turk and Dr Cox.

If you don’t remember this so-called ninth season, which starred Dave Franco, Eliza Coupe and Kerry Bishe, who would blame you? By then, Scrubs was well and truly past its prime. Likely, you’re surprised it lasted anywhere near that long.

Scrubs was a sensation in those early years after it premiered in 2001, but its legacy has never had the enduring power of other American sitcoms of the past four decades.

It had decent DVD sales back in the day, but it’s rarely talked about with the same warm-and-fuzzies as its compatriots in the 1990s. Maybe it’s a timing thing, we haven’t reached back to the 2000s with the same fervour, at least not sitcoms (dramas such as The West Wing and Gilmore Girls is forever on repeat in some households).

Which make a Scrubs revival something of a slightly odd choice. Was there a huge and loud fandom crying out for it? Surely not most of its initial audience, who probably didn’t make it, or remember making it, past the third or fourth seasons.

When you think about Scrubs, it evokes a feeling of a vibe. It was about the friendship between J.D. and Turk, it was about the rivalry between J.D. and The Janitor, it was about Dr Cox’s rhythmic put-downs, it was about J.D. and Elliot’s on-and-off romance, The Todd’s sexual innuendos and, of course, all those fantasies that took J.D. off into his own head, imagining himself as a literal punching bag or being asked to sign a nurse’s breasts.

OK, credit where credit is due, and you could easily make the connection those fantasy sequences’ influence on Community’s brand of absurd comedy.

But for the most part, Scrubs remains this amorphous memory of something that was enjoyable at an earlier time – can you recall specific storylines or guest stars? - but which triggers no strong desire to rewatch.

So, what is the point of a Scrubs season 10, circa 2026? What was left unsaid?

The basics are that we check back in with J.D. 15 years down the track and he’s a concierge doctor to wealthy people who need someone for band-aid application and prescriptions for boner pills.

A patient of his is admitted to his old stomping ground, Sacred Heart Hospital, and he finds himself walking down the same corridors and catching up with a lot of familiar faces. Turk (who now has four daughters with Carla) preternaturally senses his presence, while Elliot (they’re now divorced) is less keen to see him.

There’s a new brood of student doctors, who in the first four episodes made available for review, are starting to develop personalities – Blake, the hotshot one who doesn’t share his feelings, Asher, the British one who lacks confidence, and Serena, the one who’s paying off her debts through social media influencing.

J.D. is dragooned into returning to Sacred Heart after he realises he’s missed working in a hospital and teaching the next generation, helping them become the doctors they’re meant to be.

There are memorable recurring pop-ins from Vanessa Bayer as a HR director who mostly serves to remind the doctors they can’t get away with all those red flags of the 2000s, and Joel Kim Booster as J.D.’s rival who freely expresses his contempt.

Here’s where the Scrubs revival was surprising – it didn’t pretend to exist in a little bubble where it’s all J.D. and Turk skipping down the hallway, hand in hand.

Asher, the British intern, genuinely expresses his shock that one patient can’t afford to take his necessary daily medication because the cost is $1000 for 90 pills when you pay 10 quid under the NHS.

Or the moment in the first episode when Turk admits he is really struggling with burnout because of all the limitations of the system, and the heartbreak of seeing the same patients end up on his surgical table time and again.

The American medical system is clearly broken, and not the envy of any decent people in the world (although there was one head of an Australian insurance fund who a few years ago said we should dismantle Medicare and move towards American-style private healthcare – true story, he actually said this out loud).

If Scrubs can balance its comedic antics and character-based storytelling with a clear-eyed view of the industry it exists in and the impact it has on patients and healthcare professionals, maybe there’s something left to say.

Its theme song lyrics – “I can’t do this all on my own, I’m no superman”- can still serve as its mission statement. If the characters can show up for each other, maybe the audience, especially American voters, can too.

Scrubs is on Disney+ with new episodes on Thursdays