Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence doesn't think TV reboots will tarnish the originals

The TV nostalgia bug has moved from the 1990s—Frasier, Sex And The City—firmly into the 2000s. There’s a (very limited) Malcolm In The Middle revival on the way, and (another) reboot of Scrubs on the horizon. While it’s easy to be cynical about these and chalk (at least some) of them up as cash grabs, Bill Lawrence, creator of the latter show, disagrees. “I’ll start with, if I thought it was a bad idea, I wouldn’t do it,” he tells the Los Angeles Times in a new interview.  “I’m not chasing commerce and without being self-aggrandizing, I don’t need to.” The cast, however, really wants to work together again, and there are a lot of talented writers with open schedules, he explains—an unfortunate effect of the industry squeezing. 

“Someone was like, ‘I hope this doesn’t happen.’ That made me incredulous,” Lawrence says later. “Like, why the f— would you care if it happened? He’s like, ‘I just love the show so much, it would tarnish it.’ I don’t think that’s true. Shows that I care about have had reboots.”

It seems, in Lawrence’s view, that not only do the reboots not detract from the original show, but you can still enjoy hate-watching them, at worst. “This is my attitude: If it’s a show I love, I’m gonna watch it. If it’s great, I’m gonna be super happy. If it’s good, whatever, at least it didn’t offend me,” Lawrence continues. “And if it sucks, I’m gonna be super happy to badmouth how much it sucks to my friends. Not on the internet. But that’s how I watch TV. To me, that’s a no-lose. What’s the big deal?” To be sure, the “not on the internet” piece certainly seems different than how most people in 2024 would react, but still, point taken. One is reminded of Tyler, The Creator’s response to a fan who missed his old music: “y do u miss it?  it didnt go anywhere, its still available. or are you on punishment.” 

Elsewhere, Lawrence explains where he thinks the Scrubs reboot could pick up, relative to the original series. “Creatively, if somebody said, ‘Do you want to pick Scrubs up right back in the same hospital with the same people on a normal day, everything’s back to normal?’ No, that would be disingenuous to the story,” he explains. “Am I curious and can I think of a bunch of stories about where some of these characters are years later, not being kid interns anymore, and having new young people around them, with the way the medical world has changed—yeah, without a shadow of a doubt. That creative answer was easy.”