"Scrubs" - "Grey's Anatomy" Reference

J.D.: "Oh, I do love that show. It's like they've been watching our
lives and then just...put it on TV."

I haven't seen "Grey's Anatomy," but I assume that this is an
implication that the series has imitated portions of the "Scrubs"

Keith Baird...

No. The formula for "Grey's Anatomy" is "Ally McBeal" in a hospital.

karl...

It is now. I don't think it started that way. It started as a somewhat
soapier ER.

But GA definitely did steal Scrubs narrative method. Grey's always seemed
wrong for being a faint copy of Scrubs.

Barry Margolin...

I don't see how you can point specifically to Scrubs as the source of
the voiceover narrative. This device has been common for several years

karl...

I'm not. Yes, many other shows have done the narrative voice-over. But it
seemed to me that the tone and tenor of GA's narrative was a direct copy of
Scrubs. So much so that the different genres - farce comedy vs. dramedy made
it seem wrong on GA since I'd seen Scrubs doing it first. This isn't a
criticism on GA's for doing it wrong. If I'd seen GA's first I probably
would have found Scrubs' narrative to seem off.

record.hunter...

Voiceover/narrative as an expression of theme/metaphor/objective
correlative has been around a lot longer than GA, or SCRUBS, or
television, or movies. A lot longer.

(I think Wonder Years might have been the show that intitiated it);
wasn't it also used on Ally McBeal?

Rob Jensen...

Minus the surrealism, plus genuine emotion and a lot more
plausibility.

record.hunter...

I don't think Ally did a voiceover, either.

ranck...

The line on "Scrubs" was clearly just a joke. "Grey's Anatomy" is
nothing like JD's life, quite obviously, it's just a typical JD
fantasy to think so.

As for plausibility, I'm not sure if you are comparing GA to "Ally
McBeal" or "Scrubs" here, but according to my daughter the intern,
"Scrubs" is the closest to real life of the doctor shows on TV.
Well, not counting the actual documentary stuff on some cable channels.

Rob Jensen...

My comparison is Grey's to Ally. (And FTR, I'm a fan of Grey's, Ally
*and* Scrubs.)

-- Rob

Bill Ranck
Blacksburg, Va.

-- Rob

formula. Of course, "The Simpsons" made the same joke (almost

karl...

And the sky is blue.

Yes, I know the narrative voice over did not originate with those two
shows. I've never said they did. What did I say was their method tone and
style of doing the narrative was very similar.

Rob Jensen...

Except that they're not.

karl...

Fine, we disagree on that. I found them very similar in tone and tenor.

-- Rob

word-for-word) about "Dinosaurs" back in 1992:

Bart: "It's like they saw our lives and put it right up on screen!"

So who's imitating whom?

Zombie Elvis...

I noticed similarities with the Grey's Anatomy pilot. The episode was
narrated by Grey just like J.D. narrates every episode of Scrubs. Also
several of the some of the characters were initially very similar to
characters on Scrubs (for example "the Nazi" reminded me of a female
version of Dr. Cox). I wouldn't call it so much a matter of either
show imitating the other so much as both shows playing on certain
cliches of the medical drama.

record.hunter...

Alex even called George "Bambi" on Sun.

archang...

Bill Lawrence (Scrubs creator and showrunner) has said he wanted
his show to be kind of like a live-action Simpsons in certain ways...
(The example he usually uses in this context is how both shows have a
large cast of secondary characters.)