The DAN ZONE

I’ve been a die hard Scrubs fan since episode one the day it first aired in 2001. Still, I was actually glad it was pulling the plug last season, because the series was really starting to wear out its welcome.

So I’ll never understand why ABC decided to bring back a ‘new’ season—which is basically a new show with the same name. Some straggling characters are still around, some for only a few episodes to help introduce the new characters while offering long time fans a sense of familiarity. The problem is, it never makes sense to just have certain characters ‘disappear’ while others are still around. I mean, Turk is still on the show, and while he was always in his wife Carla’s pocket for the sitcom’s run, now he NEVER sees her in the hospital, and just occasionally mentions why she can’t make it to some sort of social event. It’s just not working. JD and Turk are now flat out comic relief in the style of the original show, while all the new characters’ storylines are total downers—It’s almost like a dramatic look at the struggles of med students instead of the perfect balance of comedy and drama we grew to love on the original. But the real problem is, the new characters are generic and boring, probably in an effort to NOT repeat any of the same quirky characters that were so fully developed in the original series. Not to mention, the new characters all look alike. It feels like you’re watching a CW show.

But one of the worst parts: replacing the janitor with two security guard. This duo is supposed to serve the same purpose as the blue collar foil for the characters, merely on the scene to torment the new characters. Wow. This was a really bad idea. Well, if the janitor loses his job on the new Patricia Heaton show The Middle should it get cancelled, maybe they’ll give him his old job back at the hospital.

Meanwhile, will the show even be worth watching once JD is phased out and all we’re left with is Dr. Cox simply repeating his once fresh shtick with a new group of students craving his approval??? I’m having really bad flashbacks to the final episode of The Facts of Life when Blair bought the school and become the Mrs. Garrett to a new group of kids. That’s as far as that continuation got before the idea was canned. Looks like Scrubs has been tainted with its own After Mash. Maybe for only half a season if we’re lucky.

Still don’t understand why ABC ordered a new season of Scrubs, yet yanked the new show Eastwick without giving it a chance. It was starting to get REALLY good. I was hooked. Bummer.

I was just remembering today how me and my brother used to play the Six Million Dollar Man when we were younger. I would be Steve Austin, and my brother would be Bigfoot. We’d run around and fight in slow motion, making the fi-chit-chit-chit-chit noise until our jaws were exhausted and we’d run out of spit–until my brother would pick up a pillow and throw it like it was a rock, just like Bigfoot did in the TV show–which would ruin the suspension of disbelief, because the ‘rock’ refused to sail through the air in slow motion, usually creaming me right in the face because I was still moving my bionic right arm in slow motion to block it…

Wow, did I have the hots for Lee Majors when I was seven years old. The closest I ever got to him was my Six Million Dollar Man doll…but that’s a different story.

So, I was thinking of taking video of my pups doing something silly and hilarious and submitting it to America’s Funniest Home Videos to try and win the 10 grand. There’s one problem. The ONLY way to win that 10 grand is to have the clip involve a child under 5 years old. Have you ever noticed, any clip involving either an animal or an adult, no matter how funny, will still lose the 10 grand to a two year-old who so much as just has apple sauce on his face?

My thought was to just borrow someone’s two year old, slobber apple sauce all over his mouth to get all the votes, and then have my dogs lick it of while I record it. Thing is, I have the sweetest dogs, but you put a child within 5 feet of them, and it’s like Cujo versus young Danny Pintauro all over again. My dogs would bypass the apple sauce and go right for the kid. I don’t know what happened to them before we adopted them from the shelter, but they HATE children with a PASSION. Which is kind of ironic, considering I named Miss Fine after The Nanny!