What happened to Scrubs?

I fear they've jumped the shark!

I've liked the show Scrubs for a while now. I didn't start watching it from the beginning, but I've had a season pass on TiVo for a few years now. It's quite quirky and funny, and it's always had good writing to acompany the good comedic actors.... but.... The past few weeks have been pretty bad. Last week there was the sit-com suicide "clip-show" where, instead of coming up with another creative and funny show, the entire cast had flashbacks from prior years. Then, this week there was not much funny about the episode because they alternated between trying to hard to be funny and attempting drama. The episode opened with one character trying to make a joke and another character telling her that she's not the comic relief of the cast of characters. Sort of a post-modern crack at themselves which fell flat on its face. "Look at us pointing out that we're a cast of characters while trying to be funny by pointing out how not funny some of us are." It just didn't work at all.

This has prompted my fear that they've jumped the shark. If you are not familiar with that term you can google it, but in short it means that they're on the way downhill for the rest of the series. It stems from the Happy Days episode where Fonzie jumps a shark on water skis. Since then, it stands for the turning point where only darkness lies ahead.

The Simpsons actually had a clip show a few years ago which they feared may lead to their tanking. They were very clever about it though, ending the show with still frames and a new ending credit song, "We're sorry for the clip show." Very clever and funny indeed. One of the stills was even Homer jumping a shark!

That clip show did not spell disaster for the Simpsons, which remains pretty good still. Hopefully Scrubs will be able to bounce back from their sad bump in the road.