But Dr. Cox is spectacularly annoying. There is something about the way he delivers his lines, with a sort of sarcastic superiority, that I almost have to change the channel when he starts going off on JD or Eliot. In fact, I don't think I've ever liked him, even when he was on Wall Street...he was the same character, just tormenting Charlie Sheen instead of Zach Braff.

I didn't notice "Scrubs" in the NBC fall lineup announced this week. Do you knkow if "Scrubs" is returning to NBC?

I fell for Scrubs with the first episode way back when and every season I can only hope it will be back in the fall. As for the stunt casting, I have to admit that half the time I don't even know who these people are...like Elizabeth Banks.

An eternity of excellent scripts from the writers of "Scrubs" and "Arrested Development." Or would that cloy in a few eons?

P. James, NBC has said that Scrubs will start up mid-season next year, like it did this year. While at first that choice annoyed me, I have to admit that, once it started up, I liked the much more dense programming schedule, with fewer rerun weeks and sometimes two new eps a night.

I have to say that it's too bad abortion is such an untouchable issue on TV, because if ANYONE in a sitcom would make total character sense to have an abortion, it would be Perry and Jordan. They'd probably make it funny somehow too.

Also, possibly my favorite thing about Scrubs this year was the escalating "Dr. Acula" jokes. The few minutes of footage shown in the first half of the finale was priceless.

jf

and I was hoping for a pet monkey. Jump, jump, jump the shark.

My gut feeling is NBC will do to "Scrubs" what Salon did to Heather Havrilesky-- an excution, gangland-style, with the body left somewhere in a ditch.

Season 5 has been a weird mish-mash. It started out pretty poorly, had several memorable moments in the middle where Dr. Cox accidentally gives rabies to several patients, and then suddenly the season finale where everyone discovers pregnancy (except Carla and Turk and Eliott). While I still watch the show right and buy the DVDs, I find myself wondering when it deviated a bit and went over the top in JD's wild fantasies. I think the season finale was a good summation for the whole fifth season in that regard: it was strange, dense, had more jokes than comments about hospital morality (and life), and still begs the question: why?

Why do 95 percent of TV critics praise for a show usually start with "I didn't like it at first but once I started watching every episode, I was hooked..."?

In other words, the TV critic is hooked on a soap opera. I couldn't stand soap operas, and then I ended up wathing General Hospital because I got hooked. But I was also 13, and certainly didn't offer my addiction as proof of a show's value.

That said, I find "Scubs" to be David Kelly lite and all that snarky, surreal poop joke mentality that implies...