I've been watching a lot of Scrubs recently, on account of it apparently hits me in the sweet spot or something.
Dr. Cox's manner of ranting is a thing of beauty.
My observation is that Dr. Cox is basically Hawkeye Pierce, except for being the complete opposite of a 1970s sensitive man.
So my Scrubs spec script would go something like this:
Alan Alda plays Nathaniel Hawthorne "Natty" Roosevelt, a sensitive and deeply empathic doctor, loved by his patients and everyone in the hospital, except that his patients die, because the doctor isn't actually very good at doctoring--behind on his skills, lax in his attention, etc. (This is uncomfortably close to Dick Van Dyke's guest role, so I'll have to do a little more breaking on his character.) Dr. Roosevelt is Dr. Cox's mirror universe twin.
In the A story, J.D. is seconded to Dr. Roosevelt, thinks it's great, discovers that he's not a very good doctor, goes to Dr. Cox for advice and gets brushed off, because of Cox's great, deep, and abiding contempt for sensitivity. Dr. Kelso steps in and enjoys a big belly laugh at how Cox's contempt for Roosevelt is ironically actually making him complicit in the bad doctoring. Act break. Cox is so angry that he can't speak, and this burns time in Act II with shtick. Finally, after seeing another of Dr. Roosevelt's patients being wheeled out of their hospital room in a body bag, he bursts in on Dr. Roosevelt sensitively and caringly talking with a sensitive patient, yells at everyone in sight, saves the patient while making them break down in tears, and vows to make the board yank Dr. Roosevelt's privileges based on his mistakes.
Alternately, we have Cox, Nurse Roberts, and the Janitor engage in MASH-style shenanigans to get Dr. Roosevelt into a compromising situation that forces him to retire.
In the B story, we have a MASH-style horsetrading chain: Turk wants to get Carla a long weekend off, so he gets a nurse to take an extra shift and an extra on-call slot, but she wants something that Ted has, and he wants something that Todd has, and he wants nylons (nurses love nylons). While Turk is wondering about that, the Janitor says that he can get the nylons, for which he wants something involving humiliating J.D.
Fantasy sequences: Dr. Cox in an evil-Spock beard using a pain inducer on Dr. Roosevelt, triggered by J.D.'s thought that Dr. Cox is the evil twin of Dr. Roosevelt. The hospital E.R. turns into the MASH compound as J.D., Elliot, Dr. Roosevelt, and everyone else respond to a mass casualty incident (Cox digs at Roosevelt like Hawkeye digs at Burns), triggered by J.D. detecting the oncoming ambulances like Radar. Dr. Cox gets so angry an egg cooks on his forehead. J.D. and Turk imagine themselves in the 70s--J.D. imagines himself as John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, and Turk imagines himself in a blaxploitation film, complete with Isaac Hayes' "Theme from Shaft" with new lyrics.
Now if only I knew how to write a script.
Posted by Greg at January 17, 2007 4:51 PM