thePeanutBloggery

What’s In the Spotlight

Gilmore Girls and Scrubs
Two of my all-time favorite shows, Gilmore Girls and Scrubs, have been warming the bottom rungs of The Primetime Index for quite awhile, and I have to admit, it hurts. Although one is technically a drama and the other a comedy, these shows have always been similar. Both are part smart silliness and part satisfying melancholy, and now both have basically fallen apart.

This is its first season without creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, but Gilmore Girls had already gone downhill last year (who could forget the horror of the Valentines Day trip to Martha’s Vineyard). Perhaps it was the stress of the negotiations with The CW, but the writer who made me believe she might actually avoid the late series melt-down lost site of her characters and wrote the show into a corner. But that was nothing compared to this season. The new writers simply cannot match the style and spirit of the former show, and now it’s a mere ghost of its former self.

Scrubs, on the other hand, has no such excuse. The creators, the writers, and even the cast remains unchanged. Yet suddenly the show is more of a comment on its simultaneously shticky and earnest style than the embodiment of it. The humor is nonexistent, and the wrap-ups that once seemed like thoughtful clarifications of what we’d known all along are now meaningless and forced. It just seems like nobody wants to be there anymore, which makes Zach Braff’s signing on for a seventh season surprising…unless you take into consideration the fact that he only has to do the final season if NBC buys it. With the show’s terrible ratings, that’s not likely to happen, so Zach will come out looking like the good guy.

The fate of both shows hangs in the balance, and I say put them out of their misery. Drawn-out deaths will not only cause suffering for the actors, writers, and directors but also for the loyal fans who tune in each week out of nothing more than a sense of duty. I want to remember the Gilmore Girls and Scrubs how they were. I want to believe Rory and Lorelei live happily ever after in Stars Hollow leading fulfilling small-town lives (the offices of the Stars Hollow Gazette might be right next door to Luke’s Diner), and I want to imagine JD and Turk working side-by-side at Sacred Heart until they decide to retire (so, please, no Turk and Carla spin-off). Why not free up these time slots, and give a couple of new shows the chance to be what these ones once were to us.

What They Said

My attorney told me I should join a church preemptively, ‘cause juries are suspicious of celebrities who find religion after getting into trouble.”
Tracy Jordan on 30 Rock

What They Played

The soundtrack pick of the week is from The Black Donnellys, which seems poised to fill the soundtrack gap left by The O.C.: “Cannonball” by Damien Rice is available on iTunes.

Primetime Index

Sweeps month is definitely over. The Index drops to 6.88 with only eight show airing new episodes.