110: My Nickname With Bill Lawrence

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dude, how is that Beastie I'm great, what's that Beastie
Boys song? It's like Intergalactic now. Someone told yeah, and
someone told me that if you listen closely, you can
hear Intergalactic, Kill the children, Kill the children, and Turgalactic.
I'm telling you, once you hear that, you will forever

(00:21):
hear it. When you listen to that song, I want
you listeners, I don't this podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
You will hear when young children.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
You know, when someone points something out to you, and
then you can never not hear it that way.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yes, it's like it's like listening to that song. Sir
shut dicy sat so shut.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
They put on the interweb on like memes and stuff.
They give you fake lyrics, and it really sounds like
these people are saying that.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Bill Bill Lawrence arrived in the zoom call everybody Intergalactic,
kill the children, Kill the children.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
I don't like that.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
I don't like it either, But the Beastie Boys did.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
It Donald, They did not do that.

Speaker 4 (01:08):
I'm not one of the Beastie Boys.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
But I'm a huge fan of the Beastie Boys, and
I refuse to believe that they killed children or that
they want you to kill children in an intergalactic planetary way.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Intergalactic kill the children, kill the children, and here's Lawrence.

Speaker 5 (01:23):
Everybody, you guys watch the Beastie Boys documentary.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Not yet.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
I really want to watch it, though it's on my
to do list. I'm stuck on the right now.

Speaker 5 (01:32):
I'm watching you know who really likes The Beastie Boys
a lot? The Beastie Boys.

Speaker 6 (01:44):
Documentary.

Speaker 5 (01:46):
And then we did this great thing.

Speaker 6 (01:51):
Bill.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
I imagine you as a sports fan. You're watching the
the the that's the one.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
I'm stuck on.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
The Bulls.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yes, oh my gosh. This but Bill, doesn't this remind
you of why you love Michael Jordan so much when
you were younger? Like, this makes me realize why he
was one of my idols growing up.

Speaker 4 (02:09):
Even I had the poster.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Guys, I want you to know that I had a
poster of him in my room because I wanted to
be cool too. Every kid that age, our age at
that time had the Michael Jordan poster, And even though
I didn't watch any of it, I was like, well,
I'm gonna need one of those.

Speaker 5 (02:23):
There is nothing funnier than you with a Michael Jordan poster.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
It was right next to a Phantom of the opera
Beach Towel. My father bought me a Phantom of the
opera beach Towel, and you were supposed.

Speaker 4 (02:34):
To use it at the beach. And I was like,
this is art. I will hang this on my wall.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
And I took thumbtacks and hung it like a tapestry,
like like a really precious, rare tapestry. It was a
fan of the opera beach towel. And right next to
that was Michael Jordan dunking with his tongue out. So
there you go. I was in.

Speaker 5 (02:54):
Should I start this voice memo?

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Now?

Speaker 5 (02:56):
Guys?

Speaker 1 (02:57):
All right, well you should have.

Speaker 5 (03:00):
Yeah, Zach forgot the the other day.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Oh I fucked up. I hear that.

Speaker 5 (03:06):
I was the only one I haven't heard. I haven't
heard Judy Is yet because I fell asleep last night.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
It's so good. Judy was a man.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
She was great.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Wait, we forgot to sing, We forgot to sing Bill
save five, six, seven, eight.

Speaker 5 (03:16):
Oh, I've always wanted to do this. Wait, is is
it going to be at the end or oh?

Speaker 4 (03:21):
Yes, the audience wait in Bill.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Thousands of people did an online Twitter poll and decided
that the mm HM stays.

Speaker 5 (03:27):
All right, well I'm gonna do oh yeah, because that's
what it is in my head five six, seven, eight.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Stories about show we made about a bunch of dogs
and nurses.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
He said, he's the stories natural. So gada ra here,
YadA ra here.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Oh yeah, Bill, you're the very first for the obvious reasons,
you're the very first asked we've invited back.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
He's our recurring.

Speaker 4 (04:02):
Yes, you're recurring, Bill.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Just just how you had the power to make characters
on Scrubs re reccurring. We bon Donald and I have
have the power to make you the creator of the
show recurring, and we've chosen you.

Speaker 5 (04:13):
Oh I like that. It makes it makes me feel
like it's tenuous, like I could lose this at any second.

Speaker 4 (04:19):
Yeah, but you can fuck up and be cut anytime,
you know what.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Speaking of reoccurring, Uh, it's it has a lot to
do with the episode.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
But Yo, how where did you? Where did you find Rob?
How did that happen?

Speaker 4 (04:33):
What's the Rob story?

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Bill? Because we've had versions of this.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
How did you find Rob? Who plays the Todd Everyone?

Speaker 1 (04:38):
All my laugh out loud moments in this episode were Rob.
And I'm embarrassed to say that because they're the dumbest
fucking sex jokes. But every time I always write down
lo ol, just so I can mark when I actually
laughed out loud.

Speaker 4 (04:49):
And they were all Robs.

Speaker 5 (04:52):
Rob was an actor that got cast in a play
that I wrote, and so I got to know him,
and he was a stand up comic and his performance
was always better than his material because he was just,
you know, had crazy amounts of confidence and I just
got to be buddies with him, playing basketball and hanging out.
And my wife always says that I ruined his life

(05:16):
because Rob went to Columbia and I think he was
thinking about doing other things besides acting, And right then
I said, I'm doing the Scrubs pilot. You want to
be the jockey surgeon. He might have a line here
and there. I think the line had Rob had one
line in every episode for nine years.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
And then.

Speaker 5 (05:39):
You know, and after that, I think, you know, he
was a guy that had been doing it so long
it was too late to reinvent himself and to start
over as anything other than an actor. But this says
a very good ending because he's a hugely he's still
the Todd and he has a hugely successful real estate
business in Venice, California, and is killing it out there.
And he's still occasionally though, dyes his hair black, puts

(06:01):
the fake tattoo on, and goes to like European comic
cons as the Todd And he's got to pay people
pay him for high fives.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
And he's got his cameo business, which you can get
him to cameo all your friends if you go.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
And if I were hiring Rob to do a Todd appearance,
he'd have to be in the banana hammock like I'd be,
and you have.

Speaker 4 (06:25):
To probably costs extra.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Donald. That probably costs extra.

Speaker 5 (06:27):
I would probably cost ever extra.

Speaker 7 (06:29):
And now he probably needs about a six month lead
time on.

Speaker 5 (06:32):
That to start starving himself.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
By the way, if you need a real estate, if
you need a real estate broker in southern California, especially
down at the beach, hire Rob Mashio, because I'm sure
he'd be willing to give you a high five while
he shows you places. In Venice.

Speaker 5 (06:49):
There is, without a doubt way to buy a house
from me high five out there for someone.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
You could buy a house and get a high five
from Robin, surell throw it in with the yeah, I.

Speaker 5 (07:00):
Don't even think you have to pay extra for that.
But he couldn't be. It couldn't be a nicer guy.
Loved the show. I used to love how passionate he
was about it. And you guys made the joke because
he would have one line and he would be running
it over and over. And it's still one of my
favorite jokes. Rob's over there running line.

Speaker 4 (07:18):
Running singular. He would take it.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
He would take it so seriously, and we were laughing
with him because he would laugh at it with us.
But he would be like over there in the corner
being like high five, high five, fine.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Working it out, but I mean, come on, always delivered.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
He's so fucking funny man. It's it's always the same joke.
But that's another testament to Rob. It's like, it's always
an innuendo joke. It's the same joke, and it's always
in a sexual innuendo joke. But I but a testament
to you and him. I laugh every fucking time.

Speaker 5 (07:54):
You by the way, you you just nailed. I believe
it might be you know, old war in history, But
my favorite Todd joke I think came from a one
a month. I think it was Neil Goldman and I
hate giving him a name check because he wants them
so bad.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
I know. I saw Neil Goman wrote on Twitter. He's like,
there's been six episodes. I've been mentioned once.

Speaker 7 (08:16):
I don't know, but the I think it was. I
think it was him.

Speaker 5 (08:19):
I think someone of the writer's room said, is every
time the Todd talks just going to be sexual innuendo?
And I think he's the one that said in your end,
in your.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
Endo, he has the best line. He has the best
line in this episode. It made me laugh so hard
when he says it's one of my l O l's bet.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
I bet you it is. When he goes, you know
what else? You know what else?

Speaker 5 (08:47):
Remember, I think it's I'm not sure, Todd, but I'm
gonna guess it's your penis.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah, Todd, I'm not sure, but I'm gonna guess it's
your penis.

Speaker 4 (09:01):
And it was now Bill Bill in your mind? Is
he a good surgeon? Yeah?

Speaker 8 (09:07):
I don't know if you remember, if you guys have
gotten there yet, no, we're only on this one ten.
One of my favorite moments that the writer's room all
loved was because we had read something about how surgeons
are just cutters. You know, medical guys call them hammers
and the patient and nail, and if they get too
caught up in their head, they sometimes aren't as good.

Speaker 5 (09:29):
And that gave us the idea for Turk's character. Asked
doctor when who the best surgeon is, thinking it would
be that young girl Bonnie or whatever her name is,
and doctor Wenn says, you really want to know who
it is, and he points at the Todd and you say,
no way. And then doctor Wenn says, you're all caught
up in your brain thinking about all these problems. You

(09:50):
know what Todd's doing, and they cut to Todd and surgery.
We actually paid for the Bonanza theme because he's just
he's just looking at all his instruments. He's going tiny Scalpel.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Was like, it's he's still present in the moment because
his mind isn't getting distracted. He's just like, yeah, he's.

Speaker 5 (10:15):
Got nothing to distract it. It's like somebody. It's like,
it's like how somebody that's not that bright could be
great at the video game. That's Todd.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Let's talk about Bonnie because we mentioned it earlier that
she was supposed to be my nemesis at one point
right like that was supposed to.

Speaker 5 (10:31):
Yeah, we we she got another gig.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
She was good.

Speaker 5 (10:34):
She would have stayed around the same way Doug did,
in the same way other you know, JD. Had Doug
on the medical side, she would have been the person
that stayed around on the surgical side. But she got
another gig.

Speaker 6 (10:45):
You know.

Speaker 5 (10:45):
That's why we we sent her off on that trip
and came up with that story only because we knew
she was not going to be around to work for
a while.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
That's always tough, man, that has to be difficult. Like
when we talk about the people that have him through
the show, and you know, like A. Z's and all
of these other people, it's like, you know, if they
weren't bubbling and doing their thing at the time, they
would have been staples on the show for years, to doubt.

Speaker 5 (11:12):
Man, even Charles Chung disappeared for a second because he
got some pilot or movie and stuff. And we loved
having that dude around. He's just a really kind of
you know meet and Potato's good actor, you know, and uhu.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
And he was a good straight man too for Donald
because he was just so good at deadpan, you know,
and Donald could be like wacky Turk and he was
just perfect like we had.

Speaker 5 (11:34):
You can keep listening him. Remember, Neil and Garrett called
them our weapons chest, and those were one line characters
that we thought were so very funny that not just
Ted the lawyer and Aloma, you know, Nurse Roberts, but
like doctor Zeltzer, you know.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
And Bob, yeah, way, Bob Clennen, who's yet to make
an appearance. I don't know if he arrives in season
one or not, but you introduced me to Bob Clint
Dennon on the show and he played Zeltzer, and I
just thought that is one of the funniest character actors
I've ever met. I've put him in, I put him
in a bunch of stuff since because I just love
that guy.

Speaker 5 (12:10):
He's uh, he's amazing, you know him and Sam Lloyd
and uh, Krista and Aloma. I mean, they could all
be regulars on any show.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
And so it was.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Though of like you'd have like your guest star level,
like Krista, and then you'd have like the Aloma level
who were like and then you'd have people used to
call your assassins who would just come by once in
a while and they do like a drive by one
liner and just kill it like and and Bob Clintennon
was one of those. He was as REGOs will there
will there be prostitutes.

Speaker 5 (12:47):
He would just be my favorite part of that joke.
You love that. My favorite was doctor Cox going no
and Bob's readA poe good.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
No, oh good good.

Speaker 5 (13:06):
He was not worried about it at all. He was hopeful.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Hey, Bill, I thought we could start off since we
have you, and I was thinking today because I did,
because you're here, and I put on a nice shirt.
I was telling him before you got on that because
we had you, I put on a nice shirt. And
I actually did a lot of preparation for this episode.

Speaker 5 (13:21):
I'll watched it last night too. I'm ready.

Speaker 4 (13:23):
It's very very good.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
First, it was such a great episode.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Dude, Judy fucking Raly, we gotta do you guys got
to carry one torch for me beforehand.

Speaker 5 (13:32):
The only thing that really bummed me out about this
episode and all my experiences is when I catch up
with you guys, unless I want to pop a DVD
and I watch on Hulu. And the song that Christa
picked at the end of this episode was so good,
and it was it's not you know, the original music
is not on these episodes and streaming and it bums
me out and.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
I heard you. We keep telling the audience that, And
just to reiterate if you're just hearing this, not that
we don't love Hulu, but we do love whoo. But
we love you Hulu. But because of streaming rights and
contracts and such, you're not gonna get all of the
original songs that that Bill and Christa and others placed it, Zach.

Speaker 5 (14:10):
And the ending song of this in the rain was
a song by a band called Sebadoh, and it was
so good and so poignant in the real production of it.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Speaking of music, we used it so much.

Speaker 4 (14:24):
Here that's in this episode right, definitely in.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
This episode, and it's kind of new in the scrubs.
It's like the second time we've used it.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. But when it
came on, it pissed me off so much. It was like, oh,
you ruined it with the what's funny.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
What's funny is like back when they back when they
introduced that sad c this was like, you know, this
was like, you know, a tenth episode of season one,
it was genuinely like sweet and heartfelt. Now that we
did nine seasons and then started to make fun of it,
now when it's like in a point you moment.

Speaker 4 (14:53):
You're like, oh, not that fucking sad. This is the
same time.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
This is the second time, this is the second time.
I remember when it finally caught my attention, I was like,
how come it fucking keeps going? Because at first I
was like, oh, such a beautiful moment for so long,
for so long, and then somebody was like, dude, the
sad song, We gotta figure that out.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
I think it was you Bill that said that it's gotta.

Speaker 5 (15:20):
Go all in our head. All those cues were the
stuff that's happening in Zach's head, Zach's character's head while
he's roomming around, you know.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
So then you ended up doing a moment where in
one of the episodes where I actually referenced the cue, well.

Speaker 5 (15:34):
You say, what do you mean now? Is when you
say something poignant it makes me think about it, And
then the sad music plays.

Speaker 4 (15:40):
And then you hear me, you hear me in the
voiceover go.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
And then I think, and then and then you geniusly
fucking then use the queue out of that scene. Now
it's so fun.

Speaker 5 (15:54):
Yeah, he walks away and says you're an idiot, and
it goes. The real cue goes, but ma uh and
then then you lip sync the last one you.

Speaker 4 (16:09):
I thought that.

Speaker 5 (16:10):
I think that guy's name is Jan Stevens, and I
think he won a bunch of score awards for our show.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
I don't think he was happy when you were like,
I don't like the anymore.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
I want to hold He understood, he got it.

Speaker 5 (16:21):
That guy got it.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
He that he got to write, by the way, just
right hard, very hard assignment, just like you guys.

Speaker 5 (16:28):
Are joking about yourself, as with anybody that was a
dude that worked his butt off, Oh my god here
for years and then when you get later in it,
you'd be like, hey, we need a queue four, and
your inbox will go how about this one? Just be
literally he was like one hand on his keyboard when
you said I need a que just going bomb bomb

(16:49):
bum bum bum. There you go done, I'm gonna head
out to the park.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
What's funny was that? There? You know, when there's these
things called stings, which are really quick little moments. They're
all over scrubs and and uh, and funny one. Yeah.
Jan would write one like hey, we need some stings
for the end of the scene, and you get one
to be like bow and you're like boom. But we'd
use them. It was like big scrub scene and bow.

(17:15):
I thought, I thought, because we have you here and
and and we're really we're really not We're not only
entertaining the audience, but we want to provide a service
so that you could explain a little bit about what
a showrunner does. Because I was thinking as we were
having you on today that I honestly think I've done
a bunch of different jobs in my career. I think
a showrunner is the hardest job there is. And it's

(17:39):
dovetails with this episode because this is about taking on
too much workload and being stressed and being overwhelmed, particularly
for the character of Joe Tracy and Sarah Chalk. And
I just I thought you could explain to people that
aren't in the business, uh, what a show what a
showrunner is, what a show runner does, and why it's
such a fucking impossibly hard job.

Speaker 5 (17:57):
Well, so it was here, what's interesting, man, Hollywood. The
first thing that you know, even when you're a kid,
if you like movies and TV and stuff like that,
is that you know that feature films are a director's industry.
We have all gone like, oh, it's a Martin Scorsese movie,
it's a Steven Spielberg movie, no matter who wrote it,
you know, and the directors get to do it. They
want the script and they cast it, and they argue

(18:18):
for final cut. And what's really interesting is in TV,
directors come and go week to week, and so the
person that creates the show, the head writer, often becomes
an event of the term for it, the showrunner. And
it's why I think, and I'm not being self aggrandizing,
I'm talking about other people, not myself, some of the
best writers in entertainment stay in television because in WEST

(18:41):
you're the movie director. In movies you're like, hey, you
give us the script and then we'll do whatever we
want to it. And in TV they go, all right,
if we decide to do your TV show, you get
to cast it, you get to write it, you get
final cut, the music. You're in charge of the director,

(19:03):
so that you can come down and say, no, I
don't like the way this scene is blocked. It's gonna
be funnier if you do it this way and you
get to run the whole shebang, right, And so that's
really appealing. The danger of the job is since they said, essentially,
if you're the showrunner, you can do everything. The people
whose brains explode are the ones that go, all right,

(19:24):
I'm gonna do all those things, but I'm also going
to do wardrobe, and I'm also going to stand on
set and make sure no one changes and to also
and I'm also going to do props, and I'm gonna
do you know. And those are the people that sometimes
they melt. Sometimes they're viewed as kind of tyrants, you know,

(19:45):
Like you know, Aaron Sorkin, I think would be one
of the first people to tell you that he's hard
to work with and for because you know, every last
detail you know drives him banana pants and the job.
The hard part of the job become whether or not
you can go of control and seed some things to
talented people. And I was lucky enough that we had

(20:07):
so many talented people there, like Carrie Bennett, the head
of wardrobe. She's done a lot of shows for me
after that. If I was somebody that needed to look
at every T shirt, every outfit, I think I would
have you not made it, that would have burnt out quicker.
But I was lucky and said, hey, you do this,
and I'll only say a word if I think it's wrong,
And then I never had to say anything, so to me, yes,
that's what the gig is great. It forces you to

(20:31):
pick the things that you prioritize the most personally and
not get lost in the things you don't care about
and the people that drown. Try to do everything.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
But even in not micromanaging Bill, in a typical hour,
you are leading a writer's room, then being called to
set to watch a rehearsal for the scene being shot,
then needing to go to editorial to look at a
cut that has to go out to the network.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Doing rewrites if jokes don't work right.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
I mean, I just remember watching you and thinking, God,
I mean, and it takes a person who can multitask
without going fucking nuts, because it's just a lot of pressure.

Speaker 5 (21:05):
The herd, believe it or not. The hardest part for me,
and I had a little of it with YouTube, but
more with the writers is you also become, if not
a big brother, you know, a parent and a psychiatrist
to people and The joke was, you know, a lot
of the writers stayed for five, six, seven, even eight years.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
On Scrubs, which is unheard of. I didn't know it
was a good gig. Yeah, I didn't know.

Speaker 5 (21:28):
You take off, but if you're on a hit show,
you stay and your salary goes up every year. And
the joke was that by the end, every single writer
had been in my office emotional, crying about something, you
know what I mean. And Zach and Donald, you guys
can't see them, they're laughing because I think they both
inherently know that I'm the last person on earth that

(21:49):
wants somebody to be in his office.

Speaker 4 (21:52):
We turned you into a hugger, Bill Bilt, Donald and I.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
I remember when you didn't hoddle then Donald, dude, Donald
and I broke you down.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
You were finally like, yo, dude, come on, let's hug
and I was.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
Like, yeah, Donald and I broke him down. He was
not a hugger. He was a very waspy Connecticut guy.

Speaker 6 (22:08):
Oh.

Speaker 5 (22:09):
They used to always make fun of He think, come
in with some emotional thing of work or life or whatever,
and I would subconsciously, with all the things on my desk,
build a wall between the two that almost nuts. What's
going on with you and your uh and your your boyfriend?

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, do that?

Speaker 4 (22:27):
And you had to do that with with everyone.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
And also I think you know, you started on Spin
City where you were you were young, and you had,
you know, a legend like Michael J. Fox to to
work with and to make sure he was happy. And
then when when Scrubs came on, we were all unknown.
Did you feel a little bit of uh an onus
to keep everyone's egos in check? I mean I would,
I would think that.

Speaker 5 (22:48):
Yeah, I really wanted to keep people's egos in check
because in between, you know, I had seen, you know,
how hard it is when certain things hit you. You know,
I was on the first year of Friends, and I
actually empathized with that actors and actresses because watching how
you know that group of the air kids, how their
lives all change so fast, sometimes to the better, and
you know, you guys know this burden nothing to complain about,

(23:10):
but sometimes in complicated ways. So yeah, it was it
was really important to me to have a good culture
at work, to keep everybody's egos from blowing up. And
I'm not you know, I don't uh to equate it
to sports because we were talking about the Michael Jordan thing.
No I'm not Michael Jordan, but to be a leader
for a group of people that they at least knew

(23:31):
there were levels of respect you had to have for
each other and ways you're supposed to behave and that
somebody would watch your back.

Speaker 4 (23:38):
You know, you might not be a Michael Jordan, but
I think of you like a Mike Kaminsky.

Speaker 7 (23:43):
Donald and I are basketball guys. It's such an insult man.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
That is the problem is is that that's the only
basketball guy he knows.

Speaker 5 (23:51):
No.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Listen, when my father of a certain age, my father
would drag me to the New Jersey Nets games and
so I only know whatever year that was, that team,
Darryl Dawkins, Mike Jaminsky, otis Bird's song. So whenever I
have to make a basketball reference, I'm still like, oh,
you mean, like otis Bird's song?

Speaker 6 (24:09):
Do you know?

Speaker 7 (24:09):
Do you know Darryl Dawkins uh nickname?

Speaker 1 (24:13):
Yeah? It does. Wait, he doesn't top the thunder thunder
and backwards.

Speaker 5 (24:20):
Yes, And you know why I care because there was
a pitch that we were really trying to do. I
don't don't know why we got bogged down in it,
but it lived for the better part of two years.
That everybody wanted Darryl Dawkins to be nurse Robert sex husband.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
That would have been awesome.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Oh man, God rest his soul, but that would have
been awesome if he was on the show.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
That would have been the best day that would have been.
That would have been a highlight for me. Oh my.

Speaker 5 (24:44):
It was so like, it sucks because it breaks. It
sounds like it breaks down on male female dynamics because
there's a lot of guy sports fans in there. But
it was one of those things that a lot of
the great female writers on that show were like, I
don't understand. Why do you want this former seven foot
tall NBA that would have been perfect that they called
Chocolate Thunder to be your exit.

Speaker 7 (25:04):
He's not even an actor, right, He's not an actor?

Speaker 5 (25:09):
Is no? He breaks he breaks backboards?

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Why was?

Speaker 4 (25:12):
Why am I right with the trivia that he was
famous for breaking backwards?

Speaker 1 (25:16):
And why was why did he do that? And how
could he do that?

Speaker 5 (25:19):
He didn't do it in person. He used to the Thunder.
He used to dunk so hard that occasionally when he
would dunk, even just with a rubber basketball. He would
leather basketball. It would shatter the backboard.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah, he's he was the first one. Yeah, he would
do it in games.

Speaker 7 (25:34):
It wouldn't would go nuts. They'd have to sweep it
up and put a new one up.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
It was really crazy because when Shaq broke the backboard,
he just made the backboard fall to the ground, you
know what I mean, Like the whole thing came down
chocolate thunder.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
When he hit the rim, that thing exploded like the
death Star. Dude. It was like wow.

Speaker 3 (25:52):
It was such a his he has like two or
three of them, I think two, but they were so
thunderous and monstrous.

Speaker 6 (25:58):
Man.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
And when he did it was so hard.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
And this was you know, basketball is a finesse game,
and you know it's a it's a it's a game
of you know where athletes they run real hard and
then they go at this little cup and it's so like,
you know, graceful and everything like that. There was no
grace in the way he slammed a basketball, you know
what I mean. It was like wow, you know what
I said, You.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
Know what I mean? I heard it.

Speaker 4 (26:21):
Yes, drink wow, drink.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Up, Bill, Bill Bill. The fans have started a drinking
game because Donald says, you know what I mean so
much that they're drinking every time he says you know
what I mean, I.

Speaker 5 (26:31):
Would force people by the way. I want to say
two things.

Speaker 6 (26:34):
One to that.

Speaker 5 (26:34):
One of the things, you guys can see the connection
to how much fun it would have been for JD
to want to call Turk, as one of his many nicknames,
Chocolate Thunder. And then Nurse Roberts doesn't like it. And
then you guys don't know why she doesn't like it,
and it's because the man that left her is Chocolate
thunderbirl Dons.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Oh my god, it must have been so late in
the night in writer's room when you guys are wrestling
with that just hours.

Speaker 5 (27:05):
How do we reach by the way? And by the way,
I'm sure he was a lovely man, but there's no
doubt in my mind while he's alive, if he had
showed up, first of all, if he had gotten that call,
he'd been like, they want me to do what beyond skill?

Speaker 7 (27:16):
Because I don't think I ever saw him like on
a love boat or on any shows.

Speaker 5 (27:20):
They want me to. They want me to come out
of retirement to do something I've never done. Before and
play a nurse's husband.

Speaker 4 (27:26):
All right, you break it backboard or something.

Speaker 5 (27:30):
I think people should also drink at any time, Zach,
And I've only heard it three or four times that
you say one of the things that you would always
say to sum up the show and the voiceovers at
the end, because it's become part of our lexicon, and
one of them I heard you going at the end
of the day. It was so funny to me because
you're talking about scrubs in an episode that if you

(27:52):
listen to it goes at the end of the day
all you can really hope, and then you go at
the end of the day, what we so any any
any scrubs at the end of the day type things?

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Okay, and I also had another drinking game idea for people.
You're gonna get shit faced listening to this podcast.

Speaker 4 (28:06):
But I got really.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Excited in this episode when I when I had a
Snoop Dogg intern sighting, and I thought it might be
fun for fans to also do a shot every time
you see Snoop Dogg intern resident attending.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
Well, it should start with Snoop Dogg, but then once
you know, Mickhead shows up and and and be doctor doctor.
Oh Man Man, Colonel Doctor passed away, didn't he?

Speaker 5 (28:32):
Colonel doctor? Just so what he knows is called Colonel
Doctor because he looks like the colonel from Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (28:39):
And my favorite thing about that, that's why you think
he's I mean, it's funny that that's his nickname, Colonel Doctor.
And his name turns out to be Coleman Slowski, which
is cole Slaw.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Oh my god, here's what I like.

Speaker 5 (28:56):
My favorite thing that you guys all liked that Zach
is the first one kind of that he noticed was
he had all these great background performers, and we wanted
the consistency of recognizing nurses and doctors, and so he
tried to have the same people come back and then
because they were around, whether it was Coleman Slavsky, doctor
Mickhead who ultimately I think murdered his spouse and gave me.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
On the show, Yes, and Colonel Doctor, and Snoop dogg
Beard fac and.

Speaker 5 (29:25):
The world's oldest intern Gloria, I think it's really But
the point is that even amongst the background people, they
became tears like a call sheet. And I started noticing
that I'd come into like the background holding area, and
there'd be all the background and then there'd be the
king shit background of those four doing the equivalent of

(29:45):
like drinking martinis as the ones that had been the
ones that have names to sit around going like we're
fucking we're ruling this world.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
And I loved it that.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
What was really cool was when you would trust them
with lines and stuff like that and they would deliver.
Like I remember, Mickhead had so many lines and you
gave him a storyline and everything, and it was because
you were like, yo, he delivers every time I give
him something.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
I mean, yeah, A lot of were actors. They just
hadn't had a break yet. And you know, like like
any group of actors, some could act and some couldn't.
But I think Mickhead was one that was actually really good.

Speaker 5 (30:21):
His backstory was Frank's backstory was a fascinating He was
a paid screenwriter that none of his even though he'd
sold a bunch of movies, none of them ever got made.
And you eventually reached the end of that career and
he was still plugging away writing and came by to
make dough and then when he was doing it, he
at least had a knowledge of film enough you know that.
He was good and subtle and he's like, what are
you making me into an actor for? This is not

(30:42):
my plan.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
It was really fun well and mainly Henry delivered one
of the greatest lines in Scrubs history, where mahoes at,
I haven't seen them.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
I haven't seen you know. I played golf with Mickhead
quite a bit. We played.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
That's one of my golf buddies. And he still writes books.
He's a novelist, you know, he writes with his with
his wife.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
And it's stay high for me.

Speaker 6 (31:03):
Man.

Speaker 5 (31:03):
He was a nice man.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, well, I definitely will. Let's take a break.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
We'll be right back after these fine words. Okay, so
we're back. Yeah, yeah, No, Bill, it's no, and we
don't do the full song at the commercial breaks.

Speaker 5 (31:23):
Bill does the song start? Whenever I say five to
six seven eight, it's unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Dan's got his finger on the trigger. And whenever you
say five hits, please.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
Don't say five six.

Speaker 4 (31:33):
Stop saying five to six eight.

Speaker 5 (31:38):
That's my favorite. He should Dan should just be contractually
obligated to do it. Whenever he hears that.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yeah, whenever Dan, we started, he started it Dan, I
have the power stick.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
Got it?

Speaker 1 (31:53):
All right? Donald, you were going to start us off.
We're forty minutes and we should probably talk about the
TV show.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
Okay, So first of all, Uh, Whiney Dancer was pretty good.
I'm gonna put that out there. I thought that was
a very funny nickname. Yes, I laughed very hard at that,
and I was mad that it didn't stick. But Scooter
short for Scooter Pie is even here because he hates
Scooter Pie.

Speaker 5 (32:14):
There's two things. It was hard for me to watch
that story because a Neil Flynn is funnier than the
material he gave him, you know what I mean in
that one, because we could have done a much funnier
stuff with your nickname.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (32:25):
And then b is I don't know why he's eating
a popsicle in that next one, I see he seemed
to want to be eating it, which made me really laugh.
And then the third one is I remember that because
we're you know, strapped for figured out a moment. Uh
at the end when someone finally calls you Scooter, which
is a moment I do like uh, and I go

(32:47):
it's revealed, Neil, and he's like, how should I celebrate
I'm like, I don't know, do some kind of dance
or Irish jig or something. And that made me laugh
out loud because he committed to it, like good god,
yeah he could.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Really he could.

Speaker 4 (33:01):
But Neil just pulled out an irs shade because it
looks pretty good.

Speaker 5 (33:05):
Yeah I didn't. I don't think that he We had
planned that, you know, and you know we put the
music to it. We put the music to it. Afterwards.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
It was really he went straight river dance. He went
to straight river dance.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
That was funny before.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
That's also not us at that beach by the way.

Speaker 4 (33:20):
Yeah, I don't want to ask you. I don't know
those doubles because that's not my hair, and I know if.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
That is your in my head also yeah, no, I
think we went and got that without you guys.

Speaker 4 (33:28):
Okay, but Donald's double is good my mind.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
I always ran.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
Now it doesn't look like my head.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
I'm going I'm going to do that. I'm going to
that Donald that looks like your head. I'm at four seconds.
If you're following, I.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Wish it was my head.

Speaker 5 (33:40):
It is so not you guys, A and B you guys.
This is the show runner issue. I don't know if
you guys have this. What the fun thing about watching
these shows for me is that I just watched them
for all the mistakes I made, especially early and like
even that stupid fantasy, I didn't have a frontal shot

(34:02):
coming back on you two, like the flash out of it.
So it was a weird transition, Like, ah, man, it's
screwed that up too. I still at the stage.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
I think this is I think this is such a
funny episode. I laughed so many times in this episode.
So you see, what you see is your mess ups.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
What I see is you know. I that That's how
it always I feel like that's how it always is
with people, you.

Speaker 5 (34:23):
Know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (34:24):
Like we we make things and then we find the
flaws in them. But if you sit back and let
other people tell you how amazing it is, you'll be like, really,
I didn't see them, you know what I mean?

Speaker 6 (34:34):
This good?

Speaker 2 (34:35):
That's another one.

Speaker 4 (34:36):
Oh drink Bill.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
I laughed that you chose smooth jazz from when we're
sitting on the bench, unless that's another track that's been changed.

Speaker 5 (34:43):
But when I don't, I don't know, but I didn't
remember it. Look, I had my first weird thing. I
was giving you guys shit here at home for not
remembering any of this stuff. And uh, I wrote this
script by myself like at home to catch us up.
And h I didn't remember writing it. I didn't remember
what it was about. So I watched it was really weird.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
So is that what?

Speaker 4 (35:04):
Just talk to that for a second.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
So, so, when you're the showrunner, you're overseeing your writing
staff having episodes, and then of course you end up
rewriting them a lot yourself. But when you said you
wrote this to catch up, just to explain that to
people the you know you.

Speaker 5 (35:20):
In comedy staffs especially, someone will go out and write
a draft. The whole staff will help kind of you know,
you outline it and do out stuff. Whole staff will
help kind of punch it up. And then the showrunner
of any show that you've ever loved will usually do
a pass of it before it shoots, you know, just
not just out of arrogance, but out of wanting the
show to sound like it's from that one distinct voice.

(35:42):
That's why people over the years, you know, they noticed
when the showrunner on one of their favorite shows left
for a year, how it suddenly sounds different, you know,
And when you get caught and behind in writing. You know,
when you look at all the different stages, outline which
has to be approved by the showrunner, uh draft which
gets notes from the showrunner, rewrite with the whole staff,

(36:04):
which the showrunner does, you know what I mean. It's
you often can catch back up if you're behind writing.
If as the showrunner, you're like, hey, why we're all
doing this, I'll outline one on my own and write
it and then just drag all you this whole gang
and to punch it up really quick and then we'll
shoot it, you know. And so that was one of
those one and sometimes those to tell you the truth

(36:25):
in a weird way. Sometimes the don't aren't. Those aren't
as good as other episodes because showrunners don't have to
listen to other people's input and sometimes and sometimes instead
of the whole group punching it up, you'll just hand
it in and go that's done. Now, we're as long
as we don't spend four days trying to make it better.
We're back on timing again. You know, make twenty four
episodes this year.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
Well, you nailed it with this one, man.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
This one has everything that you're looking for from you know,
from the drama to the comedy.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
This was I laughed so many times at this episode.

Speaker 5 (36:57):
There was a couple of things. I really liked it. Mate.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
You know, at one fourteen, Neil is just boring a
giant hole in the reception desk for no, for no
apparent reason. I was trying to think about what what
Neil's doing?

Speaker 5 (37:09):
No, you know what, you know what that's for.

Speaker 7 (37:11):
This is what you'll see early on, and you guys
should look for it.

Speaker 5 (37:15):
There are certain things that exist solely because directors, once
they knew that they were allowed to have fun visually,
you know, on this particular show, would work backwards from
the shot they wanted, so that, without a doubt was
somebody working backwards from in the script JD going hey,
uh and the jannit they're turning and being imposing, you

(37:36):
know what I mean and saying, oh, you know what'd
be cool is this giant ten foot drill in JD's face.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
I know, I know, but I'm just laughing it. I'm
just labbing because I like to just rationalize things. I'm like,
what assignment did he have with that drill in that
reception desk? I guess he was adding a new hole
for a new phone line or something.

Speaker 5 (37:51):
Well, dude, we used to get It's so funny if
you think about this in terms for writers. At first,
it would annoy us when we would see, you know, uh,
what directors came up with, for like why is the
janitor there? How is he going to be imposing? And
then when we would get trapped, we'd start making jokes
out of it. And one of my favorite ones, we
needed the janitor in there and we didn't know why,

(38:12):
and so we had him say I don't really have
anything to do. I'm mopping the rug, and then I
love you. I love you guys. Remember then the rest
of that scene, when you guys walked across that rug,
you would hear squishy sounds like why is that guy
mop on the rug?

Speaker 1 (38:30):
I love that Neil would Neil would take it seriously
and he'd be like, I why would my character be
mopping in a carpeted room? Yeah, you know, it's just
everybody wants their motivation, you know, of course, but Donald
pointed out I think and what Donald was? You mentioned that?

Speaker 5 (38:45):
You know?

Speaker 1 (38:45):
I never realized either. But the janitor feels like he's
a pretty good janitor, right, I mean he's absolutely I
never realized until rewatching it, but like, even though he
spends his entire existence fuggy with me, you know, he
does his best. He's pretty much a one man band
except for that that that Troy Troy, Oh my god,
nice to the except for Troy and then Martin.

Speaker 5 (39:05):
Yeah, Troy was the best because Troy frustrated the janitor
to no end. My favorite thing was when Troy's like,
I'm gonna go beat you up. He's like, that's not
how we do it, man, It's not how we do it.
It was literally like, we're better than that.

Speaker 6 (39:20):
Man.

Speaker 5 (39:21):
I enjoyed working with Flynn.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
And I forgot about the Frozen Effecting Bill and it's
really cool.

Speaker 4 (39:26):
It's a two forty three.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
It's really done well and I don't even remember how
we pulled that off, but the foreground and background are frozen. Yeah,
and whoever that was executed was really good. And then
we go to the guy who's then on the other
side of things. We go to the guy who's just
frozen and doing a horrible job trying to be frozen
without anything.

Speaker 5 (39:44):
I know, you know, you know what's really interesting is
it one of the things you'll see in the first year.
Much like the sound effects that you guys noticed is
they're drifting away. I think they're almost gone. I'm hoping.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
We keep laughing, we keep laughing that that you say,
they're almost going away, and then we.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Hear and then there'.

Speaker 5 (40:02):
Jingle bells. Yeah, jingle balls balls. But that The other
thing that you have to look for is we used
to because writers have to procrastinate, We used to have
hours of talks about rules, you know, and the rules
of the world, and uh, this broke one of them,
and we made it right after this was you can't

(40:23):
still be in a fantasy after you're out of a fantasy, oh,
you know, because then after you flash out, it has
to be real. The one the conversation that tortured people
forever and we didn't show the answer to it to
like the six or seventh year, is when Jad has
these long fantasies, what's he doing? Is he just standing there?

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Yeah, that's happening.

Speaker 5 (40:43):
And eventually eventually we had you and talking to the
todd in like the sixth or seventh year, when you go,
huh oh, that makes me think about trolls and you
go like this, and then Rob the better part of
like thirty second and then you're like, and.

Speaker 7 (41:01):
That's why you shouldn't buy blah blah blahs or whatever.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, well you started.

Speaker 4 (41:06):
It's funny because the last time you're wrong.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
We talked about how when I, when I came out
of a fantasy, I had agreed to buy Nurse Roberts
dead husband's of bowling shoes and I didn't know because
I was in a fantasy land, but I forgot. You
didn't really keep that little thing going that I would
have been a funny runner if like JD, because he's
in a fantasy, ends up agreeing to all this random shit.

Speaker 7 (41:27):
We didn't have any of the rules yet, man, and
we were trying.

Speaker 5 (41:30):
People used to argue all like the biggest argument that
you guys can look for in the writer's room in
a eight up hours the first year was was JD's
voiceover omniscient? Did he know what was going on in
the other stories and could narrate them or did we
have to write it so general as if he's talking
about himself but doesn't know about those stories. And it

(41:50):
used to drive people insane?

Speaker 2 (41:52):
Right, were we a hit at this time? At this
point where we like, did we get the back nine
at this point?

Speaker 5 (41:58):
Yeah, the first the show, the show did so well
coming out of the gate, the first year that it
was considered a hit, and then the second year they
made a mistake in my view, and uh, the first
year of the show it was sometimes increasing on its
lead in and just crushing and you're they should have

(42:21):
kept it there forever. And then the set they said,
it's such a big show for us. Next year, we're
going to put it after Friends. And the combination of
no show could retain eighty five percent of Friends' audience.
It was a cultural you know, lightning bolt, and so
you know, we were like the eighth rank show in

(42:41):
the country. But they're like, you're only retaining like sixty
seven percent of their audience. So we're and just so
you know, anytime they want to do a forty minute episode,
we're going to make it supersized and you guys will
be moved or not on or whatever. And they never
they should have they didn't know the show. They should
have put us after Friends and left us there in perpetuity.

(43:03):
The show would have been bigger and bigger, but instead
they put nine thousand different shows one after another, after Friends,
each time pulling them when they don't get the same
ratings as this giant monster juggernaut and never established a
new successful show after that show in its entire existence.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Yeah, you know, not only that, it was also the
end of Friends too, And then Joey came right after that,
and then we followed Joey for a little bit.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
And I followed it.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
It doesn't work either, now, yeah, we followed Joey for
like a little bit.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
And then for those of you who don't know what
the networks want, Bill, please correct me if I'm wrong.
Is they want you to hold that is to say,
keep eighty five percent of the lead in show's audience,
which is pretty impossible if it's Friends and it's the
biggest show ever. And if you go below that then
they kind of start thinking about moving you or losing you,

(43:52):
right right.

Speaker 5 (43:53):
Oh yeah, Well, the only difference is they would have
left because the show is so well reviewed and was
doing really well. If they owned our show, this is
all boring business, they would have kept us on there forever, going, hey,
we'll keep this on forever and make tons of money
for ourselves. But since they didn't own it, the second
it didn't immediately become bigger than Friends. They said, let's
try some shows that we owned to see if they
become bigger than Friends.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
And just kind of feel like that was I feel
like Friends was the end of tg of not TGIF,
but that Thursday night line.

Speaker 5 (44:19):
On must see Must see Thursdays.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
I feel like that's a no.

Speaker 5 (44:24):
Yes, you know, because you'll like this. You guys should
get it. And I interrupt him, Sorry, Donald, But Jeff
and Gold, who is an NBC exec, has a Must
See Thursday poster in his office. He's proud of when
it was US thirty Rock, the office and parks and
rec We're all Thursday and that's that was a cool
That was a cool lineup.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah, at one point that was a Thursday night.

Speaker 5 (44:46):
I think it was I can't remember if I have
the no, it might have been Earl, but it was
US thirty Rock office and either Earl or you know,
but it was He's like, that was total, a total
must they were still doing.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
That's a pretty good muss seat Thursday. Man, that's a
pretty muss seat Thursday.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Shall we talk about Nicole Sullivan? Guys, absolutely, Bill tell
us about obviously, you know a lot of people know
knew Nicole Sullivan from Mad TV and how did how
did you choose her? Were you friends with her?

Speaker 5 (45:17):
She was going, Yeah, she was another you know, we
brought people through our world that were friends of mine
that I knew were super talented. We wanted to have
her in this world because not only is she really funny,
but we knew she could actually act. And we had,
you know, kind of the idea beforehand, whether it was

(45:38):
with Brendan Frasier or her or Missus Wilke, that there
were sometimes patients that we would say, let's bring them
in and know that they're going to come back, you know.
And so we didn't know right then that Nicole was
going to die, but we knew she was going to
come back. And uh so we were setting her up
for the crap that, you know journey that her person

(45:59):
went down, you know, in a cool way. I think
the most fun way to do that. Donald said something
about it is you sneak it up on people. You
introduce somebody as something that's just going to be funny
in a goof to see them, and you get people
emotionally invested. So when there's stuff, when the wheels come off,
people are just you know, emotionally affected by that.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
That was something that you know, uh, and it just
shows how great of a writer you are. You know,
I'm sure you're you know this already.

Speaker 5 (46:29):
But he does like a like a like a Michael
Jaminski of writing.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Almost you said you you would give everybody clues. The
clues are there, and if you're really paying attention, you know,
if you're really really paying attention, when it happens, it's
not that big of a surprise like it's we foreshadowed
so much.

Speaker 5 (46:50):
Yeah, you talked about that, and I really appreciated it
because the way our staff worked that I thought was
cool before in the pre production every year before we
wrote episodes, we talked about what big things, you know,
arcs and stuff we wanted to do. Like we'd say, hey,
we want Turk and Car to get engaged, but we

(47:11):
want it to be a little bit of a rocky road.

Speaker 7 (47:13):
And then we would work backwards, same way.

Speaker 5 (47:15):
We'd go, hey, we want Johnny c to end up
with his ex who's never moved past now he's a
more matureian. We work work backwards. We're gonna kill Brendan Fraser.
It's worked backwards and then it would almost seem when
we're doing these initial episodes. Since we had already plotted
out these arcs, it was very easy to go, all right,
so if Nicole.

Speaker 7 (47:32):
Sullivan's gonna eventually die, and.

Speaker 5 (47:37):
Let's establish her here as a fun, neurotic person that
you think is just being kinde of hypochondriac, and then
do you know what I mean? So it is set
up because we were working backwards from the big episodes
that we wanted to accomplish. Was part of the fun.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
Yeah, that's good writing to me.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
That's because whenever you can look back and say to yourself,
was there and I didn't see it?

Speaker 5 (47:58):
Right?

Speaker 2 (47:58):
I feel like you know, Kayser So's you.

Speaker 5 (48:01):
Know, yeah, it is the it's the trick of it all.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
That's the trick is that is you know you're not
gonna the audience isn't gonna have the heartbreak for an asshole.
You know, you got to have the audience fall in
love with them and go, oh, I love listener. She's wacky,
she's silly, She's I want to be her friend, she's
you want to you want to fall in love with
the person before Bill kills them.

Speaker 5 (48:22):
It was the it was the one trick we went
back to a lot. It was too mean, was we
knew in twenty two minutes it was too hard to
get people to love someone and then kill them. So
we're like, all right, let's bring them and do another story.
And our goal is not only to do a successful story,
but make people like this person so that when they die,
we're uh screwed. The only time we thought we pulled

(48:45):
it off, that we killed someone people cared about in
one episode. It ties to this one because this is
me being a dummy. So Nicole Sullivan, you know, one
of the bride'smaids at my wedding, old friend she I'm
not good at naming characters. She played Jill Tracy, and uh,
and then I didn't realize till later. Jill Tracy, who's

(49:06):
Tim Hobert at the executive producer, one of them a
great actress in her own right. Not only had I
not put her on the show, but I named another
character after and somebody else played it. So then Jill
Tracy came and played the woman who died in a
Broadway musical. Waiting for my real life to the game.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
On a clear day when I can't see.

Speaker 5 (49:36):
Very long crazy.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
So did she call you?

Speaker 4 (49:44):
Did did you real jail Jill Tracy call you?

Speaker 1 (49:46):
And what was she like?

Speaker 5 (49:48):
No, Tim is just such a good buddy. I realized that,
you know, as it happened, and I'm like, oh, I'm
a piece of shit. We gotta make sure we get
you in there. And she was luckily also a Broadway
level singer and had done musical theater her whole life.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
You know, she was great, Hey, I'm looking at these
blackberries and I remember that this was like the time
that blackberries came out and Bill, as I recall, you
gave us all our first blackberries as a present.

Speaker 5 (50:09):
Yeah, it gave them to everybody as a Christmas gift.

Speaker 4 (50:11):
And I have a memory I remember you like we
were like, what is this so you can type on it?

Speaker 3 (50:17):
Yeah, that I wrote that down, Nicole Sullivan says email
as we're talking. That kind of dates the show.

Speaker 5 (50:24):
Yeah, I know, I know it was so weird.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
That means right when they all came out. I mean
that's we were like state of the art. She's got
a state of the art gadget.

Speaker 7 (50:33):
Getting back to the.

Speaker 5 (50:34):
Show, that was one of my favorite things because we
really wanted everybody had their thing to overcome on this show,
and we really wanted Sarah Chalk's character to overcome how
hard she always is on herself and you know how
much she buries herself psychologically and on an unhealthy way
with all her work. And my favorite scene in this

(50:56):
besides the Judy and Zach went out in the rain,
was Sarah and Johnny C with Johnny C doing some
really subtle stuff when he says, go ahead and make
your case why Jill Tracy can stay in the hospital,
and Sarah is saying, you know, sometimes you get overwhelmed,
and it's this and this, and John McGinley is without
doing anything big, proving to her that she does the

(51:17):
very same thing to herself. I love that moment.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (51:20):
The reason I loved it as a writer was it
wasn't something that Sarah was necessarily doing in this episode,
but she had done it in every episode up to
this one.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:29):
I wrote that down that that that's such a great moment.
That scene is so awesome and Sarah pulls it off
really well where she's talking about you know, she's talking
about Nicole's character and then and then you know, Johnny says,
but have you looked at how you have you looked
at yourself?

Speaker 2 (51:44):
I know I'm a skin and then.

Speaker 5 (51:49):
That she's like, and she's like and then she'll do anything.
She's such a people pleaser for anyone.

Speaker 7 (51:52):
I think he says, will you go clean up my
dog shit and take it to do it lunch?

Speaker 4 (52:00):
She's really good in that scene.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
Oh but it cuts right from that into you pulling
up in the cab, and that's where I got pissed
off because right there, like, no, not now jam but
it's but it marries so well, you know what I mean.

Speaker 5 (52:16):
It's drunk out and by the way, and then the
parings we did in this one, the pairings we did
in this show made me think of another question I
answered to you guys in the previous episode, because I
believe Kelso calls you Turk in this episode because you
guys are having a battle, and he did.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
It in another episode too, he did it.

Speaker 5 (52:34):
But that's why it's important. It's important to know that
that's why we do believe he thinks your name is Turkleton.
But that's why we got to the logic with the
writers that he thinks your name is Turk Turkleton. When
we said we said you know, he thinks her name
is doctor Turkleton. You know, in the writers you fight

(52:55):
about everything writers room. A lot of the writers were like,
he can't, he's called him Turk before. And then somebody's like, well,
then he thinks his name is Turk Turkleton.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
That's one of the best. And to this day, to
this day, to this day, there are a lot of
there are a.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
Lot of Scrubs fans that know, you know, Christopher Turk
is the name, but there are some that honestly believe
Turk Turkleton is the characters man.

Speaker 5 (53:21):
You know what else, by the way, came up randomly
is somebody asked me after why you were named Gandhi,
Like why doctor Coxon name checked.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
You as Gandhi Because I was a bald head guy.

Speaker 5 (53:31):
It wasn't just that, it was because I was concurrently
looking at cartoons and okaying the character design with Chris
and Phil for Clone High and the Gandhi character. They
had him with a hip go T because he was
a young teen version and whatever, and I'm like, oh, ship, we.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Should go I do.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
We were typically going to talk about that right now.
Let's just go to commercial real quick.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
Okay, sure, Commercial.

Speaker 3 (54:07):
Okay, we're back. Steph is in the house, y'all. Steph
is in the house. Steph. Steph is in the house.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
All right, Steph is in the house. We're just gonna
finish the Clone High chat. So Steph.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
Okay, so let's get.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Back into Clone High. Dude, you now, had Phil and
Chris done anything before this.

Speaker 5 (54:24):
Or or they were barely they were barely getting their
careers started. They were young animators from for Disney that
went to Dartmouth and we're also very funny and we're
just starting their career as kind of comedy writer animated.
The had done nothing. It was like the first project
that I supervised someone else the way I was supervised.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
And now the two.

Speaker 5 (54:43):
Guys that are gonna give me and you and Steph
and Joelle a job. Eventually, I pray that they.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
Give me Donald wyt you explain the context, because not
everyone's gonna know what the hell are Okay.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
So Chris and Philip gone on to create movies like
twenty one Jump Street, twenty two Lego Street, the Lego
Lego Movie, the best, probably the best Spider Man movie ever.

Speaker 5 (55:04):
Into the Spider Verse.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
Yeah, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, yes.

Speaker 5 (55:09):
They were the animators, directors writers of that as well.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
Yes, they've gone on to do some amazing things. But
in the beginning, before this all happened, there was a
little show called Clone High, which Bill was an executive
producer on, And while we were making scrubs in the basement,
they were doing all their recordings.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
And in the mental war in the mental ward. I
believe that was the writers.

Speaker 5 (55:30):
Yeah, we hid to save money.

Speaker 7 (55:32):
We hid our writing staff of that show in the hospital.

Speaker 5 (55:35):
And then you guys just casually started to notice other
writers around the commissary every day eating. Yeah, I'm just
hanging out there.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
But they put us in the show too. So I
got an opportunity to play two really cool characters in
that were.

Speaker 5 (55:48):
You George Washington, which is I was George, and.

Speaker 3 (55:52):
I was also Toots, who was Joanavak's father in law
or something like that.

Speaker 7 (55:56):
Yeah, it was a blind It was a blind former
jazz man.

Speaker 6 (55:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (55:59):
Yeah, Yeah, it's so weird because all a bunch of
Clone High nerds. I love Big Mouth, but Toots is
very much like the jazzy ghost that they have in
that cartoon Big Mouth.

Speaker 4 (56:10):
You know, are you guys bringing it back?

Speaker 1 (56:11):
In some way.

Speaker 5 (56:12):
Bill, I'm not at liberty to discuss that yet.

Speaker 4 (56:16):
No, I stumbled across something top secret audience.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
That would be awesome.

Speaker 5 (56:20):
That's a good tease.

Speaker 4 (56:21):
I was in it too, but I don't know who
I played a lot.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
You weren't in it a lot.

Speaker 4 (56:26):
I don't minimize my part.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
I did occur.

Speaker 5 (56:29):
I did it was it was such a cool college
filmmaking type atmosphere, which is what Scrubs was anyways, that
you guys would be shooting scenes and we would literally go, hey,
do you mind while you're eating to walk downstairs and
record a voice being a cartoon character, and you guys
were also nice about it.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
Well, I loved working on that show Man. That was
a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
I was Paul Revere, Joelle is telling so Paul Revere
is an important character everybody.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
Yeah, but that was like one episode.

Speaker 5 (56:55):
You had a bigger You had a bigger one when
you were selling a weird energy paste with Sarah Chalk
and Marilyn Manson came in and saying the food Pyramid song.
It's very weird.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
Yeah, dude, I just remember being I remember being there,
and this is the first time I met Mandy Moore.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
She did a guest spot on the show.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
I met Uh, I've never remember what shall we go to, Steph?

Speaker 2 (57:14):
I met Tom Green? That was cool. That was the
first time I've ever met Tom Green and he was
on fire at the time and was on it.

Speaker 5 (57:21):
Steph was on.

Speaker 3 (57:23):
And also even we have a caller, guys, our caller
has has Finally we're gonna let her talk.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
Okadies and gentlemen, please welcome Steph.

Speaker 9 (57:34):
Bill.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Bill's counting into everything. Dan, turn off the theme song, Steph.

Speaker 7 (57:42):
At any point that you want to hear that awesome song,
just say five to six seven eight.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
It's official. Anytime you say five six seven eight.

Speaker 6 (57:55):
Maybe wait three whole minutes so I think it's only
just right, Okay, five six seven.

Speaker 4 (58:04):
Eight, Okay, but not the whole song, the damn stopping
to stop it?

Speaker 2 (58:08):
Do you want to do the tag at the end? Stuff?

Speaker 4 (58:12):
I don't know, give us the tag?

Speaker 5 (58:18):
Good boys?

Speaker 1 (58:19):
All right, this this has all gone to ship Steph.
What's your question?

Speaker 6 (58:23):
So I'm finishing up my second year of medical school,
which is in part due to scrubs.

Speaker 9 (58:30):
So basically, yeah, super funny story.

Speaker 6 (58:35):
I alluded to this in my personal statement but left
out certain details because I didn't want them to not
take me seriously.

Speaker 9 (58:40):
But basically, my mom was a surgeon.

Speaker 6 (58:44):
So when I was growing up, I saw like, you know,
pictures of her job and stuff like that, and I
thought it looked awful. I was like, I have no
idea how you do what you do. She's a breast
cancer surgeon. So I was like, that's disgusting, Like, how
do you look at boobs all day? So weird?

Speaker 9 (58:58):
I never am going into medicine.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
How do you look at boobs all day?

Speaker 5 (59:02):
That's just I don't know, it's easier if you're not
a medical professional. Continue, I got it.

Speaker 6 (59:06):
Yeah, So I started watching Scrubs maybe like I don't
even remember when, maybe in middle school, and I related
to Elliott's character on such a spiritual level that I
was like, this looks really fun. Maybe I will go
into medicine. And since then kind of became more legitimate.

Speaker 9 (59:23):
But definitely the first thing that piqued my interest with Scrubs.
So thank you guys.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Do you use the word frick a lot?

Speaker 9 (59:32):
I kind of graduated to the U version.

Speaker 6 (59:35):
But.

Speaker 10 (59:37):
Sometimes I mean, I gotta say I want to interject
stuff because that means so much to me because we
wanted to make sure that medical personnel seemed like heroes
and the job seemed like fun.

Speaker 5 (59:50):
And I just was talking to the real JD last
night and his wife Dolly, who Elliott's based on, and
their favorite thing is is to consider you know that
they might have had a tiny part in some people
kind of embracing medicine as a career because it means
so much to them. That's A and B for those

(01:00:10):
of you that are just listening that you can't see
Steph could easily have played Elliott, just so you guys know,
she's elliot S. She's elliot S both in her mannerisms
and her appearance. And I almost, by the way, this
is the thing that I have to watch out for
late in life because I'm much older than all these people.

(01:00:31):
But I almost said, I am here talking to a
young Sarah Chalk. But Sarah Chalk is still very young,
So I did not say.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
That Sarah is not an old person at all.

Speaker 6 (01:00:39):
Yes, my mad school friends all tell me, all the
ones that watch Scrubs religiously are all like you have
the same luck that she does. When you guys, did
the episode of Sarah Chalk, how like the crazy stories
that come out of nowhere.

Speaker 9 (01:00:53):
You're like, there's no way that happened to you on
a Monday.

Speaker 5 (01:00:55):
That's me, Like, yeah, I was watching that. I think
that that that story that Zach and Donald told led
us to write a story in which he bought a
new car. In every thirty seconds, someone someone took another
door off.

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
That would happen to Sarah.

Speaker 6 (01:01:12):
The best part of that episode is when the grumpy
radiologists like, thanks for stopping by and don't forget your.

Speaker 9 (01:01:18):
Car doors, Like I did.

Speaker 6 (01:01:24):
You know what?

Speaker 5 (01:01:25):
You're a real fan. This will make you laugh. And
I don't even know if Donald and Zach remember it.
Different things from different episodes would stick on set and
people would say them over and over and I never
could predict what it was. And I don't know Zach Donald,
if you guys remember what it was from this one.
But it was a made up flavor of smoothie that
you guys kept saying for weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Orange goo go.

Speaker 4 (01:01:46):
Wait which episode I remember that?

Speaker 5 (01:01:50):
What flavor do you want? I'll have a Frasberry olist
an orange goo go. I believe that.

Speaker 4 (01:01:57):
I believe Bill.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
I believe that came from in the writer's rooms, you'd
have the assistance do like a smoothie run and you'd
all be like calling out weird jama juice flavors where
you make.

Speaker 5 (01:02:07):
Up fake flavors and just to torture the poor young
people working on hourly waves. Yeah, and so that orange
goo go orange with.

Speaker 4 (01:02:17):
Immunity.

Speaker 5 (01:02:20):
All right, stuff, we're taking this.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Come on, come on your time, it's your time. Stuff,
it's your time.

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
It's your time.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Stuff. Goonies go ahead. Stuff.

Speaker 6 (01:02:28):
So it's actually kind of perfect that Bill is here
on this episode because it kind of relates to the
behind the scenes part of it. But since I watched
the show so much, a lot of the times when
I'm studying, i'll recognize words that will like remind me
of certain scenes of the show. And I know you
guys talked about like trying to make it really medically accurate.
It is reverifying, but it's also really funny, which I

(01:02:53):
think is hard to do with medical vernacular if you're
not really used to it. So I was wondering if
there is a specific member of the writing team that was,
you know, kind of crucial in making the medical scenes,
specifically the funny ones, because I think it would be
kind of hard to write if you didn't have that
medical knowledge.

Speaker 5 (01:03:13):
I'm going to give props to First of all, we
have actors and actresses that can sell comedy, and they
were great. But the real JD is, as I can
tell by your persona, he is a guy that I
would not have been surprised if he went into comedy writing.
He was funny, and so for me it was it'd

(01:03:35):
be interesting to even go back to all his memories.
But I remember him talking about pimping, you know, when
you get grilled with questions and rounds, and he would
be like, I was never ready. I always felt, you know,
like I was a deer in the headlights. And then
just from him saying that, you know, I was like, oh,
JD's gonna be a deer in the headlights when they
ask him a question, you know what I mean? And

(01:03:57):
I would bet stuff that you when you go through
all this stuff, we'll meet it with humor and banter,
because if you don't, I think you go crazy. So
I give him the props for it, and the performers
the propsport because they'd find ways to make it funny.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
You know, Bill, did JD ever like overstep the line
and he's like, hey, Bill, I got an episode for you.
Here's what's going to happen.

Speaker 5 (01:04:18):
Yeah, And they did two things. One, he and Dolly
once said, hey, we got bored because we were both
sick and stayed in all weekend. We wrote an episode
and I was like, oh my god.

Speaker 7 (01:04:27):
I was like yeah, and of course I'll look at it.
And then they're like, no, we're not going to show
it to you.

Speaker 5 (01:04:32):
We forget it. We don't want to do that right,
which was super cool.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
It's probably brilliant and in the movie version would be
like the most brilliant script ever written, I know.

Speaker 5 (01:04:40):
And then the other thing was to answer Steph's question.
We would sometimes work backwards, you know, which was really
hard because for.

Speaker 7 (01:04:48):
Him, because I'd go, I want to do this funny moment.

Speaker 5 (01:04:51):
We need you to say something that would cause this
guy to not have a sense of smell and not
blah blah blah, and it can't be soious enough that
I have to worry about whether or not he died.
And he should still be conscious and be able to
talk because he has to talk in the scene. And
Jad would be like, dude, this is worse than med school. Homework.
This is impossible, hard one.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
Speaking of speaking of funny medical dragon, uh, it's pronounced
annal Jesus.

Speaker 9 (01:05:19):
I can't believe you said that. Literally, I had to
give a talk to my like med school.

Speaker 6 (01:05:25):
It was one of our small groups, and they were
talking about how it's so important to be able to
articulate in kind of Layman's terms, what you're talking about.
And I was like, yeah, there's a scene of Scrubs
where Turk has to explain that anal jesick is like
not the same as anal jesis put it in your
bite and that. Everyone was like, I mean, yeah, I

(01:05:46):
guess that works. That was.

Speaker 5 (01:05:50):
On my top ten jokes that I did not write
that I wish I could take credit for. That's such
a funny joke.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
Manil Goldman, whatever you do, I'm not gonna it.

Speaker 5 (01:05:57):
Really bums me out. I think that might have even
been Arsist or Gabby I don't even know, or Hobert.
It sounds like a Tim Hobert choke too.

Speaker 4 (01:06:03):
All right, Steph, you got another question.

Speaker 6 (01:06:05):
Yeah, it's kind of piggybacks off of the first one
a little bit. So you guys talked about early on
in your episodes that you kind of work to develop
this character and figure out what kind of mannerisms you
wanted and all that kind of stuff. It really shows
throughout the progression of this season they kind of grow
into those character traits while also still growing as people.

(01:06:28):
But I find that they're really kind of congruent with
how you would expect that person to act as a clinician.

Speaker 9 (01:06:35):
And I was wondering if the kind.

Speaker 6 (01:06:37):
Of character that you developed influenced the way that the
writers wrote scenes of how you practiced medicine.

Speaker 5 (01:06:43):
Like later on, I'll set Donald and Zach up to
talk about this, but I'll tell you my philosophy of
running a TV show is ook. They were talking about
show running earlier. So your question's awesome because it means
a lot to me that it felt that way to you.
Because when I teach sometimes like the I teach the
Writers Guild for kids running shows for the first time

(01:07:04):
and stuff I said. The most successful shows, in my mind,
when you write the pilot and come up with it,
and actors and actresses don't exist there. The characters belong
to you. You invented them, and then you cast these people.
And when you do the pilot the first episode. For
it to be great, it's got to be a partnership.
You know, it's half mine and half yours. But then

(01:07:24):
for a show to work, ownership you have to stop
being a control freak, and ownership has to go to
the actors and actresses playing the parts. And so I
would ask Donald and Zach, you know at this point
in the show where they said it, you know, because
what would happen is it's really cool. Eventually, on good shows,
people start coming up to you and going, I don't

(01:07:45):
think my character would say it this way? Or are
you sure this is how my character would react in
this moment, or should my character be more like this?
And you on shows that are working, you have to listen,
and I did you guys eventually kind of feel like
those characters were yours?

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
You know, I definitely felt.

Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
I definitely felt like Turk became if not I became Turk,
or Turk became me. I definitely at some point everything
it just seemed like I was living life on camera
at some point. And what really helped me, though, was
you realizing medical jargon wasn't my strength.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
And once you realized that, right, and once you realized
that and made Turk just a scalpel jockey.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
It freed me, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:08:33):
And I didn't have to worry about having to say
certain things, you know what I mean, drink up. I
didn't have to worry about saying certain things, whereas Zach
and Sarah would say and Johnny would say things, and
I'd be like, I'm so happy I don't have to
do that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
I remember being in the makeup chair in the morning
and being like looking through the sides and being like,
oh no, Donald's got a medical jargon monologue.

Speaker 4 (01:08:55):
Those are just lunch is going to be late today.

Speaker 3 (01:08:58):
Yeah, those would be the worst. Those would be the
worst days. But once Bill was like, I'm not going
to give you medical jargon anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:09:05):
Churk knows it, he just doesn't like to use it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
Right, life became so much easier.

Speaker 5 (01:09:10):
It's a good question, though, because do you guys eventually
even would start riffing your own lies, and I gladly
would use them because they knew their characters and how
they would react and what they would say and didn't
bother me at all. It made me happy. And you're
you know, even getting.

Speaker 7 (01:09:26):
To talk to the same way. Getting to talk to
you makes me happy.

Speaker 5 (01:09:28):
I One of the things I momentos I have on
my wall in my office from Scrubs is from a
med student Steph, who pulled an answer it rounds out
of their ass because they remembered a chunk of dialogue
on our show. And they said the attending was so
blown away because it was a question they shouldn't have
known the answer to, you know what I mean.

Speaker 6 (01:09:46):
And I said the same things about her med students
that like all of the fact like trivia that people
don't really they're not supposed to remember, you know, years
into practice because it just is you never see it.
She was like, yeah, all the med students know it
because scrubs.

Speaker 5 (01:10:01):
That what kind of what kind of doctor do you
want to be? Stuff?

Speaker 9 (01:10:07):
I'm leaning towards surgery, but we'll see opened anything.

Speaker 5 (01:10:11):
I think it's really really neat. You know that you're
doing that, and uh, it's a gig that's of service.
It's like being a teacher. It's awesome and the most
important jobs to be of service. I think like teacher, soldier,
a physician, and of course comedy writer.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
I would think right, not at all all, Right, Steph
thank you so much. That was amazing questions and also
really inspired us. I mean, you made us all feel
like we we may have inspired we you know, we
inspired at least one person per Medicine a lot.

Speaker 6 (01:10:41):
A lot. Let me.

Speaker 9 (01:10:42):
Yeah, you guys have a huge medical fan base.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
Well, good luck with that.

Speaker 5 (01:10:46):
Promise me that you'll dress up and you'll dress up
as Elliott for at least one Halloween, oh yeah, every Halloween.

Speaker 3 (01:10:53):
And whoever, if you have friends that go as Turk
for Halloween, tell them please no black face.

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
Make sure they're really black because Donald might cringe.

Speaker 2 (01:11:06):
No, they don't even have to be black if you
just don't paint your face right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
Okay, but Donald and I cringe every Halloween when people
tag us on Instagram like excitedly like Turk and GD
for Halloween. And still in twenty twenty, there's still people
painting their faces brown and black and it's horrible.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
Although we did it a lot on scrips.

Speaker 5 (01:11:25):
Yeh. By the way, one of the many things that
doesn't hold up in retrospect on the show the a stuff.
Good luck with all this stuff, and.

Speaker 9 (01:11:39):
Hi, Vic and Hayden, hope you guys are jealous.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
Turn it off.

Speaker 4 (01:11:50):
Turn it off, you guys, turn it off.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
Steph thought she was just gonna sneak into Vic and
Hayden a quick thing, but I think we should just
keep talking about Vic and Hayes.

Speaker 4 (01:12:00):
I like Vic, but I don't like Hayden.

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
I don't like it at all.

Speaker 4 (01:12:03):
I want their shout out to go awry.

Speaker 5 (01:12:05):
Vick and Hayden shout out. Now, yeah, I want let's uh,
let's do a Vic and Hayden episode.

Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
Okay, we should so at four forty four, guys, what's
happening before? At four forty four, what's happening is cow?

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
We haven't talked about this episode at all.

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
I know.

Speaker 5 (01:12:20):
Oh yeah, here's what I like.

Speaker 7 (01:12:21):
We've talked about the Sarah story both with Steph and.

Speaker 1 (01:12:26):
We jumped around.

Speaker 4 (01:12:26):
We jumped around, and we talked about.

Speaker 7 (01:12:28):
The Neil, but we haven't talked about the Judy and
Zach story.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
We're gonna get into it, and we're gonna get into it,
you know. But listen, Donald Bill Laurin's episodes, they are
always going to be long because he brings a lot
to the table, and he's.

Speaker 3 (01:12:37):
No, I'm not complaining. I'm not complaining about the length
of the episode. I'm just saying some people. Some people
want to listen to a rewatch podcast and actually rewatch
the show, well.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
Then they should listen to a different show. We happened
to we happened to Meander. At four forty four, What's
Happening is mentioned for the first time.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
Okay, you don't need to start banging.

Speaker 4 (01:13:00):
I did I bang the table?

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
I banged the table on that. I'm sorry? Why am
I yelling?

Speaker 5 (01:13:03):
What happens?

Speaker 1 (01:13:04):
At four forty four, What's Happening is mentioned for the
very first time on Scrubs.

Speaker 5 (01:13:08):
Oh yeah, and you guys did the dance and we
don't even idea it really, She says, it's not that
great a show. You just expected people to know what
we were talking about. And that's such an old reference.
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
And nowadays kids don't even know the glory of what's
happening unless you're our age.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
Hey, hey, the glory of what's happening or what's happening now?
I know, do you remember what?

Speaker 6 (01:13:29):
Now?

Speaker 4 (01:13:29):
What's happening?

Speaker 2 (01:13:30):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
Surely owned the restaurant.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
They all grew up and now d is not just
a small character. She's like the star.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
No, she was the star I think because she was
the star.

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
Everybody came back.

Speaker 1 (01:13:44):
I didn't like what's happening now as much as what's happening.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
What's happening is.

Speaker 7 (01:13:47):
I just liked We Runs dance, and I liked the
moment you guys did for me, which is forever.

Speaker 5 (01:13:52):
I liked, hey, hey, hey, what's happening?

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
Hey hey hey?

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
Do you remember in the opening credits when they made
they left rerun and he's driving the street and then
reruns just running after the pickup truck.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
That's rude that they did that.

Speaker 4 (01:14:19):
I know they were making they were making fun of
me heavy.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Said guy, making fun of the heavy set guy.

Speaker 4 (01:14:24):
But watching me run chase after that truck was funny.

Speaker 5 (01:14:26):
Come on, this sure was because he had suspenders on.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
Yeah, well that that and the hat and the and
the same red His outfit never changed.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
Do you remember the episode where Roger decided he was
going to be a nude model.

Speaker 5 (01:14:40):
My favorite thing that's happening right now is you guys said,
we haven't talked about the show yet, and then you're going,
do you remember the episode of What's Happening? By the way,
And if I was like if I was like at
ten fifteen and that what's happening episode.

Speaker 7 (01:14:54):
That's the first time that surely says.

Speaker 4 (01:14:58):
I just remember. I'm well, you can go back to
the show, but I just remember that there was an episode.

Speaker 1 (01:15:03):
Where Roger was doing nude modeling for artists, you know,
when they like paint the nude model. And I remember
thinking as a child, like this is scandalous. Roger's gonna
take off his clothes, like that's crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:15:14):
Okay, let's get back into the show. Okay, So let's
talk about the JD and Carla storyline, which is a
very interesting storyline because at the beginning of the show,
you guys are really clicking and grooving. One reason because
your best friend and his now girlfriend are always you know,
we live together, or your roommate and his girlfriend always around,

(01:15:38):
and so you guys have developed a relationship and because.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Of that, you're a dynamic duo of your own.

Speaker 5 (01:15:45):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
She doesn't work, drink up, she doesn't work for you.

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
But you guys are a team that is very, very
very cohesive, and you go along and you fuck it
up by becoming judgmental.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
Right, Well, I'm feeling every one is being condescending to
me and I and I'm starting to become a good doctor.
I'm starting to get my groove. I'm starting to know
what's happening.

Speaker 4 (01:16:08):
And and also.

Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
Okay go on, and and and I just you know,
like like someone does you lose he loses his temper,
and of course he loses his temper at the worst
person possible, his teammate. Uh, Carlo.

Speaker 5 (01:16:25):
Yeah, this was also a product the reason I wrote
this is is interesting, the product of two things. One,
all the nurses that were nice enough to give us interviews.
You know, one of the stories that you saw was
the nurses are essentially the last line of training, you know,
for a lot of these medical students and residents and
interns and stuff, because when you first show up, you
know more than they do even say it in the show,

(01:16:46):
than the training.

Speaker 7 (01:16:47):
Kicks in and the dynamics ships, and you know, so
many of them ultimately.

Speaker 5 (01:16:55):
Told us that it's so interesting how to navigate that,
because you know, there is an air of superiority to
some doctors, you know, when they get to that point,
and it messes up that dynamic, you know. And I
wanted to combine that in my personal life. My mom's family,
my mom and then me were the first two in
her side of a family to go to college, you know,

(01:17:17):
and then you always kind of enter these dynamics of like, oh,
you know, you think you're smarter than me because you
actually went on to secondary education and did that stuff.
And you know, as you get older, you realize that
doesn't have anything to do with anything. You know, At
this point in my life, I know tons of geniuses
that didn't finish high school and tons of you know,

(01:17:40):
grad school graduates. They're the dumbest people alive, do you
know what I mean? But around youthful things that kind
of carries there. And my favorite part of that stuff
was her challenging you to admit it and you actually
admitting it, you know what I mean? And that was
what enabled you guys still to be friends.

Speaker 1 (01:17:59):
In that scene was really I mean, Judy's I'm just
you know, the straight man in that scene. Her her
performance in that rain outside the bus I thought was
just incredible. She did such a beautiful job and it
was heartbreaking. Still to this day, I'm watching it and
was so moved by by by by how heartfelt and
open she was.

Speaker 5 (01:18:17):
Uh and uh, I wrote down because this is what
we wanted to do that people didn't understand it comedy
of comedy at the time, and why Judy Rays was
so perfect, you know, because there weren't a lot of
dramedies on. And one of my favorite jokes in this
episode was when before you get off the bus, she's
leaving and she's like, I'm so mad at you and

(01:18:38):
you said you can't you forgave me.

Speaker 7 (01:18:41):
You can't just change your mind, And without selling it
as a joke, she's like, have.

Speaker 5 (01:18:44):
You never met a woman before? And she walks out
into the rain, you.

Speaker 6 (01:18:48):
Know what I mean.

Speaker 5 (01:18:48):
And it wasn't read like a punchline. It was read like, yeah,
you can still be funny in drama and amongst pathos
when you're feeling bad. And that was like the tonal stuff.
That's why she's so good man, because she's always so real,
very very very good actors.

Speaker 3 (01:19:04):
Yeah, I look back at it like I had no
clue how much of a power how she was or
or is I should say, And when I watched these episodes,
you know, I said it in our first podcast, her
and Ken, Wow, really they're really MVPs of our show,

(01:19:24):
you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
Drink up?

Speaker 5 (01:19:27):
They can just you don't get actor.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
You don't have to tell people to drink when you say,
you know what, I'm just I know they're just gonna
do it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):
I'm bringing I'm bringing it to my attention that I
said it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
This is the most you've ever done, by the way
you went from the previous episode being conscious of it
and doing none to this one doing like thirty I
you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:19:44):
I probably said it several times in the last episode. Also,
this episode is also about how how important your name is,
regardless of if it's Bambi or JD or your reputation
or Scooter, whatever it is you have. Reputation is very
important and you only get one chance to make a

(01:20:06):
first impression and after that people will have judgments of
who they think you are.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
And this episode really touches on that.

Speaker 5 (01:20:15):
Here's the thing I screwed up in this episode off
what Donald and Sam bothers me. What doctor Cox's character
does to JD, you know, of shaming him was so
bad that it bummed me out that he never got
his comeuppance for that, you know what I mean, because
you didn't tell her to go protect you. And then
he makes everybody stop and goes we're all to be
super special to this little flower, you know, And I

(01:20:38):
thought that was so egregiously mean, you know what I mean.
But his character, I guess was flawed. But we should
have gotten him, have him make amends for that or
get thumped for that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:48):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
But Boxing Fantasy was pretty funny, though Johnny stil oiled.

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):
I'm not to say, holy cow, how oil did he
have on?

Speaker 4 (01:20:56):
There was a lot of oil. I remember, it was
a lot of Crisco.

Speaker 5 (01:20:59):
I watched it with Christa, who had to do all
her romance scenes with Johnny c and uh and she
will eventually, you know, be on your You're so nice
about her too. He came he came on as a
punching bag, and she was half asleep through upstairs in
the room and she goes, uh, half drowsy. Here comes

(01:21:20):
old up.

Speaker 1 (01:21:23):
That he is just just glistening with Johnny has a
full bottle of criscal oil.

Speaker 2 (01:21:29):
Let's be honest, he's ripped. He looks amazing.

Speaker 5 (01:21:34):
I think it's drawn on. Oh you know what I
wanted to say, and I wanted to tell me if
you guys thought this in real life. When I say
that is what I wrote. Last thing, I wrote down
about Judy.

Speaker 7 (01:21:43):
Would I say, like, when you get really lucky, it's
not the.

Speaker 5 (01:21:45):
Writing or anything else, it's all it's everything, and the
casting people have to really nail you know, these characters
and be who they are. And the amazing thing watching
Judy back then, you guys, Zach and Donald were such kids,
and Sarah Sarah's character, and Sarah felt like a kid
and Judy and this is one of the reasons I
think the show works. She was not significantly She's essentially

(01:22:09):
the same age as all you guys, but she seemed
like such a grown up even.

Speaker 2 (01:22:13):
From the start, definitely way more mature than we were.

Speaker 5 (01:22:17):
You know, and seemed like such an adult that it
made the show work. Of like, oh, one of these
four is you know, old for her years and an
adult already, whereas Judy is, you know, she could have
easily on a different show been Elliott or been you know,
the little kid, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:22:33):
And so it was was she like that in real
life or she was good man in real life?

Speaker 1 (01:22:38):
Judy was way more mature than the three of us.
I think we were. We were just as silly and
goofy as our characters, and you know, Judy was funny
and would play along with us, but I think she
was definitely more mature than us.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:22:49):
By the way, there's a really funny there's a really
funny fuck up bill at twelve oh three. When Donald
runs into the room that Kelso's lured him to, you
could totally see a hand that's all come in and
it's on the floor and it's holding the door open.
And it made me think, now we paint sh like
that out. I know, I know nowadays we just you know,

(01:23:09):
painted out, but it made me think it was probably
Patrick Bolton or something lying on the floor.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
Patrick shout out, Patrick Bolton.

Speaker 1 (01:23:15):
Patrick Bolton was the on set track.

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
It has wheels, that thing will be on set.

Speaker 5 (01:23:20):
I enjoyed after hearing the interesting thing you guys posted
about eating. I think I've never seen the two of
you do more eating in an episode. Zach having a
jam a cupcake in your mouth, Donald just wolf and sandwich.
Did you guys really eat that stuff or were you
just spitting it out as soon as they said cut.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
I do love a sandwich.

Speaker 1 (01:23:36):
I'm not gonna lie, and a cupcake doesn't count. But
if someone says we need you to jam this cupcake
in your mouth. You're gonna do it.

Speaker 4 (01:23:42):
I mean, that's your excuse. Also was that it was
that cheap cupcake.

Speaker 5 (01:23:46):
What are those called hostess cupcakes?

Speaker 3 (01:23:51):
That was a dang Listen. I'll tell you something right now.
You put some cold cuts, some cheese in between some
hero that sounds delicious to me. You could put some
lettuce tomato on it. I'll eat that shit.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
And another another strike at the janitor not speaking to
anyone in season one, Bill, is that he clearly has
told doctor Cox to call me Scooter at the end.

Speaker 5 (01:24:12):
I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 7 (01:24:14):
He never ever spoke to anybody except JD.

Speaker 1 (01:24:16):
And Donald and I have been going through like detectives
going so we're trying to keep the janitor Laura alive
for season one. But the facts, the facts are, the
facts are problematic.

Speaker 4 (01:24:26):
The facts are problematic.

Speaker 5 (01:24:27):
Bill doesn't We've done all the work, just like Turkleton,
there was just okay.

Speaker 4 (01:24:33):
So in your mind, Bill, hit your rationalization button. How
does Cox know to call me Scooter?

Speaker 7 (01:24:41):
It's just a random coincidence.

Speaker 5 (01:24:43):
Nicknames.

Speaker 4 (01:24:47):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
I really want this to be a running gag that
Donald and I do the detective work to see how
the janitor talks to other people.

Speaker 5 (01:24:55):
The only one I think you've ever seen him speak
to is Elliott in that thing when they're all walking
up to each other. Mad.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):
Yes, yes, well she speaks to him. He doesn't necessarily
speak to her.

Speaker 4 (01:25:05):
The exact exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:25:07):
That might not have even been a janitor she made Mad.
This is just a lens.

Speaker 4 (01:25:11):
The last thing I wanted to, last thing I've.

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
Ever you know what, And you're absolutely right.

Speaker 3 (01:25:15):
Actually, the very next person at the janitor, the very
next person that's attacked after Elliott, uh does that to
the janitor is JD.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
So it could be it could be that that one's that.

Speaker 5 (01:25:29):
One's imaginary and Elliott was talking to an intern or
inn order or something or.

Speaker 2 (01:25:34):
No, that's a possibility.

Speaker 1 (01:25:35):
Or she's just not even talking to anyone. There's no
one there and she's just saying it.

Speaker 5 (01:25:38):
Yeah, it's very fight clubby.

Speaker 2 (01:25:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:43):
The last thing I want to say is this, they
went overboard with the filters on Sarah in the bathtub,
because it's like Barbara Walters, you could barely see her
through filters, and and she's in like this most enormous
fucking bathroom, and I was thinking, like, why does Elliott,
But then I remember it is doesn't Elliot supposed to
have money from her parents.

Speaker 4 (01:25:58):
Her parents are paid Elliott's in like the bathroom of
a millionaire's house.

Speaker 5 (01:26:03):
It was subtext that we had planned for and a
lot of it got cut, but it eventually pays off.
When she tells her dad she doesn't want to go
into a female specialty and he stops paying for her life,
so she has to move in with you. She loses
her whole apartment. She works, was at that apartment. She's like,
this place is big.

Speaker 2 (01:26:22):
She works at the clinic, she starts working at the clinic.
All of that stuff. I remember, Well, thank you, sorry, audience,
we've done.

Speaker 1 (01:26:28):
Yeah, audience, we we went all over the place today,
but we're so excited.

Speaker 4 (01:26:35):
We made about a bunch of talks and nurses.

Speaker 2 (01:26:41):
Said, he's a story natural. So yanda here yea

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Episode Transcript

Hosts And Creators

Donald Faison

Zach Braff

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