Info:
DVD Release Date: May 22, 2007 (Buena Vista Home Entertainment)
Color/2006
MSRP: $39.99
Number of Discs: 3
Number of Episodes: 24
Running Time: 530 minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English, Spanish, French; Closed Captioned
Special Features:
* My 117 Episodes: A look back at 5 seasons
* Deleted scenes & alternate lines
* Director's cut of the 100th episode directed by Zach Braff
Introduction:
Make an appointment with the outrageous doctors of Sacred Heart. Garnering an Emmy Award nomination for Best Comedy Series, Scrubs’ fifth season is “sillier and more whimsical than ever” raves Newsday. This year, the laughs are off the charts as JD moves in with Turk and Carla, and Elliot uses an interesting form of blackmail in order to get her job back at the hospital. Experience all 24 episodes, plus exclusive bonus features, including a never before seen extended cut of the 100th episode all on DVD from Buena Vista Home Entertainment. It is just what the doctor ordered!
Scrubs is one of my favorite shows on television. To me, the plots, jokes, characters, settings, and pretty much every aspect about this show makes it one of THE top shows on television today, hands down.
Season five was a bit of a scheduling departure for NBC. They elected to hold the show until midseason, resulting in the season not debuting until January 2006. The upside of this was a lack of reruns, something that greatly helps a show in my opinion.
Memorable Episodes / Notable Guest Stars:
The season starts nicely with the episode “My Intern’s Eyes.” JD is now an attending physician himself, meaning now HE is the one having to deal with insane and neurotic interns. Turk isn’t the biggest fan of Carla getting pregnant, while Elliot starts her fellowship at County Hospital and tries not to appear foolish. Obviously that doesn’t end well. “My Way Home” is the show’s classic 100th episode, a send-up of The Wizard of Oz. In the next episode, “My Big Bird,” JD, Turk, Elliot, and Carla are all investigated following the death of a patient. This season contains a tandem of Story episodes, “Her Story II,” told from Carla’s point-of-view, plus “His Story III,” told from the Janitor’s point of view. In the season finale, “My Transition,” Dr. Cox learns that Jordan is pregnant again, while J.D is in for a little surprise himself with Kim. In terms of guest stars, Cheryl Hines guests in “My New God,” Gary Busey guests as himself in “My Missed Perception,” which also features Michael Learned, who played Olivia on The Waltons. Jason Bateman appears in “My Big Bird.” Mandy Moore guests in “My Half-Acre.” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar guests in “My Cabbage,” Dave Foley guests in “My Five Stages.” In “My New Suit,” Thomas Cavanaugh once again appears as Dan. Nicole Sullivan (from The King of Queens, among others) guests in “My Lunch.”
Packaging:
The packaging follows an identical construction as the season 2 and 4 sets. There is an inner Digipak inside an outer box, which opens from the side. The front cover art features the main cast standing behind an extremely large blood pressure checking cuff. The manometer that displays the pressure is held in front of it by JD. It’s heart shaped with the Sacred Heart logo. On the rear cover are still photos in the form of Sacred Heart ID badges. Running along all 4 sides is the pressure pump for the blood pressure device.
On the front cover of the Digipak is JD sitting on a stool, with Elliott disinterestedly taking his blood pressure, while Turk is looking at a chart he has open. Carla’s there, but she just stands there. On the other side is JD on his little scooter, with Elliot holding a stopwatch, Turk staring at him, and Carla not very happy as JD tries to get a high-five. Opening the digipak one level reveals the information sleeve and episode details on the left, and a bulletin board, plus photos of Turk, JD, and the Janitor on the right, all in front of a fake-looking hospital hallway type background. One more level reveals...the discs. There are two plastic disc holders, with discs one and two overlapping. Behind the first two discs is a picture of Cox and Kelso staring, baffled, at an upside-down JD. On the other panel is Elliot laying on a stretcher, and JD sitting on a bigger scooter. The discs are nice, Each uses reflective colors, with the red Scrubs logo appearing in front of a blackboard in the hallway, with the hallway wall running behind it, and the floor at the very bottom. To the right is a rubber gloved hand holding up a number of fingers corresponding to the disc number. The episode numbers on each disc are written in small black text on the left., Buena Vista really packed the episodes onto the discs -- Disc 1 holds episodes 1-9, Disc 2 holds episodes 10-18, and Disc 3 holds episodes 19-24 plus the special features (including the extended version of episode 7).
Menu Design and Navigation:
The menus are once again nice. Various clips from the season play, with various characters “cutting” away from the background at various points, then breaking away to reveal a new set of clips. The long version of the Scrubs theme plays in the background. The black strips with the menu options returns again -- at the bottom. Play All, Episode Selection, Audio Commentary, Disc Set-Up, and Sneak Peeks (Previews) are accessible from the main menu. For Easter Eggs see Special Features. Episode selection features Janitor holding a TV on the left, and a 2nd TV stationed on the right, with 2 episodes appearing in these 2 monitors. Choose the one you want. You can pull up 2 more episodes via the black bars at the top.
Video and Audio Quality:
The video seems to have a couple of problems. The video is somewhat compressed. The colors are a little war. There is a bit of grain on some episodes too. A few people who have not seen the episode may be confused why the color seems so warm in the 2nd half of “My Way Home.” That is intentional – it is meant to mirror the overly warm Technicolor look of The Wizard of Oz. A lot of the colors are otherwise a bit warm anyway. Chapter stops at the commercial breaks.
Runtimes:
Disc 1:
My Intern’s Eyes: 21:43
My Rite of Passage: 21:42
My Day at the Races: 21:43
My Jiggly Ball: 21:43
My New God: 21:44
My Missed Perception: 21:45
My Way Home: 22:47
My Big Bird: 21:12
My Half-Acre: 21:43
Disc 2:
Her Story II: 21:42
My Buddy’s Booty: 21:43
My Cabbage: 21:41
My Five Stages: 21:41
My Own Personal Hell: 21:43
My Extra Mile: 21:41
My Bright Idea: 22:05
My Chopped Liver: 21:42
My New Suit: 21:43
Disc 3:
His Story III: 21:50
My Lunch: 23:05
My Fallen Idol: 21:31
My Déjà vu, My Déjà vu: 21:42
My Urologist: 21:42
My Transition: 22:58
Special Features:
Easter Eggs:
I always said I’d never give these away, but what the heck. These are the ones *I* found:
Disc 1:
Easter Egg 1 (0:42): Go up from Play All or Episode Selection. This is a blooper version of the pain chart/The Todd gets a mega-wedgie scene.
Easter Egg 2: Go Right after Episode Selection, or Left from Play All. Two clips, the janitor making JD take a ski-jump, and JD going for an “involuntary luge.”
My Big Bird (21:12): Commentary by Neil Flynn and producer Randall Winston. This is a little fun commentary, Neil is great lo listen to for these commentary tracks. He notices all the little things, like the feet in the scanning machine not quite matching.
Disc 3:
My Lunch (23:05): Commentary by John C. McGinley & Director John Michel: Cox is one of my favorite characters on the show, so I obviously enjoy this. As this was an important episode for the Cox character, it’s great to have him on commentary. They’d never filmed patients passing from above with the fade-out, so they did it here. John reflects on the scene near the end where he’s in the lounge/waiting area, and that when his son was born he spent the first seven weeks of his kid’s life in waiting rooms like that, outside the neo-natal intensive care unit, pretty much just waiting around and holding his stomach. So he definitely wanted to include it here.
My Way Home Extended 100th episode (29:17): Includes optional commentary by Zach Braff. You can tell where the additions start right off the bat, the Toto iPod sequence starts earlier in the song and leads into the iPod. Zach tries to point out all the stuff that was cut out.
My 117 Episodes: 5 Seasons of Scrubs. Approximately 17 minutes of clips of the first five seasons, plus cast and crew interviews.
Deleted Scenes:
All together on Disc 3, there are seven deleted scenes:
One Please: 0:48
Help Me move: 0:43
Day Old Doughnuts: 1:32
A Man and His Sandwich: 0:38
Pillow Talk: 1:25
No Air Banding: 1:15
Remember the First Time: 1:47
Alternate Lines: Similar to the above, but the scene was kept in, the dialogue was just changed. There are 19 of these. I personally preferred some of these alternate lines, while others I can see why they were removed.
Final Comments:
I absolutely love this show. That said, there were a couple of minor issues with the set that bothered me. The number of special features appears to be shrinking. Maybe they’ve run out of material, maybe they’re just facing harder deadlines, maybe it’s a money issue...but the features list is getting shorter every review, and it’s disheartening. More commentaries would be nice, maybe NBC promos or syndication show promos, more featurettes...whatever the fine folks at Buena Vista can come up with. Also, nine episodes per disc is the point where you have to slightly over-compress shows, which can cause problems. And the color balance is a bit overly warm. Still, it’s better than a lot of other product. And this is one of the funniest shows on TV today. There’s no reason *not* to own it. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.
Final Numbers (out of 5 stars - How our point system works)
Video Quality: 4.5/5
Audio Quality: 5/5
Special Features: 3.5/5
Menu Design/Navigation: 5/5
Final Score: 4.5/5
-- Reviewed by Seth Thrasher on 05/19/07
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