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 beast I'm great, what's that Beastie
Boys song? It's like, um, Intergalactica. Now, someone told yeah,
and someone told me that if you listen closely, you
can hear Intergalactic Kill the children, Kill the children and
galactic And I'm telling you, once you hear that, you

(00:20):
will forever hear it. When you listen to that song
I want you for this podcast, you will hear when
some young children, you know, when someone points something out
to you, and then you can never not hear it
that way. It's like, it's like listening to that song
so sad do she such so sa stuff they put

(00:46):
on the interweb on like memes and stuff they give
you fake lyrics, and it really sounds like these people
are saying that Bill Lawrence arrived in the zoom call
everybody Intergalactic, kill the children, Kill the children. That. I
don't like it either, But the Beastie Boys did it Donald.

(01:06):
They did not do that. I'm not one of the
Beastie Boys, but I'm a huge fan of the Best Boys,
and I refused to believe that they killed children, or
that they want you to kill children in an intergalactic
planetary way. Intergalactic Kill the Children, Kill the Children, And
here's Bill Lawrence. Everybody, do you, guys, uh watch the
Best Boys documentary? Not yet? I really want to watch it,

(01:28):
though it's on my to do list. I'm stuck on
the right now. I'm watching a lot the documentary and
two of those dudes on stage being like, and then
we did this great thing. Bill. I imagine you as

(01:52):
a sports fan. You're watching the the that's the one.
I'm stuck on the bulls. Yes, oh my gosh. This
But Bill, doesn't this remind you of why you love
Michael Jordan's so much when you were younger? Like, this
makes me realize why he was one of my idols
growing up. Even I had the poster. Guys, I want
you to know that I had a poster of him

(02:13):
in my room because I wanted to be cool too.
Every 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. There is nothing funnier than you
with the Michael Jordan's poster. It was right next to
a Fantom of the Opera Beach towel. My father bought
me a Fantom of the Opera beach towel, and you

(02:34):
were supposed to use it at the beach. And I
was like, this is art. I will hang this on
my wall. And and I took thumb tacks and hung
it like a tapestry, like a 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 should I

(02:54):
start to voice my momo now, guys, all right, well
you should have a yeah. Zach forgot the the other day.
Oh I funked up. I hear that I was the
only one I ever heard. I've heard Judy's yet because
I fell asleep less night. It's so good. Judy was amazing, man,
she was great. Wait, we forgot to sing. We forgot
to sing? Bill say five six, seven, eight, Oh, I've

(03:17):
always wanted to do this. Is it gonna be at
the end or the audience wait in bill if. Thousands
of people did an online Twitter poll and decided that
the stays all right, well I'm gonna do oh yeah,
because that's what it is in my head six seven
eight about show we made about a bunch of docs
and nurses, and so get around here, yea around here?

(03:53):
Oh yeah, Bill, you're the very first for the obvious reasons,
you're the very first asked we've invited back. He's a reoccurring. Yes,
you're recording. Just how you had the power to make
characters on Scrubs reoccurring. We bond to Donald and I
have have the power to make you the creator of
the show recurring, and we've chosen you. I like that.

(04:15):
It makes me feel like it's tenuous, like I could
lose this at any second. Yeah, but you could funk
up and be cut any time, you know what? Speaking
of reoccurring, Uh, it's not. It has a lot to
do with the episode. But you know, how where did you?
Where did you find Rob? How did that happen? What's
the Rob story? Bill? Because how did you find Rob?

(04:37):
Who plays the todd Everyone all my lapt out loud
moments in this episode where Rob and I'm embarrassed to
say that because they're the dumbest fucking sex jokes. But
every time I always write down L O L just
so I can mark when I actually laughed out loud
and they were all robbed them. Rob was an actor
that got cast in a play that I wrote, and

(04:58):
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 uh, my
wife always says that, um, I ruined his life because
Rob went to Columbia and I think he was thinking

(05:18):
about doing other things besides acting, and um, um right
then I said, Uh, I'm doing the Scrubs pilot. You
want to be the jockey, um surgeon? He might have
a line here and there. I think line had. Rob
had one line in every episode for nine years and then, um,

(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 has
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 and he's got to people
pay him for high fives, and he's got his cameo business,
which you can get him to cameo all your friends
if you go. And if I were hiring Rob to
do a Todd appearance, he'd have to be in the

(06:22):
banana hammock like I'd be like, and you have to
probably cost extra Donald. That probably costs extra. I would
probably cost ever extra. And now he probably needs about
a six month lead time on that to start starving himself.
By the way, if you need a real estate, if
you need a real estate broker in southern California, especially

(06:43):
down at the beach, higher Rob Maschio, because I'm sure
he'd be willing to give you a high five while
he shows you places in Venice. There is, without a doubt,
way to buy a house from me. High five out
there for someone. You could buy a house then get
a high five from Robin Carrol's throw it in. Yeah,
I don't even think you have to pay extra for that.

(07:03):
But he couldn't be It couldn't be a nicer guy.
I 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 that it's still one
of my favorite jokes. Rob's over there running line running.
He would take it. He would take it so seriously,
and we were laughing with him because he would laugh

(07:24):
at it with us. But he would be like over
there in the corner being like high five, high five,
Hi five, high five, working it out. But I mean,
come on, always delivered. 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, always the same,
it's the same joke, and it's always in a sexual

(07:45):
innuendo joke. But I but a testament to you and him.
I laugh every time. Um 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. I think it was Neil

(08:06):
Goldman that I hate giving him a name check because
he wants them so bad. Neil Goldman wrote on Twitter.
He's like, there's been six episodes. I've been mentioned once.
I don't know, but the I think it. I think
it was him. I think someone in the writers from
said is every time the Todd talks just gonna be
sexual innuendo. And I think he's the one that said
in your end, up in your endo. He has the

(08:31):
best line. He has the best line in this episode.
It made me laugh so hard when he says, yeah,
I bet you it is. When he goes, you know what,
no one else uh remember, I think it's I'm not sure, Todd,
but I'm gonna guess it's your penis. Todd, I'm not sure,

(08:57):
but I'm gonna guess it's your penis. And it was
now now Bill, Bill in your mind? Is he a
good surgeon? Yeah, I don't know if you remember, if
you guys have gotten there yet, no, we're only on
this one. One of my favorite moments that UH the
writer's room all loved was because we had read something

(09:17):
about how UH surgeons are just cutters, you know, a
medical guys called them hammers and the patient and nail,
and if they get too caught up in their head,
they sometimes aren't as good and that gave us the
idea for Turk's character. Asked Dr When who the best
surgeon is, thinking it would be that young girl Bonnie

(09:37):
or whatever her name is. And Dr Wenn says, you
really want to know who it is and he points
at the Todd and uh, you say no way, and
then uh, Dr Went says, you're all caught up in
your brain thinking about all these problems. You 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 Don Lund Lund,

(10:00):
Tiny Scalpel. It was like Dunderlanderland Decisive. So he's still president.
He's still present in the moment because his mind isn't
getting distracted. He's just like, yeah, he's 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

(10:20):
video game. That's Todd. Um. Let's talk about Bonnie because
we mentioned it earlier that she was supposed to be
my nemesis at one point, right like that wasps we
uh we she got another gig. She was good. 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

(10:41):
stayed around on the surgical side. But she got another gig.
You know. That's why, uh we we sent her off
on that trip um and came up with that story
only because we knew she was uh not going to
be around to work for a while. 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,

(11:02):
like a Zas and all of these other people, it's like,
you know, if they weren't bubbling and doing the thing
at the time, they would have been staples on the
show for years to doubt. 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 meeting Potata's good actor,

(11:23):
you know, and uh and he was a good straight
man too for Donald's because he was just so good
at dead pan, you know, and Donald could be like
wacky Turk and he was just perfect, Like we had
you could keep listening, 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

(11:45):
the Lawyer and Alma, you know, Nurse Roberts, but like
doctor Zeltzer, you know, and Bob godde out to Bob Clinton,
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 Clindent and on the show, and he
played Seltzer, and I just thought that is one of
the funniest character actors I've ever met. I put him in,

(12:07):
I put him in a bunch of stuff since because
I just love that guy. He's he's amazing, you know
him and Sam Lloyd and uh, Krista and um Aloma.
I mean, they could all be regulars on any show.
And so it was Krista show. Ye fine line though
of like you'd have like your guest star level like Krista,

(12:29):
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 Clintenton was one
of those. He was an episodes, will there will there
be prostitutes? He would just invest My favorite part of
that joke, you love that. My favorite was dr Cox

(12:51):
go and no and Bob's read a pop good so no,
oh good good. He was not worried about it at all.
He was hopeful. Hey Bill, I thought we could start
off since we have you, and I was thinking today

(13:12):
because I didn't because you're here and I put on
a nice shirt. I was telling before you got on
that because we had you put on a nice shirt.
And I actually did a lot of preparation for this episode.
And watch the last night too. I'm ready. It's very first.
Such a great episode, Dude, Judy fucking we gotta do
you guys gotta carry one torch for me beforehand. The
only thing that really bummed me out about this episode

(13:34):
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 Chris 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 I heard you. We keep telling the audience that,
And just to reiterate if you're just hearing this, not

(13:55):
that we don't love Hulu, but we do love WHU.
But we love you Hulu. But because of streaming rights
and contracts and such, you're not going to get all
of the original songs that that Bill and Krista and
others placed in ZAC And the ending song of this
in the rain was a song by a band called
Sebadoh and it was so good, uh and so pointed

(14:18):
in the real production of it. Speaking of music, we
used it so much blah blah blah blah blah blah
that's in this episode. Definitely in this episode, and it's
kind of new in the scrubs. It's like the second
time we've used it. Buah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah. But when it came on, it pissed me
off so much. It was like, oh, you're ruined it
with what's funny. What's funny is like back when they

(14:41):
back when they introduced that sad cue. This was like,
you know, this was like, you know, a tenth episode
of season one. It was genuinely like Swede and heartfelt
now that we did nine seasons and then started to
make fun of it now when it's like in a
pointing moment, you're like, oh, not that this is the
second time. The second was the second time. I remember

(15:03):
when it finally caught my attention, I was like, how
come they keeps going up? 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. I think was you Bill that
said that it's gotta go in our head. All those
cues were the stuff that's happening in Zach's head, Xac's

(15:25):
character's head while he's roaming around, you know. So then
you ended up doing um a moment where in one
of the episodes where I actually referenced the quell you
see what do you mean that now is when you
say something point it makes me think about it, And
then the sad music place, and then you hear me,
you hear me in the voice over and go and

(15:46):
then I think, and then and then eugeniously fucking then
used the queue out of that scene now and so fun. Yeah,
he walks away and says you're an idiot, and it
goes the real cue goes my mom and then and
you whip sync the last one you go. I thought

(16:10):
that that guy's name is Jan Stevens, and I think
you want a bunch of score awards for our show.
I don't think he was happy when you were like,
I don't like the bulah bah bah anymore. I want
to he understood. Got that guy got it. He was
that he got the right by the way, just very hard,
very hard assignment, just like you guys are joking about yourself,
as with anybody that was a dude. The um worked

(16:34):
his butt off god here for years and then when
you get later in it, you'd be like, hey, we
need a queue for and your in box. Well how
about this one? Just be literally he was like one
hand on his keyboard when you said I need a
que just going bum bum bum bum bum. There you
go done, I'm gonna head out to the park. What's
funny was that? There? You know when there are these
things called stings, which are really quick little moments either

(16:57):
all over scrubs and and uh and funny way yeah,
Jan wind right one like, hey, we need some stings
for the end of the scene and you get one
to be like bound and like bound, but we'd use them.
It was like a big scrub scene and bound bound
I thought, I thought, because um, we have you here

(17:19):
and and um, and we're really we're really not We're
not only entertaining the audience, but we want to provide
a service 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. Um.
And it's dovetails with this episode, because this is about

(17:42):
taking on too much workload and being stressed and being overwhelmed,
particularly for 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 what a
show runner is, what a show runner does, and why
it's such a fucking, I possibly hard job. It's just
it's interesting, man, Hollywood. The first thing that you know,
even when you're a kid, if you like movies and

(18:03):
TV and stuff like that, is that you know that
feature films are 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 what they want the script and they
cast it, they argue for final cut. And what's really
interesting is in TV, um directors come and go week

(18:24):
to week, and so the person that creates the show,
the head writer, often becomes the advent of the term
for it, the show runner. 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 you're the movie director. In
movies they're you're like, hey, you give us the script

(18:46):
and then we'll do whatever we want to it. And
in TV they go, all right, if we decided to
do your TV show, um, you get to cast it. Um,
you get to write it, you get final cut, you
the music. You're in charge of the director so that
you can come down and say, no, I don't like

(19:06):
the way this scene is blocked. It's gonna be funnier
if you do it this way, um, 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,
I'm gonna do all those things, but I'm also gonna

(19:26):
do wardrobe, and I'm also gonna 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, like you
know Aaron Sark and I think would be one of

(19:48):
the first people to tell you that he's hard to
work with and for because you know, every last detail,
you know, um 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 two
talented people. And I was lucky enough that we had
so many talented people there, like Carrie Bennett, the head

(20:09):
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 know, not made it. I would have burned 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. Uh. It forces you

(20:30):
to 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 drowned try to do everything. 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

(20:51):
that has to go out to the network doing rewrites
if jokes don't work right. 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. The hard 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,

(21:16):
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 on Scrubs,
which is unheard of show. I didn't know the good Yeah,
I didn't know. You take off, but if you're on
a hit show, you stay and your salary goes up
every year. And uh, the joke was that by the end,
every single writer had been in my office emotional crying

(21:41):
about something, you know what I mean. And Zack 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 wants somebody to be in his office. We
turned you into a hugger, Bill Building. Donald and I
remember when you didn't. Donald and I broke your doad.
You were finally like, yo, come on, let's hug and

(22:01):
I was like, yeah, Donald and I broke him down.
He was not a hugger. He was a very waspy
Connecticut guy. And they used to always make fun of you. 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 of them.
Almost nuts. What's going on with you and your and

(22:21):
your your boyfriend? Do that? And you had to do
that with with everyone. And also I think you know,
you started in 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

(22:43):
uh an onus to keep everyone's egos in check? I
mean I would, I would think that, 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 actually empathize with
actors and actresses because watching how you know that group
of their kids, how their lives all changed so fast,

(23:05):
sometimes to the better. And you know, you guys know
this burden nothing to complain about, 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

(23:25):
talking about the Michael Jordan's thing. No I'm not Michael Jordan's,
but to be a leader for a group of people
that they at least knew there were levels of respect
you had to have of each other and way as
you're supposed to behave and and that somebody would watch
your back. You know, you might not be a Michael Jordan,
but I think of you like a Mike Kaminsky. Donald
and I are basketball guys. It's such an insult man.

(23:46):
That is the problem is that that's the only basketball
guy he knows. No. Listen, when my father, um 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 Jaminski, Otis
bird Song. Um, So whenever I have to make a
basketball reference, I'm still like, oh, you mean like Otis

(24:07):
bird Song? Do you know? Do you know Darryl Dawkins
uh nickname? Yeah? Um, yes. And you know why I
care because it was a pitch that we were really
trying to do. I don't I don't know why we
got bogged down in it, but it lived for the

(24:28):
better part of two years. That everybody wanted Darryl Dawkins
to be nurse Robert Sex husband. That would have been awesome. Man,
God rest his soul, but that would have been awesome
if he was on the show. That would have been
the best day that would have been. That would have
been a highlight from me. Oh my god. It was
so like it sucks because it breaks It sounds like
it breaks down on male female dynamics because there's a

(24:49):
lot of guy sports fans in there. But it was
one of those things that a lot of the great
female writers in that show, We're like, I don't understand.
Why do you want this former seven ft tall NBA
that would have been perfect that they called Chocolate Thunder
to be or actually he's not even an actor, right actor?
Is he famous for being funny? No? He breaks he

(25:11):
breaks backboards? Why was? Why am I right with the
trivia that he was famous for breaking backboards? And why was?
Why did he do that? And how could he do that?
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. Yeah, he's he
was the first too. Yeah, he would do it in games.

(25:34):
It wouldn't the whole fans would go nuts. They didn't
step it up and put a new one up. 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.
When he hit the rim, that thing exploded like the
death Star. Dude. It was like wow. It was such
his He has like two or three of them, I

(25:55):
think too, but they were so thunderous and monstrous. Man.
And when he did it was so hard. 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.

(26:17):
It was like wow, you know what I said, You
know what I mean? I heard it that, Yes, drink
drink up, 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 would force people by the way.
I want to say two things, one to that one
another thing. You guys can see the connection to how

(26:37):
much fun it would have been for j D 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 his chocolate thunder,
darl donness, Oh my god, it must have been so

(26:59):
late in the night in writer's room when you guys
are wrestling all that just hours? How do 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.
You've been like, they want me to do what beyond
st because I don't think I ever saw him like
on Love Boat or on any shows they want me to.

(27:21):
They want me to come out of retirement to do
something I've never done before and play a nurse's husband.
All right, break a backboard or something. 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

(27:43):
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 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? Okay, And I
also had another drinking game idea for people. You're gonna

(28:05):
get ship faced listening to this podcast. But I got
really excited in this episode when I when I had
a Snoop Dogg intern siting, and I thought it might
be fun for fans to also do a shot every
time you see Snoop Dogg in turn resident attending. Well,
it should turn into it should start with Snoop Dogg.
But then once you know, Mickhead shows up and and
and betor doctor Man, Colonel Doctor Doctor passed away, didn't he? Yeah,

(28:32):
Colonel doctor. Just sobody knows it's called Colonel doctor because
he looks like the colonel from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Yeah.
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 Slavsky, which is,

(28:54):
oh my god, here's what I like. My favorite thing
that you guys all liked that Zach is the first
one kind of that he uh 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

(29:14):
ultimately I think murdered his spouse and gave and uh
Colonel doctor and dog and the and the world's oldest intern,
uh Gloria, I think it's a really But the point
is that even amongst the background people, they became tears

(29:35):
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's ship
background of those four doing the equivalent of like drinking
Martini's is the ones that had been the ones that
have names to sit around going like we're fucking we're
ruling this world and I love it. What was really

(29:55):
cool was when you would trust them with lines and
stuff like that and they would deliver, Like I remember,
mick Head 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. That man. Yeah,
a lot of those books were actors. They just hadn't
had a had a break yet. And you know, like
like any group of actors, some could act and some couldn't.

(30:17):
But I think Mickhead was one that was actually really good.
His back story was Frank's backstory was a fascinating He
was a paid screenwriter that none of his even though
he had sold a bunch of movies, none of them
never 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

(30:39):
he's like, what are you making me into an actor? For?
This is not my plan. It was really fun, well
and manly. Henry delivered one of the greatest lines in
Scrubs history. Where my hoose at, I haven't seen them.
I haven't seen you know. I played golf with Mick
Head quite a bit. We played. That's one of my
golf buddies. And he still writes books. He's a novelist,
you know. He writes novels with his with his wife,

(31:01):
and it's hard for me. Man. He was a nice man. Yeah, well,
I definitely will. Let's say a break. We'll be right
back after these fine words you okay, So we're back.
So yeah, and we don't do the full song at

(31:22):
the commercial breaks. Bill the song start. Whenever I say
five six seven, Dan's got his finger on the trigger.
And whenever you save five, hitt say five six seven,
stop saying five six seven eight. That's my favorite. He
should Dan should just be contractually obligated to do it
whenever he hears that, yeah, seven eight, whenever he started

(31:47):
he started, Dan five the power stick. Got it all right? Donald,
you were gonna start us off. We're forty minutes and
we should probably talk about the TV show, okay, So,
first of all, uh, Whiney Dancer was pretty good. I'm
gonna put that up there. I thought that was a
very funny nickname. I laughed very hard at that, and

(32:07):
I was mad that it didn't stick. But Scooter short
for Scooter pie. Is he even because he hates Scooter Pie.
There's two things. It was hard for me to watch
that story because a Neil Flynn is funnier than the
material we gave him, you know what I mean in
that one, because we could have done a much funnier
stuff with your nickname. Uh. And then be is I

(32:27):
don't know why he's eating a popsicle In that next one,
I don't seemed 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 at the end when someone finally
calls you Scooter, which is a moment I do like, uh,
and I go, let's revealed, Neil. And he's like, how

(32:48):
should I celebrate? I'm like, I don't know, do some
kind of dance or Irish jigger or something. And that
made me a laugh out loud because he committed to it,
like good god, yeah he could, really he could. But
Meal just pull out in Irish shape because it looks
pretty good. Yeah, I don't. I don't think that he
had planned that, you know, and you know, we put

(33:09):
the music to it, and we put the music to
it afterwards. It was really straight river dance. He went
to straight river dance. That was funny before. That's also
not us at that beach by the way. Yeah, I
don't want to ask you. I don't want those doubles
because that's not my hair, and I know that you're
not in my head. Yeah, no, I think we went
and got that without you, guys. But Donald's double is good.

(33:30):
My my, it doesn't look like my head. I'm that
I'm going to that Donald that looks like your head.
I'm at four or four seconds if you're following. I
wish it was my head. So not you guys, A
and be you guys. This is the show runner issue.
I don't know if you guys have this. What the

(33:50):
unfun 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 coming back on YouTube, like the
flash out of it, so it was a weird transition, like,
oh man, it's screwed that up too. I still have
to I think, I think this is such a funny episode.

(34:12):
I laughed so many times in this episode. So well,
do you guys watch you see? What you see is
your mess ups. What I see is you know that.
That's how it always I feel like that's how it
always is with people, you know what I mean? 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 you know what I mean? That's another one,

(34:36):
drink Bill, I laughed at you chose smooth jazz from
when we were sitting on the bench, and unless that's
another track that's been changed, 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 ship
here at home for not remembering any of this stuff.
And uh, I wrote this script by myself like at

(34:57):
home to catch us up, and I didn't remember writing it.
I didn't remember what it was about until I watched.
It was really weird. So is that what just talk
to that for a second. So so when you're the showrunner,
you're overseeing uh, 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, uh, the you know

(35:19):
you in comedy staffs, especially if someone will go out
and write a draft, the whole staff will help kind of,
you know, you'll outline it and do out stuffhole staff out,
kind of punch it up and uh. And then the
show runner 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

(35:40):
the show to sound like it's from that one distinct voice.
That's why people over the years, you know, they noticed
when the show runner on one of their favorite shows
left for a year, how it suddenly sounds different. You know.
Um and uh, when you get caught and behind and 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. UM, rewrite with

(36:02):
the whole staff, 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 show runner, 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

(36:24):
you the truth in a weird way, sometimes don't aren't.
Those aren't as good as other episodes because show runners
don't have to listen to other people's input and sometimes
and sometimes instead of the whole group punching it up,
they'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. Well you nailed it

(36:46):
with this one, man. This one has everything that you're
looking for from you know, from the drama to the comedy.
This was I laughed so many times at this episode.
There was a couple of things I really liked it,
you know. One at one fourteen, Neil is just boring
a giant hole in the reception, does for no for

(37:06):
no apparent reason. I was trying to think about what
what Neil is doing? No, you know what, you know
what that's for. This is what you'll see early on,
and you guys should look for it. 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,

(37:26):
so that, without a doubt, was somebody working backwards from
in the script j D going hey, uh, and the
janitor turning and being imposing. You know what I mean saying, oh,
you know would be cool is there's giant ten ft
drill in j D's face. I know, I know, but
I'm just laughing at I'm just laughing because I like
to just rationalize things. I'm like, well, what what assignment
did he have with that drill in that reception desk?

(37:49):
I guess he was adding a new hole for a
new phone line or something. Well, dude, we 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, 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

(38:10):
there and we didn't know why, and so we had
him say, I don't really have anything to do. I'm
mopping the rug. And then if I know, if 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 mob on the rug? I

(38:30):
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? Um, you know, it's just everybody
wants their motivation, you know, of course, but Donald pointed
out I think Donald, was you mentioned that? You know,
I never realized either, But the janitor feels like he's
a pretty good janitor, right, I mean he's I never

(38:51):
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, Nicemp
Troy and then um Martin, yeh Troy was the best
because Troy frustrated the janitor to no end. My favorite

(39:11):
thing was when Troy's like, I'm gonna go beat up.
He's like, that's not how we do it, man, that's
not how we do it well. It was literally like,
we're better than that, man. I enjoyed working with flynn
Um and I forgot about the frozen affecting bill and
it's really cool. It's at two forty three. It's really
done well. And I don't even remember how he pulled
that off, but the foreground and background are frozen. Yeah,

(39:34):
and 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, you know, you know, it'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

(39:54):
hoping that we keep laughing. We keep laughing that uh
that you say, they're almost going away? And then we
here and then there jingle bells, Yeah, jingle balls but
that the other thing that you have to look for
is um. We used to because writers want to procrastinate.
We used to have hours of talks about rules, you know,

(40:15):
and the rules of the world. Um, and uh, this
broke one of them. And we made it right after
this was you can't still be in a fantasy after
you're out of a fantasy, you know, because 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 till like the six or seventh year

(40:36):
is when j D has these long fantasies, what's he doing?
Is he just standing there? That's happening? And uh, eventually,
eventually we had you and talking to the todd in
like the sixth or seventh year when you go, uh oh,
that makes me think about trolls and you go like this,
and then Robin's tough times with a better part of

(40:59):
like thirty sec and then you're like, and that's why
you shouldn't buy blah blah blah whatever. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
well you started. It's funny because the last time you're wrong.
We talked about how when I when I came out
of a fantasy. I had agreed to buy Nurse Robert's
dead husbands the bowling shoes, and I didn't know because
I was in a fantasy land. But I forgot you
didn't really keep that that little thing going that I

(41:21):
would have a funny runner if, like j D, because
he's in a fantasy ends up agreeing to all this
random ship. We didn't have any of the rules yet, man,
and we were trying. People used to argue all like
the biggest argument that you guys can look for in
the writer's room and at eight up hours the first
year was was j D's voiceover omniscient? Did he know
what was going on in the other stories and could

(41:43):
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 used to drive people insane. Right,
were we hit at this time? At this point where
we like, did we get the back nine? At this point?
The first the show, Uh, the show did so well
coming out of the gate the first year that um,

(42:05):
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 was sometimes increasing on its
lead in and just crushing and they should have kept
it there forever. And then the set they said, it's
such a big show for us. Next year, we're gonna
put it after Friends, and the combination of no show

(42:30):
could retain of Friends um audience. It was a cultural
you know, uh, lightning bowl, and so you know, we
were like the eighth ranked show in the country. But
they're like, you're only retaining like scent of their audience.
So we're and just so you know, anytime they want
to do a forty minute episode, we're gonna make it

(42:51):
supersized and you guys will be moved or not on
or whatever. And uh, they never they should have they
didn't on the show. They should have put us after
Friends and left us there in perpetuity. 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

(43:13):
this giant monster juggernaut and never established a new successful
show after that show in its entire existence. 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 and gonna work either. Now, yeah,
we followed Joey for like a little bit. And then
for those of you don't know what what the networks want, Bill,

(43:36):
please correct me if I'm wrong. Is they want you
to hold that is to say, keep of the leading
shows 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, right right, So yeah, well, the only difference
is they would have went because the show is so
well reviewed and was doing really well. If they owned

(43:58):
our show is all born 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 own to see if they have become bigger than Friends,
and just kind of feel like that was I feel
like Friends was the end of t G OF of
not t G I F, but that Thursday night line

(44:19):
must see, Must see Thursday. Yes, you know, because you'll
like this, You guys should get it and I interrupt him. Sorry, Donald,
But Jeff and Gold, who was 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

(44:39):
Parks and Wreck, We're all Thursday and that's that was
a cool That was a cool line up. At one
point that was a Thursday night. I think it was
I can't remember if I have the No, it might
have been Earl, but it was US Dirty Rock Office
and um, either Earl or you know, but it was.
He's like, that was total, a total must they were
still doing. Um, that's a pretty good must say, that's

(45:02):
a pretty must set Thursday. Can we talk about Nicole Sullivan, guys,
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?
She was, Yeah, she's another you know, we brought people
through our world that we're friends of mine, that I
knew were super talented. Um, we wanted to have her

(45:26):
um in this world because not only she really funny,
but we knew she could actually act and we had,
you know, kind of the idea beforehand, whether it was
with Brendan Fraser or her or Mrs 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.

(45:49):
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
went down, you know, um 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 introduced somebody is something that's just gonna be funny

(46:10):
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, emostly affected. But that 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, but he does, like
like like Michael Jaminski of writing almost you said, you

(46:36):
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 four. We foreshadowed so much. Yeah,
you talked about that, and I really appreciated it because
the way our staff worked that I thought was cool.
Before the pre production every year, before we wrote episodes,

(46:59):
we talked about what big things, you know, arcs and
stuff we wanted to do. Like we'd say, hey, um,
we want Turk and Carlo to get engaged, but we
wanted to be a little bit of a rocky road,
and then we would work backwards, same way. We'd go, hey,
we want Johnny c to end up with his ex.
He's never moved past. Now he's a more matures and

(47:19):
we worked worked backwards. We're gonna kill Brendan Fraser. Let'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 Nicole Sullivan is gonna eventually die, um, and uh,
let's establish her here as a fun neurotic person that

(47:40):
you think is just being kype of hypochondriac and then
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. Yeah,
that's good writing to me. That's because when whenever you
can look back and say to yourself, oh, I was
there and I didn't see it right, I feel like
you know, Kaiser, so's you know it is the it's

(48:04):
the trick of it all. 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 gotta
have the audience fall in love with them and go, oh,
I love the screw. She's racky, she's silly, she's I
want to be her friend, she's they want to you
want to fall in love with the person before Bill
kills them. It was the it was the one trick
we went back to a lot. It was too mean,

(48:25):
was we knew in twenty two minutes was too hard
to get people to love someone and then kill him.
So we're like, all right, let's bring him into 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 screwed. The only time we thought we pulled it
off that we killed someone people cared about in one episode.

(48:49):
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, so she played Jill Tracy, and uh,
And then I didn't realize until later Jill Tracy, who's
Tim Hobert at the executive producer, one of um um uh,

(49:11):
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 Colin Hey
on a clear day when I can't see see that's

(49:36):
pretty long may So did she call you? Did j
Jill Tracy call you? And what was she like? Um? No,
Jim is just such a good buddy. I realized that,
you know, as it happened, and I'm like, oh, I'm
a piece of ship. We gotta make sure we get
you in there. And she was luckily also a Broadway

(49:57):
level singer and had done musical theater her whole life.
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 president. Yeah,
I gave him to everybody as a Christmas gift. And
I have a memory. I remember you like we were like,
what is this so you can type on it? Yeah,

(50:17):
that I wrote that down, Nicole Sullivan says email as
we're talking. That kind of dates the show. Yeah, I know,
I know. It was so weird, 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.
Getting back to the show, that was one of my
favorite things because we really wanted everybody had their thing

(50:38):
to overcome on this show, and we really wanted Sarah
Chalk's character to overcome how hard she always is on herself. Um,
and you know how much she buries herself psychologically on
an unhealthy way with all her work. And my favorite
scene in this besides the Judy and Zach went out
in the rain, was Sarah and Johnny C with Johnny

(51:02):
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
mcginwiy is without doing anything big, proving to her that
she does the very same thing to herself. I love
that moment. The reason I loved it as a writer
was it wasn't something that Sarah was necessarily doing in

(51:25):
this episode, but she had done it in every episode
up to this one. Yea, yeah, I wrote that down
that that that that's such a great moment. That's scene
is so awesome, and Sarah pulls it off really well.
Wish he'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?
I know I'm a skank? And then she yeah that

(51:49):
she's like, and she's like and then she'll do anything.
She's such a people pleaser for anyone. I think he says,
will you go clean up my dog ship and take
it to She's really good in that scene. Oh but
it cuts right from that into you pulling up in
the cab and that's where I got piste off because
right there, pup up up, up up up, but no,

(52:10):
not now, Joe, but it's but it marries so well,
you know what I mean, drunk up by the way.
And then the parents we did in this one. The
parents we did in this show made me think of
another question I answered to you guys in a previous episode,
because I believe Kelso calls you Turk in this episode
because you guys are having a battle, and he did

(52:32):
it in another episode two he didn't. 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,
when we said, you know, he thinks your name is

(52:52):
Dr Turkleton. You know, in the writers you fight about everything.
Writer's 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. That's one
of the best room. And to this day, to this day,
to this day, there are a lot of there are
a lot of Scrubs fans that no, you know, Christopher

(53:14):
Turk is the name, but there are some that honestly
believed Turkleton is the character's name. You know what else,
by the way it came up randomly is somebody asked
me after why you were named gand like why Dr
Coxon name checked you as Gandhi because I was a
bald head guy. It wasn't just that, it was because
I was concurrently looking at cartoons and okaying, the character

(53:37):
designed with Christ and Phil for Clone High and the
Gandhi character. They had him with a hip goate because
he was a young teen version and whatever, and I'm like, oh, Ship,
we should go to I do. We were definitely going
to talk about that right now. Let's just go to
coal real quick. Okay, sure, going to commercial fix stopping

(53:59):
show we Okay, we're back. Steph is in the house, y'all.
Steph is in the house. Step Steph is in the house.
All right, Steph is in the house. We're just gonna
finish the Clone High chat. So step okay, So let's
get back into Clone High. Dude, you now had Phil

(54:22):
and Chris done anything before this 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. Animate they've done nothing, and it's
like the first project that I supervised someone else the
way I was supervised. And now the two guys that

(54:44):
are gonna give me and you and Steph and Joel
a job eventually, I pray that they give me Donald
Wyn't you explain the context, because not everyone's gonna know
what the hell? Okay? So Chris and Philip gone on
to create movies like twenty one, Jump Street Street, the
Lego Movie, the Best probably the best Spider Man movie,
Every Inn and everything. Yeah, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Yes,

(55:09):
they were the animators, directors writers of that as well.
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 and in the mental word,
in the mental world, I believe, and because those the

(55:30):
writers from Yeah, we hid to save money. We hid
our writing staff of that show in the hospital, and
then you guys just casually started to notice other writers
around the commissary every day, eating, just hanging out. But
they put us in the show too, So I got
an opportunity to play two really cool characters in that

(55:50):
which I was George and I was also Toots, who
was Jonahvacs father in law or something like that. It
was a blind, blind former jazz man. Yeah, it's so
weird because a bunch of clone high nerds and I
love big Mouth, but Toots is very much like the
jazzy ghosts that they have in that cartoon big Mouth.
You know, are you guys bringing it back in some way? Bill,

(56:14):
I'm not at liberty to discuss that I stumbled across
something top secret audience. That would be awesome. That's a
good tease. I was in it too, but I don't
know who I played. You weren't in it a lot.
I don't minimize my part. I I did occur. Did
it was? It was such a cool college filmmaking type atmosphere,
which is what Scrubs was anyways, that you guys would

(56:34):
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
all so nice about it. Yeah. Well, I loved working
on that show Man. That was a lot of fun.
I was Paul Revere, Joel is telling so Paul Revere
is an important, important character everybody. Yeah, but that was
like one episode a bigger you had a bigger You

(56:56):
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, dude.
I just remember being I remember being there, and this
is the first time I met Mandy Moore. She did
a guest spot on this show. I met uh, I've
never met like, should we go to stuff? I met
Tom Green? That was cool. That was the first time

(57:17):
I've ever met Tom Green. And he was on fire
at the time, and I was on it. Step was
on and then I think, and we have a caller, guys,
our carler has has finally we're gonna let her talk.
Katies and gentlemen, please welcome Step seven. Still counting into everything,

(57:37):
Dan turn off the theme song. Step At any point
that you want to hear that awesome song, just say
five six seven eight. We have It's it's official. Anytime
you say five six seven eight, it's not even wait
three whole minutes, so I think it's only just right

(58:02):
five six stop, we're not playing. Do you want to
do the tag at the end? I don't give us
the tech you good boys? All right? This this has
all gone to ship Steph. What's your question? So I'm

(58:24):
finishing up my second year of medical school, UM, which
is in part due to scrubs. So basically, yeah, super
funny story. UM. I alluded to this in my personal statement,
but left out certain details because I didn't want them
to not take me seriously. But basically, my mom is
a surgeon. So when I was growing up, I saw like,

(58:46):
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 it's like that's disgusting, Like,
how do you look at boobs all day? So weird?
I never am going into medus in how do you
look at boobs all day? That's just I don't know,
it's easier if you're not a medical professional. Continue. Yeah,

(59:07):
So I started watching Scrubs maybe like I don't even
remember when, maybe in middle school, and um, I related
to Elliott's character on such a spiritual level that I
was like, this looks really fun. Maybe maybe I will
go into medicine. And since then kind of became more legitimate.
But definitely the first thing that piqued my interest with Scrubs.
So thank you guys. Do you use the word frick

(59:30):
a lot? Um? I kind of graduated to the the
U version, but for sometimes I gotta say I want
interject step 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. And I just

(59:51):
was talking to the real j D last night and
his wife Dolly, who Elliot's based on, and their favorite
thing is to consider you know that they might have
had a tiny part in some people kind of embracing
medicine as a career. Except means so much to them.
That's A and B for those of you they're just

(01:00:11):
listenings that you can't see. Steph uh could easily have
played Elliott just so you guys know, she's Elliott esque.
She's elliot s both in her mannerisms and her appearance.
And uh, I almost, by the way, this is the
thing I have to watch out for late like because
I'm much older than all these people. But I almost

(01:00:31):
said I am here talking to a young Sarah Chalk.
But Sarah Chalk is still very young, So I did
not say that a person at all. My mad school friends,
I'll tell me, all the ones that watch Scrubs religiously
are 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, You're like,

(01:00:54):
there's no way that happened to you on a Monday.
That's me. Yeah, I was watching that. I think that
that that story that Zack 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
a brick. That would happen to Sarah. The best part
of that episode is when the grumpy radiologists like, thanks

(01:01:16):
for stopping by and don't forget your car doors, Like
you know, you're a real fan. This will make you laugh.
And I don't even know if Donald and Zack 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 Zack Donald,

(01:01:38):
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. Orange, remember that, what
flavor do you want? I'll have a frasberry, I'll have
an orange goo goo. I believe that, Bill. I believe

(01:01:59):
that came from in the writer's rooms. You would have
the assistance to do like a smoothie run and you'd
all be like calling out weird jama juice flavors. You
make up fake flavors and just to torture the poor
young people work and with immunity. Alright, stuff, We're come on,

(01:02:22):
come on, that's your time. It's your time. Stuff, it's
your time, it's your time. Stuff. Cooney's good stuff. So
it's actually kind of perfect that Bill is here in
this episode because it's kind of relates to the behind
the scenes part of it. Um. But since I watched
the show so much, a lot of the times and
I'm studying, I'll recognize words that will like remind me
of certain scenes of the show. And I know you

(01:02:45):
guys talked about like trying to make it really medically accurate.
It is um re verifying, but it's also really funny,
which I think is hard to do with medical vernacular
if you're not really used to it. So I was
wondering if there are is a specific member of the
writing team that was, you know, kind of crucial in

(01:03:06):
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. I'm gonna give props
to First of all, we have actors and actress is
gonna can sell comedy, and they were great, But the
real J D is um and as I can tell
by your persona, he is a guy that I would

(01:03:27):
not have been surprised if he went into comedy writing.
He was funny and um so for me, it was
it would 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.

(01:03:49):
And then just from him saying that, you know, I
was like, oh, j D is gonna be a deer
in the headlights when they asked him a question, you
know what I mean? And Uh, I would bet stuff
that the 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
prop sport and the performers the prop sport because they'd

(01:04:10):
find ways to make it funny. You know, Bill did
did j D Ever like oversteps a line and he's like, hey, Bill,
I got an episode for you. Here's what's gonna happen.
He and uh. They did two things. One he and
Dolly once said hey, we got bored because we're both
sick and stayed in all weekend. We wrote an episode
and I was like, oh my god. I was like yeah,
And as of course I'll look at it. And then

(01:04:30):
they're like, no, we're not gonna show it to you
and forget it. We don't want to do that, right,
which was super cool probably and and and the movie
version would be like the most brilliant script ever written.
I know, and then the other thing was to answer
steps question. We would sometimes work backwards, you know, which
was really hard because for him, so I'd go, I
want to do this funny moment. We need you to

(01:04:52):
say something that would cause this guy to not have
a sense of smell and not blah blah blah. And
it can't be so sious enough that I have to
worry about whether or not he'd die and he should
still be conscious and be able to talk because he
has to talk in the scene. And j D would
be like, dude, this is worse than med school homework.
This is impossible hard. One of my favorite one speaking

(01:05:13):
of speaking a funny medical dragon. Uh, it's pronounced anal
jes I can't believe you said that. Literally, I had
to give a talk to my like med school. 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

(01:05:34):
I was like, yeah, there's a scene of Scrubs where
Turk has to explain that analgesic is like not the
same as anal jesu put it in your butt. And
then everyone was like, I mean, yeah, I guess that works.
That was on my top ten jokes that I did
not write that I wish I could take credit for.
That's such a funny joke. Man, don't seen Neo Goldman whatever.

(01:05:56):
I'm not going It really bums me out. I think
that might have even been artists are Gabby, I don't
even know. It sounds like a Tim Hobert choke too.
All right, Steph, you got another question. Yeah, it's kind
of piggybacks off of the first one a little bit. Um. So,
you guys talked about early on in your episodes that
you kind of work to develop this character and figure

(01:06:18):
out what kind of mannerisms you wanted and all that
kind of stuff. It really shows throughout the progression of
this season that kind of grow into those character traits
while also still growing as people. But I find that
they're really kind of congruent with how you would expect
that person to act as a clinician. And I was
wondering if the kind of character that you developed influenced

(01:06:39):
the way that the writers wrote scenes of how you
practice medicine. Like later on, I'll set Donald and Zack
up to talk about this, but I'll tell you. My
philosophy of running a TV show is they were talking
about show running earlier. So your question is awesome because
it needs a lot to me that it felt that
way to you. Because my when I teach sometimes like

(01:07:00):
the I teach the Writer's Guild for kids running shows
for the first time 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 the career that characters belong to you. You invented them,
and then you cast these people. And uh, 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

(01:07:22):
mine and half years. But then 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.
Um And so I would ask Donald and Zach you
know at this point in the show where they staid it,
you know, because what would happen is it's really cool.
Eventually on good shows, people start coming up to you

(01:07:44):
and going, I don't 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
would be more like this? And you on on shows
that are working, you have to listen, and I did
you guys eventually kind of feel like those characters were yours,
you know. I definitely felt I definitely felt like Turk
became U, if not I became Turk or Turk became me.

(01:08:07):
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. And once you realized that, and right
and when when once you realize that and made Turk

(01:08:28):
just a scalpel jockey, it freed me, you know what
I mean? And I didn't have to worry about having
to say certain things, you know what I mean? Uh,
drink up. I didn't have to worry about saying certain things,
whereas Zach and Sarah would say and and Johnny would
say things, and I'd be like, I'm so happy I
don't have to do that. I remember being in the
makeup chair in the morning and being like looking through

(01:08:50):
the sides and be like, oh no, Donald's got a
medical jargon monologue. Lunch is going to be late today. 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. Churk Tchurk knows it, he just
doesn't like to use it, right, Mike became so much easier.

(01:09:10):
It's a good question, though, because do you guys eventually
even would start riffing your own ones, and I gladly
would use them because they knew their characters and how
they would react and what they would say, and uh
didn't bother them at all. It made me happy. And
you're you know, even get to talk to the same
way you Getting to talk to you makes me happy.
One of the things I mementos I have on my
wall in my office from Scrubs is from a med

(01:09:33):
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. And I
the same things about her med students that like all
of the fact like trivia that people don't really they're

(01:09:53):
not supposed to remember you know, bears into practice because
it just is you never see it. She was like, yeah,
all the med students know it. Subscribes, that's what kind
of what kind of doctor do you want to be? Stuff?
I'm leading towards surgery, but we'll see open anything. I
think it's really really neat. You know that you're doing that,

(01:10:14):
and uh, it's a gig. That's up service. It's like
being a teacher. It's awesome. The most important jobs to
be of service. I think like teacher, soldier, physician, and
of course comedy writer. I would think, right, not at all.
All right, Step, thank you so much. Really amazing questions
and also really inspired us. I mean we made us

(01:10:36):
all feel like we we we may have inspired at
you know, we inspired at least one person indicine a lot,
a lot. Let me. Yeah, you guys have a huge
medical fan base. Well good luck like that. I promise
me that you'll dress up and you'll dress up as
Elliott for at least one Halloween up, oh yeah, every Halloween.
And whoever if if, if you have friends that go

(01:10:57):
is Turk for Halloween, tell them please nope black face.
Make sure they're really black because Donald and cringe No,
they don't even have to be black if you just
just don't paint your face, right, Okay, but Donald and
I cringe every Halloween when people tag us on Instagram
like excitedly, like Turke and j D for Halloween. And

(01:11:18):
still in two thousand twenty, there's still people painting their
faces brown and black and it's horrible, although we did
it a lot on Scrubs. Yeah, but 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 Hi, Vic and Hayden, I hope

(01:11:41):
you guys are jealousy. Turn it off, Turn it on,
turn it off. Steph thought she was just gonna sneak
in a Vicken Hayden a quick thing. But I think
we should just keep talking about Vick and hay I
like Vic, but I don't like Hayden. I don't like

(01:12:02):
it at all. I want their shout out to go awry.
They can Hayden shout up. Now, let's uh, let's do
it episode. We should so at four or forty four, guys,
what's happy at four or forty four, what's happening is? Yeah,
we haven't talked about this episode at all. Yeah, here's
what I like. We've talked about the Sarah's story, both

(01:12:23):
with Steph and um. We jumped around, we jumped around,
and we talked about the Neil, but we haven't talked
about the Judy and Zach story. We're gonna get into it,
and we're gonna get you know, but listen, Donald Bill
Lawrence episodes are always going to be long because he
brings a lot to the table and he's no, I'm
not complaining. I'm not complaining about the length of the episode.
I'm just saying some people, some people wanna listen to

(01:12:44):
a rewatch podcast and actually rewatched the show at well,
then they should listen to a different show. We happened
to we happen to meander at fourty four's happening is
mentioned for the first time. Okay, you don't need to
start bang. Just did bang the table? I banged the
table on that? Why am I yelling? What happens at?

(01:13:05):
What's happening is mentioned for the very first time on Scrubs.
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. We expected people to know what we
were talking about. And that's such an old reference, I know,
And nowadays kids don't even know the glory of what's
happening unless you're our age the glory of what's happening

(01:13:25):
or what's happening? Now? Do you remember what's happening now?
Surely owned the restaurant. They all grew up, and now
d is not just a small character, she's like the star.
Was the star, I think because everybody came back. I
didn't like what's happening now as much as what's happening.

(01:13:47):
What's happening just I just liked reruns dance, and I
liked the moment you guys did for me, which is forever.
I like, hey, what's happening? Hey, hey, hey, do you
remember the opening credits when they made they left rerun
and he's driving the street do do dud dude, dude?

(01:14:12):
And then re runs this running after the pickup truck.
That's rude. That's that they did that. I know they were.
They were making fun of it, said guy, making fun
of the heavy set. Watching me run chase after that
truck was funny. Come on, this show was because he
had suspenders on. Yeah, well that that and the hat
and the and the same red. His outfit never changed.

(01:14:35):
Do you remember the episode where Roger decided he was
going to be a nude model? My favorite thing that's
happening right now, As you guys said, we haven't talked
about the show yet, and then you're going 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, that's the first time that Shirley says,

(01:14:58):
I just remember. I'm just well, we can go back
to the show, but I just remember there's an episode
where Roger was doing nude modeling for for artists, you
know when they like paint the nude model. And I
remember thinking as a child, like this is scandalous, Rod,
He's gonna take off his clothes, Like that's that's crazy. Okay,
let's get back into the show. So let's talk about
the j D and Carla storyline, which is a very

(01:15:21):
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 lived together, or your roommate and his girlfriend, uh
always around. And so you guys have developed a relationship

(01:15:41):
and because of that, you're a dynamic duo of your own.
You know what I mean. She doesn't work drink up,
she doesn't work for you. But you guys are a
team that is very very very cohesive, and you go
along and you fuck it up by becoming judgmental. Well,
I'm i'm, I'm I'm feeling every one is being condescending

(01:16:01):
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. And uh and also do okay
um and and and I just you know, like like
someone does, he lose he loses his temper, and of
course he loses the temper his temper at the worst

(01:16:22):
person possible, his teammate, uh with Carlo. 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.

(01:16:43):
Because when you first show up, you know more than
they do even say it in the show them, the
training kicks in and the dynamic ships um, and you
know so many of them ultimately, um um 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,

(01:17:03):
when they get to that point, and it messes up
that dynamic, you know. And uh, I wanted to combine
that my personal life, my mom's family. My mom and
then me were the first two in her side of
family to go to college, you know, 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

(01:17:25):
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, UM, I know tons of geniuses that didn't
finish high school and tons of you know, grad school graduates.
They're the dumbest people alive, do you know what I mean?
But uh, around youthful things that kind of carries there.

(01:17:49):
And um, my favorite part of that stuff was her
challenging you to admit it and you actually admitting it
to what I mean, and that was what enabled you
guys still to be friends. 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

(01:18:10):
and it was heartbreaking. Still to this day, I'm watching
and was so moved by Bye bye, by how heartfelt
and open she was. Uh and uh, I wrote down
because this is what we wanted to do. That people
didn't understand comedy of comedy at the time, and why
Judy Rays was so perfect, you know, because there weren't
a lot of drama tas on. And one of my
favorite jokes in this episode was when before you get

(01:18:34):
off the bus, she's leaving and she's like, I'm so
mad at you and you said you you can't you
forgave me. You can't just change your mind, and without
selling it as a joke, she's like, have you never
met a woman before? And she walks out into the rain,
you know, I mean, 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

(01:18:57):
that was like the tonal stuff. That's why she so
good man, because she's always so real, very very very
good actor. I look back at it like I had
no clue how much of a power house she was
or or is, I should say, And when I watched
these episodes, you know, I said it in our first

(01:19:18):
podcast her and Ken. Wow, really they're really m vps
of our show, you know what I mean? Uh, drink up.
You don't have to tell people to drink when you say,
you know what, I'm just I'm They're just gonna do
it what I'm bringing. I'm bringing it to my attention
that I said it. This is the most you've ever done,
by the way you went from the previous episode being

(01:19:40):
conscious of it and doing none to this one doing
like thirty You know what I mean. 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 j D or your reputation
or Scooter whatever it is you have. Reputation is very

(01:20:02):
important and you only get one chance to make a
first impression, and after that people will have judgments of
who they think you are. And this episode really touches
on that. There's the thing I screwed up in this
episode off what Donald sad bothers me. What Dr Cox's
character does to j D, you know, of shaming him

(01:20:25):
was so bad that it bummed me out that he
never got his come upance for that, you know, I mean,
because you didn't tell her to go protect to you.
And then he makes everybody stop and goes, We're all
to be super special to this little flower, you know.
And I 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

(01:20:46):
for that. I get thumped for that, m hm. But
Boxing Fantasy was pretty funny though, Johnny, I'm about to say,
holy cow, was at 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

(01:21:07):
your You're so nice about her too, that you're gonna
cat she he came. He came on as a punching bag,
and she was half asleep through upstairs in the room
and she goes up half drowsy. Here comes allD up
that he is just just listening with has a full

(01:21:27):
bottle of Cristal oil. Let's be honest. He's ripped. He's ripped.
He looks 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, because what I wrote, the last thing
I wrote down about Judy, what I say like when
you get really lucky. It's not the writing or anything else,
that's all. It's everything and the casting people have to

(01:21:49):
really nail, you know, these characters and be who they are.
And the amazing thing watching Judy back then, you guys,
Zack and Donald were such kids, and um 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 essentially the same age as all

(01:22:10):
you guys, but she seems like such a grown up,
even if she started definitely way more mature than we were,
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, Ben Elliott or been you know,

(01:22:31):
the little kid, you know, and so it was was
she like that in real life? Or she is that
good man in real life? 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. Absolutely.
By the way, there's a really funny there's a really
funny funk up bill at twelve o three when Donald

(01:22:53):
runs into the room with 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 that out And I know,
I know nowadays we just you know, painted out, but
it made me think it was probably Patrick Bolton or
something lying on the floor. Patrick shout out, Patrick Bolton.

(01:23:15):
Patrick Bolton was the onset trick. It has wheels. That
thing will be on set. I enjoyed after hearing the
interestingt thing you guys post said about eating. I think
I've never seen the two of you do more eating
In an episode Zack having to jam a cupcake in
your mouth, Donald just wolfing sandwich. Did you guys really
eat that stuff or were you just spitting it out
as soon as they said cut. I do love a sandwich.

(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 or you're gonna do it, I mean
that's your excuse. And also is that it was that
cheap cupcake. What are those called? Um host this cupcakes?
That was a dang Listen. I'll tell you something right now.
You put some cold cuts, some cheese in between some

(01:23:57):
here bridge that sounds delicious to me. You could put
some lettuce tomato on it. I'll eat that ship And
another another strike at the janitor not speaking to anyone
in the season one Bill is that he clearly has
told Dr Cox to call me Scooter at the end.
I don't know what you're talking about. He never ever
spoke to anybody except and I Donald that I have

(01:24:17):
been going through like detectives going we're trying to keep
the janitor Laura alive for season one. But the facts,
the facts are the facts are problematic. The facts are problematic,
Bill doesn't We've done all the work, just like Turkleton,
there was just so in your mind, Bill, your rationalization button.
How does Cox know to call me Scooter? It's just

(01:24:41):
a random coincidence, the nickname. He's like, I love it.
I really want this to be a running gag that
Donald and I do the detective work to see how
the janitors talks to other people. And the only one
I think you've ever seen him speak to is Elliott.
And that thing when they're all walking up to each
other mad, Yes, yes, well she speaks to him, he

(01:25:03):
doesn't necessarily speak to her. That might not have even
been a janitor and she made mad. This is just
all seen through JD Lens. The last thing I want
to uh, the last thing I've ever you know what?
And you're absolutely right. Actually, the very next person at
the janitor, the very next person that's attacked after Elliott,
uh does that to the janitor is j D. So

(01:25:25):
it could be it could be that that one's that
one's imaginary and Elliott was talking to an intern order
or something, or no, that's possibility, or she's just not
even talking to anyone. There's no one there and she's
just saying it, Yeah, it's very fight clubby when the
last thing I want to say is this, they went
overboard with the filters on Sarah in the bathtub because

(01:25:47):
it's like Barbara Walters, you can barely see her through filters,
and and she's in like this most enormous fucking bathroom.
And I was thinking, like, why does thet But then
I remember, this doesn't Eliot supposed to have money from
her parents. Her parents are paid by Elliott's in like
the bathroom of a millionaire's house. 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

(01:26:10):
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 as at the apartment, she's like, this place is big.
She works at the clinic, she starts working at the clinic.
All of that stuff, I remember, well, thank you, sorry, Yeah, audience,
we we went all over the place today. But we're

(01:26:31):
so excited about show. We made about a bunch of
docs and nurses and so get around here yeah, around here,

(01:26:55):
mm hmm.

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