10 Television Shows That Overstayed Their Welcome
7. Scrubs
When I was preparing this list I was very resistant to the idea of including any show on the basis of just one season but this was simply unavoidable. Who the hell thought that it would be a good idea to renew Scrubs for a ninth season? For eight years we followed the journey of Zach Braffs Dr. John J.D. Dorian and his co-workers at Sacred Heart Hospital, whether it was Cox, Turk, Elliot, the Janitor, J.D. himself or any of the various recurring guest stars, everyone had a favourite and they all had their moments to shine throughout the run of the series.
Those that did not see Scrubs or appreciate the show for what it was,dismissed it as juvenile but Scrubs was more than that, it had heart. This heart was shown in various episodes of the show such as "My Screw Up" which featured the sad death of DR. Cox's brother in law Ben or "My Cake" which dealt with the passing of J.D.'s father.(following the tragic real life passing of portrayer John Ritter. The last time that we were given a story of such pathos was in the episode called "My Finale"; as you may have guessed this episode was meant to be the series finale and everything was wrapped up nicely. J.D was with Elliot and leaving Sacred Heart, it seemed like we learned the janitors name and Kelso had retired with Cox replacing him as chief. We were given exactly the kind of finale that we all hope for from the shows we love. It was funny, emotional, fulfilling and decisive. It seemed like there was nothing left to say, then guess what happened? For some inexplicable reason ABC who had picked up the show a year earlier after its cancellation by NBC, decided that they would bring the series back for another season. This was despite the fact that the majority of the cast had moved onto other projects and as such would only be available part time, only John C McGinley and Donald Faison returned as full time cast members. The rest of the cast was made up of new people who played characters that were newlyarrived at the hospital. This move did not work in any way, in fact the only thing it did was wipe away some of the gloss that the original finale applied to the show. It was a terrible decision; the jokes did not work and the new characters though not terrible were pale in comparison to those that had come before, after delivering what seemed to be one of the best finales of recent years Scrubs went out with a sad, pathetic and completely unnecessary whimper. As far as I'm concerned that ninth season never happened.