Review: Scrubs S5E20, "My Lunch"

I haven’t watched Scrubs since I was in high school, but I remember enough to recognize a Very Emotional Episode when I see one.

Zach Braff’s character (about as goofy as I recalled, though less grating than I expected) starts the episode fruitlessly pursuing a lunch date with his mentor, Dr. Cox, before getting stuck at lunch with an old patient of his instead. At said lunch, he behaves like a true shitheel. I don’t remember this patient character, so I’m not sure what she did to deserve this treatment, but Braff repeatedly describes her as annoying. He also says “great story” sarcastically, but it comes after she tells him a legitimately great story about her psychiatrist's wife cheating on him with his ex-wife. You can tell he’s going to get a moral reckoning by the end of the episode because he doesn’t ask any follow-up questions when there would be so many to ask! How did the current and ex-wife meet, for example?

The former patient, who’s dropping extremely obvious hints that she’s depressed (and I think had appeared in the hospital for a suicide attempt?), ends up overdosing and dying, and her organs are donated to other patients in the hospital. I expected this to happen in the last two minutes of the episode, but it comes at about the halfway point; the show is a little less cleanly packaged than I remembered, and better for it. The whole thing has aged better than I expected; Alanna left the room once I put Scrubs on (reasonable), but this episode holds up.

I’m writing this while watching and it turns out that the patient who Braff was beating himself up for not saving did NOT commit suicide, but actually had rabies(!). So it’s not Braff’s fault she died, but Cox has unwittingly infected all the patients that were waiting on transplants. He tries to save them in a fairly harrowing resuscitation scene, but they all die. This all takes place while The Fray’s “How To Save A Life” plays and Braff monologues, and it still somehow works? That’s mostly thanks to the guy who plays Dr. Cox, who genuinely moved me as the episode ended. He quits his job in shame! With tears in his eyes! I’m now mad at Kevin for suggesting this, because I’m going to watch the next episode which was Not The Plan for my day.

Garden State is an underrated movie!! Four stars to this episode. The less that’s said about the b-plot — the horny doctor realizes he’s bisexual and gets real horned up over men and women — the better.

Episode recommended by Kevin Nguyen; email me more episode review suggestions at brendan.klinkenberg@gmail.com.