Rebecca Allen

Like I’ve said before, NBC’s Scrubs is one of my very favorite shows on the air now, and perhaps my favorite sitcom of all time. Despite the awesomeness of its recent musical episode, I think this season represents its shark jumping (and is likely the last season, regardless); but still, the show remains an excellent watch with one main problem: I absolutely can not stand the JD, the show’s protagonist (played by Zach Braff). And yet my completely loathing of his character is evened out by my admiration for Elliot (Sarah Chalke), who I think is not only one of the best written female characters on the air right now, but is the character from the show who has had the most development and growth in its six seasons. So, a two part series; in this entry, I explain why I adore Elliot, and in the next, I’ll get into why I find JD to be loathsome.

So. When we first begin the show, Elliot is uptight, neurotic, repressed, scatter brained, clumsy, prone-to-crying, and severely lacking in any kind of confidence. As a doctor (a first-year intern, actually) she’s inexperienced and barely able to keep her head above water. In the first season we learn that she’s from a wealthy but distant family and she’s desperate for parental approval; this is a need that, in the hospital, translates to her desperately craving approval of the hospital’s paternal figures, Dr. Kelso and Dr. Cox. She fails to win it from either. Furthermore, her social awkwardness repeatedly gets her in trouble and isolates her from everyone around except DJ. She crushes on JD, even long after their attempt at a relationship fails miserably.

In short, the Elliot we meet in season one is a mess. The reason I love the character is because through the course of the show, we see her grow from this mess into a self-possessed, competent, dynamic woman. In many ways, her character arch is deeper and more complete than anyone else’s on the show.

Through the first three seasons of the show, Elliot follows a fairly typical pattern for designated romantic interests. She has a crush on JD; they hook up, it fails. Then JD has a crush on her, they hook up, and it fails again. Most of Elliot’s storylines revolve around who she is dating, even when it is not JD, though a few episodes touch on her other relationships — particularly her friendship with Carla, a Latina nurse at the hospital. Carla is clearly one of the first non-white people Elliot has ever been friends with (and, more importantly to their relationship, possibly the first person who wasn’t from a similar middle to upper class background). In the first season, they clash repeatedly and only become friends because of their mutual friends; by the third season, Carla asks Elliot to be one of her bridesmaids. Though the friendship is only the focus of a few episodes, it is one of the first clear indicators that Elliot is maturing.

In the first three seasons, Elliot does have one plotline which is only semi-related to her dating life*. In season two, she’s cut off by her father when she refuses to accept his directive that she become a gynecologist. He paid for her college, her med school, and now pays for her apartment; without his money, she’s left unable to afford her extravagant apartment. She also has no background in financial planning or budgeting. Elliot is forced to move abruptly but due to work doesn’t have the time to find somewhere to live. For a few episodes, Elliot lives out of her van, with all of her possessions stored inside it. Then she spends a few nights sleeping on JD’s couch. Eventually, her van — and everything she owns — is stolen. She hits rock bottom and her recovery from this lasts into season three, and marks the real turning point for her character.

In the season three premier, Elliot (still reeling from losing all of her possessions and feeling generally awful about herself) realizes that her friends now pity her, and no longer think she’s capable of helping them out when they need it. She finds this unacceptable and for the first time gets pissed off instead of depressed. She begins to demand that they — and everyone else — take her seriously. (Of course, our visual cue for this transition is a montage of Elliot getting her hair cut and wrecking her room, the end result of which is that she begins to wear outfits where her bra strap shows, accompanied by way too much eyeliner [which, of course, the show jokes about]. I like the character development, even if I think this isn’t the best way to do it — if I recall DVD commentary correctly, this was actually in result of getting the note that the show needed to be “sexier” to boost its ratings.)

After this, people finally begin to respect Elliot (though it does not happen all at once, and she backslides repeatedly, even as she makes progress). She also gets into her first mature relationship, dating Shawn, the world’s most perfect boyfriend. This is where we see her begin to decide what she wants in a relationship and go after it; for example, she acknowledges to Shawn that her job has to come first, but that she’ll make him a priority when she can — and if that’s not acceptable, they can’t be together, and that while she’ll be sad, she’ll understand. She also goes after him when he tells her he’s moving and doesn’t want a long-distance relationship, telling him that she thinks the relationship is worth fighting to keep together for the six months they’ll be separated. In season one, Elliot had neither the strength nor maturity for these actions (in fact, we know that for sure, because she first meets Shawn in the first season and they date very briefly). Now she does.

Unfortunately, JD’s main plot in season three is that he realizes he still loves Elliot after one of their failed attempts at dating, and spends the season pining for her. She makes a mistake while she’s feeling vulnerable and sleeps with him (I don’t think the writers handled her end of this well, as we never really get much of a glimpse into why she does this); then, when she’s finally at a point where she’s ready to live with Shawn and take their relationship to the next step, JD professes that he thinks he, not Shawn, is right for her. Elliot makes the decision to dump Shawn for JD — who immediately realizes he doesn’t love her after all, and they break up. But even this, as frustrating as it was as a viewer, shows Elliot’s maturity. JD attempts to patching things up between her and Shawn with lies; Elliot tells Shawn the truth, even though she knows that means he won’t want to be with her again. And, of course, in the moment when JD first breaks up with her (at the rehearsal dinner for Carla’s wedding), he looks terrified and says, “Please don’t cry.”

Elliot, who has been crying regularly since the first episode, says, “Ohhh, I won’t,” and proceeds to shove him across the table, then brushes her hands clean, sits down, and asks for a glass of wine.

And despite the fact that JD has been Elliot’s crutch and closest emotional support for the last three years, Elliot does not immediately forgive him. Her very understandable anger carries through into season four, where we hit the next Elliot story arch — and my favorite. After the breakup, she feels isolated because JD lives with their closest mutual friends, making her uncomfortable spending time with them. While off alone, she meets the hospital’s new resident psychiatrist, Dr. Molly Clock. Molly is a relentlessly upbeat, confident woman, who becomes both Elliot’s closest friend and her unofficial mentor. Through this relationship, Elliot finds her own inner confidence, and finally hits her stride as a doctor. For example, she’s able to present and defend her point (that a former drug addicted patient should be allowed to have a heart valve transplant despite being a “bad candidate”) at a meeting of the hospital ethics committee, which would have sent her into hysterics not long before. I find this relationship to be beautiful and well done — considering that all too often, television portrays women and shallow and backstabbing (particularly towards other women), it’s exciting to see how Elliot and Molly support and help one another. And as a direct result of this relationship, Elliot finally stops craving acceptance from Dr. Cox. The episode after Molly leaves to take a job at another hospital, Elliot runs afowl of Dr. Cox, but when he opens his mouth to tell her off, she cuts him off, declaring that she did what she had to to treat her patient, and that she doesn’t care what he thinks. (In season five, she goes out of her way to help Dr. Cox and he responds by being incredibly rude and condescending; she glares at him and comments that she doesn’t care anymore, but the one thing that’s been true since she started is that he’s unsupportive and mean to her. Upon realizing that she’s right, he apologizes and begins to treat her as something akin to a colleague. Considering that Dr. Cox is a misogynist if you read not too far between the lines, this is particularly impressive.)

Elliot’s relationships have also moved forward as the show progressed. Elliot’s type through the series is controlling, and her craving for approval (particularly from men) means that she’s consistently let herself be controlled. With the exception of Shawn, this was the pattern through season four. But in season five, we finally see Elliot break out of this pattern, and with a real snap, too. She and JD (having finally become friends again) agree to go after booty calls together, neither of them really wanting a full relationship. JD backs out, but Elliot finds a guy she thinks is attractive and goes for it. At first, it is just a booty call: he’s there when she wants sex (and Elliot, through the five seasons, has finally become comfortable with the fact that she does want sex) and she doesn’t have to worry about him the rest of the time. But eventually Elliot finds that she actually likes Keith, the guy in question, and they get into a real relationship, and unlike past guys she’s dated, this is a relationship on Elliot’s terms. Which isn’t to say it’s perfect — there’s still a vast power imbalance, though it favors Elliot (who is Keith’s boss) — but for Elliot, it’s a big chance.

If nothing else, the ways Elliot has grown up can be symbolized by this: in season two, Elliot hit her lowest point when she was temporarily homeless. In season six, she’s got her relationships, career, and finances under control to the point where she buys a house of her own.

And finally, there’s this: Elliot does all this while remaining neurotic, repressed, scatter-brained, and clumsy. She is still the same character, at her core; much like a real person, Elliot stays herself, while she grows and matures. Furthermore, I think it’s interesting that she is this complex, developed character and she still hits a lot of the traits that television tends to apply to all women: she’s consistently worried about her weight and the way she looks**. She wants to get married and have babies, to the point where she’s occasionally desperate to find a man. On a lesser show, those would be the traits that define her character; here they’re part of her larger neuroses, and what defines her is her struggle to conquer them and grow.

*I describe this as semi-related because I think it’s clear the situation is still a set-up for her second season hook-up with JD.

**Actually, there’s an episode that’s about how hard it is to dress professionally as a woman: the female doctors who don’t take time to dress up or worry about their looks get mocked by everyone at the hospital; when Elliot gets her makeover, she isn’t taken seriously because she does put time and effort into how she looks.