SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about Episode 207 of ABC’s Scrubs “My Story.”
Episode 207 of ABC’s Scrubs revival gave fans answers about what led to J.D. (Zach Braff) and Elliot’s (Sarah Chalke) shocking divorce, it gave them a glimpse at what a romantic reconciliation may look like and it gave them hope that the former couple may get back together.
J.D. and Elliot — both single again after their recent flames Charlie (Rachel Bilson) and Sean (Scott Foley) fell for each other — gave their son Ollie (Kellan Tetlow) a version of the talk before J.D. invited his ex to dinner via text to celebrate how well they did as co-parents.
“Why didn’t we work, we should’ve worked,” J.D. said at the dinner, speaking for all Scrubs fans. The two went on to lift the veil on how they went from the happy couple seen sharing many milestones together in the original series’ Season 8 finale flashforward to exes and why Elliot pulled the trigger on a divorce.
J.D. and Elliot continued the conversation outside where, walking by a waterfront, J.D. professed his love and the two kissed. Moments later, it turned out that J.D. had imagined the date while keeping company of a hallucinating elderly dementia patient who thinks she is lying on the ceiling.
In a video interview with Deadline, Chalke discussed the J.D.-Elliot’s scene and its twist, the challenges of filming the kissing scene in a public space, crafting the episode’s elaborate fantasy sequences, that ambiguous glance J.D. and Elliot exchanged at the very end of the episode as well as Elliot and Sean’s short-lived re-coupling.
Romantic Misdirect
Chalke didn’t find out about the J.D.-Elliot fantasy date idea until a few episodes into production on Season 2 when it was pitched to her by series showrunner Aseem Batra.
“I was like, oh my gosh, it’s incredible, I love that we were exploring it,” Chalke said. “I think they really listened to a lot of the fan reactions from Episode 1 of the revival, and everybody was asking, okay, J.D. and Elliot, tell us more about that. Why didn’t it work out, what happened, what went wrong?”
The revival’s first episode, which marked J.D.’s return to Sacred Heart, delivered the bombshell that he and Elliot are divorced without much of an explanation.
“I thought this was the most brilliant way in; I love episodes like this, they’re my favorite ones of Scrubs where you have a misdirect and think you’re getting one thing and then you get this curveball at the end,” Chalke said. “I thought this way in of J.D. having the dementia patient and then having her up on the ceiling, he goes to join her on the ceiling to comfort her and then goes into his own fantasy, I thought it was such a cool way for us to end up finding out more about their relationship and what went wrong and what went right.”
What Went Wrong
“We really haven’t gotten into it,” Chalke said about the reason for J.D. and Elliot’s divorce. “We got a taste of it in the revival Season 1 in Episode 3 where they’re in the bathroom together, Elliot is crying, and they’re like, I don’t know how to do this, who are we actually going to be to each other in this new life where we’re working together and co-parenting?”
In that Season 1 scene, J.D. and Elliot ultimately agree that they would figure out what the next phase of their relationship is because they will always be family.
During Elliot and J.D.’s restaurant date in Episode 207, we finally got the backstory of their separation.
“Now we find out that J.D. actually was just trying to do the right thing and thought he was doing the right thing for their marriage and for their relationship and for their family to go out and become a concierge doctor, and in doing so lost all of himself and who he felt like who he was, and wasn’t open to talking about it with Elliot,” Chalke said. “She felt like, okay, you shut me out, and that was the gap. I loved that the writers had Elliot say, I could have been there for you, this is what I promised you, I could have done this, it could have been different. I liked it because I feel like you really see both sides. You understand these are two human beings that were just doing their best, and I thought it was such a cool twist to have J.D. say ‘I can’t fully be myself without you,’ and then make the decision for Elliot not to tell her, like actually for her. I thought that was beautiful to say, I can’t do this to her, we don’t know if it’ll work out. I can’t risk hurting her again.”
Even in his own fantasy, while J.D. is all in, telling Elliot that “I don’t think I can ever really be myself without you,” she is pushing back, pointing out that “we can’t do this” and “every time we try it, it ends badly.”
Chalke is happy that Elliot didn’t get swept up in the moment and kept it real.
“I think first of all, it was really important to the writers that the mislead works, and that the audience doesn’t know that this is a fantasy,” she said. “I think for Elliot, this was obviously, without saying, the most significant relationship of her lifetime. It was so painful to her that it didn’t work out, and I think that she absolutely has her walls up of like, well, we can’t do that again because that didn’t work. We finally made it to this place where we’re kind to each other, and we’re supportive of each other, and we’re making it work, co-parenting, in the personal lives and the professional lives. She also thinks about her kid. They have a kid who, if they try it again, they’re running him through this whole thing all over again, and I think that’s a big piece of why she’s like, we can’t do this. So I think even though it’s in J.D.’s fantasy, the writers wanted to show that that is Elliot’s take, so that then J.D. can be respectful of that, and his love for her supersedes his own wish to try it again.”
Filming The Kiss Scene & Avoiding Spoilers
The vast majority of the fantasy sequence was shot in one day, chronologically, Chalke revealed.
“We actually got to shoot the whole dinner table scene over the first half the day, and then by the water for the second half of the day, which is really nice to get to film in order and all in one day,” she said. “As you know, with filming schedules that rarely happens, so that was a great way to get to do it.”
Filming the kiss scene in public with dozens of bystanders armed with cell phone watching proved a challenge but, luckily, no one ruined the surprise.
“We were shooting on the water in a very public setting, and we really didn’t want that moment to get spoiled,” Chalke said. “There were so many people, everybody with their camera phones, and we were like, ‘No!’ We shot the whole scene walking, and then once we stood, and we were just doing the overs to get that kiss scene, the grips put up giant flags to block it. There was water on one side of us, and then the street was on the other side. But with these giant flags, we only had enough to cover most of it. We could still see there was like four people filming. Once we did the kiss, we turned around and Zach just looked at them and he was like, ‘Please, please don’t spoil it.’ And nobody did.”
J.D. & Elliot Post-Fantasy
For fans who may have been disappointed to realize that J.D. and Elliot’s romantic reconciliation wasn’t real, there was that look at the end of the episode to hang onto. While J.D. was leaving the hospital at the end of the day, he glanced at Elliot who looked back at him.
Deadline asked Chalke how she interpreted it. Was this a precursor to what might come for the two of them or a final closure?
“I think it opens the door as opposed to closes it because we just understand so much more of how J.D. feels, we understand so much more of where his head is at and the fact that this is actually what he would love to try, but his love for Elliot is going to stop him from trying it,” she said.
While it was a fleeting moment in the episode, a lot of thought went into the scene.
“We actually shot a few different versions of my look to him because they shot it in slow motion, and we talked a lot about it of how to play that, if Elliot’s just doing her chart and it’s just business as usual, ‘Yep yep, bye, night,’ and has no idea, and then we had a couple more where they linger on the look a little bit longer.”
The deliberate thought process extended to the entire episode.
“It was a fun episode to do for that reason because there were so many conversations about where both of their heads were at, about what would come next, about how to not let the audience understand that it was a mislead. So there’s all these detailed conversations right down to Elliot’s wardrobe when she comes into the restaurant, what could she wear that’s in J.D.’s fantasy, but that also wouldn’t tip that Elliot understood why he was asking her to dinner. It was my favorite episode to shoot of the season for that reason, because there’s just so many fun things to dig into and to think about and to try and figure out how to come off successfully with the mislead, and also just have it be powerful for the audience.”
As for what the look means and whether there is a chance for J.D. and Elliot’s Episode 207 fantasy to become a reality, Chalke left the door open.
“Are we going to see more of that? I wish I could tell. I can’t because I don’t want to spoil anything. You have to watch to find out,” she said. “I hope we get to do more seasons so that we can really find out and really explore that more. Would be really cool.”
Why Did Charlie & Sean Leave So Quickly?
J.D.’s new love interest Charlie, played by Rachel Bilson, was introduced in the Season 1 finale. By the Season 2 premiere, the two were already an item, with J.D. happily flaunting his new relationship. Elliot got back in the dating game as marine biologist Sean (Scott Foley) reappeared life after her short-lived romance with the organ donor pilot fizzled. But her latest chapter with Sean didn’t stick either. By Episode 5, Charlie and Sean found themselves taking back seat to J.D. and Elliot’s commitment to their jobs and their patients and soon found a way to each other. Episode 5 ended with Charlie and Sean making out, rendering J.D. and Elliot single again.
Why did these relationships end so quickly? Were Charlie and Sean pushed aside so J.D. and Elliot are available to rekindle their own romance?
“I think part of that was also how many episodes that they could both do,” Chalke said about Bilson and Foley. “We really wanted to tell that story, I love the idea of when Sean says, you’re dating this mistress, the hospital as well and to show what that actually is really like, that J.D. and Elliot both have the best of intentions but these medical emergencies come up and they have to show up for them and then the two of them, Rachel and Scott’s characters, are left hanging out all the time.”
Chalke reminisced about Bilson and Foley’s short stints, wishing that they could be series regulars on the medical comedy.
“You’re right, it is a bit of a compressed way to tell the story but I think that they both brought so much to the show,” she said. “We all would have had them there forever, we were all like, they should be regulars. They’re so funny, they’re so much fun. We had the best time with them, and I love what they bring out in the other characters. Like, the writers were, how do we bring Elliot’s neuroses back from the OG days, and Sean’s character is the perfect way to make her flustered and off-balance because she has such a crush on him. I love Judy [Reyes]’s line where she says, “Oh, this is how we see that Elliot’s upward in her feelings again because she’s hitting her head and dropping the purse and doing all these things because she really likes him.”
Meeting J.D. & Elliot’s Son Ollie
Episode 207 finally introduced J.D. and Elliot’s talked about but not seen in the revival son Ollie, played by child actor Kellan Tetlow (This Is Us, Tracker).
The scene, which is tied to J.D. and Elliot’s fantasy date, had the two parents sit Ollie own to discuss relationships after finding out that he had a crush on a girl. (Turns out uncle Turk and aunt Carla had already given him the talk.)
“Overall, I think J.D. and Elliot have really put their kid first, I think they’re actually really great co-parents,” Chalke said. “They both do work, and their jobs are very important. They want to be really good doctors, and they really want to mentor these new kids [interns]. But I think the piece that we really want to get across is their kid has really come first.”
There was some confusion over how many children J.D. and Elliot have. Ahead of the revival’s premiere, Braff indicated to Deadline that they have two, Ollie and an older boy with whom Elliot was pregnant in Season 9 of the original series. That was later clarified, with the series’ writers opting for one child, Ollie, who was born years after the end of the original series. (Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence has said publicly that the revival is ignoring the existence of Season 9, which was a reboot.)
Chalke praised Tetlow, who is expected to appear in more episodes.
“J.D. and Elliot are great co-parents together, and then we’re super lucky to have cast a kid who’s fantastic,” she said. “He comes onto set, and he’s the sweetest kid. Scrubs is an environment where there’s four writers at a time by the monitors in Video Village making changes and coming up, saying, ‘Okay, so Sarah’s going to say this, and then you’re going to say this, and let’s try that. And here’s a new joke.” He is a young kid, and he rolls with all of it. That’s exciting because it makes us feel like we can really explore that more.”
The Technical Side of Building a Fantasy
Scrubs is known for its elaborate fantasy sequences. The one in Episode 207 of the revival was among the more challenging to pull off, with Chalke calling the technical aspects of the episode “super complex.”
She spoke about how the scenes with J.D. (Braff) joining his dementia-stricken patient on the ceiling and him pulling away from the fantasy into the real world came to life.
“The technical piece of this episode was incredible,” she said. “They built a full room upside down with a bed up on the top, and they had Zach in a harness, walking up the wall for the scene where we’re pulling away. They had this really cool set built, where it’s this long kind of tunnel that was actually built for this shot. The light sconces are on the sides, and if you watch, they’ve continued the light bars along the walls to make it look like it’s being stretched. Roger Fires, our [production designer], is incredibly talented, he was up all night thinking about it, and then 12 hours before we shot that, he’s like, ‘No, no, we need to build this platform because it needs to be on wheels, and Zach needs to be able to be standing on it so he can actually be on it while it’s getting pulled back.’ One of the coolest parts about working on this show is every department cares so much. You’ll get a script, and often they won’t have a lot of time to build it, and it’s everybody coming together, going, ‘Okay, how we problem solve and make this happen?'”
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