SCRUBS creator explains how series, called ‘the most realistic medical show of all time,’ influenced him

Bill Lawrence has brought us some of the greatest TV series of the last few decades, including City of rotation, Shrinking, Ted LassoAND Shirts. These shows are all full of heart and a comical message of family and friendship. But not only was it Shirts a sweet and funny sitcom, apparently the medical part of the show was actually entirely accurate.

During a recent interview on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard (via CinemaBlend), the writer and producer looked back on his Shirts years. When Shepard raised the issue of how Lawrence and the Shirts the team won a Peabody Award, Lawrence said:

“The weird thing about the Peabody Awards and Scrubs that has followed me through life, and that’s important to me, is that they were embraced by the medical community, that show, on a level that no one expected.”

Among the long list of medical programs broadcast over the decades, from St. Elsewhere TO emergency room the favorite of the moment, Anatomy of Grey, Shirts is usually defined as a comedy, and as such, it would be fair to assume that the show wasn’t as concerned with depicting the workings of a hospital as accurately as its dramatic counterparts. But that’s not the case at all, and Bill Lawrence’s assertion that this is the most “realistic” offering in the subgenre isn’t just his opinion. He continued:

“You Google ‘most realistic medical show of all time’ and for some reason every single doctor chooses Scrubs. The reason is all the stories and Scrubs, especially the first four years, my best friend in college, everyone calls him Real now because his name is JD, was a complete asshole. We were in the same frat. We acted so bad that we decided he wanted to be a doctor after we went to college, he had to go back to grad school again. Now he’s a cardiologist and a heart surgeon here.”

Lawrence went on to talk about how he and JD are not only still on good terms, but that JD ended up working on Shirts also. That personal touch is what led to Shirts being so successful in accurately showing the lives of doctors, nurses, surgeons and more in a hospital. Lawrence said of his friend:

“We’re still so close. He was the medical advisor on the show. So all those stories were real. And for some reason, that world of dealing with death, and crazy mentors, and smart nurses, just resonated. And that’s how it got to the Peabodys. Because it became a conversation in the medical community about how the show, despite the fantasy, was finally representing medicine in a real way.”

It’s really nice that the series is so realistic in terms of the medical stories told, alongside the personal and comedic elements, which are already very well done. Shirts It’s streaming on Hulu, so fans can rewatch it, but newcomers can also check it out.