My Favourite Scrubs

Last week, Ro and I finished re-watching (for the umpteenth time) Scrubs, aka one of my favourite TV shows to ever exist.

The Janitor, Elliot, Dr. Kelso, J.D., Carla, Turk, Dr. Cox, and Jordan.

I didn’t religiously watch Scrubs when it first aired on TV (I rarely watch TV on actual TV), but I own all the DVDs, and I watch them constantly. After much deliberation, I’ve come up with my favourite episode from each season (it was so hard to choose!).

WARNING: Spoilers were inevitable, but I tried not to give too much away.

Season 1 – My First Day

The first episode, obviously, introduces you to the characters. One of the reasons I love it is because I know how the characters’ storylines will eventually end, and I like trying to spot any foreshadowing. It also sets the stage for my favourite TV relationship since Gilmore Girls‘ Luke & Lorelai: J.D. & Elliot. I love them.

Season 2 – My Fruit Cups

One of my favourite Janitor-J.D. interactions occurs in this episode:

Janitor: Hey, have you been stealing pudding cups and toilet paper around here?
J.D.: No! I hate pudding and I don’t use… toilet paper.
Janitor: *stares*
J.D.: I have one of those French things that shoots water up your butt.
Janitor: Bidet?
J.D.: BIDET to you sir.

I’m laughing just thinking about it.

Plus Carla and Elliot’s friendship is on point in this episode (one word: bajingo). Oh, and pregnant Jordan coming back – you gotta love her messed up relationship with Dr. Cox.

Season 3 – My Screw Up

This scene, man. This scene. It’s horribly sad, but I remember being completely shocked the first time I watched it, and I still get chills. It was one of those episodes that had you on an emotional rollercoaster the entire time.

Season 4 – My Office

One of my favourite J.D.-Dr. Cox moments. I often yell at Ro, “Why do you hate me when I do nothing but love you?”

Season 5 – My Jiggly Ball

I’d rather play Jiggly Ball than try to explain why this episode is so great.

 Season 6 – My Musical

It’s guy love, between two guys.

I love every song in this episode.

Season 7 – My Princess

I like the way it’s told (as Jack’s bedtime story) plus the costumes are great and, apparently it’s supposed to be an homage to The Princess Bride which, as everyone knows, is a fantastic film.

Season 8 – My Finale (parts 1 and 2)

This ending is so perfect. I don’t always acknowledge season nine mainly because I feel like it takes away from this amazing two-part episode (especially the montage at the end. Don’t mind me, I’m just sitting here, sobbing forever). Easily the best series finale ever (How I Met Your Mother could have taken a lesson from Scrubs. Just sayin’).

I’m no Superman

Here’s a fun song to start your week (and happy first Music Monday of 2015!).

If you, like me, are a big Scrubs fan, then this song will immediately take you back to Sacred Heart Hospital. If you’ve never watched Scrubs…I’m not sure what you’re waiting for. It remains one of my favourite shows and I may or may not publish a post about it tomorrow (spoiler alert: I did).

I’m afraid I don’t know much about the song’s creators, the alt-rock band Lazlo Bane. In fact, everything I could tell you would just be taken from their Wikipedia page. But I’d like to thank whoever decided on this as the theme song for Scrubs because I can’t imagine the show starting without it.

2014: People, Places, and Things

Another year has come and gone and I’ve decided to throw together a year-in-review post. Some of it might be a bit of a humble brag, but I also took the opportunity to reflect on the many changes/big decisions I made over the past twelve months.

PEOPLE

2014 was the year I met…

…Zach Braff (August) in New York, after seeing him in a delightful production of Bullets Over Broadway.

…Jamie Oliver (September) while he was promoting his latest book, Comfort Food.

…my 20+ publishing peeps! Especially the lovely Jane, who I am slowly turning into another concert buddy (please check out her super pretty website here).

…a few bands including You Me At Six, The Maine, Paradise Fears, Nick Santino, Cameron Leahy (lead singer of The Downtown Fiction), and Eric Halvorsen (former bassist of the now defunct A Rocket to the Moon).

2014 will also be remembered as the year I become obsessed with Neil Gaiman. I haven’t met him (yet! *crosses fingers*), but this was the year I finally started reading his books and realized that I had been missing out on something magical.

PLACES

2014 was the year I went…

…to New York City for the Writer’s Digest Conference in August. It was a whirlwind weekend full of stories and advice, seminars and agents. I came out of it certain in the knowledge that a) I am, indeed, a writer and b) agents are people too (even if they are intimidating).

…to England and France in the winter on a family vacation. We saw Christmas markets in Lille and Amiens (France), took a short trip to Brussels (Belgium), and then spent some glorious days in one of my favourite cities, London (England, obvs).

…to 30 concerts (I’m just really proud of achieving this goal, guys).

…to my first ever circus!

THINGS

2014 was the year I…

…convinced Ro that we needed matching tattoos (tattoos that represent both You Me At Six and All Time Low).

I’m Reckless, she’s Brave.

…finally got the Panic! at the Disco tattoo I’ve wanted for years.

…quit my well-paying but boring customer service job in April so that I could go back to school.

…started working towards my publishing certificate because it’s the best career out there for me.

…interned at HarperCollins in the sales department (which is how I ended up spending a day with Jamie Oliver) and put my newly gained knowledge of the publishing industry into actual practice.

…started an internship at Tundra which made me realize that publishing children’s books in particular is what I’m meant to do with the rest of my life.

…started writing for idobi radio, which allows me to combine two of my greatest passions (writing and mostly-pop-punk music) at least once a week.

…re-wrote my novel (again).

2014 in a nutshell

It was a crazy busy year! I didn’t achieve all the resolutions I made in January, but I started making progress towards most of them. I hope all you readers out there had just as good a year (if not better!). Bring it on, 2015!

Birthdays, Bullets, and Books

Birthdays

Happy one year anniversary to my blog! I started this blog last year because I a) had been meaning to start a blog and b) my BFF Nina had created a (fantastic) food blog and it was a show of solidarity.

Over the past year, I’ve uploaded 135 posts and I’m interested to see how much I can increase that number in the coming years.

To celebrate, I’ll be writing a post every day this week. Ambitious? Yes. But I already have ideas so it shouldn’t be too hard (or so I tell myself).

Bullets

To kick off the celebrations, here is my (inaugural) Theatre Tuesday post for Bullets Over Broadway. It’s a Woody Allen-penned show (adapted from his 1994 movie of the same name) that is currently playing at the St. James Theatre in NYC (until the end of the month).

I’m not actually a Woody Allen fan (in fact, I don’t think I’ve seen any of his movies…), but I had a reason for seeing this particular play: Zach Braff.

I’m a huge Scrubs fan. I constantly re-watch episodes (a few summers ago, when I was unemployed from May to mid-August, I re-watched almost the entire series), I have all the DVDs, and I quote it at any possible opportunity. I also consider Zach Braff to be my favourite actor (I mean, sure, I loooove Daniel Radcliffe, but do I love his acting or do I just love his face/the fact that he was Harry Flippin’ Potter?).

“In 1929, playwright David Shayne [Zach Braff] is finally getting his first play God of Our Fathers produced on Broadway. The producer, Julian Marx, has enlisted the wealthy gangster Nick Valenti to pay for the show. Valenti wants to have his dim-witted and untalented girlfriend, Olive Neal, star as one of the leads. Valenti has assigned his strong-armed gangster, Cheech, to watch over Olive. Surprisingly, Cheech comes up with great ideas for improving the play. However, aging diva Helen Sinclair, the real star of the show, romances the younger David, who already has a girlfriend, Ellen. Meanwhile, the leading man, Warner Purcell, has his eye on Olive.”

The play was funnier than I expected. From the minute Olive opens her mouth and lets out the most screeching, nasally New York accent you can imagine, you know you’re in for a hilarious two hours. Cheech was also fantastic and his tap-dancing mob buddies owned every scene they were in.

Of course, the highlight of the show for me was the minute Zach showed up on stage and I aggressively punched Ro, hissing “IT’S HIM!!” (because the day before he had tweeted that he was in France and I was terrified that he wouldn’t be back in time for Saturday’s show).

Now, it should be pretty obvious by now that I was biased going into the show, but I thought he did a wonderful job. His voice probably wasn’t the strongest, in comparison with some of the other actors, but it was still great and really fit the character.

We had seats on the balcony so it was a good vantage point; it was also interesting because we could sometimes see the set up for a new prop i.e. the person sitting in the house set, rolling up the telephone wire so that no one would trip, or the trapdoor in the floor opening before the scene was done. Despite that, there were still moments that can only be put down to “theatre magic”, my favourites being Cheech’s car (which he drove twice in order to shoot people off a pier), and the Pomeranian who we couldn’t figure out if it was a real dog or not (it seemed to move on its own like it was real, but there were a couple of scenes where it was unnaturally still).

When the show ended, one of my fondest wishes came true: I met Zach Braff. He comes out after every performance to mingle with fans – there are barriers in place so that he’s not crushed to death, but he signs Playbills and if you hand him a camera/phone, he will pause to take a selfie with you.

After screaming (internally) “OMG, ZACH BRAFF JUST TOOK A SELFIE WITH ME”, I walked away like this:

Books

It’s fitting that I went to New York for a writers’ conference and the only things I bought were books. I went to a session given by Barry Lyga, a YA author who I’ve been meaning to look up, so I ended up with two of his books (regrettably I missed his signing – who schedules a signing during the closing keynote speech?!). And then we went to Barnes and Nobel and I bought a bunch of Neil Gaiman books because they have beautiful covers (I think I can actually get the same editions here, but they were all conveniently in one place so I don’t have to comb every Chapters/Indigo stores in the city for a full set).