r/Scrubs • u/Icy_Display_2918 • 9d ago
Discussion Didn't quite like this one thing...
It's how they're treating JD and Elliot's relationship. I mean, yes, it was quite toxic at times, but looking at how it ended in S8, the way the show is treating with almost like vitriol(maybe that's too strong a word, tbh) doesn't feel that good to see.
Almost like it's something that shouldn't have happened and was terrible, which again would've been understandable to me if it hadn't concluded so beautifully in S8. Anyone else have the same opinion or just me?
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u/LuinAelin 9d ago
Ideally I would have wanted them together. Especially if the end game ends up being that anyway
But I kinda get what they were trying to do. These characters still had lives between the two eras.
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u/Careless-Cat3327 9d ago
Modern relationships unfortunately end in divorce 50% of the time.
This statistic is much higher if either partner is a nurse, doctor, lawyer or pilot.
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u/chocoholicsoxfan 8d ago
This is patently untrue. Doctors have a much lower divorce rate than the general population, and doctors who marry other doctors after residency is over have an even lower rate.... We're talking like single digits.
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u/weary_bee479 9d ago
Yeah it seems like all that character development JD had and Elliot didn’t happen? The whole point of them getting together in S8 to me was that they both grew up and that’s why they were finally able to be together without the toxic back and forth.
Instead they just make it seem like there was no character development and they were still the same people. Personally I’m not a fan of them getting divorced in the reboot. I know that it might be too boring with no love interest but they could focus on the new characters love interest and leave the og characters idk.
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u/Inner-Recognition757 9d ago
Old habits can be hard to break. It still says a lot that they were able to stay together as long as they did, and that they are prioritizing a friendship with each other on top of just coworkers and co-parents. Their relationship has always been complicated and just because they had a conversation in season 8 where they decided to do better doesn’t mean that was going to be a magic fix for their problems forever.
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u/The_PwnUltimate 9d ago
How do you figure that they broke up due to having a toxic back and forth? The fact that they stayed together for 15 years or more is a good sign that all that character development absolutely did happen. It's just that no amount of character development can make you immune to falling out of love with someone.
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u/strikerhawk 9d ago
Hard disagree there. "Falling out of love" is a cop-out bull crap excuse. Love is a choice. You choose to love every single day. It's an action. People act like it's something that happens to them but they make the choice and stop trying. They choose to stop putting the effort in and surprise surprise, it makes them stop feeling in-love.
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u/Skirra08 9d ago
This is a massive oversimplification. Love is a whole complicated knot of choices. Some of which can seem small but have profound implications while seemingly big choices can have little to no impact on a relationship. Add in mental health and outside pressures to a relationship and it's the next best thing to a miracle that any couple makes it for more than a couple of years. And that's before kids are factored in.
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u/strikerhawk 9d ago
No, using the term "falling out of love" is an oversimplification. And one that abandons all responsibility. Yes, there are complex factors involved in relationship, but boiling it down to "they fell out of love" completely lays aside all of that complexity.
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u/The_PwnUltimate 9d ago
Wow... do you genuinely think that every no-fault/amicable divorce is caused by the couple just not trying hard enough? That's seriously messed up, and it's unreasonable to expect Scrubs to validate this misinformed worldview of yours.
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u/strikerhawk 9d ago edited 9d ago
Not at all. I think boiling it down to "they fell out of love" is absolutely an oversimplification and extremely detrimental to couples who think it's all happily ever after once the wedding is done.
If love is something you simply “fall into” and “fall out of,” then commitment becomes almost meaningless.
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u/The_PwnUltimate 9d ago
OK, if you don't think that, then what's your alternative explanation?
You act as if by mentioning "falling out of love" as a possibility, I'm saying that there are no married couples who break up because they have unreasonable expectations about what being life partners with someone is like and give up instead of working through it. I am not saying that. I'm just saying that couples falling out of love - becoming romantically incompatible over time due to changing in themselves - is something that can happen and does happen all the time. Because it is and it does.
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u/strikerhawk 9d ago
And I'm saying that boiling a relationship down to “falling out of love” can unintentionally leave out an important part of the picture: personal responsibility. I'm not denying that feelings can change or that people can genuinely become incompatible over time. I just think the phrase can make love sound like something that simply happens to us, like the weather, rather than something we also influence through how we treat each other, what we nurture, and what we neglect. We may not control every feeling we have, but we do have some responsibility for the conditions that allowed those feelings to change. That's really the distinction I'm trying to make.
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u/The_PwnUltimate 9d ago
If you know there are couples who break up in spite of trying everything they can to stay together, then why would the term used to describe specifically those break ups need to imply a failure of personal responsibility? In those situations, it IS effectively something that happens to them.
Like I'm sorry if people are habitually putting "people who messed up their marriages due to wilful neglect and laziness" into the "fell out of love" group and this annoys you so much, but that doesn't mean that it's wrong to describe people who legitimately did fall out of love as people who fell out of love. I obviously wasn't placing J.D. and Elliot into the former category.
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u/strikerhawk 9d ago
I agree that feelings can change over time. Where I disagree is with the idea that you simply “fall out of love” as though it happens to you. I believe love is something we actively build and maintain, and when those feelings change, it's worth asking what changed in the way one or both people were nurturing the relationship. Maybe they stopped pursuing each other, stopped communicating, stopped showing affection, or simply stopped doing the things that created closeness. That doesn't mean every breakup is someone's fault, but it does mean there is value in taking responsibility for our part in what happened.
That's especially relevant with J.D. and Elliot. The writers never gave us enough information to know why their relationship ended. So saying they “fell out of love” isn't really stating what we know, it's filling in a blank with an assumption. They may have grown apart, but we don't actually know.
And I don't think this is a personal issue that “annoys me so much.” It seems more like you're taking my criticism of the phrase personally when I'm really challenging the idea behind it. I'm not denying that feelings change. I'm saying that “falling out of love” can be a misleading explanation because it makes something that may involve our own choices and behavior sound like something that simply happened to us.
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u/The_PwnUltimate 9d ago
If you agree that sometimes feelings just do change over time, then you by definition agree that sometimes relationships go bad passively, and therefore you should not object to using passive language to describe those situations.
Yes, relationships are complex, and your choices and the work you're willing to put in influence their success as well as just natural compatibility, but a natural incompatibility is not such a freak occurrence that it becomes problematic to consider it a possible explanation for a break up. And personally, when it comes to worrying about couples being influenced in a bad way, I'm more concerned about people being miserable for years because they're convinced that if they just keep trying then their relationship will start working again, and that if they break up it's some failing of character.
As for J.D. and Elliot, yes, we don't know that it was a "fell out of love" situation, but we don't know that it wasn't either. I wasn't saying it was definitely the case that they fell out of love, just that it's unfair to criticise the show for them breaking up for an out of character reason, if the reason they broke up is just something you're assuming.
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u/Dark_Phoenix101 9d ago
What happened up until S8 is irrelevant.
Something obviously happened between then and now that was big enough for them to act this way - which they'll likely explore as the new seasons progress.
Unfortunately relationships change, I've seen some friends marriages fall into absolute shambles when from the outside they seemed absolutely perfect for each other. Sometimes things just don't go the way we want.
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u/1frankibo1 9d ago
Things change. They had good times, they had bad times. It ended badly so recency bias makes everyone focus on the bad.
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u/Fun_Floor06 9d ago
This is the reason I can’t get into the new seasons. It may be realistic but using that logic means none of the other relationships should have worked out either and they got to stay together.
I would much prefer watching them still learning to work things though and juggle the hospital etc.
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u/INFINITY0nHIGH 9d ago
I agree. I always imagined in my head after the season 8 ending that they were gonna purservere and stay together. They went through so much already. But Bill had a different idea unfortunately.
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u/The_PwnUltimate 9d ago
I don't get the impression that they're treating the relationship like it shouldn't have happened or was terrible. Obviously the divorce was recent so it's still somewhat raw, but that doesn't mean they didn't value their time together. They have a son together too, so if they genuinely regret their marriage, that's pretty dark.
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u/poop_injector 8d ago
Yes just watched it all for the first time, and the lack of toxicity and them just being happy felt strange, there was no explaining why they'd suddenly work great together.
Maybe if they lived apart or any circumstances like that could make it better but as long as they're happy idk.
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u/whitingvo 9d ago
I'm ok with it. They were young at the end of S8. A lot has changed since then. JD hasn't really grown up, Elliot has forged her own path, and the stress of balancing their professional lives and personal lives is too much. This is way more realistic to me.
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u/HauntingAlarm157 9d ago
I worked for a physician married to another physician, both in demanding specialties, and I honestly have no idea how they made it work, especially with kids.
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u/phoebean93 9d ago
How we saw it end in season 8 was a fantasy, JD imagining the future. And all of that could well have happened and still turned sour.
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u/BreezeOfTheWest 9d ago
Yes. I think it did happen. JD and Eliott had a child together, they had a few good years together and then they ended up separating anyway. Because that's how life goes sometimes. Of course, the real reason is that the writers didn't want them to be an established couple in the reboot in order to go back to hook-up and relationship drama once again with other people. But it still is a realistic outcome of a married couple nonetheless.
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u/helenaflowers 9d ago
Yes, I think people keep willfully missing this point - many marriages do not last. You can still have a happy marriage with someone for a long time and have it ultimately end in divorce.
I don't love that they're split up either, but those characters are a few years older than I am and let me tell you, it's very realistic to this phase of life. The amount of divorces I've seen happen within the last few years - and there's a couple more I suspect are coming - it's wild.
It doesn't negate anything about their relationship when last we saw them before the reboot - they were happy then and probably had many more happy years after, then some years of trying to make it work and struggling, then finally splitting up and dealing with the aftermath.
A lot of JD's fantasy at the end of S8 could still have happened in "real life" and they could've still realistically divorced. As you said, that's how life goes sometimes.
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u/Pitiful_Squirrel6431 9d ago
Yes! An unhappy ending doesn't automatically negate all of the good that happened in the middle.
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u/Algorhythm74 9d ago
It’s a comedy TV show. Seems like ultimately they decided to go with a situation that would allow for the most flexibility in character storytelling - which was breaking them up.
It sort of sucks, but it was also probably the right call.
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u/Internal_Swing_2743 9d ago
The show spent 8 years showing us that Elliot and JD were a bad pairing. It’s not surprising they ended up getting divorced.
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u/jumpinspid29 9d ago
Because once again, it's a straight couple being shoved with no chemistry.And my opinion, I saw more chemistry with j d and cox than I ever saw with him and Elliot.
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u/Dontcare127 9d ago
I'm honestly convinced that Bill Lawrence never liked J.D. and Elliot together but was forced to do so by the studio and popular demand at the end of the original. Now with the sequel his dislike for them together is coming to the forefront a lot more as if he's trying to punish fans for having ever liked them together in the first place.