Scrubs’ Elliot Reid: Our Overlooked, Underappreciated Neurotic Hero
Sarah Chalke’s doctor speaks for talented but insecure people.
Photos Courtesy of NBC
If you are a fan of Scrubs and want to talk about great scenes in creator Bill Lawrence’s medical comedy from the aughts, you will probably want to talk about Zach Braff’s narrator/lead John “J.D.” Dorian and his hard-assed, but somehow still likeable, boss-mentor, Dr. Perry Cox (John C. McGinley).
You’ll mention the time Dr. Cox was so overcome with grief when his best friend Ben (guest star Brendan Fraser) succumbed to leukemia that he both wasn’t processing his death and yet, still managed to blame J.D. for it. Or you’ll write think pieces like the one Shea Serrano did for The Ringer in 2019 that recounts a moment from the fifth season where Dr. Cox, who is known for his narcissistic god complex, is completely wrecked when his screw-up kills three people and only J.D. can reel him back in. Or you’ll simply mention any number of other times that Dr. Cox stood there with his hands behind his head or sucked on his teeth in exasperation over something J.D. or another staff member did that was not up to his know-it-all, perfectionist standards.
Or maybe you’ll think back on the decades-long bromance between J.D. and surgeon Chris Turk (Donald Faison). You’ll praise the realness of their conversations about everything from the movie Fletch and the TV show Sanford and Son to ones about race, growing older, losing relatives, becoming parents and (sometimes semi) functioning adults. The actors themselves even do it in Fake Doctors, Real Friends, the podcast they started during the quarantine period of the coronavirus pandemic. There, they recap episodes and talk to others involved with the mythology and making of Scrubs.
How appropriate that y’all are overlooking one of the true standouts of this series, though; the character who spoke for all talented women who have no confidence in said talent: The incomparable and always self-effacing Dr. Elliot Reid (Sarah Chalke).
Thin, blonde and pretty, Elliot entered the series in the pilot as a Type A competitive beast and a potential love interest for J.D.. But we soon learn she is an emotionally unstable mess. During the first season when she’s still a lowly intern, she tells her boyfriend Sean (guest star Scott Foley) that 98-percent of her behavior is motivated by “getting my dad to love me; 2-percent [by] chocolate.” She can also work herself up into a crying fit just by thinking about how she might become her mother. There are frequent references throughout the long-running series that her brother is gay but that it’s just not something her family discusses. She was seventh in her class at medical school, but feels like that’s not a good enough accomplishment.
What Elliot really needed in the show’s first years was a mentor or friend. And although she did eventually find it in Carla Espinosa (Judy Reyes), a nurse who is probably smarter than all the doctors in the entire hospital, the two women spend the earlier episodes at each other’s throats—both on account of Elliot’s natural nervousness and her white girl privilege/innocence to the experiences of a woman of color, and to Carla’s need to degrade Elliot by her looks and call her “stick.” (Side note: One could easily write 1,000 words proclaiming the awesomeness of Carla, but there’s no need in writing any defense of her. That character knows she’s boss).
Elliot sure as hell wasn’t lucky enough like J.D. was to find a champion in Dr. Cox. It takes her until the fifth season to finally stand up to him and call him on his actions toward her. But his nickname for her remains: “Barbie.”