Scrubs is, famously, one of the most realistic medical shows on television – the characters generally do the jobs they’re supposed to be doing based on their title, the medicine is generally solved with proper medical procedure, and the structures they work in reflect both the bureaucracy and the culture of the American medical profession. But I would say it goes far enough that it manages to reflect the nature of working life itself. What makes most procedurals boring (or at least frustrating) for me is that success is a given and everything the characters do is a roll-out of the inevitable; this isn’t work, it’s ritual. One of the funniest observations I ever saw someone make was that part of the reason Dale Cooper’s antics are so amusing in early Twin Peaks is because throwing rocks at pottery while thinking of Tibet are exactly as based in rationality and exactly as successful as the techniques of most TV detectives.

Scrubs treats the process of medicine as a series of decisions. Technique is a matter of right and wrong, but decisions are a matter of ‘what am I prioritising?’, or if you prefer, ‘what can I live with?’. One of the major throughlines of the series is characters juggling career advancement, personal ideals, and personal ego; a turning point for JD and Cox’s relationship is when the former admits he still wants to be Cox, “but… a more successful you.” This goes down to decisions in the micro – how much time am I willing to put into zeroing in exactly what is wrong with this patient? How much attention will I pay to their vitals? Their emotions? Their lifestyles? For the characters, these are decisions that mean the difference between life and death.

The side effect of this is that it captures how much of the character’s work days are decisionless grunt work. The characters frequently complain how ninety percent of their time is spent keeping old people alive before sending them back to nursing homes where they will inevitably either return to hospital or die, and almost all the rest of their time is spent battling hypochondriacs and tedious minor problems. Working life is a combination of the incredible weight of too many decisions and the incredible weight of meaningless busywork, and if you’re as lucky as the characters, you’re doing this in service of something you actually care about.