A Scrubs Peanut Christmas

Since I've been writing some pretty lengthy posts, I thought I'd just include a link to a spoof that the cast of Scrubs did on the Peanut Christmas special. [WARNING: If you have overly sentimental attachment to the original and cannot bear to hear the voice of Zach Brach come out of Charlie Brown's animated mouth, do not watch this.]



I've been watching the syndicated repeats of Scrubs, and I have to say I like the show--and for a mainstream tv sitcom, it's interestingly and surprisingly edgy about certain topics. For example, today one of the characters, Jordan, a woman depicted as bitchy and nasty, admits to having had an abortion at the age of 19 and not regretting it. When's the last time that happened?! She suffered no ill consequences on the show--she wasn't hit by a bus or condemned by others for her decision; she wasn't embarrassed; she did seem a tad bit wistful, but she was clear that she didn't regret the decision. The show also features an inter-racial couple, Carla and Turk (Puerto Rican and black) and at times has talked very candidly about race. Overall, it's not a bad sitcom in terms of how it handles diverse matters. Except can anyone believe that there'd be a hospital sitcom without any significant Asian American characters? A hospital??? And one set in Los Angeles??? PLEASE! No Filipino nurses or doctors? No South Asian med students? No Chinese/Korean/Japanese American patients? A true Hollywood fantasy.

[ADDENDUM--DEC. 12: I saw an episode of Scrubs today--the one where the schtick is that the episode is sung like they are all in a musical. In one of these musical interludes, when Turk makes some comment about Carla being Puerto Rican, she corrects him and says that she's Dominican. What follows is this song where Carla calls Turk on his ethnic myopia and his lumping of all Latino ethnicities into one another (including calling their baby a "blaxican"). All in all, while it wasn't advocating for a complete break down of racial hierarchies and ethnic stereotypes, it was still one of the more frank discussions of race and ethnicity (and all done while carrying a tune) than you normally see coming from a network sitcom.]