Imagine, more than anything, you want to bake apple pies. The first time you took a bite of apple pie, way back when you were little, you said, “ho boy I love this apple pie so much, sweet god I’ve found my purpose in life.” So you work and you work and you work at it and eventually you get pretty good at baking apple pies. And then one day, after your professors and parents and even your little old grandma has given up on you as some crazy brained pie baker, you get hired at the best apple pie baking shop in town. People from miles around come to eat this pie, it’s that good. You are freaking out: this is your dream. You’re going to bake apple pies with best of them. And then your big moment — the first apple pie you bake is served up! Swollen with pride, you watch that lucky customer take his big first bite. And then you watch him spit it out and fix you with angry eyes as he says, “It tastes like you s*** in this.”

And that, in a pretty frigging good metaphor, was my biggest fear a few months ago as I went into my job as a staff writer on Scrubs. This is my first truly big gig as a television writer, and it’s on a show I’ve loved since the first episode. I stress — since the first episode. This show that I’m writing on is one of the reasons I wanted to write TV in the first place. It’s very surreal. I suppose I should introduce myself. Hi, my name is Kevin Biegel, and this is the “intro” blog. As such there’s no giant point because I’m trying to make a deadline. If you want to see the pictures, go ahead and skip to the bottom.

As I type this I’m in my office and hopped up on about twelve cups of coffee. It’s very dark outside and everyone went home for the day hours ago. I’ve got those antsy gut pangs you get when you know you can leave work but something is making you stay. I’m pretty much all alone in the abandoned hospital where we shoot the show. Much has been said about how creepy this place is. It’s “haunted” some have said. It’s “about to fall apart” and “infested with mice and rotting things” and “teeming with black mold” that will “years later, kill me.” All of which may be true, but more than anything else, I find the hospital charming. It’s cavernous and full of old equipment, the kind of place you’d love to sneak into when you were a kid. You’ll start in a dark spooky room full of giant, leaky machinery, exit to a musty hallway full of unused lighting equipment, and end up on the set for J.D.’s apartment. That set is right down the hall from my office, and my office is actually a converted old patient’s room. During the course of this place’s days as a hospital, I’m sure a few old geezers croaked in here. If their spirits are wandering around this place — hell if they’re looking over my shoulder as I type — well, I say a big old hearty hello! Please don’t haunt me. And sorry about the farting.

So three paragraphs in and that’s one fart mention and one mention of defecating in someone’s mouth. What up, Disney! (Disney owns the show. Go see Chicken Little)

So you get that I’m excited to be here, right? That hand in hand with that is the fear of doing a bad job on something I love? As these blogs go on I’ll write about what it’s like to work on the show, what you go through… your basic young writer’s view on stuff. And a fan’s view on it all, too. I promise I’ll try to write this thing as honestly as possible. I’m pretty hard on myself: while one day I might go home thinking “goddamn, I’m a funny man,” the next I’m just as likely to walk out of here shaking my head thinking “man, you sucky fraud.” And not to be self aggrandizing, but when I was starting out, I didn’t find a lot to read as far as “here’s what the freshman year of writing on a TV show is like.” So hopefully that’s what this will be. That peppered with stories about the writers, stories about the cast and anecdotes. Lots of anecdotes. Anecdotes like this:

I just went on a walk to get coffee, and I found a giant cart filled with Hostess stuff. Chocodiles, Twinkies, caramel Ho Hos. Caramel?! S*** yeah caramel! That’s almost as good as finding the same mountain of stuff in a dumpster behind 7-11, except it’s not in a dumpster behind 7-11. This stuff probably belongs to set dressing, but at this late hour they’ve all gone home. As I walked back to my office with two big fistfuls of Ding Dongs, I thought to myself, “man, right now, I am the King of Scrubs.” Tomorrow, after set dressing reads this, I’m sure they’ll say, “you’re gonna pay us back for those Ding Dongs, stupid.” And I’m gonna say, “sorry, no.” And they’ll say, “Why no?” And I’ll say, “Because I am the King of Scrubs. It says so on the blog, jerks. Burn.” I ate those free Ding Dongs, and they were good. Burn.

So there’s the first blog, all seven disconnected paragraphs. Did you read that last paragraph and mutter, “this jackass writes for TV?” Well, I read it and muttered the same thing. Except I had a belly full of free fruit pies. Burn. I promise future blogs will be much, much shorter and they might actually be about something. I’ve been told that most of these will be in video format, too. Which is great and all, except that probably translates to me pointing the camera at people and throwing acorns or dead snails at their heads. Or, conversely, me getting punched in the head for throwing the stuff. But for now, I leave you first with a picture of me and The Todd in a robe:

And then a picture of me with The Todd without the robe:

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