Really, it’s 11:41 on Wednesday night and I’m going to write this thing whip quick. Do you honestly expect it to be good? Do you? Well I do. But if it’s not, you can email me at this address: scrubswriterblog @ yahoo.com
I’m just looney-tunes enough at this late hour (after I’ve snuck into half the writers’ offices and changed their homepages to something involving “bottle” and “guy,” after I’ve been chased by a security guard who thought I was an intruder, after I’ve eaten nearly one hundred bucks worth of sushi dinner) to wonder what kind of responses I’d get with an email address. So send away with your “yO dUdE YOuZ sUx!!!” tomes, we’ll read the choice once in the writers’ room, and here’s the blog:
We’re taking a trip in the sorta-way-back machine today, back to the my first day working on Scrubs. Right now, it’s early December. I’ve been here for about five months, and the digs are feeling pretty damn comfortable. At least comfortable enough to hang my office with pictures of giant squid and a Red Dawn poster. FYI for the new guys out there: make your office look like a dorm room and you will catch hell for it.*
Okay, so pretend it’s late-June 2005. June 26th to be exact. Two weeks ago Bill Lawrence, the creator of the show, sent all of the writers a letter talking about the upcoming season and how excited he was.
Included in the letter was some homework. Here’s what it was:
1.) Come up with five stories for every character.
2.) Come up with at least ten good fantasies for JD.
3.) Interview at least two doctors to get weird/dramatic/interesting stories for the show.
4.) Come up with two full episodes — complete with A, B and C stories — that you’d like to write. Do a good job, and you’ll get to write them.
For the past two weeks, I’ve obsessed about this stuff. How could I not? Like I’m going to show up on the first day of work with some s*** I scribbled out the night before on a Fatburger napkin. Charming and quirky? More like stupid and unprepared… although if you can pull that kind of thing off and be funny, hats off my friend. But me? I’ve been up every night thinking, writing, rewriting, throwing out bad stuff and coming up with new stuff. That means no GTA. No bowling league. Netflix go away, I gotta concentrate. And the dedication has paid off, because I’ve come up with more than five stories for every character. Shoot, for JD alone I’ve got, like, eleven. I have enough fantasies to fuel a season. I interviewed five doctors instead of two, and I’ve interviewed three nurses more. And now it’s the night before that first day of work. Am I totally psyched and ready to blow everyone away with my genius? Hell no. I’ve got a big belly full of “uh ohs” because there’s a solid chance I’ve got twelve and a half printed pages of garbage.
“Hey, what if JD buys Kelso’s old car?” No, lame. Next. “What if Turk and Carla can’t decide who to pick as their baby’s Godparents?” No, that’s hokey. That’s My Two Dads. “But what if Elliot and JD don’t want the responsibility, so they try to look irresponsible?” Oh my God, let it go. It sucks. Cross it off. “What if Turk builds a meth lab?” Slap yourself, idiot. But before you do, wonder what you’re gonna do about the fact that every “crazy” doctor story you got from those interviews ended with poo going some place it shouldn’t.
So that’s what my brain is doing at 2 am, and I haven’t even started thinking about the most important thing. The absolute, most essential part of my first day. Which is: what am I going to wear? I’ve got lots of good t-shirts and good jeans and good sneakers. And good polos and good button ups and good jackets and even a weird stretchy thing that feels a little like rubber and makes my nipples look pointy. I want to look good because, as vain as it sounds, I like the idea of my new coworkers first impression being, “hey, lookit that Biegel, he’s a cool cat! So laid back and so put together.” I want to be put-together guy.
Because people love Put-Together Guy.
So, 2 AM and what’s the wardrobe gonna be, Kev? What stories are you gonna tell everyone tomorrow, Kev? Do you wear the “Little Kingdom” pre-school shirt? Do you start with the story about Elliot and her new fellowship? Should you wear your Converse? Should you bag the Kelso-lowers-the-temperature-in-the-hospital-to-save-money runner? The lack of sleep the past few days and the worry about the quality of my work and the worry about the wardrobe have conspired to create a furious brainstorm, and it’s in this daze that I pick the Spanish T-shirt.
I got the Spanish t-shirt in, shockingly, Spain. Though I hardly ever wear it, right now this thing is looking pretty sweet. It’s black, and on the front is simple white building design by the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi.
It’s… whimsical.
Charming, even.
“A building designed by a famed turn of the century architect on your t-shirt? How very clever and appealing!” The shirt seems like a smart choice. I bet my good jeans would go great with it. Yeah! And to top it off, how about the blue pull-over the girlfriend likes? What a brilliant combo! To maximize the effect, the pull over shall be unzipped halfway to more properly present the shirt’s design. I lay the clothes out, lay down to sleep, and run over a few Turk stories before I conk out. And when I dream that night, I dream of being Put-Together Guy.
I wake up real early and chug coffee. Lots of it. I don’t even think about the clothes because I made that decision last night and I know this stuff looks good. I drive to work all full of excitement. Oh wow there’s the hospital! Oh wow there’s my parking space. Me! My mind races with thoughts of grandeur, thoughts of being funny and inventive and smart, thoughts of being liked. And thoughts of the sweat rolling down my side, because it’s about this time I realize what I’ve done.
It’s 90 degrees out and I’m wearing a wool pullover. I was so hopped up on excitement and caffeine that I didn’t bother to think that the hospital is in the San Fernando valley. Once the sun comes out at, oh, about now, it’s a good 20 degrees warmer here than in my frigid catacomb of an apartment ten miles away.
The simple solution is to take off the pull over, which I do. I haven’t even started work and the wardrobe has been compromised. And that’s when I remember why I hardly ever wear the Spanish t-shirt.
You see, the Spanish t-shirt hates me.
Me not feeling remotely awkward.Who’s this thing cut for? Maybe a runway model. Or maybe it’s supposed to drape the body of a coke slut as she wakes on the pool table in her boyfriend’s mansion. The shirt was not cut for a run-of-the-mill white boy. The thing is bunching up in odd places, and it’s crawling up my back. Literally: it’s inching its way up my back, catching on sweat and skin, and as I walk in and say hi to the first people I see (our two writer’s assistants) I’m yanking the shirt down around my waist. And I’m sweating. I look like a junkie. As one of the guys walks me down the hall to my office, the shirt starts to crawl up my belly. My belly! I can’t even enjoy seeing my office for the first time because my shirt is stuck to my belly. This thing is sentient and it wants to kill me. I am trying to be Put-Together Guy with my new coworkers while draped in a hateful being. The only saving grace of this shirt is that it’s black, because that means no one can see that I’ve soaked the pits.
As I meet all the other writers I try to play calm and cool but I know I’ve got to look a little weird. And I’m worrying about the homework, too: are they going to go, “oh man, sweaty Baby Huey over there, so not funny. And so stiiinky!” Damnit damnit damnit damnit damnit damnit damnit!!! But then, as we go into the big writers’ room and start to talk, something weird happens: I start to chill out.
In my head, I had almost envisioned the first day as a giant board room with lots of old guys sitting around. You walk in, do your presentation and they go “yay” or “boo.” But this wasn’t going to be like that. This was people talking about vacations and restaurants and boyfriends. You always hear that about TV and movie crews: “Aw jeez, two weeks into production and Charlie the grip was like my brother! I swear, we’re a big old family!” But the writers at Scrubs have been together for four years. They’ve gone to each other’s weddings. Their kids have played together. The whole two weeks leading up to this, the only notion in my head was that the spotlight was going to be on me, and that I had better perform. I hadn’t taken the time to realize — to just sit back and chill the hell out and realize — that no, no way, it wasn’t going to be me walking in, all eyes turning toward me expectantly, and then I just start firing off the comedy rockets, man. I hadn’t really grasped that no, I already earned my spot. I’m here. So slowly, I sat back and I did chill the hell out and enjoyed the conversations happening around me. How are the twins? How’s the beach house coming along? Does Bill Callahan’s dog still smell? The twins are great, the beach house is coming along and like a fat kid’s bellybutton, by the way.
Bill took charge and laid out the plan for the year, and I was even more comfortable because I realized he wasn’t going to make me stand up and give some horrid introductory “hey I’m Kevin so glad to be here I love sitcoms and tacos!!” speech. Bless him for that. As he talked it was reassuring, hopeful… s***, it was great. I sat near the writers’ table and we all listened and talked for hours. Note “near” and not “at”: me and Aseem, the other new writer, sat on a nearby couch because there weren’t enough chairs for everyone (it would take me one more week to get the stones to grab a chair AT the table). Bill talked about how the show was doing: how it sold into syndication (Comedy Central), how the network feels about us, how he feels creatively invigorated. And he had concrete ideas about where the show can go this year, and what characters can do, and goddamnit I counted it as a victory that a few of the ideas I wrote down he had written down, too.
This show — any show — is written by a lot of people, and though you do have to prove yourself, ultimately the process is not about the individual you. I guess I should’ve just kept in mind what Bill had written at the bottom of that letter.
“I expect a lot out of all of you. Except Kevin and Aseem. Don’t make me too crazy and you’ll do fine.”
I still hate that f***ing Spanish t-shirt, though.
*Most TV writers would rather give Leon Spinks a sponge bath than hang so much as a picture of their kid in their office. That’s not because they hate their kids or because they haven’t come to terms with their feelings regarding Mr. Spinks, although I’m sure some are guilty of both. It has more to do with the fact that you don’t spend all that much time in your office. That and the fact that the running idea seems to take its cue from Robert De Niro in Heat — you want to be able to leave a place in 30 seconds flat. Me, I got a shag carpet and a statue of Elvis and I’m feeling right at home.
For the holidays, we’ve got Ted’s band ““ aka The Blanks (featuring Sam Lloyd, George Miserlis, Philip McNiven, and Paul F. Perry) ““ to record an a capella tribute to Santa’s rock, the one and only Mrs. Claus.
