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I'm always a week behind in my TV, so while this was last week's episode, I thought it was so good that is was worth commenting on. I know I'm always jocking Arrested Development as the best comedy on TV, but Scrubs is such a close second sometimes that their status is almost indistinguishable. It's even difficult to really hold them to the same critical standard too: AD is a broad satire, Scrubs is a weird comedy/character piece hybrid - two different sensibilities, two different goals (both kind of ignored by their networks. I mean, Scrubs is in its fourth season and we're only now getting, in May, the first season DVDs).

My favorite comedies are the kind that are so weird that it hurts your head, literally, to watch them. Pick pretty much any episode of Father Ted to experience this comedy migrane. For me, I grasp my skull and almost freak out because I cannot believe what I am watching. There's a lot of comedy, TV and films, that are funny, but it is only the rare amazing example that is actually able to make me feel this. It's probably due to something like my brain trying to process all this weirdness and failing and then not knowing how to understand the experience.

"My Life In Four Cameras" gave me the comedy migrane. Halfway through, in response to a dying sitcom writer that he's just diagnosed, JD takes off into a fantasy that lasts for the entire final act, a strange mixture of the Scrubs style with ironic sitcom trappings that is just so surreal that I flipped out. The show, over it's four seasons has set up a definite tone, and by completely warping the framework, our expectations of how each episode's story arc should go become worthless. The standard becomes inverted, and our (or my, at least) brains doesn't have enough time to get used to this new style, and we are left grasping, in a sweet comedic befuddlement.

Sure, Scrubs can get a little schmaltzy at times, but it's the weirdness like this that makes up for it.

Scrubs at Amazon