Scrubs used to be the best medical show on television by far.  Past tense.  Season 9 premiered with two episodes that aired December 1 on ABC, and I want to sue the producers for malpractice.  The show has made too many changes to maintain its integrity, but too few changes to give it an entirely new identity.  Instead, this bastardized mish-mash demotes Scrubs to a mediocre medical drama on par with all the others.

I knew many original cast members had left.  I knew that the premise of this new season was to create a show about medical students based at Sacred Heart Hospital.  I still thought it had potential.  After all, Frasier was a pretty successful spin-off from Cheers.  And, in real life, medical school is a recipe for funny:  take a bunch of smart people, mix in a lot of stress and a little competition, and throw them into some awfully awkward situations.  Unfortunately, this new iteration of Scrubs completely misses the mark.

Not surprisingly, the best part about the new Scrubs is the old cast.  Dr. Cox is still hilarious.  As he has for the past eight years, John C. McGinley thrives in his role as a ranting, lovable jerk.  Kelso, played by Ken Jenkins, is still an amusingly cantankerous old man.  The bromance between J.D. (Zach Braff) and Turk (Donald Faison) continues to flourish.  However, even these familiar elements feel a bit empty without the supporting cast.  Brief cameos by Sarah Chalke (Elliot) and Neil Flynn (the Janitor) weren’t enough to infuse their personalities into the show, and without Judy Reyes (Carla), Turk’s character seems a little flat.

Still, my disappointment goes much deeper than a sentimental yearning for an original cast reunion.  I was willing to give this version of the show a chance to make it on its own merit.  It’s just that the new characters simply don’t cut it.  Whereas the old crew featured complex characters, each with annoying traits balanced by endearing ones, this group is a bunch of irritating caricatures.  The writers have gotten several of the med student stereotypes right: the overeager but insecure Lucy, the entitled Cole, and the slacker Drew.  (Even if they are going for one-dimensional generalizations, though, they’ve missed a few.  What about the bookworm who spends every second of her spare time in the library or the guy who is so socially awkward you wonder how he’ll ever interact with his classmates, let alone his patients, or the gunner who asks everyone else about their MCAT scores on the first day?)  The point is, every medical school class has its “types,” but as a Scrubs viewer, it’s no fun being able to categorize them already.  Undoubtedly, the characters will evolve on the show, but there’s nothing surprising about any of them at the start, and that’s just plain boring.

Photo Larry at http://www.photolarry.com/

Ironically, even though the show now has a female narrator in Kerry Bishe’s Lucy Bennett, the Scrubs women have taken a fall.  For the first eight seasons of Scrubs, Chalke’s Elliot (while admittedly insecure at times) showed that women do not have to give up their femininity to succeed in a professional career.  Reyes’ Carla was a strong positive role model—an intelligent advocate for her patients, a loyal girlfriend to Elliot, and a supportive wife, all while maintaining her own independence.  Lucy, at least so far, is a simpering sycophant.  Even in her attempts to stand up to Dr. Cox in the climax of the first episode, she appeared weak and annoying.  I was secretly rooting for Dr. Cox to crush her.  The other two developing female leads fall short as well.  The Australian medical student may eventually show some spunk, but for now she is simply a vapid butt of Dr. Cox’s jokes.  And, Denise, a holdover from Season 8, is occasionally funny, but generally an unlikable crude mannish hussy.

Speaking of which, the show’s degeneration into Gray’s Anatomy-like debauchery is also irksome.  Of course, the characters’ love lives were important sub-plots in the first eight seasons (and real-life hospital romances are common gossip fodder), but now undeveloped flings seem to be taking center stage on Scrubs.  Lucy sleeps with Cole before we really know either character.  Denise and Drew’s affair comes out of nowhere (and therefore Denise’s emotional attachment is unconvincing).  And, whereas “The Todd’s” sexual innuendo has been consistently funny for eight years, Cole’s sleaziness takes it a step too far.   Sex sells, and Scrubs has sold out.

The saddest thing about the new Scrubs is its divorce from the truth.  Once widely recognized among medical professionals as the most accurate medical show on television, the writers seem to have stopped doing the research for Season 9.  Especially for the first four seasons as the main characters progressed through residency, the show was spot-on in terms of the tasks they did, the types of patients they saw, and the fears they had.  Only two episodes in, Season 9’s script has lost that completely.  Granted the feeding frenzy over the “crappy pizza” during orientation and the juvenile “do-we-have-to-take-notes” scene are universal medical school experiences, but it’s pretty sad when those were the most truthful parts.

For one thing, residents never serve as teaching assistants or RAs, like Denise is doing in the show.  Residents take care of patients, and while they are expected to teach medical students during their clinical rotations, they absolutely do not help out in the classroom.  And, most medical schools don’t even have conventional dorms, so the idea of a resident acting as a dorm counselor is absurd.  If the writers felt compelled to create a college scene, maybe this should be a show about pre-meds.

Infinitely more disappointing is the lack of accuracy within the hospital itself.  Medical students do not see patients right away.  At most medical schools, students spend the first two years in the classroom and the anatomy lab.  When they do go on rounds or see people in clinics, the patient encounters are generally awkward contrivances rather than actual contributions to care.  They practice on “fake patients” (i.e. actors who are paid by medical schools to pose as patients at scheduled sessions) and shadow “real” doctors, but they do not actually participate in patient care until the third year of medical school.  Consequently, it is exceedingly unlikely that Dr. Cox would even see these students in a hospital-setting, and it is downright impossible that Lucy could have recognized her group’s cadaver as one of “her” former patients.  Not only is this frustrating for viewers who once admired the show for its authenticity, the writers have stupidly stolen their own built-in narrative.  These do-it-all med students have no room to grow.  If they’re already fully functioning members of the team in their first days of medical school, what on earth will they do for the next four years?

We can only hope this lame version of Scrubs won’t last that long. In the Season 9 premiere, Denise rounds on a comatose patient and says, “Man, I wish his family would just let him die.”  I wish producer Bill Lawrence had been graceful enough to do the same for his show.

A radioactive spider bites Peter Parker’s arm, imparting the teenager with wall-crawling abilities, enormous strength and agility, and a precognitive “spider sense”. In 1965, that was all the scientific explanation Stan Lee needed to explain the origin of Spider-Man’s superpowers. It doesn’t take a PhD to come up with questions about this breezy explanation, not to mention the similarly simple explanation for how Superman flies, or why gamma radiation makes the Hulk a muscle-bound behemoth.

© DC Comics

In The Science of Superheroes, published in 2002 by Wiley, authors Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg attempt to deduce the plausibility of these crusaders—caped or no– in light of modern science. Each chapter examines a different superhero and tries to rationalize the extraordinary feats they perform, combining explorations of sciences with comic book history. The book dissects the often absurd premises of a host of superheroes, starting with the likelihood of intelligent aliens like Superman (depending on the numbers either quite possible or completely impossible). Even if Krypton existed it couldn’t have the high-gravity described in comics, the authors explain. “According to the basic laws of physics, Krypton is impossible.”

No spandex-clad vigilante is spared. Gresh is a novelist who has written over a dozen popular science books related to pop culture, several with Weinberg, a fellow novelist with a master’s degree in mathematics.

© Marvel Comics

Unsurprisingly, radiation as a cause of superpowers gets a lot of pages, with its central role in the origin of superheroes like the Hulk (created by gamma radiation from a bomb) and the Fantastic Four (bombarded by cosmic radiation in space). In the real world, radiation does not bestow extraordinary abilities. “Hard radiation in large doses does only one thing and it does it well, it kills.” A sobering insight for superhero fans.

© Marvel Comics

Most superheroes rely on pseudoscience that does not stand up well to examination. “Comic books, particularly superhero comics, have always been a friendly technobabble environment,” Gresh and Weinberg write. Even accepting the idea that a spider-bite could impart superpowers doesn’t make Spider-Man more realistic, as his new strength and agility don’t correspond to actual spider talents. ”The problem with Spider-Man isn’t that he’s improbable but that he’s inaccurate.”

Gresh and Weinberg’s discussions of real science are much more coherent than the speculative sections. This is more of a science textbook illustrated with comics than a definitive guide to how superpowers work. Explanations about why superheroes like Ant-man and the Flash are firmly in the realm of fantasy (the law of conservation of mass and the limits of biology, respectively) are far stronger than musings on how Batman could really exist (assuming a man of unlimited wealth and unparalleled physical and mental ability wanted to dress like a flying rodent and beat up criminals).

Readers looking for hope that cosmic rays or radioactive animals will give them powers beyond those of mortal men may be disappointed by The Science of Superheroes. “In science, laws aren’t made to be broken.” But the book works quite well as a basic introduction to diverse scientific topics like the evolution of stars and the anatomy of spiders. In the end, the aspiring superhero will have to settle for dazzling friends with scientific knowledge, not heat vision.

Poster art provided by www.harrypotterexhibition.com

An exhibit full of Harry Potter™ movie props does not belong at Boston’s Museum of Science. Don’t get me wrong; I love Harry Potter™. I began reading the books before they were popular, long before the screaming legions of tween fans lined up at midnight, in costume, for the later books in the series and then the movies. I even partook of some of the midnight movie and book premieres myself (although not in costume.) But the Museum of Science has welcomed Harry Potter™: The Exhibition for the next four months, and it’s an exhibit completely devoid of science. The museum is missing a wonderful opportunity to educate the squealing fans that will flock to the exhibit.

Despite the inappropriate location, the exhibit is worth seeing if you’re a fan of the movies. It features a multitude of recognizable props and costumes – everything from Buckbeak, a horse-sized replica of Hagrid’s Hippogriff, to Oliver Wood’s Quidditch robes, to Snape’s wand. The props are all carefully arranged in rooms that were painstakingly designed to look just like the movie sets. (Haven’t you always wanted to visit Hogwarts?)

The frustrating thing is that it would be so easy for the Museum of Science to add science to the Harry Potter™ exhibit. Near the Quidditch broomsticks and costumes, a placard could briefly describe the aerodynamics of flight. Near the shrieking mandrakes – plants that look like horrifying babies and emit a high-pitched squeal when you uproot them from their flowerpots – a sign about botany could fit right in. But there is none of this.

Even if it would be a tight squeeze to fit additional signage within the meticulously designed exhibit, there is plenty of space throughout the rest of the museum to add a temporary “Science of Harry Potter™” mini-exhibit to supplement the hall of props. In fact, on a recent preview night (for “Very Important Muggles”), there were “Science Entertainment Stations” set up elsewhere in the museum. One explored basic chemistry in the form of a “potions” lesson. Another explored flight, allowing museum visitors to design a hovercraft broom from recycled materials and test its aerodynamic properties. I asked one of the “potions masters” if these tables would be set up for the duration of the Harry Potter™ exhibit. No, she told me. Just for that one night. What a wasted opportunity.

Neville Longbottom (played by actor Matthew Lewis) adds his wand to the exhibit at the Museum of Science. Photo provided by http://www.harrypotterexhibition.com.

On the plus side, perhaps it will draw children to the museum who otherwise might have whined about museums being boring. Perhaps it will breathe new life into a museum that hasn’t changed very much over the last few years. But it cheapens the museum’s stated mission, “to play a leading role in transforming the nation’s relationship with science and technology.” The Museum of Science is devoting four months to the display and upkeep of a major collection of movie props in an apparent attempt to attract younger visitors, but the mission is being ignored. Yet hopefully, after experiencing the magic of the exhibit, many children will want to run around the rest of the museum to see “real” magic – science. If even just a few do, then I suppose the exhibit isn’t a waste of space after all. But wouldn’t it be more appropriate at the Children’s Museum?

So go see the exhibit – bring your imagination, your children, your friends – but make the trip worthwhile and wander around the rest of the museum as well. Science is the closest thing to magic that we can experience.

Harry Potter™: The Exhibition shows at the Museum of Science (1 Science Park, Boston) until February 21. For more information about the exhibit, go here: http://www.harrypotterexhibition.com/.