Scrubs' Zach Braff Unpacks J.D. And Elliot Fantasy, Clarifies Kim/Sam Canon, And Shares Season 3 Hopes

The November 4 episode of "Scrubs" generated some of the revival's biggest buzz yet, as the ABC comedy finally began to fill in the blanks surrounding J.D. and Elliot's divorce — only to reveal that their long-awaited heart-to-heart had played out entirely in J.D.'s imagination.

J.D. ultimately decided to keep his feelings to himself rather than risk hurting Elliot (Sarah Chalke) and their son Ollie all over again... but those feelings aren't necessarily going away. In Episode 8, he continued trying to bury them while seeing where things might go with Cassie (Stephanie Koenig). Meanwhile, a new, hunky ER attending (played by "One Day at a Time" vet Ed Quinn) emerged as a potential post-Sean fling for Elliot.

So where does that leave J.D. and Elliot? And what other loose ends does the revival still need to tie up?

For answers to all those questions, I caught up with series star/executive producer Zach Braff over Zoom for an interview that the diehards are going to want to read in full. Below, Braff goes on record about Episode 7's unconventional storytelling device and what it reveals about J.D.'s emotional growth; addresses lingering confusion over the revival's continuity, including the whereabouts of J.D.'s other son, Sam; and explains what fans can do to help strengthen the case for a Season 3 renewal.

TVLINE | You and I have talked quite a bit about Episode 8 from last season, and how much buzz Dr. Cox being sick generated — but I don't think I've seen more social media chatter than I saw coming out of Season 2, Episode 7, which addressed J.D. and Elliot's divorce. We've known since the revival began that J.D. and Elliot had split — but until now, we'd only really explored the emotional fallout, not the circumstances that led to their separation. What went into deciding how to fill in those blanks?

I think the audience was due, right? The audience is due for lots of things, and I want to give it all to them, but it's such a tricky balance with 21-minute episodes and only nine and 10 of them. They were due for some more backstory on what happened with this divorce, and we wanted to have it be J.D.'s fantasy, where it ultimately turns out to be all the things he wished he could say to Elliot.

J.D. taking responsibility was a really good thing for the audience to hear — but ultimately, also, for the growth of J.D., and to see that he had the emotional maturity now to say, "I'm not going to go down this road because I don't want to hurt her ever again."

TVLINE | I did a full-series rewatch prior to the revival, and I can't recall another instance of the show using the fantasy device quite like this.

It's a little bit similar to the Brendan Fraser "Where do you think we are?" thing. That wasn't a fantasy, it was Dr. Cox's imagination, so it's not a perfect one-to-one... but that's the only time we ever did something like that. Again, not a fantasy in that case, but this one isn't really a fantasy either. It's sort of a moment in time when J.D. joins [his sundowning patient] and enters her world of imagination, where he can imagine how something would play out if he sent a text. It's kind of like that Gwyneth Paltrow movie, "Sliding Doors," and it's beautiful what happens. And when he comes back [to reality], he chooses not to [invite Elliot to dinner] because he feels it is now the emotionally mature thing — not to put her and his son, who he loves more than anything, through any more pain of divorce and breakup.

TVLINE | But regardless of whether the emotions we're seeing come from a real place, this is still ultimately J.D.'s version of what could be — his version of the conversation he wishes he could have had with Elliot.

Absolutely. Imagine you had — and it doesn't have to be a romantic partner, but let's just say in this case an old romantic partner or someone you broke up with where you could just say, "I wish I could have this fantasy where I get to say everything I wish I had said, and I say it correctly, and I say it articulately, and I say it from the bottom of my heart."

J.D. in the OG series is very narcissistic and self-centered. It's a fun character to play because he's the protagonist — he's silly, he's funny, he's goofy, and he's also an excellent doctor — but he has plenty of negative attributes. He's a very flawed protagonist. I see that so much more now at the age I am now when I'm playing him, and I still love playing that, but I also wanted to fold into this new series some emotional maturity.

TVLINE | Do you think if audiences had seen that what-if scenario from Elliot's perspective, it would have been much different?

It's a great question, Ryan, and I think we should do that in Season 3. I think that Elliot in the real world would love some accountability — and would, like anybody who's gone through a breakup, love to hear the other person say, "Hey, here's where I fell short. Here's where I should have showed up. Here's my Monday morning quarterbacking about what happened and how I'm responsible." Of course she would love to hear that, and I think he'll always be the love of her life. They'll always be the love of each other's lives.

I think it's confusing for Elliot, too, because now that he's back at the hospital, he's the guy [she remembers]. He's so joyous, he's dating all these other women — I mean, she's dating too — but he's back to his old self. He says that in the speech. He goes, "I found my purpose again. I realized that when I got separated from teaching, when I got separated from being a leader, when I was just being a concierge doctor in the suburbs for rich people, I just lost my whole purpose." And now he has this joie de vivre, and she clocks that.

Darko Sikman/Disney

TVLINE | I'd seen another interview with Sarah where she mentioned that you filmed Elliot's reaction to seeing J.D. walking out with Cassie a couple of different ways. I imagine part of what's going through her head is, "This is the J.D. I remember. Why wasn't he like this for me?"

Yeah. It's tricky to shoot that because Elliot hasn't seen anything the audience has seen, right? So the only thing, if you think about it, that Elliot is clocking is, "Oh God, great. He's going to date yet another woman who works here, and she happens to be the head of the hospital, and she's beautiful. Great." J.D. is trying to act aloof because he's trying to act like he didn't just commit to pushing down those feelings, and then you [see], once he passes her, that his face sort of drops, and he feels the heartache. Cassie's a fling, and she's fun, but he's not in love with Cassie.

TVLINE | By the end of Episode 7, J.D. decided his feelings for Elliot are better left unsaid because he doesn't want to hurt her or Ollie again. But in Episode 8, it's obvious those feelings aren't going away. Is he genuinely trying to move forward, or just postponing a conversation he knows he'll eventually have to have?

For me, the way I'm playing it is that he's trying his best to just stuff it down and move on. Not that Cassie will necessarily be endgame, because she's sort of brutal and tough, but he's confessing to Turk, like, "Hey, you're my best friend. This is on my mind. I'm trying to avoid it, but I'm being honest with you that it's present." And Turk says, "OK, what do we do to make this never happen?" So he is trying to push it down, as people do. He's trying to say, "I want to acknowledge these feelings. I feel them, but I'm going to keep them to myself and hold it down and keep it professional with her." It's hard because they share a child and he loves her, but I think he knows he's not going to go down that road again. At least that's what he's trying.

TVLINE | With both Stephanie Koenig's Cassie and Ed Quinn's Jax, I don't necessarily get the sense the audience is supposed to be rooting for either of those relationships, at least not in the way they're potentially rooting for J.D. and Elliot.

They're flings. These characters were married for many, many years. They're in a hospital where people are stereotypically very flirty. There's this hunk, and Stephanie's beautiful, and they're doing what people do. They're hooking up, and they're not necessarily meant to be love affairs.

I think Charlie, the Rachel Bilson character, had more of a chance [of turning into something real]. But that was [ultimately set up for] Scott Foley's character Sean to finally get some revenge on J.D. for all the f—king headaches he'd caused him.

TVLINE | I was wondering how you were going to wrap that up, because once Sean came back, I thought, "They can't possibly stomp on this man's heart again."

He was due! He was due to get back at J.D.

TVLINE | I saw you respond to an Instagram post last week suggesting J.D.'s original Season 8 ending had been rewritten, since he now says he left Sacred Heart for private practice rather than to work at Kim's hospital to be closer to Sam. You clarified that Kim is still part of the story, Sam's now in college, and you'd like to revisit that arc in Season 3. Is that an ongoing discussion?

I should not be reading these comments, but I'm human. Sometimes I fall off the wagon, but I am promoting the show. I'm out there yelling from all towers to please watch the show. So I feel a responsibility to get in there and clarify things — especially that, which was a very popular post. I just wanted to say I understand that it's a little confusing. And again, if you follow my Instagram account or you follow "Scrubs" super closely and listen to the podcast, you might be clued into a lot of this stuff. But for people that casually watch "Scrubs" or just click on a headline, they don't know all the intricacies of what we tried to do.

I was trying to say, in CliffsNotes form, we did remove Season 9 from canon, right? Because in Season 9, the story was that Sacred Heart had burned down. And first and foremost, this [revival] was Bill Lawrence's idea. It was important to him that J.D. comes back to Sacred Heart, which we all agreed.

And then you have to sort of say — in the same way that Roseanne didn't end up winning the lottery, and John Goodman's character didn't die — "OK, here's where we're going to pick up from. We're going to pick up from the Season 8 finale that everybody loved so much."

And even there, I have to be careful and say, "Now, everyone remember what you saw projected on that sheet at the end of Season 8 is all of what J.D. hoped would happen. Some of it may have happened. Maybe they did have Christmas with Cox and Jordan, and they had matching sweaters, who knows? But some of it probably didn't happen." Not all of it necessarily came true, because the wording [in that last scene] was something to the effect of, "Who's to say what might actually come true and what might not?" And then Bill Lawrence, the creator of the show, takes that sheet down as the janitor, and the very last thing that happens on OG "Scrubs" is he puts that in the trash as if to say, "Who knows? That could happen or couldn't."

I did want to clarify for the audience that we are not retconning — is that the term they use? We're not retconning Elizabeth Banks and that child. That all exists. That's all part of the canon still. We would love to have Elizabeth Banks on. I think we were saving introducing that character of Sam for when we could hopefully get Elizabeth Banks, who — I'm not saying this is fact, I haven't confirmed this — but in my mind, Sam is college-age. We address in the [Season 2] finale that he's studying overseas. And so I think, again, I don't speak for [the writers], but I think the idea was, we knew that Elizabeth was down to do an episode, so eventually, when we can schedule it, the idea would be to save Sam for when we can do that all together.

TVLINE | I also covered the "Roseanne" revival — I always find it amusing that Sarah's part of two ABC sitcom revivals that came back and erased the events of Season 9 — and I think part of the reason fans keep asking about Sam is because the revival established early on that J.D. had kids, plural, and they want to know where Sam fits in. Roseanne and Dan Conner still had four kids at the start of that revival — and then when it became "The Conners," and they still hadn't found a way to bring in that fourth kid, he was jettisoned entirely.

I get it's confusing. And what if I told you that we're figuring it out as we go? But also the confusing thing for people was that Sarah, I believe, was legit pregnant when we did Season 9, and so I think we wrote in that [Elliot was pregnant]. But we did, again, remove that storyline and that ninth season. So I understand why anyone would be confused.

And again, if someone half reads this article, they're going to be like, "Wait, what?" But I can tell you that J.D. and Elliot have two children. One is Sam, one is Ollie. Ollie is in the next few episodes. He's in the finale as well. And our hope is, if we get a Season 3, to bring back Sam.

TVLINE | Speaking of revisiting a storyline from the original run... I've got to ask about the "Dr. Acula" fantasy in Episode 8. It might be my favorite of the revival. How did that "Sinners" spoof come together? Was that a writers' room idea, or a Zach Braff and Donald Faison idea?

That was a writers' room thing. And the joke — I've had this fantasy forever that we somehow do a high-budget version of "Dr. Acula," because J.D.'s incarnations were always the cheapest pieces-of-s—t versions, and he had no budget. And the writers' room came up with the idea that not only did J.D. have a huge budget, but that Turk had done a rewrite of it. So it became the Ryan Coogler "Sinners" version of "Dr. Acula."

I have to tip my hat to Adam Bernstein, who directed that, who was not only just an all-star director, but directed our original pilot. And Roger Fires, our production designer, Steve Jackson, our director of photography... everyone who worked on that put so much love into it. It just looked beautiful.

And for Donald, it's so funny, because I keep joking it was like if you designed a birthday party for Donald. Donald loves Ryan Coogler and loves "Sinners." Donald also loves action movies where you can fly, and he loves looking cool in period costume. I was like, "This is like Donald's birthday party, where he gets to do all the different things he loves to do" — other than Star Wars. I was like, "Someone needs to bring in a lightsaber," because other than that, Donald has had all his wishes come true. We had a lot of fun.

TVLINE | I know the show has been doing well on ABC, but in this day and age, linear ratings are only one piece of the puzzle. How important is the show's performance on Hulu to its future? And for fans who want to see more "Scrubs," how much of a difference can they make by watching there?

It's really important. And I know that fans are probably kind of confused about all this, because it is confusing, but it matters.

Of course, the show is watched on ABC in primetime, but the show, at least in the United States, streams on Hulu, and they care very much how many people watch on Hulu — ideally, the first day it's on, which is Thursday.

You can't just do well on ABC. You also have to perform on Hulu. And I know there are some fans out there that say, "I'm going to wait until it's all out and binge it all." I would just say, "Just watch it," because we want to keep making it. And I think it's doing well, but we can always do better.

TVLINE | And the 10-episode order isn't necessarily an indicator of anything these days. There are plenty of returning shows doing 10- and 13-episode orders on broadcast.

It's funny... back in the day, we would do 18-to-22 episodes, which is just crazy to think about. Nobody does that. We were talking about this when we got to the 200th episode [airing Wednesday, December 2]. It would be impossible to get to 200 episodes nowadays because most shows are doing 10-to-13 episodes max. But we don't know our fate. We know that fans are really loving it. We know the critics have been really lovely to it. But there's so much competition out there, so we just hope enough people check it out and stream it on Hulu so we can make more.