Speaker 1: Donald Countersen. One two, No, Donald, go down, Donald go down.
Speaker 1: That's not what I meant. Three two, Well, then that's
Speaker 1: what you gotta say. You said, count asen. I thought
Speaker 1: you were like Donald, count us down, there we go
Speaker 1: because counting us in is you know, like the songs
Speaker 1: about seven eight, right, exactly, so count our song, Donald,
Speaker 1: I really don't want to anymore. Five six, seven eight.
Speaker 1: You want fame, will fame costs? And right here's where
Speaker 1: you start paying in sweat, Debbie Allen, fame the TV
Speaker 1: show Thank you. Here's some stories about show we made
Speaker 1: about a bunch of dots and nurses. And I said,
Speaker 1: he that stories never so ye around here are yeah?
Speaker 1: Around here? All right? Listen, we have m Donald. We
Speaker 1: have our first we have our first real guests, Yes
Speaker 1: we do. And I'm really excited about this. I don't
Speaker 1: think there could be a more appropriate guest. Because he's
Speaker 1: the reason that we're here. He's the reason we're friends.
Speaker 1: He's the reason that this show happened, that so many
Speaker 1: people across the world love, and it all came from
Speaker 1: his brain. He's the reason why I'm in my why
Speaker 1: I have a closet that I can stay in. Right Now,
Speaker 1: he's the reason I have at this show. He's the
Speaker 1: reason I have a desk, He's the reason I have
Speaker 1: this water bottle. I always say that to our next guest,
Speaker 1: jokingly but also seriously. Whenever I buy myself, even occasionally,
Speaker 1: I buy him dinner and he's so grateful, and I say,
Speaker 1: are you kidding? I can only buy you this dinner
Speaker 1: because of you, ladies and gentlemen. The creator of Scrubs,
Speaker 1: mister Bill Lawrence. Yeah, I pretended to not even be
Speaker 1: in the frame, even though this is not a video thing. Hey, guys, know,
Speaker 1: I wish we were recording so people could see that.
Speaker 1: I want people. I want people at home to know
Speaker 1: that even though we're not recording the video, Bill hid
Speaker 1: on on the Zoom app and made an appearance. Hey,
Speaker 1: that was two nice and of an introduction, because you
Speaker 1: guys would have both done fine without me. I like that.
Speaker 1: I can claim credit for your success and well being,
Speaker 1: but um, you would have found your way regardless. Well
Speaker 1: that's nice of you to say, but you definitely changed
Speaker 1: both of our lives a lot and in a big way,
Speaker 1: and also made something that very rarely happens. I'm finding
Speaker 1: as I attempt to make TV shows and produce them,
Speaker 1: and something that went nine years, and something that is
Speaker 1: a global success. And I guess the first logical question
Speaker 1: I wrote down in my notes is how did you?
Speaker 1: Because I was listening to this, I want to know
Speaker 1: how you came up with the idea? How did it?
Speaker 1: How did it the seed come to you in the
Speaker 1: first place. You guys both know there was a medical
Speaker 1: advisor on the show named j D. And he's the
Speaker 1: real j D, and he's my best friend in college.
Speaker 1: He was a fuck up and h are we allowed
Speaker 1: to curse on you? Bill go nuts? Let loose? He was,
Speaker 1: He was a screw up. I went the other way
Speaker 1: and I used to joke with him because he was
Speaker 1: such a bad student that he went back to college
Speaker 1: to go to med school a second time. I mean
Speaker 1: to pre met a second times. We get into a
Speaker 1: med school. I said, my biggest nightmare would be waking
Speaker 1: up in an emergency room and having you standing over
Speaker 1: me and going, hey, you're gonna be fine. And I
Speaker 1: just thought that would be a good TV show because
Speaker 1: we used to drink beers and used to talk about
Speaker 1: how all these stories, especially the early ones, are ones
Speaker 1: straight from his life. You know, worrying that his friends
Speaker 1: sewed a piece of gauze up into somebody fallen into
Speaker 1: love with a different girl in his residency program, and
Speaker 1: he's now married to He's a real guy. It's more
Speaker 1: relevant than ever because he has become the Kelso at
Speaker 1: a Kaiser hospital in West Fields and he's there running
Speaker 1: their COVID virus command center today as we speak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that you tweeted something about that, So tell us, like,
Speaker 1: because you're you must be. You're still best friends, so
Speaker 1: you must be in contact with him as he's dealing
Speaker 1: with all this COVID insanity. Right, Yeah, he's super pals.
Speaker 1: He's a heart surgeon and a cardiologist. He still does
Speaker 1: speaking in Gay sometimes the real JD, but he goes
Speaker 1: by John so people. You know. He put out a
Speaker 1: tweet the other day is saying, hey to all the
Speaker 1: doctors and nurses you know that work with me. I'm
Speaker 1: really proud, and I said, hey, is the real JD.
Speaker 1: He married the real Elliott and he's out there fighting
Speaker 1: the fight and it became viral and a news story
Speaker 1: and stuff in our basketball game that Donald has played
Speaker 1: in before, and in this episode you can see that
Speaker 1: Donald can play ball. JD played in that game and
Speaker 1: he tore his rotator cuff, so he can't be a
Speaker 1: heart surgeon as much because it, you know, aggravates his injuries.
Speaker 1: So he took the Kelso job the same way. Doctor
Speaker 1: Cox took the Kelso job late in life, and he
Speaker 1: runs the whole hospital in those fields. That said game
Speaker 1: you speak Up is probably the roughest game I've ever
Speaker 1: played in in my life. Jaws being broke, Noses Broke listed.
Speaker 1: It's a bunch of dumb comedy writers too. Man, It's
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, it's violent. It's serious. It's so it's violent, dude,
Speaker 1: it's violent. It's it's a lot older now, Donald, we're all,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're the old guys now, and there's a
Speaker 1: wave of young My son plays Will and I sent
Speaker 1: Zach a video of Will dunking the other day and
Speaker 1: I was so excited about Yeah, Bill, send me a
Speaker 1: video Will dunking. He's like, you have no idea how
Speaker 1: proud this makes me? Donald Donald, Zack doesn't understand, as
Speaker 1: I said, you know, it's like to see somebody dunk.
Speaker 1: I didn't even get in response, as Zach's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: he's thrown that round ball into the hook. If you
Speaker 1: if you had send me that kid singing bring Him
Speaker 1: Home from the name Is, I would have cried. You
Speaker 1: would have lost your mind, lost your mind. Oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, Zach, I am so proud of Will. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. I would have had it on repeat. I
Speaker 1: literally would have just been playing Will singing bring him Home? Bill.
Speaker 1: When when you were younger, could you dunk? Did you
Speaker 1: could not? You can? When I was younger, I could.
Speaker 1: But when I was a lot younger, yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: Donald Will does it? Will does it now aggressively. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. That's awesome, Like on the spin, move on
Speaker 1: the break. He can do it off the dribble, and
Speaker 1: he can do it off And how are you he's
Speaker 1: has trouble still gripping it. Why are you guys speaking
Speaker 1: Latin right now? I have no idea. He tries, he tries.
Speaker 1: I wanted to go back to j D for the
Speaker 1: real j D for a second, because I remember back
Speaker 1: in when we first started, he had a pager and
Speaker 1: um and they would literally he'd be at the hospital
Speaker 1: advising is So, just for those of you who don't know,
Speaker 1: a medical advisor on the show is obviously showing us
Speaker 1: everyone the extra is Donald and I all the doctors
Speaker 1: how to how to look like we know what we're
Speaker 1: doing and this is how you do this, and this
Speaker 1: is what you'd be doing in this particular situation. And
Speaker 1: this was still in the era of the facts machine,
Speaker 1: and I remember j D would he'd be talking to
Speaker 1: us and saying, yeah, hohold like that, do that, and
Speaker 1: then he'd get a page and then he'd go receive
Speaker 1: a facts and he'd look down at the facts of
Speaker 1: someone's ekg and he'd be like, I should probably get
Speaker 1: goo and yeah. You know, he used to joke about
Speaker 1: that that he liked the gig with us so much
Speaker 1: more than his real gig, you know, because he was
Speaker 1: a grunt. You know, he was still I mean it
Speaker 1: was out of residency, but you know he was slaving
Speaker 1: away back then to pay off med school loans and
Speaker 1: kind of being around Hollywood. You loved it. You know.
Speaker 1: His wife would also uh cover for him when he
Speaker 1: was when he couldn't be there, she'd come by and
Speaker 1: you know, we'd run things by her. Speaking up this episode,
Speaker 1: it starts off in the r and I remember thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be awesome. I get to show my
Speaker 1: dramatic face in the middle of surgery. It'll be just
Speaker 1: like all the doctor shows that are on right now,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And then we get there
Speaker 1: and you're like, no, put the mask on me, put
Speaker 1: the mask on. You're like, no, you guys, we have
Speaker 1: to wear the masks now. I was like, wait, but
Speaker 1: we're supposed to reacting. This is nearly and you were
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, no no, no no, put the masks on.
Speaker 1: And I do it with your eyes. And I remember
Speaker 1: being like, okay, this could this is gonna be. This
Speaker 1: is okay looking back at it now, we were other
Speaker 1: than mash I think the first shows really to do that.
Speaker 1: All of these other shows were doing surgery without the
Speaker 1: masks on. And Donald It's a great point because you know,
Speaker 1: JD is most proud of even though we took so
Speaker 1: many liberties and we're goofy and stuff. It's been often
Speaker 1: said that this for at least medical professionals, that this
Speaker 1: was the most realistic medical show, you know, just on whatever.
Speaker 1: I get that all the time, built and people on
Speaker 1: my social media and everything will say and even I
Speaker 1: think the American Medical Association said that, so so tell
Speaker 1: us about that when you when you started, did you
Speaker 1: I've always said and correct me if I'm wrong, that
Speaker 1: you because the show is going to be silly and
Speaker 1: go off in crazy tangents. That you said to your
Speaker 1: writers and obviously a mantre to yourself that no, I
Speaker 1: want the medicine to always be as accurate as possible.
Speaker 1: We had to they, you know, they initially even before
Speaker 1: I cast, you guys talked to about making that show
Speaker 1: on a sound stage, and I'm like, man, this show's
Speaker 1: gonna be so silly in so many ways. If it's
Speaker 1: not in a real hospital, people are going to tell
Speaker 1: it's fake. And so we used to have this board
Speaker 1: of you know, we do all the funny fantasies and
Speaker 1: jokes and silly shit, and then we had this board
Speaker 1: of ways to make it real, you know, and one
Speaker 1: of them. Donald was talking about. One of them the masks.
Speaker 1: But you guys need to look competent, people needing to die,
Speaker 1: the rooms to be grungy, and to not have as
Speaker 1: saturated a look color wise. You know, we just wanted
Speaker 1: we thought, like we made everything that wasn't funny real,
Speaker 1: that maybe it would work. Going back and forth between
Speaker 1: serious and goofy tone. You know, I heard Donald talking
Speaker 1: about that in your other episode, about how the colors
Speaker 1: didn't pop and everything look kind of dank and you know,
Speaker 1: and disgusting intentionally when you came out, you were coming
Speaker 1: off of Spin City for those of you who don't know,
Speaker 1: But I was going to ask, should we go through
Speaker 1: I mean, not that you want to sit here and
Speaker 1: discuss your resume or anything like. Yeah, he would, he'd
Speaker 1: love to. We gave a little story about what we
Speaker 1: were doing before Scrubs and how our life changed before Scrubs.
Speaker 1: I imagine your life changed. I remember the table read.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying I would love to hear yea, we've
Speaker 1: never heard like how. I mean, you were already successful,
Speaker 1: You're coming off Spin City, but how you know, Donald
Speaker 1: and I went on and on about how it was
Speaker 1: such a shock to our lives. I mean, this was
Speaker 1: your first hit show on your own. I mean, was
Speaker 1: that a big change in your life? Yeah? You know
Speaker 1: what I had had such a weird experience on Spin
Speaker 1: City that I was partnered up with an iconic star
Speaker 1: from my generation. You know, you guys were so kind
Speaker 1: to Mike Fox when he came and guessed it on
Speaker 1: the show. But that was such a surreal experience for
Speaker 1: me writing for Mike. You know, it's like the back
Speaker 1: to the guy that I grew up with, this particular experience.
Speaker 1: Even before I met you guys, I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: you can't have any expectations. There's no huge movie star
Speaker 1: doing this. You guys have probably heard me say before.
Speaker 1: I decided to treat this whole thing like, all right,
Speaker 1: I wrote the script. No one's ever gonna make it.
Speaker 1: They're gonna let me shoot the pilot. It'll never be on.
Speaker 1: The show's gonna be on. It'll never last a whole season,
Speaker 1: So I'll make the janitor an imaginary character, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Oh, it lasts a whole season, it'll
Speaker 1: never be on a season two. And so to me,
Speaker 1: that kind of protected me. You know, I thought that
Speaker 1: I was making something like Freaks and Geeks, you know,
Speaker 1: that would be people would go, hey, that was really good.
Speaker 1: And it got canceled after four episodes, and it was
Speaker 1: surreal to me that it kept working. That makes sense
Speaker 1: to you, guys. So I was really into the art
Speaker 1: of it all. Like at a table read, I remember
Speaker 1: just being so happy that everyone top to bottom was
Speaker 1: so good, you know, and from what I had done,
Speaker 1: not necessarily popping you know, jokes in a sitcom style
Speaker 1: and playing it real. And I'm like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: a show that I'd watch even though no one else will.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I was resigned very early to the show
Speaker 1: not being successful. It was very weird. I'd never asked
Speaker 1: you this question, but be coming off of Spin City
Speaker 1: and this was kind of the beginning of a big
Speaker 1: single camera comedy craze for those of you don't know
Speaker 1: the difference being sitcom traditionally a set in front of
Speaker 1: a live audience and then a single camera we shoot
Speaker 1: like a movie. Was there any pressure on you to
Speaker 1: make this idea? You had a sitcom and did you
Speaker 1: have to best thing that Spin City bought me was
Speaker 1: the financial and professional security to what happens in television
Speaker 1: often is you'll create a show. Hey, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do a show about a young married couple and what
Speaker 1: it's really like and I'm not going to compromise it
Speaker 1: at all, and then you'll go sell it to a
Speaker 1: network and when you come out, you're like, all right,
Speaker 1: it's the same show. I mean, we have a kid
Speaker 1: that's six that speaks like a thirty year old and
Speaker 1: I do have superpowers now, but otherwise otherwise it's like
Speaker 1: the exact same, right, And so with this show, when
Speaker 1: I said, I was so convinced it to be a failure,
Speaker 1: because like early on ABC, we're like, hey, that show
Speaker 1: is interesting. Maybe the doctor Cox character should be married,
Speaker 1: and we'll just it's a sitcom. We see him at home,
Speaker 1: we see him at work. I'm again, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to do that. It was never really an issue for
Speaker 1: me because I was so convinced that this would never
Speaker 1: work anyways. I just wanted to stick with what I
Speaker 1: thought would be cool, you know, and what would work.
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of pressure. The only thing
Speaker 1: that this episode resonates in a huge way because the
Speaker 1: president of NBC at the time was convinced that single
Speaker 1: camera comedy shows weren't funny. Um and uh so I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep this show on by decorating it
Speaker 1: with every bell and whistle I can. So this is
Speaker 1: one of the last I think there's only a couple
Speaker 1: more episodes after this that still have sound effects. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's something I wanted to talk about. As we get
Speaker 1: we start going through the show. Just so we're clear, though,
Speaker 1: who was the president of the network. Sucker, what was Sassa?
Speaker 1: What was Sassa? Scott Sasa was very sassified, all right, So, uh,
Speaker 1: this is built bill in an episode that we'll have
Speaker 1: aired by the time. This here is because an episode
Speaker 1: two we talk about the infamous time that Donald give
Speaker 1: a nuggie to Jeff Zucker and he said please Donald, no,
Speaker 1: and um and my, but my, I was I always
Speaker 1: thought at the time, I thought that Jeff Zucker was
Speaker 1: Scott Sasa's assistant. No, he was Scott sas Sassa got
Speaker 1: shuffled out right as Jeff Zucker came in. Jeff Zucker
Speaker 1: now run CNA. He's one of the most powerful guys
Speaker 1: you know in the news world. Scott Sasa is claimed
Speaker 1: to fame with me because there's always a disconnect with
Speaker 1: executives that really didn't know how this worked. And what's
Speaker 1: really interesting is if you look at the credits of Scrubs,
Speaker 1: the only title and the writers that has writer next
Speaker 1: to it is staff writer, which is the lowest rank
Speaker 1: on the totem pole, and then the other writers on
Speaker 1: the show, our story editor co producer things that don't
Speaker 1: necessarily say a writer. And when I handed in the
Speaker 1: first three scripts, you know, a showrunner always rewrites everything
Speaker 1: on any show. We had a great writing staff, but
Speaker 1: I was still doing that at Scott Sasa called me up.
Speaker 1: He's like, I read the first three scripts and I
Speaker 1: gotta say, those three staff writers you hired, because he
Speaker 1: thought that was the whole writing staff with three people.
Speaker 1: Those three straff writers you hired really nailed it and
Speaker 1: really captured your voice from the pilot. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be right. Well, first of all, they didn't because I
Speaker 1: wrote the in the Secondly, secondly, those three staff writers
Speaker 1: are all like twenty one and they've never worked on
Speaker 1: a show before. Um so crazy man. And then he
Speaker 1: shockingly got fired and uh Jeff Sucker replaced him right
Speaker 1: before Donald kissed his head his head. Yes. Yeah, By
Speaker 1: the way, you know what, we missed a good bit
Speaker 1: of scrubs tribue. I got to say it. I forget it.
Speaker 1: Do you guys remember Real j D's wife's name. She's
Speaker 1: Elliott and real do you know her last name? Her
Speaker 1: maiden last name her No, her maiden last name was
Speaker 1: is Dolly Clock. I'm horrible at naming characters. Do you
Speaker 1: remember a character on our show named Molly Clock That
Speaker 1: was Heather Graham? Yes, wow you Yeah. By the way,
Speaker 1: a lot of our fans bill On when we put
Speaker 1: the first episode out, we asked the question, well, I
Speaker 1: asked a random questions saying I don't even know what
Speaker 1: sitcom set that was, and like my whole Twitter feed
Speaker 1: was like answering that it was the Damon Wayne's show
Speaker 1: having kids. There you go, so everyone probably you know
Speaker 1: my favorite, my favorite part of this show and it's
Speaker 1: not even the a storyline in this episode is the
Speaker 1: clock the countdown. You could have made the whole show
Speaker 1: about that. That was That could have been the whole show.
Speaker 1: That's good. That's a good writer trick. You put an
Speaker 1: imaginary ticking clock on something and everybody invest in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was clever. Wait before we get to the show,
Speaker 1: I just want to ask another trivia thing of Bill.
Speaker 1: I got so geeked out. I really did my homework
Speaker 1: this week, and like, oh wait, before you go, I
Speaker 1: want to tell Donald because he can look him up.
Speaker 1: There's a picture of Donald and the surgeon he was
Speaker 1: based on. Donald would be named John Turk because that's
Speaker 1: the surgeon's name Button j D was already John, so
Speaker 1: he became Chris Turk. There's a picture of you with
Speaker 1: your arm around John Turk when he visited set once
Speaker 1: and I'm not even sure who he was, remember him.
Speaker 1: I remember when he came in visit. He was like,
Speaker 1: I'm Turk and I remember him being white and me
Speaker 1: being like, oh snap, Donald was like million not I'm Church. Um.
Speaker 1: I want to just want to do one other bit
Speaker 1: of a trivia that is that UM ABC passed on
Speaker 1: the show. Yeah. So for those of you who don't
Speaker 1: know UM, the show is produced by ABC Studios, and
Speaker 1: ABC the network gets first crack at things if the
Speaker 1: studio produces it. And our show ended up on NBC,
Speaker 1: So tell us how that happened. The dude is a
Speaker 1: true story and I'm not even gonna out him is
Speaker 1: a nice man. When I pitched this show to the
Speaker 1: people that ran the ABC network, Uh, one of the
Speaker 1: dudes had a chair that you know, kind of blocked
Speaker 1: you could lean back into that blocked the view of
Speaker 1: his head. And about midway through the pitch, like a
Speaker 1: bad guy, like a bad guy in a movie. Bad guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and midway through the pitch we all heard audible snoring.
Speaker 1: You'd had a night I think the night before, and
Speaker 1: I was literally like, I don't think this pitch is
Speaker 1: going that well. Guys like, I'm not sure this is
Speaker 1: what you would call a sale in the room because
Speaker 1: that the dude that the dude that buys is snoozing.
Speaker 1: So they didn't buy it, and the guy that ran
Speaker 1: ABC Studios said, you got to wait five months. But
Speaker 1: then since they hated it, I'll say, hey, can I
Speaker 1: have permission to go sell this somewhere else? And they'll
Speaker 1: think it'll never sell, so they'll say okay, And then
Speaker 1: I went and sold NBC. But it was why the
Speaker 1: life of our show was so weird. We were one
Speaker 1: of the only shows on NBC completely owned by ABC,
Speaker 1: which is why time slot would me moved around and
Speaker 1: not always protected and stuff. So it was it was
Speaker 1: a weird business arrangement. I always wonder how that goes
Speaker 1: in the TV landscape when like, you know, you hear
Speaker 1: these stories of oh, every like everybody passed on Breaking Bad,
Speaker 1: you know, and the guy at ABC who passed on Scrubs,
Speaker 1: Like I just wonder if they if they fuck with
Speaker 1: each other in the hallways, like good job, Tim. You
Speaker 1: know the moment I had. There is a great guy
Speaker 1: at ABC who ran it for a while and as
Speaker 1: now a producer named Stu Bloomberg, and he ran into
Speaker 1: me after our first year and he goes, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't he heard that pitch. He was there. He's like,
Speaker 1: I heard that pitch and I didn't get it. Now
Speaker 1: I get it. I feel like an idiot. And I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that's really cool. So it was. He was very nice
Speaker 1: about at least he was mentioned he was not the
Speaker 1: one that fell asleep. Yeah, will you tell us about
Speaker 1: casting Turk? And um, you're just gonna get right into it. Well,
Speaker 1: I literally have like hours of questions for Bill, but
Speaker 1: I know we want to also do the episode, But
Speaker 1: tell tell us about just you know about We obviously
Speaker 1: want to know from your experience because we shared our
Speaker 1: experience in the in the first episode, but your experience
Speaker 1: of finding Donald. I was a Donald fan already. I
Speaker 1: had seen Clueless, you know, and U I just thought
Speaker 1: he was really funny and and and he killed all
Speaker 1: his auditions and uh in the test part of it. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really interesting because I feel like I, um,
Speaker 1: both hurt and then saved Donald in a way to
Speaker 1: make myself look like a hero feel pretty cool about it,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, the one thing I tell people
Speaker 1: that don't understand what network tests used to be. It
Speaker 1: literally used to be that you would come as an
Speaker 1: actor and actress and stand in the head of casting's
Speaker 1: office while twenty people were in the back sitting or
Speaker 1: you know, leaning against the window judging you, and you'd
Speaker 1: have one chance. If you're actually shooting the show, you'd
Speaker 1: have twenty chances, but you'd have one chance to do
Speaker 1: it not mess up, you know, and and also somehow
Speaker 1: make a rim of people that all feel weird to
Speaker 1: be standing in someone's office anyways. Laugh. So I used
Speaker 1: to tell everybody, you know, the biggest curse in the
Speaker 1: world is low energy. You know what I mean, because
Speaker 1: if you come into those low energy everbody's gonna be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is horrible. And the one mistake I made with
Speaker 1: Donald is if you tell Donald once you doll up
Speaker 1: that energy to eleven, won't you make sure you dial
Speaker 1: that energy up to eleven? Everybody h Donald, I mean
Speaker 1: Donalds like, Hello Los Angeles. And he came in and
Speaker 1: he thing he did, he did his audition and the
Speaker 1: truth is he did crush all the comedy about what
Speaker 1: he left. They're like, that guy's energy was fantastic and
Speaker 1: he's really funny, but he very obviously can't do any
Speaker 1: of the sincere or dramatic moments because he's an insane person.
Speaker 1: And U and I'm like, no, no, no, you can
Speaker 1: that's me. That's me. And they never do this. But
Speaker 1: I had luckily been through the process before in a
Speaker 1: different show, and so I went out to Donald and
Speaker 1: tried to make it very grave because I wanted him
Speaker 1: to come in then and just play the drama of everything,
Speaker 1: you know, because I'm like, I told all of them,
Speaker 1: I'm like, look, that's my note. And if he comes
Speaker 1: back and does it the other way, you'll see you
Speaker 1: can do whatever we want. It's a single camera show,
Speaker 1: you know. And I went back to Donald and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I think I said something like, all right, they thought
Speaker 1: you suck shit. Yeah, those I thought you would come
Speaker 1: to tell me, all right, you got the part. You
Speaker 1: were like, so I'm walking. I remember skipping into the
Speaker 1: room like here we go, here we fucking go, and
Speaker 1: you were like So that really was horrible for them.
Speaker 1: For them, that was too much. I think much is
Speaker 1: the word um now, but the uh but then I
Speaker 1: just we talked for a while and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: just dial it down and now play it like it's
Speaker 1: not a comedy and play the drama of it. Donald
Speaker 1: came back in, and there's a compliment to his acting ability.
Speaker 1: He came back in and then he did it as
Speaker 1: if he wasn't looking for any laughs or energy, and
Speaker 1: he walked out. I'm sure shook by doing it again.
Speaker 1: And the second he walked out, the head of NBC
Speaker 1: casting and got named Mark Hurstfeld was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: see it totally. He's got it. Yeah, thank yeah, well,
Speaker 1: thank you. Well. First of all, thank you very much
Speaker 1: for being a hero and ste I'm not here. I
Speaker 1: don't have the best bedside manner. You guys know that,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't matter though. Man, you got the point across.
Speaker 1: And look, dude, twenty something years later, I owe you
Speaker 1: a lot. Bro. Well, I remember it's so intimidating. I
Speaker 1: almost I think that may have been the first time
Speaker 1: I ever made it to a network test and it
Speaker 1: was down to four of us and literally everyone there
Speaker 1: must have been thirty people crammed into a small office.
Speaker 1: It was the most awkward environment to ever try and
Speaker 1: do a good job. What was this for? This was
Speaker 1: for Scrubs? Really? It was that guy Mark, wasn't it
Speaker 1: Bill Mark? H Yeah. Everyone was crammed into his office
Speaker 1: and I was very nervous, and Sarah was there to
Speaker 1: read with me for her scenes. But I remember feeling
Speaker 1: my adrenaline come up, like I was almost going to
Speaker 1: have a panic attack, and I was like, not today. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I cheated. Everybody cheats. I cheated
Speaker 1: for the people I wanted to get the part. So
Speaker 1: you guys both had extra lines and jokes and moments
Speaker 1: that we had all come up with and found together
Speaker 1: that other actors weren't doing right. And then when I
Speaker 1: at the beginning, when I go in and talk to everybody,
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, I'm really into everybody bringing their own flavor.
Speaker 1: And so some of these actors and actresses have stuff
Speaker 1: that they've brought on their own and I let him
Speaker 1: do it. But it's not true, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's just you two and Sarah had stuff that you
Speaker 1: brought on your own that we let you do. Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I remember the time, thinking that's so awesome.
Speaker 1: He feels like he's rooting for me, but is he
Speaker 1: doing that with everyone? Like I didn't you know that?
Speaker 1: You know, I knew. I knew since then you've told
Speaker 1: me that. But at the time I'm thinking, like I think,
Speaker 1: I think, I think I might be his favorite, Like
Speaker 1: I'm getting extra jokes the you know, the only one
Speaker 1: that it's great trivia, the only one that we didn't
Speaker 1: know what was going to happen, and we shifted gears
Speaker 1: a little bit of like what are we gonna do
Speaker 1: if this doesn't happen? It's fascinating and I'll when you
Speaker 1: have them on the gut as a guest, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you I wrote in the script like we were looking
Speaker 1: for a John c McGinley type for doctor Cox. And
Speaker 1: John came in and read it and was fucking he
Speaker 1: was amazing. And then at the student he did something
Speaker 1: completely different and high energy John and his intensity dial
Speaker 1: had been dialed up like ten notches, and the reaction
Speaker 1: of the studio was like, whoa, that is way too
Speaker 1: And unlike with you guys, I wasn't even confident enough
Speaker 1: to bring John back in and go, hey, you did
Speaker 1: that wrong, because I feel like what would follow would
Speaker 1: be a hard blow to the face, you know, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, get off my neck, Get off my neck.
Speaker 1: Um and uh. And so we had this giant level.
Speaker 1: Me and the casting directors, you know, Brett and Debbie
Speaker 1: were like, uh, oh man, who's it going to be
Speaker 1: if it? Because for us it was John McGinley, And
Speaker 1: we went into the network and just said just cross
Speaker 1: your fingers. And he came into the network and did
Speaker 1: it completely different without anybody having spoken to him. And
Speaker 1: this the Johnny C dialed down ten notches and literally
Speaker 1: walked out of there as if he with the thought
Speaker 1: he almost said I got this as he left. It
Speaker 1: was just so Johnny C. He was older. He did it,
Speaker 1: and then I'm like you feel good? He's like cash,
Speaker 1: see you? So was Johnny had so many expressions that
Speaker 1: he would always say, we're talking about five good ones
Speaker 1: and and cash and how he'd better now, how are
Speaker 1: you doing better? Now? Better now? How are you doing
Speaker 1: there's five good ones for you. How are you doing
Speaker 1: better now? And then how he'd say to the editor.
Speaker 1: We'd finish the scene and our editor's name was John Michelle,
Speaker 1: and he go, well, we gave John Michelle some mamo,
Speaker 1: some amo, I love that dude. Man, that's funny speaking
Speaker 1: that you went out for like a Johnny C type
Speaker 1: and everything like that. I find it so funny that
Speaker 1: when that's almost like a gift and a curse when
Speaker 1: they when they say that we talked about this in
Speaker 1: the last podcast, you know what I mean when they
Speaker 1: say we're looking for a Zach Braft type, they're not
Speaker 1: looking for Zach Braft though, they're looking for a Zach
Speaker 1: Braff They want they want Zach braff ish. You know what,
Speaker 1: Although I think I thought it's different if like and
Speaker 1: this is a compliment, like right now, both you guys,
Speaker 1: you say Zach Bradford, Donald fays On, they're going TV star.
Speaker 1: When I said John c mcginwiy type at the time,
Speaker 1: it just meant a character actor, you know, with kind
Speaker 1: of an intensity thing. It wasn't like he was a
Speaker 1: household name, you know what I mean. So I don't
Speaker 1: think it cursed him as much because there's no insult
Speaker 1: to him. Seven out of ten people that read the
Speaker 1: script or like, no, no, no, cool, who's John c mcginway,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And so he didn't have
Speaker 1: this yes, guy, you mean office space, But that's a
Speaker 1: different guy. No, it's the same guy. No, that's not
Speaker 1: the same guy. So uh now if you say John
Speaker 1: c mcginway type, people are like, oh yeah, arms crossed,
Speaker 1: super intense, you know, but that kind of didn't scary intimidating,
Speaker 1: Oh scary, you know what I mean. And then we
Speaker 1: were we were afraid of Bill in the beginning. But
Speaker 1: then when we got like more, I never said that. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I did say one thing. I did say
Speaker 1: one thing, and because of it, because of it, it
Speaker 1: stuck with me for the rest of the fucking show.
Speaker 1: And I said one time, I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: Bill said to everybody. He was like, look, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: write for all of you, whatever you do, just don't
Speaker 1: come in my fucking office and say, how come I'm
Speaker 1: not in the show this week. And so as a joke,
Speaker 1: I went into his office. I was like, dude, I'm
Speaker 1: fucking barely in the show this week. And he was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you got phase on and that's stuck with me. But
Speaker 1: do you remember phase Oh my goodness, I totally forgot
Speaker 1: about that. So Donald did that and then for the
Speaker 1: rest of the show, when you were when you were light,
Speaker 1: when you barely had anything to do in the episode.
Speaker 1: People are like, oh, man, I got phase on, I
Speaker 1: got phase I remember the only two things I remember
Speaker 1: like that, I remember phase and I remember even saying
Speaker 1: to guest actors, um see if you guys remember this.
Speaker 1: A guest actor would be like, I still don't think
Speaker 1: I nailed that line. I'm like, dude, I don't have
Speaker 1: time pet to Sarah one Morsey because Sarah she wants
Speaker 1: one more when she's had seven five. Because Sarah, no
Speaker 1: matter how many takes she did, like, she'd be like
Speaker 1: the director would always be like, Okay, Sarah, you good.
Speaker 1: Can we move on one more? One more? We'll be
Speaker 1: like something so good about it. Confused guest actor's face
Speaker 1: when I'm like, dude, I don't have time to Sarah
Speaker 1: one Morsey right now, they thought I was speaking like
Speaker 1: kling On. It is gibberish that that song had like
Speaker 1: a nice hook to it. She wants one more when
Speaker 1: she's had five. S Hey, you know what's interesting? I
Speaker 1: can I remember something donald about someone choosing a take
Speaker 1: in this episode. I wish I could remember who said.
Speaker 1: It might have been um Neil Goldman because he was
Speaker 1: up on set. But it's in the cut, and I
Speaker 1: didn't have it in the initial cut, and he said
Speaker 1: there's one take where Donald comes in and says, uh,
Speaker 1: does as anybody seen my keys? How about my wallet?
Speaker 1: And he says, how about my wallet? Like Chris Rock
Speaker 1: my wallet? I literally went back to the cut and
Speaker 1: I went back to the cut. Watch that, master, and
Speaker 1: you're like, how about my wallet? Donald? Was that Chris
Speaker 1: Rock inspired? I wanted to ask you, Now, it's probably
Speaker 1: Eddie Murphy inspired, obviously, yeah, but it was how about there? Well,
Speaker 1: there's there's that one. And the one that we used
Speaker 1: to laugh at all the time from this episode is
Speaker 1: I try to discover a Little Man. I remember we
Speaker 1: laughed for days about that. You're really funny in this episode.
Speaker 1: I wanted to say, yes, you are. Now that we're
Speaker 1: talking about the episode, I was gonna say that we
Speaker 1: can segue to the This is episode three My Best
Speaker 1: Friend's Mistake, and first of all, as a show called
Speaker 1: Our Stride, I feel like in this episode, now, the
Speaker 1: next episode that's after this is My Old Lady, and
Speaker 1: I think that's the third episode we shot, but this
Speaker 1: episode aired before My Old Flip. I'm correct. Why Why
Speaker 1: were Donald and I? You'll have the answer to this.
Speaker 1: Both Donald and I forever have always said, oh, one
Speaker 1: h three was the episode where we lose three patients,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of like a good hitting our
Speaker 1: stride moment. And then both of us this morning went
Speaker 1: to go rewatch the show and we're like, oh, one
Speaker 1: h three is not that? Did they twitch around? I'm
Speaker 1: almost positive, but I gotta go look. The pilot and
Speaker 1: the next one or two were directed by Adam Bernstein. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can help you out because Joel, our amazing producer,
Speaker 1: made a note here that she said, I read this
Speaker 1: was originally supposed to be episode two, this one. It
Speaker 1: wasn't that as much is because we fixed that in
Speaker 1: scripting stage. They wanted me to repilot and I wrote
Speaker 1: episode two that you guys talked about. And then Adam
Speaker 1: didn't want to go away for a week and come back,
Speaker 1: so he was directing two episodes in a row. I
Speaker 1: think we crossboarded even a little bit. I can't remember,
Speaker 1: off to check. And then Mark Buckland directed The Mild Lady.
Speaker 1: After this, even though it was the third episode. We're
Speaker 1: going to split him out because Adam wasn't coming from
Speaker 1: New York and even though we were gonna go you're
Speaker 1: going to direct the first episode. In the third episode,
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, I'm not flying home and coming back.
Speaker 1: I'll do all the prep before and do him, you know,
Speaker 1: because he's a quirky character. So then we say, so
Speaker 1: this day, I've tried to get him to come do
Speaker 1: with other things in the years since, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I don't really like to leave New York. Donald smart
Speaker 1: because we did catch our stride with two things. And
Speaker 1: I'll see if you guys that we used to have
Speaker 1: this big wall of things that we were trying to
Speaker 1: establish his motifs for the show, and this one was
Speaker 1: we had a super long discussion. The reason we did
Speaker 1: that runner about how important music was going to be
Speaker 1: in this show. And so we're like, we're even going
Speaker 1: to make a song travel around this show like a virus,
Speaker 1: and you know that'll be the start of how queuing
Speaker 1: people in that music isn't just background on this show.
Speaker 1: It has huge importance. You know. The song that we chose,
Speaker 1: I'm So in love with you, you know, just give
Speaker 1: me able to it was it was specifically about what
Speaker 1: was going on in those scenes. It wasn't just a
Speaker 1: viral song. And we were trying to train people to go, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to listen to the words of the song too,
Speaker 1: because they're about what we're actually doing. And then the
Speaker 1: second thing, this is why it was important that Bernstein
Speaker 1: was there, was when we first discussed that the camera
Speaker 1: is a character. And it's the first time we did
Speaker 1: a cowboy switch. When Zach's running to meet Elliott, that
Speaker 1: a stunt man dives and takes a face plant, and
Speaker 1: the camera doesn't just cut It goes around looking for
Speaker 1: him like it's like it's an actual character, you know,
Speaker 1: and then Zach cuts up like this. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: there was a thought bubble you could have almost looped
Speaker 1: in the camera, going where'd you go? And and so
Speaker 1: those two things kind of set a creation, of course
Speaker 1: for the show in ways that you know, we kind
Speaker 1: of ran with after this. Yeah, I didn't remember this
Speaker 1: one so much. And then as I was watching and
Speaker 1: I was going, wow, there was there's a lot in
Speaker 1: this episode that are little moments that stuck with me forever,
Speaker 1: like the friend zone and and the timer and the
Speaker 1: creative timer clock thing every time I see Sarah and
Speaker 1: and Donald. Uh. You know, there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: that were that were used throughout the show too, that
Speaker 1: that are established here, like it's the first time we
Speaker 1: see Donald playing basketball, and and you look very good
Speaker 1: down you look very fit. I wish I could get
Speaker 1: back into that shape. You can eat too much shit. Well,
Speaker 1: twenty six years old body compared to a forty six
Speaker 1: year old body is a big, big, big, big difference. Man. Well,
Speaker 1: I I really I took notice that you looked fire. Well.
Speaker 1: I accept and received that, and so did Rob Mashio,
Speaker 1: like Rob ye any black hair? Uh the uh the
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, man. So this is one of
Speaker 1: the things I get mocked for. Why this episode stuck
Speaker 1: in my head was we all have those things, like
Speaker 1: remember when you share something with friends that you wish
Speaker 1: you hadn't or or you're drunk and you say something
Speaker 1: to it's a shiver story. When you think back, you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: so Donald was getting a nuggie to Jeff Zucker. Yes,
Speaker 1: so one of mine, And in writer's rooms you tell
Speaker 1: personal stories. Was in a fraternity Really I was in
Speaker 1: a fraternity. Yeah no, I was, And uh you were
Speaker 1: in a fraternity? Yeah no, I swear Okay. In college
Speaker 1: we were all drinking and hanging out and I was
Speaker 1: a little buzzy, and I had a hometown girlfriend, and um,
Speaker 1: you really think you can go and you care that
Speaker 1: much about her? And I said, and it haunted me
Speaker 1: for the rest of the year. They tortured me. I said, dude,
Speaker 1: I miss you so much it hurts sometimes. And that
Speaker 1: became one of the memes from this show because the
Speaker 1: mental I gotta tell you of all the memes and
Speaker 1: and anything I get, gifts I get sent um, I
Speaker 1: miss you so much it hurts sometimes, is one of
Speaker 1: the most common. And it's also, by the way, the
Speaker 1: core of how to use you know, I said, Look,
Speaker 1: voiceover can be a crutch comedically because it's so easy.
Speaker 1: And when I teach, like the Writers Guild, they're like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean how, I'm like, well, the easiest
Speaker 1: way is to state a premise in your voiceover and
Speaker 1: then do the opposite. An example is just tell Turk
Speaker 1: how you feel without sounding like you know a girl
Speaker 1: for once. I miss you so much it hurts sometimes.
Speaker 1: Another one was when Elliott had the voice over or
Speaker 1: uh is when Kelso spilled stuff on his face. Whatever
Speaker 1: you do, do not say the word splotchy. And I
Speaker 1: think Jade, I think you just said good splotchy, doctor
Speaker 1: splotch instead of why would you even say good spot
Speaker 1: That's not even a word good anyways, all right, so
Speaker 1: I wanted to say at forty nine seconds in as
Speaker 1: my first Muppet exit that I ever did in the
Speaker 1: show scrolls, which which I always thought of, was when
Speaker 1: I when I would just turn my head. I always
Speaker 1: always laughed at how Kermit the Frog and all the
Speaker 1: Muppets with Sesame Street characters would always turn and then
Speaker 1: and then walk out. Yeah, so I U when I
Speaker 1: when I leave the viewing room here, I sort of
Speaker 1: do a side turn and I just kind of laughed.
Speaker 1: I think that was the first time I tried out
Speaker 1: my successful Muppet exit. Also ever, yeah became well it was.
Speaker 1: It was a go to bill. At one to eleven,
Speaker 1: there's an exterior shot of the hospital that has never
Speaker 1: ever seen again, I don't think, And I noticed that
Speaker 1: it says something about women's on the top of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: paint it out. We didn't have the budget at the
Speaker 1: time to be painting or to be painting things out.
Speaker 1: But it's funny watching the early episodes, there's like it
Speaker 1: looks like you guys were it looks like someone was like,
Speaker 1: do we have an exterior shot at the hospital? Nah?
Speaker 1: How about that one? All right? Well we went and
Speaker 1: shot a bunch of stuff that we used in the pilot,
Speaker 1: and then once we ran out of that stuff, we
Speaker 1: just started shooting it to their own building, right. But
Speaker 1: this one was this, This was not because it says
Speaker 1: women's something at the top. Yeah, No, it was particularly bad.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of bad stuff in here, guys. Mate.
Speaker 1: You know, I always get shipped for that because I'm
Speaker 1: always like, you, guys, remember my favorite thing to say
Speaker 1: when we're so busy is I'll take all I'll take
Speaker 1: all the mail on that. Okay, So someone like an
Speaker 1: editor would come up and go, that says women's and
Speaker 1: I'm like, when the letters come and there are thousands
Speaker 1: of them are going to come, Dear Scrubs used to
Speaker 1: be a huge fan, But that hospital exterior said women's
Speaker 1: on it. You can send all those letters to me.
Speaker 1: I'll take all the mail. And it was such an arrogant,
Speaker 1: dicky thing to say, but I just never got caught up. No,
Speaker 1: but it's true because if they're looking at stuff like that,
Speaker 1: they're not really watching the show, you know. What I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Bill would always said that when we when we were
Speaker 1: like when we were all holding up for something like
Speaker 1: you're you're in the wrong, you're wearing the wrong watch.
Speaker 1: Bill would be like, guys, I'll take all the mail
Speaker 1: on the wrong watch. Let's say that. And then the
Speaker 1: meanest thing that you could say is to say to
Speaker 1: John Inwood all the time was he would make you, guys,
Speaker 1: wait while he went and fixed a light, you know,
Speaker 1: a way in the background. Take it ten minutes. And
Speaker 1: when he finally got back to camera, I always go,
Speaker 1: show Saber, you know, we were in real trouble and
Speaker 1: you fixed it with that light that's one hundred yards
Speaker 1: in the background. Yeah. Well, the man was passionate. He
Speaker 1: wanted to get it just perfect exact. That was also
Speaker 1: the episode was also not only your first Muppet exit.
Speaker 1: I wish I had a wider frame, but the first
Speaker 1: time that when you got up from following that you
Speaker 1: shook out your shoulders. Oh really that ocame. Thanks, I'm
Speaker 1: frozen in a frame here at two minutes of me
Speaker 1: in a threesome fantasy with Sarah Shaw and another beautiful
Speaker 1: model and we're all sweaty, and the first thing that
Speaker 1: came in my head, was could you even do that
Speaker 1: today on a half hour single camera network comedy. Not
Speaker 1: that because it was pretty suggestive and graphic risque. Sure,
Speaker 1: that was so awesome by way, like host of My
Speaker 1: job right right. Well, first of all, it was so
Speaker 1: awesome because that's everybody's fantasy to get married and for
Speaker 1: your wife to be like, yeah, we could do this,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be It's also it's one of the best
Speaker 1: outtakes ever. Do you remember that one outtake where Zach
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I keep kissing when they don't stop.
Speaker 1: Remember that. I remember something being like I was like,
Speaker 1: I know, I think I was like keep rolling. Yeah. Look,
Speaker 1: I've had this discussion a lot. There's tons of things
Speaker 1: on our show you couldn't do now, correctly or incorrectly,
Speaker 1: Like the Todd is an interesting one, you know, and
Speaker 1: we used to say, uh, like the Todd started in
Speaker 1: a way. I don't know if you remember he was
Speaker 1: always in a banana hammock because I said, if we're
Speaker 1: gonna do a young man's fantasies and see women's scantily clad, um,
Speaker 1: I think we have to see as much, if not more,
Speaker 1: ridiculous male nudity and so Todd would just always be
Speaker 1: in a banana hammock um uh. And he was representative
Speaker 1: of somebody intentionally, so crass are so ludicrous that he's
Speaker 1: to be laughed at and not with, But unfortunately I
Speaker 1: think he was laughed with a lot. Um So I
Speaker 1: don't know if you could do him now. The one
Speaker 1: things I always get busted on or two storylines. One
Speaker 1: is when the janitor turned j D into a racist,
Speaker 1: and one is when I put Donald's picture on the
Speaker 1: cover of his college magazine twice. Do you remember when
Speaker 1: I said, like, your college was so happy to have
Speaker 1: an accomplished, great black guy that you know in their
Speaker 1: lily white school that on their brochure, your your pictures
Speaker 1: there twice. That yeah, they photoshopped you in twice just
Speaker 1: to look like a PC college. You know. Well, I
Speaker 1: noticed that. I noticed that. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: things and this is just how how time has gone.
Speaker 1: First of all, the show's about sexual harassment, which is
Speaker 1: very uh. This episode is yeah, because I was so dominant.
Speaker 1: Right now, one of Hollywood's biggest movie makers is now
Speaker 1: in jail for doing horrible, horrible, horrible things. Right, but
Speaker 1: we're touching things like that that are kind of untouched,
Speaker 1: like you can't touch these things now, these things that
Speaker 1: we were doing in the show back in the day,
Speaker 1: some of these things, networks would be like no, no no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: let's stay away from that, Let's stay away. They'd be
Speaker 1: so careful. I think, as Bill said, for some for better,
Speaker 1: we've we've evolved and we probably wouldn't make some of
Speaker 1: those jokes today, and in some I wonder if and
Speaker 1: this example, with the sort of sexual, sweaty threesome fantasy,
Speaker 1: I'm just surprised Bill that you got it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I knew you wanted to push the envelope of what
Speaker 1: the show could be. I'm just I just wondered, like,
Speaker 1: even in now in twenty and twenty if a in
Speaker 1: a primetime network comedy, if you could do a sweaty
Speaker 1: sex threesome joke. No. Look, I want to answer two things,
Speaker 1: because what Donald was saying, you know, it is interesting.
Speaker 1: We talked about it a lot because I don't know
Speaker 1: if you remember in this episode the resolve is that
Speaker 1: would have been a completely different story if doctor Cox
Speaker 1: or younger male was calling Sarah sweetheart and the boy's
Speaker 1: sport but we were kind of anticipating stuffing. We talked
Speaker 1: about it. Kelso was of a different generation. He was
Speaker 1: older than all you guys he called. He was definitely
Speaker 1: an old school dude. You can never say these things
Speaker 1: are innocuous, but it was a time in which at
Speaker 1: the end John c McGinley talks to Sarah and goes,
Speaker 1: if you're going to get mad about some quasi term
Speaker 1: of endearment, you know from an old out of touch dude,
Speaker 1: you know your life here is going to be a
Speaker 1: lot more complicated than it has to be. And she
Speaker 1: took the lesson of picking my battles, you know. So
Speaker 1: to Donald's answer, I think it's a story you can
Speaker 1: maybe still do if you're talking. Although we've now moved
Speaker 1: twenty years away from that. At that time we were
Speaker 1: going like, hey, here's a guy in his mid to
Speaker 1: late sixties. You know that is without a doubt, of
Speaker 1: a generation. I got so much trouble when he Kelso
Speaker 1: said to a male nurse, you know, oh, you're wondering
Speaker 1: why you don't get respected, It's because you're doing a
Speaker 1: woman's job. And our intent was that Kelso is so
Speaker 1: out of touch that he would say that you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And then the complaints I got from
Speaker 1: Nurse's Association, got letters and stuff true, were how could
Speaker 1: you have a character saying that when it's such a
Speaker 1: problem that characters that people out there, especially from that generation,
Speaker 1: believe that and say that. I'm like, right, it's real.
Speaker 1: He's the bad guy on the show. And there's a
Speaker 1: nursing shortage like don't discourage people. Yeah, he's the bad
Speaker 1: guy on the show. He has those thoughts, and in
Speaker 1: a good way. I think Kelso evolved and into Zach's question.
Speaker 1: It comes all under the heading and it's not just
Speaker 1: with those two girls, which was a joke and obviously
Speaker 1: a joke about some you know, young male fantasy, but
Speaker 1: this is for both of you, and for Sarah and
Speaker 1: for Judy. When I said the show has to be
Speaker 1: real beyond the goofiness. What we fought about more than
Speaker 1: jokes was about when we would have sex scenes, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was really important to me, not in no
Speaker 1: as sibious way that they seemed. They didn't seem like
Speaker 1: a TV sitcom kiss where everybody goes whoo. And some
Speaker 1: of the romance scenes between Zach and Sarah and Donald
Speaker 1: and Judy and even Johnny C and my wife, which
Speaker 1: still turns my stomach a little bit because I had
Speaker 1: to see it. Did I had to kiss Christa so
Speaker 1: early and I was still in the terrified of Bill
Speaker 1: Phays and um it was an early episode I don't know,
Speaker 1: which was probably five or something, and I had to
Speaker 1: make out with Krista, and I remember being like, this
Speaker 1: is the craziest job. I'm about to make out with
Speaker 1: my boss's wife for him. I still had that on
Speaker 1: a loop at my house. It's awesome soon. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: it means super sexy. I'm really grateful. Oh my gosh, no,
Speaker 1: but it is. Did you did you guys think you
Speaker 1: were doing fairly racy sex scenes? The two absolutely throughout
Speaker 1: the whole joke. I mean, I can't remember that big
Speaker 1: famous one that Sarah and I did with the pizza.
Speaker 1: I remember that being like, I can't believe they're gonna
Speaker 1: put even put this on TV. This is gonna be censored,
Speaker 1: and all my stuff with Amy Smart, I remember being like,
Speaker 1: they're gonna air this, like I was really excited about
Speaker 1: and not in that way, but like when Judy and
Speaker 1: I would do scenes together, I was it really felt
Speaker 1: like we were a couple when watched when I watched it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, because that's how I don't
Speaker 1: know that there was just something that was really uh uh.
Speaker 1: She and I had great chemistry, I feel like and
Speaker 1: because of that, and because of that, I uh, you
Speaker 1: know when I watched her stuff. That's that's what everybody
Speaker 1: hopes for when they do romantic stuff, that the audience
Speaker 1: believes it. And if the audience doesn't believe it, well
Speaker 1: hopefully I believe it, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: I liked you guys. I like you guys. Is no
Speaker 1: offense because I love Zach and Sarah. But my favorite
Speaker 1: couple on the show, Donald and Judy because as a
Speaker 1: writer's room on a glasshem the writer's room. One of
Speaker 1: the things we put on those boards in the first
Speaker 1: couple of weeks was we're gonna get Turk and Carla
Speaker 1: together and never break them up and never threatened them
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, because we're gonna do will they
Speaker 1: or won't they with the other characters and how cool
Speaker 1: is it to see a couple that finds each other
Speaker 1: and works right And the only reason we ever even
Speaker 1: had you guys have a little dip here there as
Speaker 1: a couple was because we never expected the show to
Speaker 1: last nine years, and we had to be like, we
Speaker 1: should probably throw a couple of curveballs there a way, man,
Speaker 1: you know we need them. Looking back at it now,
Speaker 1: it's the it's perfect as a young man doing you
Speaker 1: know who's on a television show? Like I used to
Speaker 1: be like and were gonna have Holly Berry on the
Speaker 1: show as my love interest? And those things could never
Speaker 1: ever happened. Were you bummed out? Not that it was
Speaker 1: Judy because she's a knockout, but were you all my
Speaker 1: love I know? But where you like where all my
Speaker 1: love interests? Yeah? Absolutely, man, But when you look back
Speaker 1: at the storytelling, when you look back at at at
Speaker 1: the relationship that those two have, Like I can't post
Speaker 1: pictures of my wife and I because people are like,
Speaker 1: that's not Carla. Yeah. I get hit by the way
Speaker 1: most pictures of me hugging anyone because they're like, why
Speaker 1: aren't you hugging turk? Right? That's that's the other one
Speaker 1: that comes up. I'll be like, here's a lovely picture
Speaker 1: of me and my family and they're like, that's not
Speaker 1: where's j D? Where's that? Braf? People? People hit me
Speaker 1: all the time too with how and we tried to
Speaker 1: do it you and Judy reacted. You know, TV is
Speaker 1: a world in which a wife has her hands on
Speaker 1: her hips and is frustrated with a husband or the
Speaker 1: husband's like, you know, you're crazy. And even when we
Speaker 1: sent you guys in crazy stories. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: scenes was in a later episode, but when you guys
Speaker 1: find out Judy's pregnant before she does, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: tell her and everybody knows her and know the cool
Speaker 1: thing about your characters is that you when when it
Speaker 1: comes to a comedic peak, and we did this a lot,
Speaker 1: you admit fault and then she, instead of punishing you
Speaker 1: for it, says, I, who gives a shit? We're having
Speaker 1: a baby, you know what I mean. And that's not
Speaker 1: often how real couples work. So it was a couple
Speaker 1: to aspire to, right, I thought, looking back at it now,
Speaker 1: I love it, like just the even the courtship, even
Speaker 1: how the show starts and how these guys start offs.
Speaker 1: You know they're not together, but if you didn't watch
Speaker 1: the show from the beginning, you would imagine that when
Speaker 1: the show was introduced, these characters started off to you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like you watch Family Guy and
Speaker 1: you and you say, okay, so Peter's married to and
Speaker 1: this is his family and this is and you accept
Speaker 1: that the whole way through. There's no need for an
Speaker 1: origin story or anything like that. And that's why I
Speaker 1: feel it is with Carla and Turk, there's no need
Speaker 1: for an origin story. They're just a TV couple that works,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, I was. I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this because get taken it back to
Speaker 1: the episode, like the way Zach was doing cool things
Speaker 1: in freezing frames. I was trying to remember Minusia for
Speaker 1: you guys, and the only the Turk and Carlo Minusha
Speaker 1: I remember was the scene in which you two are
Speaker 1: going to hang out and watch Fletch and then Donald leaves.
Speaker 1: It was very subtle. We added, It's one of those
Speaker 1: discussions you have in the writer's room. It's like Donald's
Speaker 1: psyched to watch Fletch and Carlo says, do you want
Speaker 1: to go hang out in your room? We don't want
Speaker 1: just Carla to go do you want to go? Fuck?
Speaker 1: Because that makes her seem like a bimbo, And we
Speaker 1: don't want Turk to just you know, be like I'll
Speaker 1: drop j D in an instant. So like the dumb
Speaker 1: things you argue about in writer's room, you won't even
Speaker 1: notice unless you watch it again. Did you see that
Speaker 1: Carlo was holding two beers? So like when she goes
Speaker 1: to you go look at again, she goes, you're watching Fletch,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's funny when we do all the lines,
Speaker 1: she goes, hey, you want to go hang out in
Speaker 1: your room? And she's got So it's not with the
Speaker 1: women in the writing staff very right. We wanted to
Speaker 1: make it. Oh, we're not just gonna go fuck. I
Speaker 1: mean we will eventually, but she's got two beers. So
Speaker 1: it's like, do you want to go out your room,
Speaker 1: we both have a beer, we'll shoot the shit and
Speaker 1: then we'll hook up. And that fine line I think people,
Speaker 1: as me being a nerd, I think people, even if
Speaker 1: they don't notice that it's subtext, that they if you
Speaker 1: do a ton of it, they gradually notice that it's
Speaker 1: more than just physical. That's seen also, Zach d And
Speaker 1: you can hand it back to you, but you had.
Speaker 1: One of our other first arguments was we constantly fought
Speaker 1: in the writer's room, and I made huge mistakes as
Speaker 1: we went along about things that should be a fantasy
Speaker 1: and shouldn't. And this was one of the first arguments
Speaker 1: because when Carlos is, do you want to go hang
Speaker 1: out in my room? We look to you and when
Speaker 1: we look back, the remote control is still hovering in
Speaker 1: the air. Yeah, and it drops and it's very bugs bunny.
Speaker 1: And it was not done as a fantasy, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? And you already did you always this
Speaker 1: early have the sort of white flash to a fantasy? Always? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were. We were making the rules still, but we
Speaker 1: hadn't done the sound effects because we were just starting
Speaker 1: to obsess about the difference between fantasies and flashbacks. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the funniest things I think in
Speaker 1: throughout nine years of Scrubs is that Bill was always
Speaker 1: dancing around what is so broad that's that it's a
Speaker 1: fantasy or what could exist in this world? And there's
Speaker 1: a There's two that come to mind is my favorites
Speaker 1: that he put in the real world, but we're probably
Speaker 1: supposed to be fantasies. One one is when when Donald
Speaker 1: packs me into the bag, it was literally, it was
Speaker 1: literally the size of a fucking bowling back. Sorry, it
Speaker 1: was a backpack, and I was like, and if you remember,
Speaker 1: my arm and leg were sticking up like my body
Speaker 1: never had I had a fake foot by your head.
Speaker 1: And then so when he scratched your nose, that was
Speaker 1: real and in the real world. And the other one
Speaker 1: is that the janitor builds a full size house out
Speaker 1: of sand in the barking lot, and that was in
Speaker 1: the real world. That the all right, the sand castle
Speaker 1: is not my fault because the sand castle, the gag,
Speaker 1: you know, it was written like it was real in
Speaker 1: the script, and we thought it would be a sand
Speaker 1: castle like the size of like you ever see a
Speaker 1: kid's playhouse like outside, something you could actually build and
Speaker 1: are When I showed up, I drove, I tried to
Speaker 1: drive to my parking spot that morning, and the parking
Speaker 1: lot was closed. I remember gone, oh, rounded the part
Speaker 1: and there was like a final tap there was a
Speaker 1: sand castle as big as my home. I'm like, oh, no, well,
Speaker 1: that's we can't say it's a fantasy, because I think
Speaker 1: he lived there. For most of the episode. He kept
Speaker 1: yelling at people. Those are the two that always stuck
Speaker 1: out in my mind as one, and I'm sure as
Speaker 1: we go through the series we'll find other ones, but
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, like, oh my god, that one in
Speaker 1: the bag was in the sand castle. Ye mistake. So
Speaker 1: listen to twenty five. We were talking about how you
Speaker 1: phased out In this episode you were you went nuts
Speaker 1: with sound effects and there's there's literally a horn noise
Speaker 1: when Johnny for fucking when you and Jady eventually do Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this episode, this, this might have been your
Speaker 1: peak sound effects moment as you're figuring out, oh no,
Speaker 1: there's another one coming. I know there's another one coming,
Speaker 1: but this one has this one has the ear flick
Speaker 1: noise and also pretty much like any time Johnny c moves.
Speaker 1: You guys did the trivia question of Jeff's you know
Speaker 1: the Powers that Be And you know it's hard to
Speaker 1: screen rough cuts some single camera shows because they wouldn't
Speaker 1: hear the laughs of all their friends and Will and Grace.
Speaker 1: Is this funny? And I thought it was funny. I
Speaker 1: hated those sound effects so much. Did you guys do
Speaker 1: the trivia question of the one sound effect that stayed
Speaker 1: all nine years? It's got to be the wish to
Speaker 1: go away into fantasy? Yeah, no, wish to fantasies, though,
Speaker 1: is not a sign effect with an actor. There's an actor,
Speaker 1: Oh Todd high five? Who there you go, Todd's high
Speaker 1: five being amplified times nine thousand. I think it's I
Speaker 1: think that's the sound of like a rubber matt being
Speaker 1: slapped on the ground, which you know, and we kept
Speaker 1: that one forever. That's funny. They really hurt, by the way.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, John, I'm not being a whimp.
Speaker 1: They genuinely hurt. No one's calling you a whimp. But
Speaker 1: come on. He still passes out fives, you know on
Speaker 1: a line to people. I know you can. You can
Speaker 1: go on Cameo. By the way, we'll give robo shout out.
Speaker 1: You can go on Cameo and Rob Maschio will send
Speaker 1: you a message and high five you virtually. And uh go,
Speaker 1: go hire a rob to give your friends a virtual
Speaker 1: high five. On count I kind of want to get
Speaker 1: one for Donald. I'll accept and receive it, thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Three twenty six, The janitor says, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite lines of the first season. You see him unhappy.
Speaker 1: I like that I had forgotten that you lock you
Speaker 1: outside and was talking about Neil for a second bill
Speaker 1: because we told we shared with the with the listeners.
Speaker 1: The story about how you know he wasn't intended to
Speaker 1: be in your mind as big a role as he
Speaker 1: was or and and of course everyone always discusses that
Speaker 1: he may have been a figment of my imagination if
Speaker 1: if the show only went one season, but just talk
Speaker 1: about Neil and how you kept expanding his part because
Speaker 1: he was just so freaking funny. I have a question,
Speaker 1: did he have to audition? Also, that's the other question.
Speaker 1: He did not have to here here's here's what happened
Speaker 1: is Neil does a stand up bit when he's interviewed
Speaker 1: because he's a really good actor. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys have ever seen him any of his dramatic stuff.
Speaker 1: In the middle, he was the theater and he's so good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he came in and read for John mc for
Speaker 1: doctor Cox and um, he was really good. But literally
Speaker 1: there because we were old buddies, I'm like, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be the janitor and uh. And so when he talks
Speaker 1: about it, he's like, so I really prepared and I
Speaker 1: came in and then build it. I'm gonna be the Jane.
Speaker 1: And when Neil does the bit, Neil's like, well, I
Speaker 1: still carry around like a clipboard and a stuff mop
Speaker 1: carry around a mop. He well, I get to wear
Speaker 1: one of those cool lab jumpsuit. Gray jumpsuit. Oh, he
Speaker 1: would get so mad. Neil would that it wasn't a jumpsuit.
Speaker 1: He goes, it's it's a gray shirt and pants. It's
Speaker 1: not a jumpsuit. I'm sorry. I always thought that his
Speaker 1: character was like the worst janitor in the world, But
Speaker 1: when you watched the show, he's always working and he's
Speaker 1: always doing his job. He was never lazy, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. He was drunk most of the time.
Speaker 1: As one of my favorite lines ever, have you been drinking?
Speaker 1: I'm not drunk. Nah. So look, JD, the real j
Speaker 1: D told me often when he was talking about it,
Speaker 1: there would always be somebody as there's any group dynamic.
Speaker 1: When he was a resident, we just plague him, you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't always a janitor or whatever. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to come up with that character for you, and I
Speaker 1: thought it would be a line here or there. But
Speaker 1: Neil was so funny man and such a gift just
Speaker 1: to have around. And he's you know me, whenever I
Speaker 1: think someone's funny in their buddy yet put him or
Speaker 1: hurrying as much as I possibly can, so he became
Speaker 1: more and more of a character in ways I never thought.
Speaker 1: And part of the joy for me of going back
Speaker 1: and look at these episodes not only seeing moments like
Speaker 1: that Zach that I know Neil made up. You know,
Speaker 1: like even in this episode, you're screaming and the line
Speaker 1: in the script is la la la, I can't hear you.
Speaker 1: But then I kept it in because like, that's one
Speaker 1: of the first times that I looked in editing. And
Speaker 1: then there was Neil going, what you love who you know?
Speaker 1: I mean, just playing around with you, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. I remember the scenes with Neil would always
Speaker 1: be so fun because you know, we'd all riffer around,
Speaker 1: but Neil was the best at it, and and you
Speaker 1: just never knew what he was going to say. And
Speaker 1: I just remember I always knew I was going to
Speaker 1: laugh extra hard because he would just come up with
Speaker 1: the craziest shit ever. I was randomly down the wormhole
Speaker 1: of getting ready to talk to you. To you guy,
Speaker 1: by the way, the end of my other sentence was
Speaker 1: one of the gifts for me. The show go on
Speaker 1: and evolved, some stuff got worse as a writer, you know,
Speaker 1: like when you say, I torture myself when I got
Speaker 1: too broad and stuff like that. But then some stuff
Speaker 1: got better, characters got richer, And last night, randomly, I
Speaker 1: was watching Neil interact with Donald, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember when he had a
Speaker 1: sock puppet. He's like, he pretended to hit you with these,
Speaker 1: and your dynamic with him was so funny as well.
Speaker 1: You know, it was cool to see him start to
Speaker 1: interact with other characters. But the wormhole I ended up
Speaker 1: with last night and everybody should go look for it.
Speaker 1: There's a scene with Sam Lloyd who plays Ted, and
Speaker 1: Zach and Neil and you guys are trying to help
Speaker 1: Neil with a girlfriend. You know, he's trying to the
Speaker 1: girl that played the ukulele Kate mccochie cooch. You're trying
Speaker 1: to get him to go for it with her. And
Speaker 1: I told Neil, I'm like, you gotta make up something
Speaker 1: of what you did with your girlfriend. And Neil, Zach,
Speaker 1: we used your real reactions. He made up a monologue
Speaker 1: about killing a d for her. It's not in the script,
Speaker 1: and I watched it last night. He goes, he starts,
Speaker 1: and he goes, he goes, look, you should give her
Speaker 1: a present, um, like, something personal, something you made. Like
Speaker 1: when I first started dating lady, I gave her a
Speaker 1: duck that I killed already already a weird premise, right,
Speaker 1: And then he said, uh, I know what you're asking.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't have been more personal to kill her in front
Speaker 1: of her? And yes it would have, which is also
Speaker 1: made up. And then he goes, but the duck and
Speaker 1: I were driving over and uh and he goes, he goes,
Speaker 1: maybe I was having a bad day, maybe he was.
Speaker 1: I don't know. But next thing you know, we're pulled
Speaker 1: over on the side of the road, shirts off, which
Speaker 1: meant the duck was wearing her shirt. He goes, next
Speaker 1: thing you know, we're pulled over on the side of
Speaker 1: the road, shirts off, you know, seeing what's what? So
Speaker 1: Neil described a scene that he beat a duck to
Speaker 1: death on the side of the freeway. Yes, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's why that guy's in the show so much. Man.
Speaker 1: I said, hey, come up with something that you did
Speaker 1: for your girlfriend, and he's like, what he's probably looking
Speaker 1: for is that I beat a duck to death for
Speaker 1: her and then brought it over so she could cook it.
Speaker 1: See it also he would also just come up with
Speaker 1: the craziest ship and to the point where in later episodes,
Speaker 1: in later seasons, Bill sometimes it would just say in
Speaker 1: the script, it just and then Neil makes up something. Yeah, Neil,
Speaker 1: please say something funny. So late I guess it was
Speaker 1: one script. I guess it was late night in the
Speaker 1: writer's room, Bill, and you're like, we're not going to
Speaker 1: do that, just putting Neil said something funny. Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: I wrote that in the script at the first time.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Neil, it's two in the morning, just say
Speaker 1: something funny. And the next day he did. Of course.
Speaker 1: You know, I liked it the most when I got
Speaker 1: to see him with you guys or with Sarah actually
Speaker 1: having a real moment, you know, because it's so cool
Speaker 1: that he could actually deliver, you know, absolutely. That's the
Speaker 1: interesting thing as we you know, as a show goes on,
Speaker 1: you start to see people's first one on one scenes together,
Speaker 1: and so in this episode, John c McGinley and Sarah
Speaker 1: have their first real one on one scene where she's
Speaker 1: asking him for advice. And at this point, we as
Speaker 1: an as an audience member, we think that JD and
Speaker 1: John C McGinley are the only ones that you know,
Speaker 1: that's the only dad son relationship, but he was actually
Speaker 1: a dad to all of us in this show as
Speaker 1: far as you know what I mean. And this was
Speaker 1: the first episode where we see Sarah and him and
Speaker 1: actually him mess with Sarah in a way that could
Speaker 1: have gotten her fired, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 1: just thought that's I thought that was very interesting because
Speaker 1: eventually you have to introduce everybody, even though it took,
Speaker 1: you know, a whole season for everybody to meet the janitor,
Speaker 1: for the janitor to do other scenes with, for Neil
Speaker 1: to do other scenes with everyone other than Zach. It
Speaker 1: was just it's just interesting because when the show starts off,
Speaker 1: it seems like the bubble is so small, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And it starts with JD's relationship with everybody,
Speaker 1: but then as it goes on, the bubble just kept
Speaker 1: getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It's a great metaphor
Speaker 1: and by the end of it, we're all in the
Speaker 1: same universe together. And this is also the first episode
Speaker 1: where the hospital gets really wacky all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like we weren't whacky before that.
Speaker 1: Before this, we were you know, even though it's episode three,
Speaker 1: we started. This is where we're starting to do things
Speaker 1: that later on I think, you know, I love it
Speaker 1: when you jump from episode one or two and you
Speaker 1: jump all the way to episode you know, season three,
Speaker 1: episode five, because the growth of the show is so different,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I think about it in
Speaker 1: terms of characters, Like, What's one of the things that's
Speaker 1: hard for me to watch about the early episodes is
Speaker 1: Ken Jenkins is such a good actor, and he was
Speaker 1: the bad guy on this show, and I had not
Speaker 1: yet realized how deliciously silly and funny that guy could be.
Speaker 1: You know, that guy is a comedy assassin. But he
Speaker 1: was so good at being a guy that you just hated,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, And we leaned into that
Speaker 1: and he didn't have any other levels. So it's so
Speaker 1: cool when he expands, you know what I mean, to
Speaker 1: see that you know that he's silly and funny, that uh,
Speaker 1: Johnny c can be kind here there, that Donald and
Speaker 1: the janitor can go back and forth at each other,
Speaker 1: but beyond different playing fields because Donald's not threatened. Brian,
Speaker 1: It's it's weird to see you guys all at the
Speaker 1: beginning because I did like the rich characters that you
Speaker 1: all became very much. You know, I love it. Bill.
Speaker 1: We take a caller here on our show and it
Speaker 1: looks like side by the way, I just thought it
Speaker 1: was a super villain because it is us as a
Speaker 1: as a gentleman. That is, he's got a cat for
Speaker 1: you guys listening at home. His picture came up on
Speaker 1: zoom and he's petting a cat, like like the evil
Speaker 1: genius you all are enjoying talking about your show. Well,
Speaker 1: I have bad news, that's what um. All right, well,
Speaker 1: go ahead and introduce him. Yes, Hi, Mark, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Hi everyone, how are you? Can
Speaker 1: you hear me? Yes? We can? You just fine? Margin
Speaker 1: my first ever zoom meeting. I've never done this. I'm
Speaker 1: glad it's working. I'm glad you're here. Well, Mark, you
Speaker 1: picked a good episode to beyond because you have the
Speaker 1: creator of the whole show, Bill Lawrence. So if you
Speaker 1: have a question for any of us, go ahead. Oh well,
Speaker 1: hello Bill Lawrence, and hello all of you. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: It's so glad to be. Where do you live, by
Speaker 1: the way, I live in Chicago, on the northwest side
Speaker 1: of Chicago. Up in Avondale, old urban Park area. Shout town,
Speaker 1: stand up. We're just talking about Neil Flynn. That's where
Speaker 1: that's the area of the world that he is from.
Speaker 1: My friend really Oh, but not your specific area. But
Speaker 1: he's from Chicago. No, but he was like downstairs right now.
Speaker 1: No no no, no, no, I mean you could be all right,
Speaker 1: go ahead, Mark, all right. Even from the earliest episodes,
Speaker 1: Scrubs wasn't afraid to raise social issues and took a
Speaker 1: clear stance that I thought prioritized like well being of
Speaker 1: people over the economics and insurance bureaucracy. I felt like
Speaker 1: this helped a lot of young people, myself included, start
Speaker 1: thinking about the human side of healthcare and healthcare like
Speaker 1: as a human right for the first time, and sort
Speaker 1: of some of those more serious issues. So I was
Speaker 1: just wondering if you guys were called any specific moments
Speaker 1: from production episodes or moments on set that might have
Speaker 1: changed or influence the way you guys have you the
Speaker 1: sort of work done by your characters, or just sort
Speaker 1: of the healthcare system as a whole. All that's Donald
Speaker 1: and Zach answer this for the show. I will tell
Speaker 1: you I've been thinking about this a lot lately, Mark,
Speaker 1: because the real j D and my pal we were
Speaker 1: both kind of screw ups with a lot with very
Speaker 1: little direction as young guys. And I remember asking him
Speaker 1: what the hell he was doing going back to pre
Speaker 1: med and he talked about wanting to be of service,
Speaker 1: you know, and his viewpoint right now, you know, not
Speaker 1: to make this two point. Yet I face time with
Speaker 1: him every night when he gets off work because he's
Speaker 1: run of the COVID command centers on the whole ICU
Speaker 1: for those hospital as we spoke about, and it helps
Speaker 1: him decompress and not take that stuff into his family.
Speaker 1: And he as a caregiver cares so much more about
Speaker 1: the humanistic side than any of this other bullshit. And
Speaker 1: he instilled that upon me, and he said we could
Speaker 1: steal all of his stories, but we could never have
Speaker 1: a callousness. He said, he was only interested in me
Speaker 1: stealing his stories and his life and his name. If
Speaker 1: the undercurrent of the show was that it was about
Speaker 1: a bunch of people flaws and all that cared most
Speaker 1: about helping and taking care of other people. So that
Speaker 1: was part of the series. And I'll we have the
Speaker 1: rest to Donald and Zach. That's cool. That you asked that,
Speaker 1: because I think about him every day. He's out there
Speaker 1: doing stuff much more important of courts and and and
Speaker 1: it's the perfect question for this era, Mark because these
Speaker 1: these medical professionals and everyone who's working in the industry,
Speaker 1: whether you're a doctor, a nurse, or a janitor, a medic,
Speaker 1: everyone who in this environment is as as the world
Speaker 1: is finally seeing in the spotlight how heroic these people are.
Speaker 1: And I think I always felt when we were making
Speaker 1: this show that Bill was really shining a light on
Speaker 1: how dedicated these folks were and how they had to
Speaker 1: deal with life and death every single day. One thing
Speaker 1: that really stood out for me when you when you
Speaker 1: asked your question was the I remember learning that the
Speaker 1: nurses really run the show. I hadn't spent much time
Speaker 1: in a hospital when we started making Scrubs, and I
Speaker 1: learned that the doctors can't do it without the nurses,
Speaker 1: and the nurses are the ones who are on the
Speaker 1: front lines, and the doctors have to be rotating, and
Speaker 1: they can't do anything without the help of amazing nurses.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until I spent more time in hospitals with
Speaker 1: both my father and my sister, getting sick that I
Speaker 1: really this was after Scrubs, but I remember being like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is everything we were doing is so real. I'm
Speaker 1: witnessing it on the front lines that we see that
Speaker 1: doctor like every now and then, but man, these nurses
Speaker 1: and when we have a good one, it is such
Speaker 1: a difference and puts a smile on my sick father's face.
Speaker 1: And when we have one that's a little bit aloof
Speaker 1: it just drives you crazy. And I just really it
Speaker 1: really came home to me everything we had been doing
Speaker 1: on the show, how crucial and how important of the
Speaker 1: people on the front lines, particularly in this anecdote I'm
Speaker 1: telling the nursing staff of hospitals were to me. The
Speaker 1: one thing that really sticks out for me is to
Speaker 1: piggyback on what Bill said, is you know, for some hospitals,
Speaker 1: if you don't have insurance, you can't get treated. And
Speaker 1: the one thing that Scrubs did which I thought was
Speaker 1: amazing was we had a bunch of the doctors on
Speaker 1: the show were a bunch of rule breakers, venders, especially
Speaker 1: when it came to something like that, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. That was always special for me because you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't have great insurance, especially right now,
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't have it and or any
Speaker 1: insurance at all, and tests any insurance at all, thank you, Zach.
Speaker 1: And test costs a lot of money, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And if there are rule breakers and rule
Speaker 1: benders out there that can save lives in that way,
Speaker 1: I'm all for that, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: I love that we had people on the show, like
Speaker 1: doctor Cox. When Kelso's trying to get this person out
Speaker 1: of the hospital, Cox comes up with so many different
Speaker 1: ways to get this guy a bed, and I thought
Speaker 1: that was just amazing. Hey, Mark, we obsessed so much
Speaker 1: about your question. All in terms of the character doctor Kelso.
Speaker 1: There's an episode you guys might remember. I remember the
Speaker 1: song and the scenes that because the real j D
Speaker 1: he runs a hospital now and he's like, and you're
Speaker 1: forced with having to make these decisions for the greater good.
Speaker 1: And there's an episode in which doctor Kelso, you know,
Speaker 1: it has to punt a guy, you know, from treatment
Speaker 1: that they don't have in churs to have money in
Speaker 1: an effort to still build other stuff and to have
Speaker 1: money to save other people. And we made this joke
Speaker 1: about how every time doctor Kels so's foot hits the
Speaker 1: bottom of the stairs. When he leaves the hospital, he
Speaker 1: starts whistling as if the day doesn't even affect him.
Speaker 1: And at the end of that episode, even he because
Speaker 1: he knew he was directly responsible for his guy not
Speaker 1: getting care. His foot hits and he has a moment
Speaker 1: you can see it's really hard for him to start
Speaker 1: whistling again. There's a Citizen Cope song called Sideways playing,
Speaker 1: and so we just wanted to make sure that the
Speaker 1: people weren't the villains and that the system was So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really grateful that you noticed that and asked about it. Awesome.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys for giving such detailed, great responses. I
Speaker 1: think it just speaks to how much you guys feel
Speaker 1: for this show and put into this show. It really
Speaker 1: comes across and I think that's why I've been such
Speaker 1: a big fan for so long. So thank you, Thank you, Mark,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for asking your question. Did you want
Speaker 1: to ask another question? Oh? Sure, all right, you get
Speaker 1: one more? All right? So, this episode, episode three, and
Speaker 1: the show as a whole, I think has a lot
Speaker 1: of moments that exemplify really healthy, often sensitive male relationships.
Speaker 1: Both your guys's Turk and j D and j D
Speaker 1: and doctor Cox and other ones, and I was just
Speaker 1: wondering if you guys could maybe talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what was important to you guys to have positive
Speaker 1: sort of emotional moments between rows and how that might
Speaker 1: have affected your real life friendship. I think that's a
Speaker 1: great question. I'm glad you asked it with Bill on
Speaker 1: the show because for me, I really felt in a
Speaker 1: positive way. Granted we joked about it a lot, but
Speaker 1: I thought in a positive way we were showing, you know,
Speaker 1: when we were growing up. I mean when Donald Bills
Speaker 1: a smidgeon older than us, but when Donald and I
Speaker 1: were growing up, you know, anything you did that was
Speaker 1: a motive towards the guy you were called gay and
Speaker 1: it was derogatory and it was negative, and it was
Speaker 1: just an adjective in high school and junior high and
Speaker 1: middle school and everything was And I always as someone
Speaker 1: who was it's not no surprise I'm similar in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways to j D. I always felt like,
Speaker 1: but this is who I am. I am a guy
Speaker 1: who is a hugger and who's emotional and where's his
Speaker 1: heart in his sleeve and loves musicals, who happens to
Speaker 1: be a heterosexual. And I felt like Bill wrote a
Speaker 1: character a friendship that was like, well, we're gonna show
Speaker 1: that that's okay to men in a way, because I've
Speaker 1: noticed it in my life, you know the fact that
Speaker 1: Donald and I would hug and stuff. You know, I
Speaker 1: did a Broadway show and Scrubs fans would come to
Speaker 1: the stage door and they'd be like, JD, can I
Speaker 1: have a hug? And I would always kind of laugh.
Speaker 1: It was almost like the show was giving a certain
Speaker 1: community of men telling them that it was okay to
Speaker 1: You're not gonna no matter what your sexuality is, who cares,
Speaker 1: It's not going to be threatened by being like JD,
Speaker 1: just being who you truly are. And I always thought
Speaker 1: that that was a really positive thing that Bill put
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, I love I love the fact that
Speaker 1: the two of them were so comfortable around each other
Speaker 1: that they could be like brothers and lie in the
Speaker 1: same bed in their underwear and it not be a
Speaker 1: thing for them, you know what I mean. I like that,
Speaker 1: And I think that storyline definitely transfer into my real
Speaker 1: life with Zach, you know what I mean, Like, I
Speaker 1: feel like my comfortability about being around other men and
Speaker 1: not being afraid to be who I am and except
Speaker 1: who they are. Is all because of scrubs, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. I've played best friends in other projects,
Speaker 1: and you know, you played the tough guy, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But with these guys, none of that stuff mattered.
Speaker 1: What mattered was that they loved each other at the
Speaker 1: end of the day. And I cherished the fact that
Speaker 1: I can have friendships with men and I can say
Speaker 1: to them I love you and it not be looked
Speaker 1: at as a bad thing. It's a weird topic for
Speaker 1: me because you know, JD was based on real JD.
Speaker 1: Donald's based on Doctor with The truth is with these
Speaker 1: two characters. Anyways, I always joked around and I was
Speaker 1: kind of wrestling with both sides of myself because I
Speaker 1: am I played sports and was the high school jockey
Speaker 1: type guy that I was afraid of this stuff. And
Speaker 1: on the other side, I do. Zach and I share
Speaker 1: a love of Broadway musicals, French Bill, Kievoi Pu Condom,
Speaker 1: poor servitude, all right, whatever, and uh watch that's a digression.
Speaker 1: Well single is in later episodes. Yeah, I was always
Speaker 1: wrestling as a young man with you know, which which
Speaker 1: lane I fit in, and wishing that it would be
Speaker 1: easier just to not have to pick a lane. And
Speaker 1: then these guys, look, the truth is, whenever you create
Speaker 1: a relationship as a writer, it's yours for a second.
Speaker 1: And then the actors, if they're great, they wrestle ownership
Speaker 1: from you. And what starts out is eighty twenty years,
Speaker 1: you know, quickly, and this show became fifty fifty mine
Speaker 1: in theirs and then became all theirs in a way
Speaker 1: that I would write moments that weren't supposed to be
Speaker 1: romance moments, you know, like whether it was them wanting
Speaker 1: to hug each other, you know, at the end, and
Speaker 1: then when I look in the dailies, they're rubbing their
Speaker 1: faces and heads against That's my favorite gift is My
Speaker 1: favorite gift is and whatever people are always like you
Speaker 1: using gifts of yourself. I'm like, yeah, that one I
Speaker 1: do because it looks like we're trying to smell each other. Dude,
Speaker 1: that really looks like I think one of you ad
Speaker 1: lived in that you smell like an athlete in a
Speaker 1: way that you're just so happy. And so my point
Speaker 1: is I was doing it as an intellectual exercise and
Speaker 1: these guys made it something more and it's all about
Speaker 1: their You get lucky on a TV show when what
Speaker 1: you're watching feels even more real because the undercurrent of it,
Speaker 1: their intense friendship is reel. You know. I also like
Speaker 1: that when we meet people nowadays, they're so eager to
Speaker 1: talk about their best friend and how much they love
Speaker 1: their best friend, you know what I mean, and that
Speaker 1: that that makes me feel great. You know, he's the
Speaker 1: brown bear to my vanilla bear, or you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. I honestly think it gave us a certain
Speaker 1: community of men who watched the show and we're open
Speaker 1: to it, a sort of permission to to to be
Speaker 1: more true to who they were as Mark. If you
Speaker 1: want to, if you want to indulge my version of
Speaker 1: googling my own name is all occasionally go looking at
Speaker 1: all these wedding videos where the best man sings guy
Speaker 1: love to the groom. They're fantastic. There's like a thousand
Speaker 1: of them out there, and it always starts with a
Speaker 1: fake set up. He's like, you know, I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of what to toast and what to blah
Speaker 1: blah that I thought it's probably better to do in
Speaker 1: song then it days the facts, and then the groom.
Speaker 1: The groom always stands up with a microphone too, because
Speaker 1: they've rehearsed it twenty times. And I'm at home by myself,
Speaker 1: just going like this, lauding. I love it. All right, Mark,
Speaker 1: thank you for two awesome questions. Yes, thanks man, all right,
Speaker 1: says Mark. Hey stay safe, buddy, be healthy, Bill. Why
Speaker 1: does nurse Roberts have so many bowling shoes for sale? Look,
Speaker 1: one of the things that we embraced on Scrubs early
Speaker 1: on was surreal jokes just for us, okay, and we
Speaker 1: are trying to think, I remember this, and we wanted
Speaker 1: this to be a runner, and we dropped it. We
Speaker 1: shouldn't have dropped it, but you know, you get too busy.
Speaker 1: When you were fantasizing about talking to Turk, we started
Speaker 1: going down path of going. What he doesn't realize is
Speaker 1: he's in a topic with Nurse Roberts and she's got
Speaker 1: a side hustle. Yeah, and we were like, what's your
Speaker 1: side hustle? It's selling her dead husband's bowling shoes but
Speaker 1: he didn't even bowl. She's just got like twenty pairs
Speaker 1: of bowling shoes and she tries to unload to people.
Speaker 1: I thought that was I thought that was so funny,
Speaker 1: and I forgot that joke, and then that when Donald
Speaker 1: showed up wearing them, I just laughed out loud. I
Speaker 1: thought that was so funny, and then I and then
Speaker 1: I thought, I gotta ask Bill just the logic behind it?
Speaker 1: What is Nurse rob Why is Nurse Robert's side hustle
Speaker 1: selling her her husband's bull She's just always looking to
Speaker 1: get a step ahead, man. The um. I just love
Speaker 1: that joke because the same way I told you that
Speaker 1: Neil's joke meant that he and the duck were both
Speaker 1: wearing shirts, even though that wasn't said aloud, that choke
Speaker 1: means that while you were fantasizing about turk apropoem nothing.
Speaker 1: Nurse Robert said, Hey, is there a chance you ever
Speaker 1: be interested in buying some used bowling shoes? Is that
Speaker 1: something that you would want? Because then you snap out
Speaker 1: of it, You're like, I do, I would really want
Speaker 1: that when I come out of the when I come
Speaker 1: out of the fantasy. She said something like, so the
Speaker 1: checks in your locker or something? No, because I got
Speaker 1: them in my locker. Oh yeah, you want to write
Speaker 1: me a check? You want to write me a check
Speaker 1: because I got them in my locker, so I figured
Speaker 1: her locker, it's just stacked bulling shoes. Every couple of
Speaker 1: days she saw someone a pair of bowling shoes. It's
Speaker 1: just a little side hustle. Bill touched on this at
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven. There's the very first thing we did
Speaker 1: a lot with stunts on Scrubs called the Cowboy Switch.
Speaker 1: And just if you go back and watch it, what
Speaker 1: happens is the camera never cuts, but I'm running down
Speaker 1: the hall, and then the camera without cutting, goes behind
Speaker 1: a cart, which switches to the stuntman, who then goes
Speaker 1: and does a really hard fall on the ground. The
Speaker 1: camera can't find me and comes back and like a
Speaker 1: magic trick, I've switched back to where I was. This
Speaker 1: is a really clever thing that we used to do
Speaker 1: a bunch of times on the show in order to
Speaker 1: do a really harder fall that that needed to be
Speaker 1: a stuntman. And I wonder, Bill, is that something Adam brought,
Speaker 1: or something a stuntman brought, or or you knew about
Speaker 1: how how did those start coming into the show. Adam
Speaker 1: pitched very hard the thing we already spoke about is
Speaker 1: on this show. The camera is a character because it's
Speaker 1: almost an extension of Jad's head. You know, he's narrating
Speaker 1: for this camera that doesn't exist. So that was Adam.
Speaker 1: It's why he directed it. I remember him even saying
Speaker 1: just so you know, I think he shot one without it,
Speaker 1: but he's like, just so you know, when we do
Speaker 1: the cowboy switch to buy time, the cameras are going
Speaker 1: to look around for Jading and I remember going, like
Speaker 1: what it's like, it's gonna go like that, it's gonna
Speaker 1: try and find it's gonna try and find its owner.
Speaker 1: It's like a dog when you disappear, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And so that was Adam and that dude
Speaker 1: Noon was all about the cowboy switches because he and
Speaker 1: Ernie the two stuntman always, by the way, it's our
Speaker 1: favorite jokes at Ernie a great stuntman, but it's like,
Speaker 1: always be wary of a stuntman who no longer has
Speaker 1: any of his own teeth. He had a big set.
Speaker 1: He had a big set of a great white teeth.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what happened to your real teeth? So yeah,
Speaker 1: the end is they said the stunts on this show
Speaker 1: you want this stuff to all look real and not silly.
Speaker 1: Let's have our thespians and you guys both did some
Speaker 1: do them as much as we can, whether it's driving
Speaker 1: a scooter into the water or sliding under the cart
Speaker 1: or cowboy switches, and it helped sell the reality of
Speaker 1: that clumsiness. I thought it was awesome. And when we
Speaker 1: get to the Wizard of Oz episode, there's the most
Speaker 1: epic cowboy switch that we'll talk about where the scooter
Speaker 1: goes to the puddle, but stay tuned for that. The
Speaker 1: friend Zone bill that is one of the funniest articulations
Speaker 1: of the friend Zone. I noticed this time that everything
Speaker 1: everybody's dressed in beige. That's my first favorite. That's my
Speaker 1: first favorite and one of my all time favorite fantasies ever.
Speaker 1: And it just was It's such a smart, smart way
Speaker 1: to describe the fact. I would have done that fantasy
Speaker 1: in a world of streaming where you don't have time
Speaker 1: limits for ten minutes, I would have wanted to hear
Speaker 1: where everybody cross pass with her. I loved My favorite
Speaker 1: was it even Becky being in there. And my favorite
Speaker 1: was the guy we worked together at Penguins, Because in
Speaker 1: my head, I'm like that guy and Elliott barely had
Speaker 1: shifts together. They just occasionally overlapped at Penguins yogurt and
Speaker 1: he was just like your shifts. I just love the
Speaker 1: cleverness of in Elliot's mind. None of those people stood out.
Speaker 1: So they're everybody's dressed in a shade of beige. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're all blending in. They're all just people that drifted
Speaker 1: through her life. You know. Um. The last thing, I
Speaker 1: don't know if Donald you have anything else, but the
Speaker 1: last thing from the show that I wrote down that
Speaker 1: I thought it was really funny. I don't know if
Speaker 1: we ever did it again, is that you're using rowdy
Speaker 1: mouth to open up the beauties. That was That was
Speaker 1: the last thing I had to I was gonna ask you.
Speaker 1: I thought rowdy. I thought Rowdy should have always should
Speaker 1: have always been a bottle opener. But I think that's
Speaker 1: the first time we introduced your dead dog without I
Speaker 1: don't think we had any lines referencing it, did we
Speaker 1: zero lounge draft? No? No? No? Oh? You mean was
Speaker 1: he an episode two? Yeah? He had an episode two.
Speaker 1: That's when we introduced him. That's when we enter Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I loved you know, Rowdy is That's I think something
Speaker 1: more than shocking me, more than anything that people would
Speaker 1: go now, is is there a dead dog that's a
Speaker 1: character in this show? A real stuff dead dog would
Speaker 1: be a huge issue. Bill. I don't know if the
Speaker 1: urban legend is true, and I really don't want you
Speaker 1: to correct it if it's not. But Donald and I
Speaker 1: were discussing in an earlier episode of the podcast that
Speaker 1: when the one the prop men was let go, he
Speaker 1: hid Rowdy in the ceiling tiles of the prop room.
Speaker 1: That's true, that's true. That is true. I told you,
Speaker 1: I told you it's true. Yeah, he we had to
Speaker 1: let someone go for different reasons, and he knew that
Speaker 1: that was a prop that he had that was a
Speaker 1: character on the show, so he tried to get us
Speaker 1: back by hiding it in the above the tiles. He
Speaker 1: locked himself in there and hid that poor dead dog
Speaker 1: above the tiles. And by the way, we found it
Speaker 1: right away. So when we got an extra one, we
Speaker 1: were only getting an extra one in case something ever
Speaker 1: happened to the real one. But part of the laura
Speaker 1: became that we got an extra dead dog to you know,
Speaker 1: replace the one that was lost. But it's not it's
Speaker 1: just to generate. It's just in a weird way. That's
Speaker 1: what generated that story of what would we do? And
Speaker 1: then Bill that gave birth to a beautiful, very moving
Speaker 1: storyline of introducing Stephen m the other I was already
Speaker 1: laughing in the end. Did you get Rowdy or did
Speaker 1: you get Stephen? I got nothing neither. They're all I
Speaker 1: told you this story. No, I don't mean that. I
Speaker 1: mean when we break so we don't live together anymore.
Speaker 1: At one point, who gets who gets who? Oh? I
Speaker 1: forgot who got Rowdy and who got Steven? I don't remember.
Speaker 1: But Bill, I was laughing with Donald about how someone
Speaker 1: can't tell the difference, and I feel where their old
Speaker 1: taxidermy balls are, and I go, no, that's Stephen. You
Speaker 1: knew one of them was fixed, so Rowdy hit that.
Speaker 1: I think that's Donald's line to open. Yeah, I don't see.
Speaker 1: I don't know if today you could do taxidermy dead
Speaker 1: dogs humping someone's leg. Yeah, I don't know a whole
Speaker 1: new Let everybody not to make this an end line.
Speaker 1: But this was such a fun exercise for me because
Speaker 1: everybody always asks me what my favorite episode of Scrubs is,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how you guys feel. I always
Speaker 1: say the pilot because it remember reminds me of first
Speaker 1: meeting you all, and of the experience and the people
Speaker 1: so much more than any specific episodes. When I watched these,
Speaker 1: like the first one, two or three episodes, that's what
Speaker 1: I remember is seeing you two idiots become friends and
Speaker 1: having to deal with the pluses and minuses of that
Speaker 1: when you came in crazy hungover to work, but also
Speaker 1: when I would see your friendship on screen, you know,
Speaker 1: and seeing how people were afraid of Johnny c and
Speaker 1: how that translated, and seeing Donald's chemistry with Judy and
Speaker 1: Zach and Sarah's puppydog love for each I mean, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: So that's what this stuff takes me back to, you know,
Speaker 1: is how cool it is that not only that you
Speaker 1: two are still friends, but that we all still spend
Speaker 1: time together and talk. You know, I say, I love
Speaker 1: a lot I've noticed, but I truly do love that
Speaker 1: about what we've done together. You know, we didn't just
Speaker 1: build a television show together. You know, it wasn't just
Speaker 1: you know, you created a show, We acted in it,
Speaker 1: see you later. We become like a family and when
Speaker 1: we see each other, it's so amazing. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't see everybody as much as I see the
Speaker 1: two of you, but it's always it's always dope, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I I enjoy. I know I'm
Speaker 1: gonna laugh. I know I'm gonna you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I know I'm gonna feel good. It's always great to
Speaker 1: be around Joe. Thank you so much, Bill for coming on.
Speaker 1: And I hope that you'll do this. I mean, it
Speaker 1: makes sense of all people for you to come on
Speaker 1: a bunch to this because I hope. I hope you will,
Speaker 1: because you know, people seem to be really liking it
Speaker 1: and which makes a smile, and it makes so much
Speaker 1: sense to have you on whenever you're willing to come on.
Speaker 1: You know what, I thought you could do that. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can either use this cut it, or take this
Speaker 1: pitch and do it from now on on any podcast
Speaker 1: that I'm not on. If you guys running too a
Speaker 1: question with the guest or with each other, why did
Speaker 1: this happen? Or is this true? You can fire it
Speaker 1: off to me. I will voice memo record a one
Speaker 1: line response that you can edit in. And that's great.
Speaker 1: That's very smart you'd be like, all right, Joel, we
Speaker 1: need a bill voice note answer on this question and
Speaker 1: then we'll just cut it in when we do the
Speaker 1: podcast editing. I love that. Yeah, um, you know, as
Speaker 1: if I'm hovering there all the time, which I will
Speaker 1: not be. Well, this is great what you guys are doing.
Speaker 1: I love you both, I miss you both. Thank you,
Speaker 1: and um and um we love you and thank you
Speaker 1: and um. You know. We ended the last episode by
Speaker 1: giving a shout out to the medical community, and I
Speaker 1: think it's right to do it since we were a
Speaker 1: show about a hospital. Just to give all our love
Speaker 1: to anybody who's listening to this, who has anyone fighting
Speaker 1: on the front lines of this insanity. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for your your courage and uh and and for
Speaker 1: being there for for all of us. And yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a thousand things you can do to be of service.
Speaker 1: You can write a check, or you can call your
Speaker 1: friend that's working at a hospital and talk to him
Speaker 1: or her every night just to see how they're doing.
Speaker 1: But uh, spend a few minutes and do it. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. And on that note, Donald, will you
Speaker 1: lead us in song? Yeah five six, here's some stories
Speaker 1: show we made about a bunch of docs and nurses
Speaker 1: and a janitor who loved me. I said, here's the
Speaker 1: stories never you all should know, So gather around you.
Speaker 1: Here are gather around you, Here are scut free while
Speaker 1: show wis at ten time