‘Scrubs’ EP Aseem Batra On Dr. Cox And Carla’s Season 2 Presence, Casting Changes, Featuring Fewer Interns In Each Episode & More

SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about the two-episode Season 2 premiere of ABC‘s Scrubs revival.

Scrubs returned Wednesday night with a two-episode Season 2 premiere that gave us a lot of Dr. Cox (John McGinley), established Tosh (Ava Bunn) as the lead intern following Bunn’s promotion to a series regular alongside OG stars Zach Braff (J.D.), Donald Faison (Turk) and Sarah Chalke (Elliot) and introduced three new recurring players in SNL alum John Higgins as Grant, the new Chief Resident, and Keyla Monterroso Mejia as surgical nurse Mimi. (Additionally, Tamera Mowry-Housley will guest star as Dr. Steffie, a pediatric doctor.)

In an interview with Deadline, Scrubs executive producer/showrunner Aseem Batra revealed how much we will see in Season 2 of McGinley and Judy Reyes (Carla), who are both series regulars on series filming in Los Angeles at the same time as Scrubs, which is based in Vancouver.

Batra also spoke of the new setup introduced in the premiere where, besides Tosh (who will be in all episodes and already had substantial storylines about learning to trust herself and choosing a specialty in the first two half-hours), the rest of the interns will come and go as the show tries to focus. For instance, in the first two episodes, in addition to Bunn, Jacob Dudman (Asher) and Amanda Morrow (Dashana) were in both episodes, while David Gridley (Blake) and Layla Mohammadi (Amara) were in one episode each.

She also addressed the departures of recurring cast members Joel Kim Booster (creative decision) and X Mayo (scheduling issue as the series cannot hold onto her since she is not a series regular and busy with other projects.) Additionally, Batra revealed the theme for Season 2 and teased what is to come.

In part 1 of the interview with Batra she previewed the return of Scott Foley, who was not in the premiere (his character, Sean, will be back in episode 3), and reviewed plans to also bring back Johnny Kastl at the end of the season.

DEADLINE: There was a lot of Dr. Cox in the first two episodes. At the end of episode 2, he was admitted into Sacred Heart in order to get treatment, hinting that he may be at the hospital for a while. How much will we see him this season?

BATRA: That was just to get him his treatment. What we really wanted to do with those first two episodes was to reassure our audience that he’s going to be fine, that yes, this is an ongoing issue, but he’s going to be fine. We don’t have him for the majority of the episodes, but we do have him coming up again, and he’ll return in another way. So, really, the treatment he’s readmitted for is something that will be just for that episode, and then we get him back later in the season.

DEADLINE: For how many episodes?

BATRA: We have him in two more throughout the season.

DEADLINE: What about Judy? She was only in episode 1; she and John had a lovely scene together. How many episodes is she doing this season?

BATRA: That’s pretty much the same issue because she’s on High Potential, we’re working it out. But she will also be recurring between five and six total.

DEADLINE: Is there potential risk for J.D. because he’s breaking rules by admitting Dr. Cox into the hospital?

BATRA: The only risk for him is we do have someone coming up who will have a little power over him, and that should be an interesting dynamic. And whether he gets caught or not, we don’t know. But Dr. Cox used to work the system all the time and managed to get away with it. So I think that’s just what he is doing in that episode.

DEADLINE: Talk about the decision not to feature other interns besides Tosh in each episode. Will you try to make the rest stars of their own episodes?

BATRA: Last season, sometimes they would just weave in and out and have a line or two, and we wouldn’t be able to develop a story for them. In this iteration, we’re able to give them a little more of an arc and an episode to be able to flesh out their characters or the dynamic between them. We kind of see that with Tosh and Asher having a little bit more of an arc in the first episode, so it really is that.

And because we want to be able to honor being able to tell stories for our legacy cast without just having our new interns only get a line. So they get a little bit more of a fleshed-out story by doing it this way.

Also, Scrubs was very big on guest stars in the first iteration, and we’re doing that similar thing here, being able to bring back Scott Foley. In trying to tell stories in 21 minutes and 30 seconds, that would also make it harder for us to tell a good story with our interns. So that’s why we give them more airtime in one episode rather than trying to spread it all thin.

DEDALINE: In the first two episodes, we saw for the first time Nurse Dubois (Michael James Scott) without his partner in crime Nurse Raymond (X Mayo). How are you handling her departure? I know X Mayo is busy but to me it felt like something was missing — the two were like a Greek chorus, going back and forth.

BATRA: We always envisioned that as this nurse duo, but X is awesome, and she’s going out in the stratosphere of other work, so we had to make a decision. We have so many characters already, and we think Michael — he’s just so strong that we do believe that he’s going to be able to interact with our other characters. We might miss that dynamic at first, but I think we have some good stuff coming up in terms of how he interacts with other characters that will fill that void.

DEADLINE: Any chance for X Mayo to pop up in an episode?

BATRA: We would love that. It’s a scheduling thing, so we would, of course, love that, but we don’t have that on our agenda at the moment.

DEADLINE: How was the creative decision made to change the dynamic by not bringing back Joel Kim Booster’s Dr. Park character and instead introduce John Higgins’ Dr. Grant?

BATRA: We loved Joel. We had a lot of fun doing that Season 1, but we were looking for something more. There wasn’t the immediate jeopardy after the first episode where he was, I’m after your job, and we felt like Zach being able to interact with a younger person who needed his help would give us stories and open up the stories.

So it was really a creative decision based on wanting him to have another frustrating dynamic the way he had with Dr. Cox. He was always trying to convince Dr. Cox that he should be his mentor, and now he’s got a similar frustration in trying to convince John Higgins, the character Grant, that he should be his mentee and look up to him. It’s just a fun way to play that dynamic we’ve always had on the show.

DEADLINE: Elliot seems to be branching out, empowered by Dr. Cox and Tosh. Will she be doing podcasts? Is there another chapter in her career?

BATRA: Yeah, that’ll be just a fun episode for us to see how she’s feeling about expanding with something. What we’ve heard from a lot of physicians is, they get to either a burnout place or wanting to do more, wanting to explore more. So that is an arc that we’re setting up so we can see where that goes for Elliot.

DEADLINE: The maintenance guy disappeared completely in the Season 2 premiere after having a solid presence the first season, and we also haven’t seen Neil Flynn this season though we know that he’s coming back. Will we see the alleged father-son duo together again?

BATRA: Yeah, we’re going to see them together, and father and son will be reunited.

DEADLINE: But we’re still not sure if he’s his real son, right?

BATRA: No, I mean that’s the fun about the janitor — you never know what’s real.

DEADLINE: The first two episodes featured cameos by Flavor Flav and Joey Fatone. What other celebrity appearances can you tease? And what is the overall theme of the season?

BATRA: That’s some random stuff that we used to do on the old Scrubs, bringing in people who were big at a point to make fun appearances. The theme of the season is the maturing of our characters, how they relate to one another and how Elliot and J.D.’s relationship evolves post-divorce.

DEADLINE: What about musical numbers? You told us in April that bringing Scrubs’ musical bits back was on your to-do list for Season 2. Will that still happen?

BATRA: Yeah, on a smaller scale than the sort of the things that Scrubs did originally this season, but we do have some fun little musical things coming up.