It may have been a decade since Scrubs’ eighth season went off the air, which many consider to be the end of the show due to the bizarre ninth season, but the show is still loved by fans all around the world.
Although while it may have been seen as a comedy throughout most of its run, we’d be doing a massive disservice to the show’s creators if we didn’t acknowledge some of the emotional moments that made the series what it was, specifically the deaths that reduced fans to tears.
Updated March 6th by Rhys McGinley: As well as being one of the best and perhaps most underrated single-camera comedy shows of the 21st century, Scrubs is known to be the most medically accurate television show out there. A lot of this is due to the real-life inspiration for the show and the writing team who truly capture what hospitals and doctor’s lives are like and the patients and their medical conditions. People in Scrubs catch realistic diseases, have realistic problems, and ultimately can have realistic, if not heartbreaking, deaths across the nine seasons of the show, with there being far more than ten that affected fans for one reason or another.
Enid
In the last couple of seasons of Scrubs, Dr. Kelso went from the stereotypical, oftentimes one-dimensional villainous boss of the hospital - despite some deeper moments and being hilarious - to a mostly likable, funny friend of the rest of the characters.
In the dreaded ninth season of the show, Kelso goes back to work after announcing Enid’s passing. Fans never meet Enid, but it was clear that despite the way he treated her a lot of the time, Kelso did love his wife. He does ruin this moment by becoming a creepy womanizer mere days after her death, putting this at the bottom of the sadness ranking.
David Morrison & Mrs. Guerrero
One of the hardest-hitting episodes early on in Scrubs is “My Old Lady,” an episode that shows the true nature of what a hospital can be like despite everyone’s best efforts.
It revolves around J.D., Turk, and Elliot having three separate patients, with the idea that one in three patients die in hospital, making fans anticipate one of their deaths. In what is a bit of a shock at the end of the episode, all three of the patients die, through no fault of their doctor. One is a bit more affecting than the others, but the deaths of Turk’s patient David and Elliot’s Mrs. Guerrero hit hard, especially this early in the show.
Peter
Peter is a strange one as he is not necessarily the main focus, and fans never actually see him die like many others. Yet, the episode “My Super Ego” is still pretty heartbreaking due to his death.
The episode shows apparent super-intern Nick Murdoch eventually crumbling over the pressure of being a doctor as he is unable to do anything to save a child’s life, and quitting Sacred Heart. It was made clear Peter was going to die, and seeing how that can affect doctors, even the ones who appear the strongest, was a harrowing sight.
Mr. Morrison
As mentioned earlier, Dr. Kelso undergoes a bit of a metamorphosis near the end of the show, but before that was a hilarious but objectively unlikeable individual. However, there were glimpses of his humanity that made fans feel for him.
In one episode, Kelso decides to bump Dr. Cox’s patient, Mr. Morrison, off of a drug trial that would likely save his life to make room for a potential donor to the hospital. Mr. Morrison died, and the rich patient donated enough money to reopen a wing of the hospital. At the end of the episode, we see how Kelso actually was affected by Mr. Morrison’s death and did struggle with the weight of his job, pretending to be perfectly happy when other doctors walk by. This death is more heartbreaking from a Dr. Kelso character perspective than an attachment to the character.
Carla’s Mom
While it was a core theme of an episode, the passing of Carla’s mother wasn’t exactly something that got highlighted much in comparison to other deaths on this list.
She was alive one minute and then the next, in the blink of an eye, Carla informed the gang that she had passed away, and we saw them return from her funeral. Carla was clearly always pretty close with her mom, and when you combine that with the strain that her relationship with Turk was under, it became quite complicated. Ultimately, though, it brought them closer together.
JD’s Dad
JD was never particularly close with his father, as we saw when he visited his son for the weekend, something that made J.D. a bit on edge despite loving his father.
Still, when he found out that he died, it was an emotional moment that he struggled with throughout the course of the episode. The best thing to come out of it was Dr. Cox stepping up and being there for JD, even going so far as to tell him that he was proud of him. It was a great way to honor the memory of the late John Ritter.
Elaine
Elaine was the sort of character that we all aspire to be. She looked into the face of death and chuckled – because she wasn’t scared.
She was ready for what was to come, and when she eventually passed away, the musical number that led to the final moments of the episode was beautiful. JD had formed a friendship with her, and yet when she finally went, he was able to smile and realize that she was prepared for that moment. Because of her confidence, he was more prepared than he thought, too.
Denise’s Son
During her time with Dr. Cox as ambulance workers, Denise Lemmon rubbed Perry the wrong way on more than one occasion.
She was an incredibly active woman who seemed to be beaming with joy from dawn until dusk, which made the revelation towards the end of her episode all the more heartbreaking. As it turned out, her son Davey had passed away in an accident. The realization on Cox’s face, as well as the sadness in the eyes of Denise, came out of nowhere and really put fans on the back foot.
Jill Tracey
Scrubs always did a fantastic job with recurring characters who appeared across multiple years only a couple of times, and Jill Tracey is a perfect example of this.
She had initially attempted suicide in the show’s early seasons, getting help from Cox and J.D. She later returned to the show, clearly struggling, something her annoying nature made unclear to J.D. She eventually died, with J.D. blaming himself for not helping. It was sad not only for how it affected J.D. and then the rest of the story after that but for how long Jill had struggled.
Dr. Cox’s Patients
The sadness from Jill’s death does not end there. Her organs, which she’d donated for after her death, were passed on to three different patients, a moment that was initially bittersweet, later turning just bitter.
The issue was that Dr. Cox wasn’t aware of the fact that she’d died from rabies, which meant the three individuals in question also died. It sent Dr. Cox down a dark path – one which many didn’t think he’d come back from.
Mrs. Tanner
Mrs. Tanner served as the first major example of Scrubs being more than just a comedy in the series’s early episodes and is the third of the three patients mentioned earlier.
As opposed to going on dialysis, she was adamant that she was ready to die and was ready for what came next. JD, an intern at that point, didn’t quite know how to handle it and even admitted that he was scared. Their embrace on her hospital bed felt like a grandmother hugging her grandson, and to this day, it’s still a testament to the writing on the show.
George
J.D. and Turk were pretty excited for the famous steak night, right up until they realized that George would be all alone for the evening, realizing what they had to do.
They sat and spoke with George and attempted to calm his fears of dying. As the episode went on, it became obvious that they were just as scared about the prospect of passing away as he was, but in the end, all they could really hope for in their final moments was that their last thought was a good one. “Hey man – that beer tasted great.”
Mrs. Wilk
Mrs. Wilk was on her way towards recovery as she prepared to leave Sacred Heart Hospital, only for Cabbage to pass on an infection to her without even really knowing it had happened.
When she came back in, it was evident that she wasn’t going to survive this time around. It was tough for Dr. Cox and J.D., who had grown close with her, but even though they struggled, they were put at ease by the fact that Mrs. Wilks was such a positive, upbeat person that said it how it is.
Laverne
Laverne was one of the characters in the show that seemed destined to hang around until the series came to an end, and while that was sort of true with the introduction of Shirley, it was still gut-wrenching to see her die after she was involved in an accident.
It came in the wake of a heartfelt argument, followed by a moment of real love, with Dr. Cox. Carla’s reaction to her best friend’s death was at the heart of the storyline, as were her final words with Laverne.
Ben
The revelation that Ben had leukemia sent shockwaves through the Scrubs universe, and that was particularly true for Dr. Cox, who struggled to come to terms with the death of his close friend.
The episode in which he actually died was a confusing one because most fans didn’t actually know he’d passed away right up until the moment that we saw Dr. Cox and J.D. were at his funeral. Ben contributed a great deal to Scrubs during his short stint in the show, and he was easily the most emotional death.
