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Is JD the Ross of Scrubs?

Is JD the Ross of Scrubs?

Rewatching all of Scrubs, is JD the Ross of Scrubs?

You know when you watch FRIENDS again with fond memories and you realize how cringe/nope some things could be in it, like how Ross is actually a gigantic douchebag.

I'm rewatching Scrubs with my SO at the moment and oh boy, am I crazy or is JD just a tremendous piece of shit? I'll give it to him, more often than not he knows what the right choice is, but you'll watch him make the same horrible decisions over and over again and we're already at season 5. He just spends his whole time lying, cheating, betraying his best friends at the slight occasion. He takes good care of his patients sure but everybody else? Big oof. JD is incredibly narcissistic (to his own admission) and he regularly treats people like shit because he considers himself better than everybody else.

I seriously wish I had jotted down some of the worst of it to put it here because I legit feel until you rewatch the show you don't realize how bad it is, but he did some horrible stuff. Remember when he emotionally blackmailed Elliot into quitting Sean, then she did, then JD decided he didn't want Elliot anymore so he dumped her at Turk and Carla's rehearsal? Then when Elliot needed some time to process it he basically annoyed her into being friends again until it worked?

Which leads to my main contentious point: women. Oh boy. Oh big boy. There is one thing and one thing only that matters to JD when it comes to women: S E X. How to sex all the sex there is to sex; everything he does is to get sex, every "girlfriend" he gets is about getting to bang her, every first time he meets a woman you see a glamour shot of the girl in lingerie cause that's the only thing that is ever brought on the table with women and JD: he wants to do the dirty. JD is only slightly better than Todd in that he doesn't verbalize every misogynistic thought into his head but that's it, that's the extent of it, and even that is debatable because at least Todd is honest about his intentions. In the beginning of the show he's also incredibly patronising to Eliott for the sole reason that she's a woman so she can't possibly be better than him (something he routinely thinks about a lot of people cause, remember, narcissistic).
Remember when JD met Kylie? Remember Kylie? Remember anything about her? Nope, you know why? Because she's on screen for like 5 episodes and the main plot point of all those episodes is "She hasn't let JD bang her yet". JD is never interested in any woman for who she is, what she's capable of, he never has any respect for any of them, you never see him talk at length with any woman, it's always just about dat ass. They're pieces of meat whose sole purpose is to temporarily appease JD's need to relieve himself but that's it. Hell I think his best relationship might have been Neena at that point.
And when he gets the sex? It's even worse, cause then JD has to tell everybody, he doesn't give two shits about having an actual other human being interested in him but folks, HE HAD SEX. Everybody has to know.

I used to really identify with JD when I first watched the show in my teenage years but rewatching it as an adult in a stable relationship is SO hard. JD is just such a horrible asshole to everybody, that will put everything and anything in front of others if it advances his life. Every time they tie him up with a woman I'm like "oh poor girl, just, just run". And just... I mean... JD is just the whitest dude to ever white dude, some of the cringefest is on purpose but sometimes you feel like they make him up to be some kind of saint who struggles but ultimately makes the right decisions, but when you re-e-e-e-eaaaa-lly look at it most of the time what happens is JD hurts a bunch of people, then makes the right decision cause he ends up kinda having too, and here we go, curtains, good episode. JD is such a saint.

There's some other cringy parts to the show, like how everybody somehow forgets that the Janitor killed around 300 squirrels, like that's legit serial killer territory we're verging on but nope, Janitor gets the girl. Don't get me wrong I love the guy, but it's good they steered that ship real fast cause I don't think they realised the kind of people that routinely kill animals for fun usually end up on Mindhunters instead.
Same for Turk being homophobe, it's briefly mentioned in one episode and kind of laughed over but he was straight up uncomfortable seeing two dudes kiss and it's never really brought on the table ever again. Fat shaming in the show and just generally making fun of fat people is also very common occurrence.

The whole writing is really on the verge of misogynistic sometimes, like you feel the writers see women as completely alien creatures that live in an entirely different world and that you just have to try to communicate in their ways. There are very few strong female characters whose lives don’t entirely revolve around a man: Jordan is first shown as very strong but then ends up chained to Cox and becomes the standard nagging wife trope. Carla is also shown as strong at first but then turns more and more crazy as the show progresses and more resentful of Turk and being married to him, plus all the jokes about women faking it until the wedding. I can’t even pinpoint specific instances and I’m probably wrong but it’s a feel you get sometimes in some of the jokes or how most characters see women.

Most characters like Kelso, Cox, Turk to some extent even, are often annoyed or hate their wives like in bad boomer humor. And it’s also often joked upon that all women are eventually baby crazy. And it’s straight up reminding you ALL THE TIME that women never have sex for pleasure and that it annoys them to have to give sex to their husbands. Or it’s to gain personally from it like to advance their careers. There’s a lot of exceptions of course but the fact it’s such a running gag can only lead me to think the writers (or some of them specially) have a very skewed view of women.

Plus there's the whole Cox and the intern situation where I’m not sure there wasn’t some slight abuse of power in that Cox should definitely have been mentoring her instead of trying to get into her pants HARD

Overall the show still holds up well, I'm not saying the contrary, hell we're still watching it. But any notion of JD ever being someone to look up to has burned to the grounds, to the point where I look forward to the slapstick just to see JD suffer a little (which to the show's credit is very often) cause otherwise he almost NEVER gets his comeuppance. It's like, "Oh I emotionally destroyed another human being, but that's ok I slipped and hit myself on a door, guess we're even".

Are we crazy or did anybody else notice this upon rewatching the show?

Is JD the Ross of Scrubs?

Is JD the Ross of Scrubs?

Rewatching all of Scrubs, is JD the Ross of Scrubs?

You know when you watch FRIENDS again with fond memories and you realize how cringe/nope some things could be in it, like how Ross is actually a gigantic douchebag.

I'm rewatching Scrubs with my SO at the moment and oh boy, am I crazy or is JD just a tremendous piece of shit? I'll give it to him, more often than not he knows what the right choice is, but you'll watch him make the same horrible decisions over and over again and we're already at season 5. He just spends his whole time lying, cheating, betraying his best friends at the slight occasion. He takes good care of his patients sure but everybody else? Big oof. JD is incredibly narcissistic (to his own admission) and he regularly treats people like shit because he considers himself better than everybody else.

I seriously wish I had jotted down some of the worst of it to put it here because I legit feel until you rewatch the show you don't realize how bad it is, but he did some horrible stuff. Remember when he emotionally blackmailed Elliot into quitting Sean, then she did, then JD decided he didn't want Elliot anymore so he dumped her at Turk and Carla's rehearsal? Then when Elliot needed some time to process it he basically annoyed her into being friends again until it worked?

Which leads to my main contentious point: women. Oh boy. Oh big boy. There is one thing and one thing only that matters to JD when it comes to women: S E X. How to sex all the sex there is to sex; everything he does is to get sex, every "girlfriend" he gets is about getting to bang her, every first time he meets a woman you see a glamour shot of the girl in lingerie cause that's the only thing that is ever brought on the table with women and JD: he wants to do the dirty. JD is only slightly better than Todd in that he doesn't verbalize every misogynistic thought into his head but that's it, that's the extent of it, and even that is debatable because at least Todd is honest about his intentions. In the beginning of the show he's also incredibly patronising to Eliott for the sole reason that she's a woman so she can't possibly be better than him (something he routinely thinks about a lot of people cause, remember, narcissistic).
Remember when JD met Kylie? Remember Kylie? Remember anything about her? Nope, you know why? Because she's on screen for like 5 episodes and the main plot point of all those episodes is "She hasn't let JD bang her yet". JD is never interested in any woman for who she is, what she's capable of, he never has any respect for any of them, you never see him talk at length with any woman, it's always just about dat ass. They're pieces of meat whose sole purpose is to temporarily appease JD's need to relieve himself but that's it. Hell I think his best relationship might have been Neena at that point.
And when he gets the sex? It's even worse, cause then JD has to tell everybody, he doesn't give two shits about having an actual other human being interested in him but folks, HE HAD SEX. Everybody has to know.

I used to really identify with JD when I first watched the show in my teenage years but rewatching it as an adult in a stable relationship is SO hard. JD is just such a horrible asshole to everybody, that will put everything and anything in front of others if it advances his life. Every time they tie him up with a woman I'm like "oh poor girl, just, just run". And just... I mean... JD is just the whitest dude to ever white dude, some of the cringefest is on purpose but sometimes you feel like they make him up to be some kind of saint who struggles but ultimately makes the right decisions, but when you re-e-e-e-eaaaa-lly look at it most of the time what happens is JD hurts a bunch of people, then makes the right decision cause he ends up kinda having too, and here we go, curtains, good episode. JD is such a saint.

There's some other cringy parts to the show, like how everybody somehow forgets that the Janitor killed around 300 squirrels, like that's legit serial killer territory we're verging on but nope, Janitor gets the girl. Don't get me wrong I love the guy, but it's good they steered that ship real fast cause I don't think they realised the kind of people that routinely kill animals for fun usually end up on Mindhunters instead.
Same for Turk being homophobe, it's briefly mentioned in one episode and kind of laughed over but he was straight up uncomfortable seeing two dudes kiss and it's never really brought on the table ever again. Fat shaming in the show and just generally making fun of fat people is also very common occurrence.

The whole writing is really on the verge of misogynistic sometimes, like you feel the writers see women as completely alien creatures that live in an entirely different world and that you just have to try to communicate in their ways. There are very few strong female characters whose lives don’t entirely revolve around a man: Jordan is first shown as very strong but then ends up chained to Cox and becomes the standard nagging wife trope. Carla is also shown as strong at first but then turns more and more crazy as the show progresses and more resentful of Turk and being married to him, plus all the jokes about women faking it until the wedding. I can’t even pinpoint specific instances and I’m probably wrong but it’s a feel you get sometimes in some of the jokes or how most characters see women.

Most characters like Kelso, Cox, Turk to some extent even, are often annoyed or hate their wives like in bad boomer humor. And it’s also often joked upon that all women are eventually baby crazy. And it’s straight up reminding you ALL THE TIME that women never have sex for pleasure and that it annoys them to have to give sex to their husbands. Or it’s to gain personally from it like to advance their careers. There’s a lot of exceptions of course but the fact it’s such a running gag can only lead me to think the writers (or some of them specially) have a very skewed view of women.

Plus there's the whole Cox and the intern situation where I’m not sure there wasn’t some slight abuse of power in that Cox should definitely have been mentoring her instead of trying to get into her pants HARD

Overall the show still holds up well, I'm not saying the contrary, hell we're still watching it. But any notion of JD ever being someone to look up to has burned to the grounds, to the point where I look forward to the slapstick just to see JD suffer a little (which to the show's credit is very often) cause otherwise he almost NEVER gets his comeuppance. It's like, "Oh I emotionally destroyed another human being, but that's ok I slipped and hit myself on a door, guess we're even".

Are we crazy or did anybody else notice this upon rewatching the show?