"My Day Off" is the ninth episode of Scrubs' first season. J.D. gets a day off work, but gets stuck at Sacred Heart with appendicitis. Elliot finds out her physicals are cold and violent. When J.D. doesn't want Turk to operate on him, Turk gets upset.
Synopsis[]
During J.D.'s rare day off, he visits the bar. While he and Turk have drinks, J.D. tries to hit on a girl named Jennifer. He passes out and is admitted to Sacred Heart. There, he receives an uncomfortable physical from Elliot. During rounds, Elliot says that his symptoms lead her to believe he has appendicitis. When J.D. learns that Turk will be operating on him, he asks Dr. Wen for another surgeon, hurting Turk's feelings. On Thanksgiving evening, however, his fever rises and he is immediately admitted into surgery. Turk, who is the surgeon on call, performs the procedure, and J.D. later apologizes for not trusting him. With twenty minutes left on Thanksgiving Day, J.D., Turk, Elliot, Carla, and Dr. Cox meet at the bar for drinks.
Meanwhile, after hearing from J.D. that the physical she gave him was rough, Elliot tries to be more touchy-feely with her patients, which backfires. Her hands are very cold because of poor circulation, but they turn out to make a great ice pack for her patient Mike Davis' head.
Carla introduces Dr. Cox to a new patient. Dr. Cox calls him "dad" and starts to smother him with a pillow, to Carla's horror. It turns out to be a joke: The patient is a former chief of medicine at Sacred Heart, Dr. Benson, and he and Dr. Cox get along well. But when Dr. Cox tries to show off J.D., he finds Dr. Kelso talking to Dr. Benson. This upsets Cox, who tries to make Dr. Benson like him more than Dr. Kelso. After Cox makes a fool out of Kelso in front of him, Dr. Benson lectures Cox, saying he should understand that he doesn't need to show people that Kelso is an ass—Kelso does that on his own.
Recurring themes[]
More: Fantasies • Flashbacks • J.D.'s girl names • Janitor's pranks and lies
Fantasies[]
- Fat Albert and his crew laugh at several jokes.
- When Elliot gives J.D. a physical, her hands are so cold he turns to ice.
- While being viewed during rounds, J.D. feels like a statue, Rodin's "Thinker."
- Dr. Cox does a round-off–double back handspring–back tuck down the hallway to get Dr. Benson's attention.
- Turk is a frat boy wearing a toga and a beer helmet.
- Janitor cuts J.D. with an electric knife as a feverish J.D. imagines he is a Thanksgiving turkey.
Janitor story[]
When J.D. is a patient, Janitor makes sure his stay is unpleasant by reminding him that people die in hospitals and taking the television out of his room.
Guest stars[]
- Paul Collins as Dave Benson
- Michael McDonald as Mike Davis
- Trevor Davis as Tommy
- Amelinda Embry as Jennifer
- Angee Hughes as Admitting nurse
- Drew Wicks as Patient
Music[]
♫ List of music featured in Scrubs
- "Absolutely Wasted" by Sporting Riff Raff
- "Fuzzy" by Incredible Moses Leroy
- "Hooch" by Everything
- "The Magician" by Bobby McCall & Dontrell Mayfield
Quotes[]
- “What annoying thing?”— J.D.
- “What annoying thing?”— J.D.
- “You know, when you talk.”
- “Dude, she rocks.”— J.D.
- “Dude, she rocks.”— J.D.
Trivia/Goofs[]
- Dr. Cox doesn't call J.D. any girls' names in this episode (perhaps because he is too worried about his former mentor, Dr. Benson).
- It is revealed that J.D. is afraid of pennies and sharks. The fear of pennies may stem from the Janitor torturing him in the pilot over a penny stuck in a door.
- When J.D. says, "That sounds like a Fat Albert joke", he is referring to the cartoon by Bill Cosby made into a movie in 2005. The format for many of the jokes on the show was "You're like a _______. You _______."
- Turk is part of the group of black guys who laugh at the Fat Albert jokes, even though Turk tells the jokes.
- Turk enjoys "being a walrus" by putting straws up his nose.
- In the scene where Turk operates on J.D., the wall behind him is full of x-rays, meaning the "O.R." is actually an x-ray room.
- During J.D.'s operation, Turk makes the incision on the wrong side. However, when he checks on J.D.'s incision later, it's on the correct side (on the right).
- Despite J.D. having his appendix removed, a scar is never seen in any future episodes when he takes his shirt off though it is possible that the scar healed.
- Despite the episode's title, J.D. only spends a minute of his day off.
- At the end of the episode, when Dr. Cox orders a round of five drinks for the main characters, the glasses are not filled before he takes them over to the other four people. Then, when he sits back down at the bar, the bottle rotates between shots.
- When J.D. turns on the TV briefly and Janitor comes in to turn it off, one can hear J.D.'s voice making the noises coming from the TV.
- In the scene where Elliot spills spaghetti on a patient's face, it can be seen that there was no spaghetti on the plate she was carrying and that the spaghetti was already on the patient's face.
- The song The Magician by Bobby McCall & Dontrell Mayfield is featured in this episode and the previous episode, "My Fifteen Minutes".
- Dr. Cox claims that he started working at Sacred Heart when Dr. Benson was the chief of medicine. However, in later episodes it is revealed that Dr. Kelso became the chief of medicine in the 1970s and that Dr. Cox has been at Sacred Heart for 20 years. Therefore, Dr. Cox could not have worked under another chief of medicine.
- However, it has also been revealed that Dr. Kelso became a doctor in the 70s. As hospitals don't promote interns to chiefs of medicine on their first day, it is possible that Dr. Benson was, in fact, the chief of medicine when Dr. Cox started working at Sacred Heart.
- When J.D. says, "There was the Niña...", he is referring to one of the ships Columbus used to sail to America (the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Niña).
- When Turk says, "To me, you'll always be that geeky kid with the Pat Benatar t-shirt," he is referring to Pat Benatar, an American rock singer widely known for "You Better Run", the second music video ever played on MTV.
- When Dr. Kelso says, "Still, Rodin's masterpiece makes us wonder, why didn't he spend a little less time thinking and a little more time at the gym?", he is referring to Auguste Rodin, a famous French sculptor, painter and printmaker.
Title explanation[]
J.D. gets the day off.