Bill Lawrence has revealed that when he is able to, he will edit the recently removed episodes of Scrubs so they can return to circulation without blackface scenes.
With each passing day, more and more TV shows from the past are having episodes removed from circulation. The reason? Those episodes show white actors in blackface. The list of shows to have either removed or edited episodes from streaming services and television includes Scrubs, The Office, Community, Peep Show, and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
In the case of some of the episodes of Always Sunny, there's a strong chance they will never return to streaming services or TV. The removed episodes have threads that rely on one or more of the characters appearing in blackface multiple times. However, for Scrubs, that was not the case, which has left fans of the show asking why the episodes were removed completely.
The three episodes in question feature JD (Zach Braff) in blackface in two episodes, and Elliot (Sarah Chalke) in the other. Two of the occasions are JD fantasies, while the other is a flashback. Braff, Chalke, Donald Faison, who played Turk on the show, and Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence appeared on a special edition of Fake Doctors, Real Friends, Braff and Faison's podcast, to explain the decisions made.
Lawrence revealed that it was his decision to make the call and have the episodes pulled. He also admitted that their existence makes him "feel sh**ty" and that it was ignorant and arrogant of him to include blackface in the first place. As for the decision to remove the episodes rather than edit them, that is simply due to the circumstances and the current climate the world finds itself in.
Lawrence revealed that a lot of fans have questioned why the episodes were removed entirely. The writer does plan to edit them and return them to circulation eventually, but the pandemic is preventing him from doing that right now. The three episodes of Scrubs haven't disappeared forever, and hopefully, once the world has returned to some semblance of normal, they will be back on Hulu with the blackface scenes removed.
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