Scalpels drawn: The war over “Scrubs”

There was this show called “Scrubs.” It was a comedy about wacky doctors and oddball patients and an extremely peculiar janitor. People liked it just fine. They shot it in an abandoned hospital in the Valley, where they offered cast and crew members money to spend a half-hour on a body tray down in the morgue.

It did OK. But NBC threw it around the schedule a lot and then it did less OK. But still, 6 or 7 or 8 million people were watching it and ABC, who has comedies like “According to Jim” which is watched by about 5 million people and “Carpoolers” which gets about 4 million people to tune in, looked at it and thought to itself, “Hey, 7 or 8 million viewers is pretty good, in our book” and so they asked “Scrubs” if they wanted to do a season for ABC, which produces the show in the first place.

And then NBC, who was pretty much going to cancel the thing, said, “Whu---? Waitasecond, buddy, that’s our show!”

Yes: NBC, which has waited until the last second before renewing the show and has used it as a midseason replacement and was dragging its feet about whether or not they’d even allow “Scrubs” to produce a series-finale episode, is suddenly is all about their “Scrubs.”

I have a dog. He’ll be like totally ignoring a cow’s hoof and then I’ll pick it up and then he wants that cow’s hoof more than anything on the planet. NBC’s like my dog: They’re both house-trained.