Scrubs: The Complete Seventh Season

If any series that managed to survive the writers' strike of last season suffered most, it might have been Scrubs. Though it's still slated for an eighth season starting in January, the last few seasons have seen the hospital comedy hanging by a thread. The fact that the strike forced the show off the air for five months only weeks after it premiered made things worse, especially since when all was said and done, the seventh season it contained a miniscule 11 episodes and ended without any sort of closure or cliff-hanger. This makes watching the two-disc DVD set more difficult than usual, considering what was lined up could have been one of the show's most significant seasons. Creator Bill Lawrence and his crew gave the series its most lucrative story arcs yet, turning J.D. into a father, removing one of Turk's testicles, giving the Janitor a living, breathing, real live girlfriend, having Elliot break off her engagement with Keith and forcing Dr. Kelso into retirement because he was too damn old. However, thanks to a premature run, season seven is capped off with a loose parody of The Princess Bride, which likely should have come earlier in the order, judging by Kelso's involvement, not to mention the fact that it doesn't exactly finalize anything. Still, the brief and disarrayed season couldn't interfere with the series' streak as one of television's most consistently funny sitcoms, as well as producing one of its finest moments to date: a side-splitting Risky Business homage. The bonuses include the expected bloopers, interviews and deleted scenes (the best of which comes when J.D. asks Dr. Cox if he needs to grow up), but also a behind-the-scenes look at the aforementioned episode titled "My Princess." Described by a crew member as "Terry Gilliam meets The Carol Burnett Show," the featurette shows the extensive work involved in building the appropriate sets, as well as the period piece costumes, the best of which was the challenging creation of "Turla," a Turk and Carla hybrid (two heads, one body). Directed by Zach Braff, it's one of the show's greatest achievements, pushing the usual J.D. standard fantasy sequence into a full-length episode that's a whimsical yet touching little fairy tale.