Scrubs: Outta here like Vladimir

Belated "Scrubs" spoilers coming up just as soon as I put on a fedora...

"Thanks for everything, Ted. Sincerely."

God, I'm going to miss Ken Jenkins -- who's been the "Scrubs" MVP for the last two seasons -- if, in fact, he's leaving the show.

I understand why Bill Lawrence wants to do a bonus final-final season on ABC next year. NBC wouldn't let him make the handful of episodes he needed to send the show off properly, and it wouldn't make fiscal sense for ABC to pick the show up for a half-dozen episodes or less. But episodes like "My Dumb Luck" -- funny and touching and classic "Scrubs"-ian though it was -- concern me, because now certain characters are getting their closure well ahead of schedule.

I imagine Jenkins will stick around with the show in some capacity -- Kelso could become a private practice doc based in the hospital (ala Elliot), or a member of the board (ala Jordan), or a pharmaceutical rep (ala Heather Locklear), to name just three possibilities -- and if Cox gets the chief of medicine job, there could be some entertaining role reversal in Cox having to make the unpopular decisions while Kelso needles him about it.

But part of what made this episode so good -- and what's made the last few so good after nearly two years of very uninspiring "Scrubs" -- was that knowledge that the end was in sight, and that the writers could pull out all the stops and give Kelso a proper farewell (from his job, if not from the series).

This reminds me of the last two years of "The Sopranos." Season 6 (or 6A, if you want; the one with the Kevin Finnerty experience) started off like gangbusters, because the writers at the time assumed this would be the last year. About halfway through the writing process, David Chase agreed to do one final batch of episodes, and they had to put the brakes on a whole lot of storylines. (That's why Vito's gay awakening got so much play, for instance.)

If "Scrubs" can be as good as it's been for the last few episodes for another year, then I have no problem getting another season out of the show. But if it's been this good of late solely because the finish line was in sight, then I worry about how much of the ABC season is going to feel like filler.

Oh, and was I the only one driven batty by every character mispronouncing Porphyria? It's poor-FEAR-ee-uh, not poor-fur-EE-uh.

What did everybody else think?