Warning! Spoilers ahead for the Scrubs revival Season 2, Episode 7, “My Story”Scrubs Season 9 was so poorly received that it was quickly viewed as some sort of non-canon continuation, despite officially belonging to the sitcom’s main timeline. Thankfully, the show’s revival legitimized the consensus that Season 9 should be ignored by declaring it largely irrelevant to the new episodes.
A handful of Season 9 elements have since been re-canonized by the revival, such as JD (Zach Braff) and Elliot (Sarah Chalke) getting married and having a baby. However, Season 8 now feeds directly into the revival’s first episode, “My Return,” with Season 9 existing in some sort of alternative Scrubs timeline.
One of the few downsides of this move is that Dr. Kelso (Ken Jenkins) ultimately has fewer canon appearances, as he featured in 9 episodes of Season 9 out of a possible 13. Of course, the same thing happened with other legacy characters, like JD, but the fact most have returned for the revival has meant their post-Season 8 lives have been fleshed out in other ways.
Because Jenkins, 86, hasn’t returned for the revival due to his retirement from acting, the new Scrubs episodes have been limited in how they can involve him. There have been a few fun references, but nothing of any real substance. That said, “My Story,” the latest effort, does tell us something interesting and on-brand regarding Kelso’s life after Season 8.
“My Story” Restores Enid’s Death After ‘Scrubs’ Season 8
Kelso returns as a professor in Scrubs Season 9, serving as a teacher to the next generation of doctors. His new role comes in the wake of the in-universe death of his wife, Enid – a character who was never shown on-screen but was often referenced. Kelso’s feelings for Enid were often intentionally contradictory. In some episodes, he spoke fondly of her; in others, not so much.
Regardless, Enid’s off-screen death was framed as an emotional milestone in his life and as the reason he turned to teaching in Season 9. Because the revival retconned Season 9 from existence, it’s been hard to know whether Enid still died, and what Kelso has done since we last canonically saw him in Season 8.
“My Story” doesn’t just reveal that Enid did still die at some point between Season 8 and the revival, but the news comes embedded with a new story about Kelso as well. When Cassie (Stephanie Koenig) tells JD that the hospital chapel was once the room where women were lobotomized in the ’50s, JD points at Kelso’s portrait and replies: “Yeah, this guy tried to bring that back, but then his wife died and he lost interest.”
Although it’s possible that Kelso started this controversial campaign to bring back female lobotomies (presumably to lobotomize Enid) during his time as Chief of Medicine, I think that’s unlikely. Instead, I think he probably did so while trying to abuse his influence as a prominent figure in the local medical community, after Season 8.
Either way, because Enid was still alive at the end of Season 8, the story as a whole serves as a darkly humorous story that fills in some of the blanks of Kelso’s life in the new Scrubs episodes’ revised continuity.
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Scrubs
- Release Date
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February 25, 2026
- Network
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ABC
- Directors
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Chris Koch, Gail Mancuso, Ken Whittingham, Michael Spiller, Randall Keenan Winston, Zach Braff
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Scrubs
- Release Date
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2001 – 2010-00-00
- Network
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ABC, NBC
- Directors
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Michael Spiller, Chris Koch, Ken Whittingham, Adam Bernstein, Gail Mancuso, Marc Buckland, John Inwood, John Putch, Will Mackenzie, Victor Nelli Jr., Craig Zisk, Lawrence Trilling, Linda Mendoza, Michael McDonald, John Michel, Rick Blue, Richard Alexander Wells, Henry Chan, Joanna Kerns, Mark Stegemann, Matthew Diamond, Peter Lauer, Elodie Keene, Jason Ensler
