Scrubs: Sarah Chalke Breaks Down Elliots Dream Date With J.D.

Scrubs‘ latest episode delivers a major “what if” daydream scenario in the latest episode, “My Story,” which sees J.D. (Zach Braff) reconnect with Elliot (Sarah Chalke) on a deeper level.Warning: Spoilers for Scrubs Season 2 Episode 7 ahead!

While J.D. continues to get closer to the hospital’s new administrator Cassie (Stephanie Koenig), canceled plans leave him considering a dinner date with Elliot, which also stems from ongoing conversations the exes have been having with their son Ollie (Kellan Tetlow). The pair end up having a rather romantic time, and just as we’re led to believe a reunion may be on the horizon, J.D. is taken out of his daydream, and the evening is revealed as merely wishful thinking.

Instead, J.D. decides to hold back on speaking about his true feelings for Elliot to avoid causing her potential heartache or pain.

Below, Chalke opens up about the standout episode, exploring J.D. and Elliot’s dynamic as parents, and much more.

Disney / Sergei Bachlakov

Was it cathartic to have J.D. & Elliot have this dream date and air their issues?

Sarah Chalke: I love the whole premise of the episode. When Aseem [Batra] pitched it to me, I just thought it was such an incredibly smart way to get into it through the lens of this patient who was struggling with dementia, and she’s up on the ceiling, and J.D. goes up to join her and comfort her and then ends up going into his own fantasy. It’s the first time that we get to see one of his fantasies that’s really elongated.

And in terms of J.D. and Elliott, I thought it was so beautifully written and [had] a level of insight into what had happened that we haven’t really gotten yet as an audience. So it was a really cool scene to film. We actually filmed a bunch of that stuff in one day. We went to the restaurant for half the day, and then we were outside by the water for the other half of the day.

How do you think Elliot would feel knowing that J.D. holds back from telling her that he loves her in the episode’s final moments?

He’s doing it for her. He wants to, and he’s like, “I would love to try this again, and I’d love to do it, but for Elliott, I’m not gonna do that because I can’t risk hurting her again.” I think she would find that showing a lot of growth and I think it would only allow her to have second thoughts about the separation even more.

Do you think the door is closed on a potential romance between them in the future?

I think it actually opened it up more than closes it, because I think through the season, we’ve really started to see them function so well with coparenting, but also working together and being supportive of each other in life, in work, in dating, and parenting, and you start to see more and more why they got along. But also, with J.D. coming back to the hospital, that’s what was missing for him. So he is starting to come back to his old self and having all the qualities that she fell in love with in the first place. So I think it actually opens the door more than closes it because you start to see these are two people that really loved each other. And here’s why. And now that they’re both having that spark again of being fulfilled, both in their work and in their personal lives, they just both start to see more and more in each other of who they’ve fallen in love with.

We meet Ollie in this episode. Will we see more of the family dynamic this season, or is that something you’d like to explore further in a third season?

I really hope we get to do a third season for so many reasons, and that’s absolutely one of them ’cause it is a fun area that we haven’t gotten to explore a ton. There’s a tiny bit more to come, but mostly, we’ve talked about things that we would do with that in the third, and the kid they cast, he’s fantastic and he’s up for anything. [He’s] at that young age where it’s his first time working on a set where stuff’s just getting thrown at you; there are four writers at a time by the monitors coming up with alternate jokes in between takes and saying, “Hey, buddy, try it like this” o “try one of these, what if you were to say this?” And he’s rolling with all of it.

You were a young actor yourself; how has that helped in your approach to working alongside Kellan Tetlow?

I wasn’t quite as young as him, but I want it to be a really warm environment for him where he feels comfortable doing those things and trying different things. It was all of Zach and Donald’s, and my goal from the get-go was for that to be the environment for all of the interns coming into this show, for two reasons. One, just because I want it to be a nice place for everyone to work, because that’s how it should be [and] because it can be that way. And also, just ’cause that’s where the best comedy happens. If you can’t try things and take risks and do something stupid and fall flat on your face, physically or metaphorically, if you don’t feel safe. And so I think that’s when the magic happens: when there’s a sense of safety, and it’s probably one of the things I love the most about this job because we’ve known each other for 25 years, because it’s such a fun working environment; every year gets creatively more and more fun because everybody just feels safe to try anything.

Additional reporting by Amanda Bell

Scrubs, Wednesdays, 8/7c, ABC