Scrubs Season 11 Won’t Bring Back Ken Jenkins, and That Might Be a Good Thing

The bad news: Ken Jenkins won’t be returning as Dr. Kelso on Scrubs any time soon.

If you’re an original Scrubs fan, this is heartbreaking — and for me, doubly so, because I learned it right after watching Jenkins’ 1989 guest appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

At the same time, I can’t help thinking Kelso’s absence will make Scrubs Season 11 even stronger.

If The Revival Is About How Everything’s Changed, Kelso’s Absence Makes A Lot Of Sense

The Scrubs Season 11 premiere reinforced the idea that this world isn’t the same one JD left in 2009 at the close of Scrubs Season 9.

Cox is struggling with being a patient rather than a doctor; JD is now the boss rather than the doe-eyed intern; Elliot laments all the chances she didn’t take earlier in her career; and Turk has to face the fact that his interns may someday be better than him at surgery.

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Given that backdrop, it’s hard to see where Kelso fits in.

Back then, he was the administrator who had to make hard decisions about what the hospital could afford and had little patience for people who followed Cox’s tendency to rebel against the rules.

But now everyone else has moved on in life, and the hospital is a different place, so where would Kelso even fit in?

If he did appear, he’d probably be a crotchety old man on a lawn chair, remembering the good old days when he ran the hospital — didn’t he retire near the end of the original series?

Don’t get me wrong; it would be fun to catch up with him and see how his post-Sacred Heart life had turned out, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it would fit into the series’ current arcs.

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At this point, Kelso’s presence might be more nostalgic than anything else, and that wouldn’t add a lot to the show.

Of course, I wasn’t sure we needed Cox, given that JD should have outgrown needing his approval by now, and I was wrong about that.

Still, if Kelso did appear, it wouldn’t be about him still clashing with Cox in the same way, although it would be fun for him to be part of a support group Cox was in for doctors-turned-patients.

Scrubs Is Better Off Closing That Door Altogether

I wouldn’t want the series to kill Kelso off, especially when Ken Jenkins is still alive (even if he never plans to come back to the series).

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That would be like when Law & Order: SVU killed off Captain Cragen for no reason.

However, I think it’s time for the medical dramady to acknowledge that Kelso belongs to Sacred Heart’s past, not its future.

What could be more in keeping with Scrubs’ theme of time having passed than that?

There are plenty of ways to honor Kelso without bringing him back on-screen, too.

With Elliot, JD, and Turk helping shape the next generation of interns, there are plenty of events that could remind them of Kelso.

JD struggles with how to be a mentor and often overfocuses on his relationship with Cox, but Kelso influenced him too.

It would be poignant for him to understand Kelso differently now that he’s in a different stage of his career.

Cox having a “conversation” with Kelso about his own medical issues, where he imitated Kelso’s voice for half the conversation, would also be very Cox.

Elliot could tell Tosh how offended she was when Kelso called her “sweetheart” back in the day.

And that’s only the beginning of how to honor Kelso without bringing him back.

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Over to you, Scrubs Fanatics! Could Scrubs be stronger without Kelso, or am I just trying to convince myself because he won’t be there this season?

I’m also curious to know if there are any other legacy characters you think that could return to the show instead.

That’s the beauty of revivals of legacy series — there are many familiar faces who could stop by for an encore.

Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.
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Scrubs airs on ABC on Wednesdays at 8/7c and streams on Hulu on Thursdays.

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