What Will Happen To Dr. Cox? John C. McGinley Interview

TVLINE | Over the years, we’ve seen Cox carry a lot — professionally and personally. Do you see this as a kind of reckoning for him?
I think what Cox has been doing since we saw him leave in Episode 1 is not dissimilar to what I, John McGinley, was doing for a couple of years when I quasi-retired. 

I went to a shrink and I said, “Barry, I’m micromanaging the family too much. I’m getting in everybody’s way.” And he said, “Here’s the thing: Your objective for the last 28 years was Max,” my son who was born with Down syndrome. He was born 28 years ago — he’s doing great — then the girls were born 18 and 15 years ago. He goes, “What was your objective?” And I go, “That’s easy. It was to provide for the family and create a sense of safety and protection.”

And he says, “Okay, well, you’ve done it. So now what do you want to do? Because you can’t go fussing with everybody all the time. You’ve set them on a path to flourish. Here’s what I want you to do — and there’s no wrong answer: I want you to start finding out things that make you, Johnny C., happy. I’m not talking about going off to an ashram and doing peyote. What can you do organically in your journey here that fulfills you now that everyone is provided for, and everyone is safe? Go ride a bike, go learn falconry, start painting” — I’m making this up — “but go find things that not only get you out of everybody’s hair, but make you get out of bed in the morning and go, ‘I can’t wait to experiment with that nuance of purple on the canvas.'”

I think I have succeeded at it, and I think Cox is failing miserably at it, and it makes me laugh that he can’t find anything that can fill his cup the way going in and saving lives for 16 hours a day and teaching young people how to do it did. And if that’s where his cup is half empty, then to have that compounded by a possible brush with mortality — writers can write that, and they did. When I have that talk with Elliot about regret, and reconciling what might’ve been a profound wrong and I was the catalyst for it… The fact that [that scene] didn’t go sideways is a tribute to [Sarah Chalke] being so amazing.

When your friends and mine, who have unfortunately checked out in a moment, for whatever the horrible circumstances were, that’s one way [to go out]. But your friends and mine who have stuck around for a second, and have been able to reconcile things with us — or with their brothers or sisters, their aunts or uncles — that’s both a privilege and a responsibility, and I think Cox is taking this on. I don’t know if he’s a fatalist as much as he knows that this challenge can go south.

And trying to protect… it’s so funny that verb just keeps coming up. I told Aseem that Cox protecting J.D., telling everybody that I want the other doctor to take care of me because I’m trying to protect him from this at the expense of getting the best doctor in the hospital — rational thought would be, “I want you to take care of me. You give me the best shot.” 

“I’m going to protect you from taking care of me” is so deliciously a— backwards and wrongly selfless. That scene is one of the richest scenes I’ve ever gotten to play on “Scrubs.”

TVLINE | I don’t think Cox would have accepted J.D. overseeing his care during the original run. Both in that scene, and in the scene you referenced where Cox makes amends with Elliot, I felt like we were seeing Cox in a whole new, more vulnerable light.
I agree. I think we saw it ever so briefly at [Ben’s] funeral, but it was silent film time. There were no words other than Zachy saying, “Where do you think we are?” And then it was silent film time for Cox. This is an articulate exploration of mortality. Fear, inadequacy, and reconciliation. Call action, and get out of my eye line.