Spoiler Free

I have been a big fan of the Fake Doctors, Real Friends podcast for the last several years. But I have so many complaints about it now.

The show is a rewatch podcast for the show Scrubs. It was fun to listen to the two stars of the show, Zach Braff and Donald Faison (who are the hosts of the podcast) talk about every episode of the original run of Scrubs for the last few years. Unlike the other rewatch podcast I listen to, Office Ladies, Zach and Donald are willing to admit when an episode of Scrubs isn't actually great. Office Ladies hosts just say everything is wonderful. The nice thing about Office Ladies is they actually talk about the TV show. Fake Doctors doesn't stick to the show too reliably.

Now the complaints...

Now that the TV show has been resurrected with two new seasons, they are making new podcast episodes. But their podcast feed is a mess. All their rerun podcasts are mixed in with episodes about the new season of Scrubs. They are writing (New) as the indication it is a new podcast.

My other complaint is with the number of spoilers on the podcast. The episode My Premiere Night Primer was horrible with the spoilers.

DO NOT READ BELOW THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS

Each time the hosts (or producers of the show) said they didn't want to do spoilers, they proceeded to offer spoilers. Here is a list.

Clear reveals

13:33, Joelle. The promise: "Just so… spoiler free review from a critic here." The reveal: The pilot's very serious opening scene is a fake-out. "It's a fantasy," she says, adding that "a crazy insane thing happens," then "a much more insane thing," before it lands in JD's current reality.

15:34, Joelle. The promise: "I'm not spoiling anything." The reveal: The first time we see Turk, "he can sense JD."

33:49, Zach. The promise: "I don't want to give away too much to fans." The reveal: Johnny C. McGinley's Dr. Cox leaves partway through and returns. "I don't want you to panic when you see him go away. I promise you he comes back."

34:15, Zach. The promise: "Without spoiling anything." The reveal: The pilot ends on a music cue that Donald's character starts.

39:40, Joelle. The promise: "I don't want to spoil it." The reveal: She had said 17 seconds earlier that Turk and Carla are "back together," then added, "you learn more about their family." At 41:19, Zach gave away the detail she held back: "they have four kids together now."

50:52, Joelle. The promise: "Not to give anything away." The reveal: She quotes a joke almost word for word, in which a character tells Donald's character that "communicating with me just in Star Wars memes is not a form of communication."

Partial reveals

20:15, Zach. The promise: "I don't want to ruin anything about the show… I won't say a word." The reveal: He had just said that Vanessa Bayer plays an HR woman, and he kept going about her landing "seven jokes in a row."

25:29, Zach. The promise: "Oh, I don't want to ruin them." The reveal: He held back Joel Kim Booster's improvised jokes, but moments later described the character: Kevin Park, an attending who wants to be chief of medicine and became Dr. Cox's protégé while JD was gone.

45:57, Donald. The promise: "I don't want to spoil anything." The reveal: He said it twice anyway. Producer Daniel called it out with "That's a spoiler. So bleep it," and the episode bleeps it, so listeners never hear what it was.

48:55, Zach. The promise: "You can just bleep what I'm about to say." The reveal: The specifics were bleeped, but he still said this fantasy got him a call from Bill over the budget. Joelle followed, unbleeped, at 49:13: "I thought it was the episode two stunt… I'm excited to hear that you're going even bigger later."

Very disappointing! I actually stopped listening at about 15 minutes because I realized they couldn't keep themselves from revealing things. Crazy that they repeatedly did it as they promised they wouldn't.