Welcome Back, Scrubs. I've Missed You So.

I can hardly believe that one of my favorite TV comedies ever is down to what will most likely be its final episodes.

After a fashionably long hiatus (why do so many shows follow the Lost formula these days and make you wait from May to January without a new episode?) Scrubs launched its (probable) last season last night with two back-to-back episodes. The first was your typical Scrubs silliness (only made truly memorable by a rant Courtney Cox Arquette's character goes on about spiders and how they should be stomped rather than carried outside in paper cups "because they're sneaky"). The second had me doing what Scrubs has me doing quite a bit: laughing one minute, reaching for the tissues the next.

When a dying man comes into the hospital, with no family to be with him in his final hours, J.D. and Turk skip their annual Steak Night to share a beer and some comfort with the man. It was a sad situation, certainly, but one that's not unusual for that show. But here's the genius of Scrubs: you never see it coming. The sad moments aren't predictable. There's a terminal patient in almost every episode. So I wasn't planning on crying, especially since the banter between the doctors and patient was so comic. But then the old man admitted he was scared. And the two doctors, who previously had told the dying man that they didn't see death as something to fear, that they believed in heaven, admitted to being afraid themselves.

"Of course we're afraid," J.D. said (or something like this; I am going from memory here.) "We just don't want Death to know. Because once it knows, it has us."

Gah. If only real doctors were that candid.

The episode ended with J.D. telling the old man the only thing that he knows for sure about death: that if you can die with your last thought being a happy one, that that's the best exit you can hope for. So the dying man lets his head fall back and remembers how good his last beer tasted.

And that was his dying thought. And really, when I have to go, that wouldn't be such a bad note to leave on. Especially if my last beer is a Unibroue.

I cried quietly for a minute as the episode finished. Which is troubling; if the second episode of this (probable) final season does this to me, what in the world will I be like with the last episode? Because chances are, they will pull out all the tearjerker stops.

Any other Scrubs fans out there? If so, what were your fave episodes? And should the series go on even though Zach Braff and Bill Lawrence have said this is it for them? And if you don't like Scrubs...what is wrong with you??