#4: SEINFELD dressed in SCRUBS

SEINFELD has been an influential sitcom through the 1980's and 90's. Many ideas and techniques related to story structure, characters, and cinematography have crowned SEINFELD as one of the most unique sitcoms created. Because of this, many other sitcoms have copied, ever so slightly, some of the things that make SEINFELD unique.


One sitcom that comes to mind when mentioning SEINFELD techniques is SCRUBS. SCRUBS, at its core, is about a small group of friends that have been together through college and are on the road to becoming doctors. This is similar to SEINFELD in that the characters are a tightly knitted groups of friends who joke with and make fun of one another.


Another similarity between the two sitcoms, is the re-occurrence of minor characters. For instance, SEINFELD's Crazy Joe Davola shows up in a few episodes and is part of some of the jokes; SCRUBS's Dan Dorian is JD's brother and comes in at times throughout the series and takes part in plenty of the humorous sketches.


Additionally, SCRUBS is similar to SEINFELD in that it refers to previous jokes that have happened in earlier episodes and seasons. For example, SCRUBS refers to JD and Turk's jokes the "floating head doctor" and the "world's most giant doctor, in which JD dreams he his body is separated from his head and they act as different entities, and when JD and Turk stand on top of each other and have a giant lab coat and stethoscope.