My Five Stages

Infobox Television episode | Title =My Five Stages
Series = Scrubs
Season = 5
Episode = 13
Guests= Dave Foley (Dr. Hedrick)
Travis Schuldt (Keith)
Sam Lloyd (Ted)
Michael Learned (Mrs. Wilk)
Michael Janik (Patient #1)
Alicia Fusting (Patient #2)
Airdate = March 7, 2006
Production = 513
Writer = Tad Quill
Director = Jay Alaimo


Caption =
Episode list =List of Scrubs episodes
Prev = My Cabbage
Next = My Own Personal Hell

"My Five Stages" is the 106th episode of the American situation comedy "Scrubs". It originally aired as Episode 13 of Season 5 on March 7, 2006. The title comes from the Kübler-Ross model of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Plot

Mrs. Patricia Wilk, the hospital's favorite patient, has come back to the hospital because of an infection she caught from Cabbage's farewell handshake a week ago. Despite the best efforts of Dr. Cox and J.D., the infection has led to multiple-organ failure and Mrs. Wilk is now going to die. Cox and J.D. try to make her last days happy with various methods, one such way is making a beach on the roof for her (she couldn't leave for a real one because of her condition). The group talks, where Mrs. Wilk reflects on her life and reveals that she never was afraid of death as she simply used the idea of it as a way to motivate her to get better, but now when she's actually facing the prospect of dying, she's frightened.

Mrs. Wilk requests advice from the hospital's grief counselor, Dr. Lester Hedrick, to help cope with her fears of death. Dr. Hedrick comforts her and explains she will go through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Cox and J.D. are cautious around Hedrick, as he gets personal with them, and are offended by his humorous and open nature, making them reluctant to trust him. This intensifies when Mrs. Wilk's body begins to fail and she lapses into a coma; Hedrick insists she is ready to die, while J.D. and Cox continue their efforts to keep her alive.

Mrs. Wilk, now in a deep coma and continuing to fail, doesn't have much time and J.D. and Cox hold a competition on who has to contact her next-of-kin. The competition ends, however, when they start thinking she might pull through like other patients have, but Hedrick points this out as denial (J.D. and Cox, who care about Mrs. Wilk so much, they are experiencing the five stages of grief with her). Later, when Mrs. Wilk is put onto full-life support, Cox admits he would do anything to make her get better (bargaining), and annoyed with Hedrick, storm his terminal patients therapy session and angrily demand he leave them alone (anger).

Meanwhile, Elliot and Keith's booty call continues on, growing steadily stronger. When Keith reveals that he never got Elliot's booty-call message the night before. Turk and Carla are shocked, and make Elliot realize that Keith is booty-calling her. Carla and Turk each try to use Elliot and Keith to fight a power struggle about who gets the power in their relationship, but this makes the situation worse and Elliot ends her booty-call with Keith , but soon begin to miss his company and doesn't know why. Elliot, while talking to Carla and Turk on while she feels this way, realizes she misses Keith, as their relationship has advanced more than a booty-call. Meanwhile, Kelso is driven to run Ted off the road as he despises bicycles (because of the hand they had in his father leaving his family). The Janitor pushes Ted to use this leverage to make Kelso treat him better.

Suddenly, J.D and Cox's pagers go off and rush off to Mrs. Wilk's room, where they and Hedrick stand vigil over her until the heart monitor flatlines. They are all sad (depression); rather than point this out, Hedrick says "she was lucky to have you as doctors" and leaves them alone in the room, where J.D. and Cox keep staring at Mrs. Wilk, peaceful in death.

In the end, Elliot asks Keith out, who eagerly accepts, as she wants him to be her boyfriend. The Janitor loses his leverage over Kelso when Ted eagerly accepts meager compensation.

The last scene is of J.D. and Cox on the roof, talking about how great a person Mrs. Wilk was. Hedrick notices and calls up to them, saying they've reached acceptance, and his bicycle is promptly destroyed by Kelso (much to J.D. and Cox's pleasure as they still hate him). They then sit down on two of the three chairs on the roof-beach and comment on Dr. Kelso. They notice the empty third chair, which saddens them (as Mrs. Wilk used it earlier in the episode), they continue thinking about Mrs. Wilk, who is now, finally, at peace.

Featured music

* "Long Road" by Pearl Jam with Neil Young
* "Bring Me Love" by Deberg/Jacobs

External links

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