Character
Elliot Reid M.D. is a fictional character played by Sarah Chalke in the American comedy-drama Scrubs. She appeared in every episode during the first eight seasons, except for two…
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Investigate this subjectElliot Reid M.D. is a fictional character played by Sarah Chalke in the American comedy-drama Scrubs.
Elliot Reid M.D. is a fictional character played by Sarah Chalke in the American comedy-drama Scrubs. She appeared in every episode during the first eight seasons, except for two Season 8 episodes, "My Last Words" and "My Lawyer's in Love".
Chalke was a regular cast member for the first eight seasons and appeared in a recurring role in four episodes of Season 9. Elliot is a close friend and a frequent love interest to protagonist John "J.D." Dorian (Zach Braff) for the first eight seasons, and she becomes his wife at the end of season eight. The character of Elliot Reid is also close to other series characters, including Carla Espinosa (Judy Reyes) and Christopher Turk (Donald Faison).
The character of Elliot Reid is described as the daughter of Simon and Lily Reid (Lane Davies and Markie Post). Her father was a former Chief of Medicine at St. Augustine's, a private hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her mother is portrayed as a cold, self-absorbed alcoholic. Her father regularly tries to interfere with her career over the course of the show. He eventually cuts her off financially after he tries to push her to specialize in gynecology but she refuses. Her parents overall cut her off because they feel it’s time for her to be independent. Elliot has several brothers, who are also doctors, but they are never portrayed on the show. One of these unseen characters is her brother Barry, a closeted homosexual whom their parents sent to a "hetero camp." She used to play "Wonder Twins" with another one of her brothers, Bradley.
Elliot is described as the valedictorian of her high school and an alumna of Brown University.
She begins the show as an intern at the fictional Sacred Heart Hospital and later becomes a resident. She serves as a co-chief resident with J.D. during Season 4. At the end of that season, she briefly leaves to take an endocrinology fellowship, which ends five days later after her research partner finds a cure for osteogenesis imperfecta, the disease they were hired to research. After a brief spell at a free clinic, the character returns to Sacred Heart and becomes a senior attending physician. At the end of the episode "My Coffee", she accepts an offer to go into private practice. In "My Full Moon", she ponders her future career after struggling to deliver the bad news to a patient diagnosed with H.I.V. She tells Turk that if she were lucky enough to get married and to have enough money to survive without working, she would "walk out of this place and never look back." In the tenth season, Elliot is back on the staff of Sacred Heart as the head of their simulation program, forcing her to navigate a new dynamic with J.D., her ex-husband and now boss.
When first introduced, Elliot was portrayed as socially awkward and hyper-competitive, but her personality was modified slightly by the second episode. According to Chalke, her character was shown to totally lack "social skills." She is characterized as a chatterbox who puts her foot in her mouth at every conceivable opportunity (in "My Mentor," she asks an overweight woman, "When's the baby due?" and accidentally insults Turk's Jehovah's Witness mother by describing people of that faith as "crazed, annoying busybodies"). According to J.D. and various patients, her bedside manner is cold and mechanical, although in later seasons she is shown to bond with several patients. Her bedside manner (or lack thereof) is part of the reason that Dr. Cox decides to split the role of chief resident between her and the more sensitive J.D. (saying the two of them together would make "one barely passable doctor/Labradoodle").
Elliot is frequently shown telling "inspirational stories" to fellow staff and patients that invariably ended with someone committing suicide. "My Happy Place" has become the expected result of any story she begins. In the episode "My Fishbowl," she admits that she tried to kill herself as a teenager by filling her pockets with rocks and walking into a lake like her favorite author, Virginia Woolf. However, the attempt failed when someone rowing a boat in the lake accidentally struck her on the head with an oar.
In Season 3, Elliot undergoes a notable transformation; she begins dressing and grooming herself in a more sexually provocative manner and adopts a somewhat more assertive and self-assured personality. This was the result of a directive from NBC's marketing department, which wanted the show to have a sexier female star for the network's coveted young male demographic. A short feature on the Season 3 DVD set titled "The New Elliot" explained the reasons for the makeover and the response it engendered from Chalke and the show's writers.
Chalke, speaking about her character, has noted how much Elliot changed through the run of Scrubs. At the start of the series, Elliot was a competitive and independent person until she realized that she needed the help and support of her co-workers. Chalke said that Elliot's transformation in the episode "My Own American Girl" did not really help her life, and that Elliot was still "on a never-ending journey to find respect [in Season 4], and now she's a lot more confident and together."
J.D. and Elliot have a complex relationship; they are close friends and often grapple with their romantic feelings for each other. In an interview, Sarah Chalke said that Bill Lawrence, the creator of Scrubs, wanted to avoid a "will they or won't they get together" plot for the series, instead opting for a running gag where they hook up once a year and have "everything blow up in [their] faces and not work out."
In the Season 1 episode "My Drug Buddy," they start a relationship, but break up in the following episode upon realizing that they don't work as a couple. They mend their friendship, but it is later revealed that they still have feelings for each other, and they begin sleeping together again in "My Monster." They decide to be "sex buddies" without any romantic involvement, but this ends after only a
Source: Elliot Reid (CC BY-SA)
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