After a week off for Inaugural balls (weak!), Scrubs came back with a bang.  And by that I mean that my new favorite secondary character, Denise, was back in both episodes.  I was definitely a little disappointed with Eps. 3 & 4 two weeks ago, but there were a number of great moments last night.  This one kind of summed up the difference from two weeks ago to tonight for me:

DENISE: I’m so happy to be done with all that, I could drop a deuce right here.

I appreciates all the Sesame Street cameos in Ep. 5, but it really shined for me largely because of interplay between JD and Denise, which was great:

DENISE: You just called me Jo.

JD: Do you not like that as a new nickname?

DENISE: Just a little butch.  I like bangin’ dudes. So…

JD: I’ve heard that’s nice

I also very much enjoyed that they’re not making the JD/Elliot relationship go through all the old machinations (Ep. 6).  We seem to be moving into new territory, no matter how it ends up playing out.  In fact, all the major characters are evolving faster this season than they did over the past few seasons, which is probably why the show was a little stagnant.  The maturation of the principals and the infusion of great new characters is driving the best season of Scrubs in recent memory.

Go watch Eps. 5 & 6 from last night.  You won’t regret it.