If laughter is indeed the best medicine, Bill Lawrence may in fact be America’s answer to the heath-care crisis. Since bursting onto the scene as the co-creator of SPIN CITY and his little medical-drama-series-that-could follow-up known as SCRUBS, Lawrence has been consistently delivering three CC’s of laughter — and as an added bonus, enough music recommendations to fill up two iPods — to this TV Addict for the better part of two decades now. Which is why, it was such a thrill to be given the opportunity to talk with the showrunner in an all-too-brief interview yesterday.
But before we get to the SCRUBS goodies — complete with Lawrence’s defence of an overcrowded hospital Medical School which we’re saving for Tuesday — we thought, in honour of tonight’s brand new episode of COUGAR TOWN, we’d share Lawrence’s take on everything from Travis’ sexuality (We hope you’re happy @rural_juror) to Tiger Woods.
As COUGAR TOWN has evolved into more of an ensemble, I’ve really started to dig the series. Particularly the episode a few weeks back where Travis pretended to be gay to torture Grayson. But here’s the thing, myself (along with more than a few fans) were already sort of under the impression that Travis was in fact gay. Was there ever any talk in the writer’s room about going in that direction?
Bill Lawrence: [Laughs] First of all thanks for saying the nice stuff. I feel like we’ve gotten a real chance to find the show, especially as the show has become less the journey of one woman week-in-and-week-out struggling to survive being forty and single and more of an ensemble show about a dysfunctional family, which is essentially what it is at its core, I think we’ve gotten more successful with it. But No… Dan’s [Byrd] character, we always thought of him as a straight guy on this particular show. If we didn’t, it would have been a series of talks with the actor just to tell him, “Hey, I know we never talked about this when you got the part… but…”