And we're back for the third series of Scrubs - it's continuing down that slippery slope of sanity into the inescapable world of psychosis, where people believe they're Napoleon or have irrational fears of beards. In this series the fantasies are still focused around J.D., but it's becoming infectious with the other characters now having bizarre fantasies of their own.

This series starts with J.D. getting psyched up for the day, singing and dancing to George Michaels' Faith in the parking lot, until he gets told off by Turk for breaking the rule about white guys dancing in public. So he puts on something that rocks, which would be U2's Beautiful Day and the next minute and a half is J.D. talking for everyone and doing an excellent impression of Dr. Cox at the end, which results in Cox shouting at him for using his name in front of his patients!

As the episode develops, Elliot is complaining about her inability to stand up for herself, which references the finale of series two, where Dr. Cox punched out Kelso, who now has a squeaky nose that alerts everyone to his whereabouts, allowing them to slack off because they can now hear him coming. Even Ted, the suicidal hospital lawyer, has managed to escape Kelso's control. J.D., Turk and Carla come to a dead end when the head of the radiology department refuses to do a CAT scan, after which Elliot decides that she's finally going to get mad about things and change, so with an all new (hot) look she walks into the room and threatens to help one of her patients that he screwed up on and "spend every waking second on figuring out how to help him physically and financially bitch slap" him, walking off to bask in her victory.

With this change in Elliot, she actually becomes really likable as a character; in series one and two she was high pitched, squeaky and in some episodes could be quite a chore of a character, but the fact that she's actually willing to stand up to people like Cox and Kelso helps make her into a hilarious character. This of course is helped greatly by the reintroduction of Sean (Scott Foley), the guy who she dumped for her job in series one, who it turns out is a trainer at sea world and he's an amazing character. There are lots of jokes about illicit things with dolphins and one of the funniest jokes in the series is how J.D. doesn't know that humans are in fact mammals, but Sean does.

The key things in this series are two love triangles. One quite obviously between J.D., Elliot and Sean but then there's another one thrown into the mix. With Elliot and Sean back together, J.D. is back on the look out for someone and finds a girl with no complications whatsoever, except for the small fact that she's Jordan's little sister, Danni (Tara Reid). Any of you who actually paid attention through the past two series know this is going somewhere bad and that bad place would be the naked chicken dance in Dr. Cox's spare bedroom. The only problem (excluding Cox tormenting him) is that J.D. is still in love with Elliot and this forms the second love triangle, except Elliot is seemingly unaware of being in this one.

The other key thing in this series is Carla and Turk's wedding, which is a big factor in a lot of the episodes, meaning they revolve less around J.D., and you'll notice his only real girlfriend in the series is Danni instead of the last series, where he had about half a dozen girls nearly in his bed. There aren't many surprises in how this series progresses and I won't be spoiling any surprises by saying the wedding is the season finale... but don't necessarily expect a happy ending to everything; I mean, it is a season finale after all and what else would you expect?

This change in dynamic away from Dorian-centric (tasteless, I know) stories leaves a lot more time for other characters like Cox and Jordan with the whole new baby thing and of course Kelso, who in this series actually becomes my favourite non-J.D. character purely because he doesn't give a crap and his saying to Perry explains this well, "Hey, guess what has two thumbs and doesn't give a crap? Bob Kelso! I think we've met..." While exploring Kelso's character you find out that he actually has a kinder side, taking out his gardeners' family to dairy queen and even offering Carla some advice, although his advice to Ted still comes with a backhanded insult. It is also revealed that Kelso has been having a long running affair and has an affinity for Japan Air stewardesses.

Cox has to tackle living with Jordan and deal with having a son. He starts complaining about Jordan, who has been saying he doesn't pull his weight with their son. J.D. tells Cox to say how he feels, which ends with J.D. being turfed out of his own bed by Cox because he followed J.D.'s advice and told Jordan how he felt. More specifically that "spending the day with the baby isn't really a job and that it has turned her into an inflexible shrew". There's also the episode My Clean Break, which explores Dr. Cox being nice and the repercussions it has when the residents no longer fear him; this is like His Story in the last series, except Cox doesn't take on the internal monologue, as his thoughts take place with him talking to what appears to be a therapist - of course, things in this show are rarely quite as they appear!

This series also features more on the Janitor and explores a little bit of his back story, like him taking a personal interest in finding a teddy for one of Elliot's patients, with a flashback that explains why he became a janitor. There is also another episode that explores his past as an actor, using a real clip of actor Neil Flynn from The Fugitive, where he played a traffic cop who gets shot. It's used to explain why he's the way he is and that he isn't such a jerk after all - this really is fantastic usage of an actor's real film footage in a very original way.

I again have decided to neglect the fantasies until now; this is both because they deserve their own section and because in this series they need a little more explaining. First let's start with how other people are now accepting J.D.'s fantasies, this is best done with Turk, who in one scene tells J.D. to think about Elliot, then to think about Sean and Elliot, then to think about him (Turk) and Elliot; the first fantasy is J.D. and Elliot kissing, the second is the same fantasy but the third time is J.D. as a black guy kissing Elliot and Turk knew this is just what he'd picture. Another one of these is where Danni shows J.D. an apartment they could afford if she moved in permanently, leading to J.D. having an out-of-body experience talking to Turk, which ends like a fantasy but there's a scene switch to Turk wearing bugles as witch nails and cackling, but that doesn't end like a fantasy and I've watched this show a bazillion times and I still can't figure it out fully.

There is also a heavy sprinkling of normal fantasies, like J.D.'s version of Elliot giving a pelvic exam where a fifty year old patient turns into a twenty-five year old supermodel, J.D. marrying Marcia Brady, a travelling farting circus featuring J.D., Turk and Dan (J.D.'s older brother), J.D.'s fantasy tux, which is in pimp style, and landing a jellybean in Laverne's cleavage, which subsequently gets him shoved off the desk and jumped on.

There are also some non-J.D. fantasies, like Elliot's toilet epiphany that helps her fix her problem with intubating patients and there are a few fantasies by Turk in His Story, with one involving Carla hiding in a postbox and his new female attending having her arms ripped off by Cox and Kelso as they fight over her. Finally there are a lot of flashbacks, the best one being a flashback of how Turk started shaving his hair; it followed driving five hundred miles to a basketball game to see Michael Jordan play, but J.D. brought sandwiches instead of the tickets so Turk starts screaming and pulled his hair out, yelling "Leave it on the floor!" at J.D.

Music again plays a big part in this series, as is quite obvious from the series opener. There is only one choreographed scene that comes to mind in the series and that is Turk walking out after a surgery in a Shaft-esque fantasy singing Shaft-like lyrics. Two more scenes that play to music that fit the mood of the scene perfectly is the ending of the first episode, My Own American Girl with the song American Girl and the second episode My Journey, with Don't Stop Believin' by Journey, which I assume was deliberate. Some of the bands included are REM, Mathew Sweet, Stroke 9 and Enrique Iglesias' Hero, which plays every time J.D. does something impressive after hurting his back doing a slam dunk trying to outdo Turk, Coldplay, Joshua Radin, Finger Eleven, and Rhett Miller returns for a sex scene between J.D. and Elliot, while The Polyphonic Spree actually make an appearance in the show, which I'll leave as a treat to discover just how they were written in.

The extras in this series are a bit of a let down; there aren't any commentaries on the episodes and the actual extra features don't have that much to them either. While a few of them are funny, it doesn't amount to much more than the show on disc, there is a bit on the new directors in this series and some of the general back scenes to the show, but nowhere near as much as the previous series and it looks more like this got the leftovers from those.

However to end on a good note there are a few big name guest stars, the biggest and best being Michael J. Fox who plays Dr. Kevin "Super Doc" Casey, who suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and does an amazingly convincing portrayal of it for not just one but two episodes. There's a return of Brendan Fraser for the reprisal of his role as Ben for an episode, which I decree everyone has to watch twice to figure out what actually goes on. Christopher Meloni stars as Dr. Dave Norris, a paediatrician who is more annoying than Dr. Cox. Scott Foley appears for about seven episodes as Sean, and Tara Reid who is in five episodes, and also the return of Tom Cavanagh as Dan, who turns up for quite an emotional episode.

Scrubs Series 3 sees the return of your demented great uncle, who instead of caring for his pinecone child has now adopted an entire pine tree and is wondering what has been put in the water, as his daughter (the pine tree), is dropping about thirty kids a year and he can't quite figure out why none of them resemble him. I'm quite disturbed, I know, but then so is this show -after all, human-dolphin relations are brought up a few times in the series - I guess I just have an affinity for the weird and wonderful, and so will you once you've enjoyed the third series of this sublimely ingenious comedy show.

Reviewed by Nik Gregory for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).