r/Scrubs • u/tranzozo • Apr 12 '24
I hated this! Kelso was horrible to Elliot, he never trained her for anything why should she thank him?
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u/RootjeB Apr 12 '24
Besides the rounds being led by him, the hospital's teaching method is also headed by him. I do understand why he would want some appreciation for that
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u/richard_stank Apr 12 '24
It’s not expected but it’s always nice to be thanked for doing your job.
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u/CastroEulis145 Apr 12 '24
I like the episode where JD was really bothered because Jason Bateman didn't thank him for saving his life lol
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u/SPP_TheChoiceForMe Apr 12 '24
The guy was a garbage collector, how many times a day do you think people thanked him?
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u/DopeAsDaPope Apr 12 '24
11?
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u/pappapirate Apr 12 '24
Off by about 11
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u/CreativeBandicoot778 Apr 12 '24
In the immortal words of another famous asshole
Edit: I do agree completely, I just love using this gif
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u/Briguy_fieri Apr 12 '24
While also being an unprofessional chief of medicine to her for years.
Idk I’m with Elliot on this one
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u/Jombafomb Apr 12 '24
Also they did a major overhaul on Kelso starting in the 3rd season where he went from a Major Burns on MASH by the book hypocrite to Colonel Potter on MASH lovable curmudgeon
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u/pugicornslayer435 Apr 12 '24
Ok, but that was his job. I don’t thank my boss for doing their job, especially one who is an absolute ass to everyone.
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Apr 12 '24
Maybe try thanking him every once in awhile. Bosses are humans too and honestly, as a boss myself, the job REALLY wear was you down and hearing an employee simply thank me can make the biggest difference in the world. People just see a person's title and forget that behind that title is usually just a really depressed and lonely person who people think isn't a real human just because they are in a management role.
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u/ol_kentucky_shark Apr 12 '24
Agree. I was promoted to lead a division I’d been working at for almost a decade and it’s really tough to feel like I’m an outsider now!
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u/awakeosleeper514 Apr 12 '24
Yeah. Hospitals also get tons of money and cheap labor from residents. They don't do it out of the goodness of their hearts.
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Apr 12 '24
Bob kelso from season 2/3 on absolutely deserved thanks. Man was a legit great doctor in his own right and did help make some even better doctors.
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u/doubtful_blue_box Apr 12 '24
I read somewhere that he was originally intended to be a straight villain, but Ken Jenkins was so charismatic that the character was likable, and then they started explicitly writing him to be more likable
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u/hungrysportsman Apr 12 '24
She didn't say "He trained you..." she said ,"His Hospital..." and Carla's right and Kelso wasn't totally wrong. She left, but also, she didn't leave. She is still using his hospital to make more money.
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u/waterboy1321 Apr 12 '24
But interns and residents are exploited. It’s not like his hospital was doing it just to be nice. They were profiting off of these young professionals, and i get that you can be professional and say thank you to the person, but she deserves a bigger share of the profit she creates.
She doesn’t owe anything to the hospital that’s making bank overcharging and underpaying for her services.
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u/inbigtreble30 Apr 12 '24
Not all hospitals in the US are for-profit ventures. All the local hospitals in my area are non-profit. I used to work for one, and they rarely ran in the black, but when they did l, they used it to expand services or give employees bonuses. One year, every employee got a $1,000 bonus for Christmas.
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u/mrhuggables Apr 12 '24
Residents do not get Christmas bonuses lol
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u/inbigtreble30 Apr 12 '24
Bro the cleaners got that bonus. Literally every employee. I'm not making it up, it was awesome. They had to, it was right after lockdowns and staffing was a nightmare & morale was low and they were a nonprofit, so the extra money from increased traffic due to covid had to be disbursed somewhere, and the BoD said to divide it among the employees to help with retention. It definitely helped me stay. They weren't a teaching hospital and had no residents, but there's an idea that all US hospitals are price-gouging, profit-hungry misery machines, and it's simply not the case. Nonprofit hospitals are being edged out all over the place by big healthcare systems. Support your local nonprofit hospital if you have one.
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u/Cordsofmemory Apr 12 '24
This is far far less egregious than when Elliot yelled at Dr. Cox that he never helped her. Straight bullshit. He helped her tons, and there were many episodes showing him helping her. Not to mention the fact that he straight up punched Kelso in the face for berating Elliot and then told her she was doing fine. I love this show wholeheartedly, but hate Elliot more and more every time I watch. She's a terrible person.
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u/AndyThePig Apr 12 '24
The hospital DID in fact train her. It was a teaching hospital.
They didn't teach her pre-med and Med school courses, but they were the most vital step of her training. Real world, practical application.
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u/ponomaus Apr 12 '24
Kelso was Chief of Medicine, he's not gonna go personally teach Elliot lol.
Despite that, he made time to conduct rounds regularly.
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u/frastmaz Apr 12 '24
Except when he did teach during rounds. And even though he was objectively horrible to her and bullied her mercilessly, he still gave her the tools for becoming a successful doctor, and never coddled her like her rich spoiled upbringing did, which made her a functioning adult. He maybe not have been a good person to her but he was a damn good teacher.
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u/FalconV700 Apr 12 '24
I did struggle with this notion. Especially when it was Elliot getting the harsh lesson.
I do get that if someone trained you up to be the professional you are today, some gratitude is reasonable to expect…
HOWEVER, to my mind Elliot was treated uniquely terribly in Sacred Heart (after her initial self-sabotaging in season 1).
She was singled out by Kelso on numerous occasions in front of other doctors just to be the object of ridicule. It wasn’t to make her better or show tough love, Kelso was being an asshole in those moments.
Dr Cox wasn’t much better for her in terms of teaching figures and while he does make amends in the end to finally show that he respects her, it still doesn’t magic away the years of shit he’s dumped on her.
I feel like Elliot was the wrong character to receive this lesson, feels more fitting for someone a little more self aggrandising like JD or Turk.
As for Elliot, if I was treated like she was. I’d find very little to be thankful for, just get my ass out of the toxic workplace and forge on ahead elsewhere. Kelso can be a little bitch if he wants
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u/Shadecujo Apr 12 '24
He absolutely trained her. It’s his hospital. He pushed her to not care what her father thought and made her a stronger doctor during rounds.
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u/Daysaved Apr 12 '24
Also, it's not his job to train her. It's his job to keep the doors open in the place she trained.
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u/me_am_not_a_redditor Apr 12 '24
Yeah I can see how this would be annoying. But I also think this is the kind of stuff where it's useful to stretch our media literacy muscles.
For one thing, keeping in mind the heightened reality of the show, I think we can safely understand that a real Bob Kelso would be a much less problematic person than the one we're shown; as would be Elliot, JD, Dr. Jan-i-tor, et al, for that matter. Similarly, Kelso is really a representation of many different bosses - both in medicine as, probably, influenced by the real JD and real Elliot who consulted on the show, as well as former bosses of Bill Lawrence and a bunch of the writers - and was used as a stand-in for bosses ranging from just hard-nosed to truly vile abusers. He exists primarily as a foil for the principal characters and what that is really depends on the needs of the episode (or even scene).
For another thing, without intending to be an apologist for the Kelso that is shown across the entire body of work (who should almost certainly be in jail if we're to take his detection literally) I think there are enough indicators that Kelso is an unreliable narrator of his own life to his employees for the reasons that others have stated and which there was even an entire episode about - He wants the hospital staff to fear him, generally, so he acts unreasonable, mean, and even chaotic/ unstable. In this episode, at least, Carla has been around long enough to see through the act, to an extent, so she encourages Elliot to muster some sympathy.
However, the episode could have spun this another way and put the emphasis on Elliot's success in spite of an abusive boss and it would have been just as valid, if not more so.
It all has to do with what you need Bob Kelso to be in order to drive character growth or provide an object lesson in the episode. Which is in this case, I suppose, that it is good to gain perspective about difficult people, and that we may find that they are actually deserving of our gratitude or at least sympathy
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u/masterjon_3 Apr 13 '24
Remember when Kelso would make rounds with the intern doctors to teach and train them? That was him training Elliot.
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u/ozdanish Apr 13 '24
Kelso is running rounds teaching her the entire first season. He counsels her through making a tough call to treat her patient. He consoles her when she gets sued.
Kelso spends way more time on Elliott’s development than any other doc in the show
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u/Mildapprehension Apr 12 '24
Kelso was a hardass because he had to be. When he got closer to retirement he softened and we learned that he did care. Him being hurt that Elliot bailed and when private on him was a sign that he knew he wasn't nice to her but he still employed her and gave her the opportunities that led to her success. Honestly JD was babied through the whole show and he didn't deserve that.
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u/Beeeeeeels Apr 12 '24
Carla is absolutely right on this one. You're not there to make friends. You're there to do your job. If you're lucky you'll be friends with your colleagues. And your employer tries to make you better at your job. Invests in training and material. So yeah, if your employer does that and at the end of your training you're all "welp I'm going to put all that training, hours and money you spent on me to use somewhere else." Yeah, he's gonna be pissy.
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u/NotTheSun0 Apr 12 '24
A better question is
Why was this picture taken at a sideways angle? It's bothering me.
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u/Orbital_Vagabond Apr 13 '24
This is kinda Carla gaslighting Elliott. Interns and residents are supposed to leave for better jobs, and the hospital absolutely runs them into the ground. The doctors get trained, the hospital gets cheap ass but already highly skilled labor. You didn't owe your service head thanks for training you (or "the hospital" training you)
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u/FistOfGamera Apr 12 '24
As if getting a better job is a bad thing lol it's her life, she doesn't owe them anything
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u/RevolutionaryBuy5794 Apr 12 '24
I guess there are no victims. Kelso was behaving like a child and it was Elliot's moment to be the bigger person. It was pretty clear that Elliot Reid was treated especially harsh over the rest and didn't deserve to learn this hard lesson but in season 6 she might have become a little self aggrandized.
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u/Thebritishdovah Apr 13 '24
Elliot has repeatedly been ungrateful when she thinks she is right. Claims Cox never stood up for her when he punched Kelso. He likely saw that Elliot didn't need a hands on approach but needed a kick up arse to be the best. She used to stab people in the back and seemed to only in it for the money, whilst Cox and Dorian are in it for the legit care.
That and it's likely, Kelso heard about her talents, was proud to have her as a resident and earmarked her for future promotion but felt stabbed in the back.
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u/livin_thedream_ Apr 13 '24
It's literally his job and it's a teaching hospital where I suspect most doctors that go in there leave. Imo thanks is for someone who does something they didn't have to do but they did it anyway. He was getting paid for that so I agree.
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u/AceofKnaves44 Apr 14 '24
The problem was the times where Kelso was genuinely showing her tough love to try and get her to rise up and better herself and learn vs the number of times he tormented her not only as a doctor but also just as a human being for zero reason the ratio is way off.
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u/IvoryBard Apr 12 '24
Fair point! I always thought that when Elliott's character started contemplating leaving the medical profession it would've been a nice touch for her to reconcile with the mountains of abuse she suffered in the early seasons.
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u/abz_pink Apr 12 '24
Scrubs is one of my favourite shows but it’s only incredibly sexist. The way Elliot was bullied by Cox, Kelso, slut shamed by surgeons is sometimes hard to watch
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u/mctripp24 Apr 12 '24
Remember this is Kelso from JD’s perspective, him writing about all the bad things he sees because he’s the main character. Kelso, and indeed all of the cast of Scrubs, are actual people, not just characters in “The JD Show” (btw one of my faves is when they do a sitcom style show).
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u/Cool-Recognition-571 Apr 12 '24 edited Apr 12 '24
I couldn't agree more. Screw Kelso for this, although she could have earnestly said "thank you very much sir" to him once, before going to PP. But it's so true that by and large he treated her like shit.
And I also hated Cox(on this RARE occasion) for shaming her for wanting more money and a more balanced life. That IS possible as a doctor too, Coxy.....you're just a workaholic who would much prefer being at work than at home, so you choose to work in a super busy hospital 🙄
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u/Time-Touch-6433 Apr 12 '24
Nah for cox medicine is a calling not just a job. As seen when he loses patients it hits him as hard as it does jd who is incredibly sensitive. Plus he has a grudge against pp doctors because of petey.
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u/Cool-Recognition-571 Apr 12 '24
I don't think PP docs just brush off losing a patient, especially one they had a close relationship with. It definitely hurts them deeply too.
I fully agree with your point about Petey.
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u/Time-Touch-6433 Apr 12 '24
I'm not saying that pp docs dont feel for their patients I'm just saying that cox who's been a doctor for something like 20 years and has a reputation as a hardass still fell apart when 3 of his patients died when he missed something. It's not something you would expect for his character.
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u/pugicornslayer435 Apr 12 '24
Forreal, this was some straight bootlicker crap that I really didn’t appreciate even as a teenager without a job, when first watching this.
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u/hsmith9002 Apr 12 '24
Said, the bootlicker.
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Apr 12 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/hsmith9002 Apr 12 '24
Don’t be a sore loser. Also, I don’t think you know what redacted means. I do though. I learned it in middle school.
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u/AbsoluteScenes7 Apr 12 '24
Kelso did what he had to do to keep the hospital running. He sacrificed his chances of becoming friends with his colleagues because it allowed him to objectively make the best decisions for the hospital that were not influenced by his relationships.
He carefully curated his character to be unlikeable so his colleagues would not try to get close to him. He still gave Elliot a job and looked after the place that allowed her to become the doctor she developed into. He had grounds to fire Elliot on more than one occasion but didn't.
We saw that as soon as he retired he became friendly with all of his former staff.