Diagnosis laughs

It's the most effective prescription to cure writer's block.

Write what you know.

For Bill Lawrence, who had just finished a stint on Michael J. Fox's Spin City, it was just the medicine he needed to create the hospital-based comedy Scrubs, which enters its third season tonight.

"I was trying to think about something to write about," Lawrence recalls. "All my best friends from childhood became doctors. But in your head, they'll always remain the same kinds of screw-ups they were when they were kids.

"It would just be a nightmare to wake up in a hospital and have those clowns standing over me. Then one time we all went to a bar and we were talking and what was consistent in all their stories was that their internships were all harrowing and that a residency is a real test of will, whether they would be a doctor or not."

Thus was born what is one of network television's few comic charmers. Scrubs stars Zach Braff as J.D., a medical intern at Sacred Heart Hospital, who is, in various turns, tormented by his boss Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley), the hospital janitor (Neal Flynn) and his on-and-off again romance with fellow intern, Elliot (Canadian Sarah Chalke).

"The real J.D. is a cardiologist and his wife is a doctor too," Lawrence says, adding the two are often called upon to solve creative crises. "If we have a comedy writing emergency, we call. If we need a disease that is fatal but doesn't look like it -- what disease would it be?"

The real J.D.'s wife, however, is not the template for Chalke's over-achieving, mildly insane Elliot, Lawrence cautions. "I interviewed her for it, but I can't label her that crazy. Elliot and Carla (the nurse played by Judy Reyes) are really a compilation of eight or nine girls I've dated in my life. I also interviewed a bunch of female doctors to base Elliot on. And then I interviewed three nurses (for Judy's character) and found them fascinating because, from an outsider's view, they really run the hospital. They're the strongest and the most together."

Even Flynn's maintenance man is based on Lawrence's own experiences. "When I was 16 I had some job and one guy, from the second he saw me, he just hated me for no reason. It was a weird thing to have to deal with, but it always cracked me up."

And for inspiration for Dr. Cox, Lawrence had to look no further than his father-in-law, who is also -- you guessed it -- a surgeon.

"There's enough stuff around me."

And that perhaps explains why Lawrence, amid the guffaws, also embraces the poignancy inherent in any workplace where life and death are decided daily.

"It's a tough balance. Everybody is so TV-savvy that just to do a funny sitcom without people hooked into the characters doesn't work. I think you need a little emotional depth to grab people."

And guest stars. This season will see appearances from celebs including Jennifer Garner's ex-husband Scott Foley, Jay Mohr, Brendan Fraser and Christa Miller Lawrence, who will be back as Cox's ex-wife. She's also, as her name suggests, married to Lawrence.

He also says viewers can expect the outlandish comedy that marked the first season, and was dialled down for the second, to again play less of a role.

"The first season was jokier."

Gone is the persistent speculation that Scrubs will replace Friends when that long-running sitcom ends next May. (The friends-in-the-city newbie Coupling is currently facing that brand of especially scorching heat.) That suits Lawrence just fine.

"I think laying low is the best thing."