So... What was on TV last night?

Pop Culture Brain | Movies TV Music Web Theater: How 'Scrubs' and 'Cougar Town' Share the Same Universe

popculturebrain:

In his recap of last night’s Cougar Town finale (which featured Sam Lloyd reprising Ted the lawyer from Scrubs), Alan Sepinwall talks at length about how the shows share a universe despite the fact that actors overlap…

I checked with “Cougar Town” co-creator Kevin Biegel - who had a cameo himself as Seinfeld Guy - about what Ted’s appearance means for cross-series continuity, given the presence of Christa Miller as Ellie and occasional appearances by Ken Jenkins as Jules’ dad. According to Biegel, one draft of the script had a gag where Ted sees a picture of Jules’ dad and freaks out because he looks just like Kelso. (Though given that Cox herself briefly played Sacred Heart’s chief of medicine, there was certainly opportunity to just deal with it when Jules and Ted met.) The idea is that Chick and Ellie look a lot like Kelso and Jordan but aren’t the same person. Also, he says the existence of Coffee Bucks already put the shows in the same universe, and (here’s where it gets slightly headache-inducing) that even though there have been Zach Braff references on the show, John Dorian somehow exists as well. Quoth Biegel: “They made fun of Zach Braff on ‘Cougar Town,’ but Braff is not JD in this universe. Braff just looks like the guy who is JD, just as Kelso looks like Chick and Seinfeld Guy looks like Brad Pitt. (Please quote me!)” So make of that what you will, continuity nerds.

Interesting stuff. I like the idea of the characters “looking like” characters that share the same continuity - it would help fix a lot of messy plot lines. For example it can explain on Glee how Wicked, Kristen Chenoweth’s character and Idina Menzel’s character can all exist.

I KNEW THIS IS HOW THEY WOULD JUSTIFY IT!!!