According to The Gate, Sarah is scheduled to appear in the first 6 episodes of the ninth season of “Scrubs” only…

If you were unsure about the fate of Scrubs, have heart because the Hollywood Reporter/Reuters has news that three new cast members are joining the show for the next season.

Set in a medical school for its latest season, Michael Mosley, Kerry Bishe, and Dave Franco are said to be joining the series as regulars, with John C. McGinley, Donald Faison, and Eliza Coupe returning as well.

The bad news here is that the hilarious Zach Braff and the lovely Sarah Chalke are only confirmed to appear in this season’s first six episodes, and will very likely vanish after that as the focus moves to the medical school.

Throwing in my own two cents here, while I love McGinley as Dr. Cox, and Faison as Turk, the heart of the show has always been Braff, and I’m not sure how they will compensate for that, or it will be successful. All I know is that Braff will be sorely missed if his time on Scrubs is really at an end.

Today, August 27th, is Sarah’s 33rd birthday! I would love to wish Sarah an amazing day today!

Sarah and her fiance Jamie Afifi are going to be having a baby! She is expected to give birth this winter.

One of our favorite TV ladies is pregnant! Sources confirm to E! News that Sarah Chalke is going to have her first baby this winter. The kiddo’s father is Chalke’s fiancé, Jamie Afifi, an entertainment lawyer.

Chalke is probably best known for playing neurotic doc Elliot Reid on Scrubs, but she also recently starred in Lifetime’s Maneater movies and did a stint as Becky No. 2 on Roseanne during the 1990s.

From E! Online

Congratulations Sarah and Jamie on this amazing news!

Many SCRUBS have been waited with baited breath to see how creator Bill Lawrence transforms the show from a hospital based comedy to a “med school” based comedy, and while at the Summer TCA Press Tour, iF caught up with him to get the skinny.

Here’s what he had to say …

“I tried to change the title of SCRUBS to SCRUBS MED,” says Lawrence. “I felt we had been writing the ending of SCRUBS for four years, because I thought it was going to be cancelled for four years. It’s a completely different show with some of the same characters. It is tonally the same. [ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson] wants to keep it the SCRUBS brand, but the show takes place in the med school. I’d say it’s like THE PAPER CHASE in a hospital setting.”

Lawrence also notes, Sacred Hearts is actually a teaching hospital, but it was something that was never really emphasized on the show.

“It’s one of the things we always fudged on SCRUBS,” says Lawrence. “We always said it was a teaching hospital, but we never really showed the teaching aspect of it. If any of you know the show, we would fudge it and have little classrooms built on set. This year we built a college campus over at Culver Studios and it looks like a Med School. We put the hospital right on campus, much like the UCLA Hospital is in Westwood and on campus. It’s back and forth with 21-year old students at Med School starting their first day of hospital care.”

Of the cast, John McGinley and Donald Faison are full time cast members with Zach Braff “there for the first six or eight episodes,” says Lawrence.

“The only intern who survived last year was Eliza Coupe who is now a regular on the show,” says Lawrence. “I really liked what she did, but 80 percent of the people are new actors. Three new young actors are testing next week for the parts.”

Another comparison Lawrence offers is the transition that happened when Kelsey Grammer moved from CHEERS to FRASIER.

“FRASIER was very smart, because they moved it to a new location, so it didn’t bother you when you didn’t see Sam and Diane,” says Lawrence. “The way we’re going to be able to get through this, is there is a Med school setting and right across the street is the hospital. When they’re in the hospital, you’ll see all of the familiar faces from the show. Whether it will be the attorney, or The Todd or Sarah Chalke or Judy Reyes or Ken Jenkins or Christa. We created a world in which the hospital still exists and they’re still there.”

And there will be an explanation for the Janitor (Neil Flynn) leaving the show as well.

“He makes up his own stuff, so he just came up with an idea of how his character would have left, because he has his own show to do,” says Lawrence.

From iF Magazine