Growing up, the series Scrubs was a huge part of my teenage life. It solidified my choice of working in healthcare and it taught me valuable lessons on life, love, death and how best to cope with it all. Here in the Netherlands we are always a bit late when sitcoms come to our country, but I remember fondly when I first got in contact with the show, a marathon weekend of Scrubs on Comedy Central in an era with nothing else on TV (and no Streaming Services), I got hooked immediately.

Why am I telling you this? Well fast forward to 2020 and Zach Braff and Donald Faison (J.D. and Turk) have their own podcast in which they basically are giving us super bonus features of each Scrubs episode. It was during one of the podcasts that Zach mentioned his work in Wish I Was Here. I then remembered the amazing Kickstarter he did to get this movie funded. But since the movie had never screened in The Netherlands, I kinda lost track of it, until the mention on the podcast. So without hesitating I got myself a copy, some snacks and planted myself on the couch and turned on the TV.

Wish I Was Here tells the story of Aidan Bloom and his family. How Aidan is struggling as an actor, with his religion and with providing for his family. In the movie he often reflects back to his childhood and his imagination, trying to relate it all to his life. The emotions portrayed in this movie are strong, very strong and combined with the soundtrack all you can do as a viewer is to be swept away. This is also my advice when you are going to watch this movie, just let it happen to you, let the tears flow, smile when you want to and grief if you have to.

In these uncertain times of COVID-19 we are all confronted with what it is we hold dear, what the power of human touch is and what moves us forward. Even though Wish I Was Here is not set in a pandemic, it does show so very clear what it is to be human.