When "Scrubbing In," MTV's new reality series about travel nurses, airs its first episode Thursday night, it will have a formidable act to follow in terms of media outrage and water-cooler gossip.
In short, it will have to top its own trailer.
All the general public has seen of the 10-episode series, which follows nine nurses from different parts of the country as they immerse themselves in Orange County life, is a short montage and a few clips on MTV.com. But those snippets have already ignited a war of words online, as some are lobbying to have the show taken off the air while others praise it as a noble effort to spotlight a heroic profession.
A Change.org petition, which had gathered 13,710 signatures as of Wednesday, calls the show an "obvious dramatization" that upholds "the senseless sexual objectification that we as nurses, both male and female, continue to endure." The Canadian Nurses Assn., among others, has gotten behind the campaign, with that group's president writing in an open letter that the show will demean the work of real nurses with "typical 'reality' show fodder."
