Doctor Odyssey Is Gloriously Stupid Network TV
Image Courtesy of ABC
By Dean Robbins
Executive producer Ryan Murphy has been the puppet master behind television for years now, but his presence has been especially strong this year. Currently, he has Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story on Netflix, American Sports Story and Grotesquerie on FX, the 9-1-1 franchise on ABC and Fox, and, most recently, ABC’s splashy medical drama Doctor Odyssey.
The premise is simple: Joshua Jackson plays Dr. Max Bankman, the new doctor on board the Odyssey cruise ship, who works with distrustful veteran nurses Avery (Hamilton’s Philippa Soo) and Tristan (Sean Teale). It is vacation escapism mixed with semi-serious medical situations to make one really, really stupid but entertaining network television show.
It is unclear how long Doctor Odyssey can last within its premise, but the first two episodes prove that it is willing to do just about anything to keep things interesting. Most of the first episode is concerned with a quick-forming love triangle between Dr. Bankman, Avery, and Tristan while the second episode is focused on the characters “rizzing” up their own guests. It is pure, uncut trash.
The medical drama elements often feel like they reside in a different, albeit still silly, series. The pilot episode includes a guest who gets iodine poisoning from overeating shrimp, a crash on a water slide, a man overboard, and a newlywed who fractures something very important on his honeymoon. It is maybe a little weird to have a scene of characters partying and seducing each other followed by a diagnosis scene with lightly squirm-inducing medical gore. Imagine The Love Boat meets ER.
The guests and their myriad of maladies offer great opportunities for guest appearances. The first episode includes Saturday Night Live alumni Rachel Dratch while the second features country singer Shania Twain as a widow romanced by the ship’s captain (Don Johnson). To facilitate the guest star focus, every episode follows and is titled after a different themed week-long voyage, including Singles Week and Plastic Surgery Week.
Cruise ship escapism, medical crises, and guest appearances are a weird mix but it oddly works, even (or especially) when the plot goes off the rails. “Singles Week” reveals that the crew is practically required to flirt with the guests, which seems to be an HR problem. Despite moments like these, Doctor Odyssey finds genuinely interesting material in what the characters describe as their central mission: to “preserve the fantasy.”
Dr. Bankman, Avery, and Tristan have to not only solve the problems that come to them but they also need to make sure the guests can continue to have a fun vacation. Avery proves to be especially good at this. The diseases are also usually the result of having too much fun. Doctor Odyssey revels in this decadence in all of its forms whether inviting or perverse.
Doctor Odyssey premieres every Thursday at 9pm on ABC. Episodes stream the morning after on Hulu.
