Now Is the Time to Watch Doctor Odyssey
You could use a vacation. Why not a cruise? I’m not a travel agent, but I have to recommend spending some time aboard The Odyssey, a cruise ship where all of the guests are hot, every week is themed, and at any given moment, at least five people are having some kind of bizarre medical emergency. The best part is that you can take a trip on The Odyssey for the low, low price of having a Hulu account (or cable).
Doctor Odyssey is the latest entry in the Sexy Essential Workers portion of the Ryan Murphy–verse (see also: 9-1-1, 9-1-1: Lone Star). The premise is so simple, it’s kind of shocking that no one has done it already. Joshua Jackson plays Dr. Max Bankman, the new doctor on a luxury cruise ship called The Odyssey. He’s Dr. Odyssey. Each week, a new group of guests boards the ship, and each week they present several new medical conundrums to Dr. Odyssey and his team (nurses played by Phillipa Soo and Sean Teale). Noses are falling off during plastic-surgery week; Kate Berlant got poisoned by a smoothie during wellness week; a guy started sweating blood on the Halloween cruise!
To give you a sense of how this all goes down, two crucial moments from the pilot are a dance battle set to “Despacito” and the reveal that Dr. Odyssey was patient zero for COVID in the United States. Is everything happening on the boat a fever dream? Is Dr. Odyssey still in his COVID coma? Has he died and gone to heaven? All of that would make much more sense than what the show is currently positing: that everything happening on the ship is a real thing that could actually happen. The magic of the show, of course, is that its brand of perfectly calibrated ridiculousness (and its never-ending stream of guest stars) is what puts the wind in its metaphorical sails.
Because we felt the need to spread the gospel, Cut editor Brooke Marine and I convinced several of our colleagues to pay a visit to the doctor. If you’re feeling a little stressed this week, perhaps you should consider making an appointment as well. Here are all of our thoughts.
Brooke Marine, deputy culture editor: All aboard the S.S. Odyssey!
Danielle Cohen, staff writer: Scrubbing in!
B.M.: If you could describe this show in one word, what would it be?
Olivia Craighead, blogger: Soothing. I’m really turning my brain all the way off when I watch it.
B.M.: Oh, really? It kind of stresses me out. But in a good way. Like, it’s less deep than Grey’s Anatomy, but it reminds me that there are ailments I couldn’t have even dreamed up …
D.C.: I find it immersive. I get lost in its waters.
Matthew Schneier, features writer: I love it, but I don’t really find it soothing — I feel like it’s calibrated for nanosecond attention spans. There are like 18 surgeries an episode!
B.M.: How do we feel about the theme weeks on the ship? What are our favorites?
O.C.: Wellness week with Amy Sedaris, Margaret Cho, and Kate Berlant has been my favorite so far. Halloween was kind of a flop!
D.C.: Agreed, the zombies were disappointing. They should have been contagious! Plastic-surgery week was my top choice, wellness week a close second.
B.M.: I agree plastic-surgery week was my favorite. I need more Gina Gershon on this ship … Halloween week wasn’t great, except the guy who sweat blood. I didn’t even know that was possible. Apparently, hematohidrosis is rare but real. But every problem does get resolved a little too quickly.
M.S.: Is that possible to sweat blood?? Leaving aside whether it can be instigated by … becoming too horny. When Avery got an appendectomy, she recovered from it in, like, under four minutes.
B.M.: Do you believe the theory that this is all in Max’s COVID dream? Max, who will henceforth be referred to in this chat as Dr. Odyssey, even though that’s the name of the ship and not the doctor.
O.C.: They call him Dr. Odyssey sometimes. It’s canon.
Chantal Fernandez, features writer: I found the show really wants you to believe that it’s all a dream in the earliest episodes. So much talk of “this is heaven,” etc.
O.C.: Something about the moving walkway is really giving “welcome to heaven.”
D.C.: I am obsessed with the Below Deck aspect of it all, the way the staff talks about maintaining the illusion. That makes me believe it is not a COVID dream or heaven.
O.C.: Have any of you ever been on a cruise?
Brooke LaMantia, editorial assistant: I went on a Disney cruise, and that was fun, but I would never go back on one.
D.C.: I have been on one. It was deeply unglamorous.
B.M.: When I watch this show on my Hulu app (I put it on while I make dinner and then eat dinner in front of the TV if there’s enough time left in the episode), they show me like three different commercials for cruises each time. As if this show could make me actually want to be on one.
D.C.: I thought it was so sexy when they were dancing to “Despacito” in the pilot.
B.M.: Don Johnson: hot or not? I say hot! Even hotter than on Miami Vice.
O.C.: Hot!
C.F.: Absolutely.
D.C.: Hot for sure.
O.C.: Talk about looking good in the uniform …
B.M.: When they let the British nurse named Tristan win the Halloween costume contest by wearing the captain’s uniform, I didn’t like that.
C.F.: Tristan finding out his mother has Huntington’s disease and not getting checked himself … insane behavior.
M.S.: I think Dr. Odyssey’s carpe diem pursuit of “fun” (reality TV, Halloween) also makes zero sense.
O.C.: Well, Matthew, he has trauma. From being patient zero of COVID.
M.S.: A straight man grateful to be alive post-COVID is not going to pursue joy by adopting gay hobbies … he is going to go all in on FanDuel. I was confused also by the contention that straight men and butches get together to play strip poker?
B.M.: This brings me to my next point, which is that I believe Dr. Odyssey is bisexual, or at least should be.
C.F.: Did he hook up with the real-life Ken doll? I was making a soup while watching and may have missed.
D.C.: I thought he and Ken were gonna kiss!
B.M.: No, they just got naked and stood in cryochambers together. And then Ken did his nighttime skin-care routine and then he literally died. I was moved by Barbie and Allan and Skipper coming onboard to mourn him though. :(
D.C.: I think it is definitely being suggested that he’s bi. And they have to rationalize him having a relationship with his employee at the same time.
B.M.: Dr. Odyssey: Life’s too short to be straight.
O.C.: He’s kind of a bad doctor … always getting things wrong. Avery is the good one.
D.C.: He’s a good doctor but a bad ship doctor. He doesn’t know knots and cruise illnesses.
M.S.: What does it mean that she’s not a doctor because she went to school “in the wrong order”?
B.M.: I took that to mean that nurse practitioners are basically doctors, just without the M.D. degree, but I have no idea what she meant by that …
D.C.: I chose not to investigate that further. As is the case with most things on this show. Now they’re in this situation where she’ll have to leave for med school at the end of this season, right? Because she has this scholarship. Or she can bail on her girlboss doctor dreams and stay on the show.
C.F.: There’s too much happening in the present to investigate the past.
B.M.: What can be, unburdened by what has been …
O.C.: I think they’re going to work something out with a med school and Dr. Odyssey will become her teacher and she will do cruise-ship med school.
B.M.: What’s been the most troubling medical situation so far?
C.F.: The collapsing nose was troubling.
D.C.: I loved the coke-nose girls. I wanted to befriend them.
C.F.: They all go on land too much.
D.C.: That’s real on cruises, though! For the one I was on, you go to a li’l vacation spot every few days and they plan activities for you.
B.M.: Like searching for buried treasure in caves …
O.C.: I loved that plotline.
B.M.: Me too. I was relieved they didn’t have to cut off the one lesbian’s arm.
O.C.: I wanted them to take her arm off, though.
B.M.: How would they have done it underwater?! I just accidentally spoiled myself on three upcoming guest stars … I won’t repeat them here, but who are your dream guest stars?
O.C.: I want more people from the Murphyverse. Give me Jessica Lange, Leslie Grossman, Gaga. Patti LuPone!
D.C.: Vanessa Williams!
M.S.: Harrison from Popular! Niecy Nash, obviously. Larry David.
C.F.: Lea Michele.
B.M.: Since we had Rachel Dratch on the first episode where her husband got iodine poisoning from eating too much shrimp at the welcome buffet, I would also like to see Cheri Oteri and Ana Gasteyer. Kathy Bates and Frances Conroy! Angelica Ross. Sandra Bernhard.
C.F.: Also more nonactors like Steph Shep. She was good! Food God is waiting by the phone … Heidi and Spencer would be good.
O.C.: How many seasons do we think this will last?
B.M.: How many more things could go wrong on this ship … we’ve already seen a broken dick, blood sweat, a nose falling off, a sepsis death. But I hope we get at least four seasons.
O.C.: We haven’t even gotten to the bee-nado stage of Doctor Odyssey yet.
D.C.: How many passengers know what’s wrong on this cruise? Nobody has to see a dead body, but are they like, Wow, so many medical issues on this cruise?!
O.C.: Using the florist as a morgue was a chilling detail.
C.F.: Presumably everyone had food poisoning from the raw meat during the hurricane?
D.C.: I was so amped to text my boyfriend, “They’re bringing Ken to the flower shop morgue on a luggage cart.”
B.M.: I can’t help but say, “Oh my God, this is crazy,” out loud every time something wild happens on this show, which is every five minutes.
D.C.: The thing is I don’t realize how crazy it is while I’m watching. I’m so in it that it feels really normal.
B.M.: I feel so good when I watch this show. It’s curing me of … everything.
C.F.: I adjusted so quickly to the insanity of the show. Like, I turn away for five seconds and they are about to amputate someone I barely remember being introduced. My brain is smooth and quiet.
B.M.: This week’s episode is titled “I Always Cry at Weddings,” and I am just praying that Matthew’s premonition of Phillipa Soo needing to sing on this show comes true in this episode. Like, she’ll step in for a sick wedding singer or something.
M.S.: What would actually be a real public service for me is … what do I watch next if I like Dr. O? Is the answer just Grey’s/any other Murphy? Nip/Tuck?
O.C.: It does sort of feel like something that was originally pitched for Quibi. Ten-minute medical stories on a cruise ship. It just moves so fast. The energy kind of reminds me of when Katherine Heigl was really going all out on Grey’s. The LVAD-wire era of the show.
B.M.: Next week’s episode is titled “Oh, Daddy!,” but I’m going to be out of the country for that. I need a VPN, stat!
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