Doctor Odyssey, the latest show in the endless assembly line of Ryan Murphy productions, feels like network TV catnip. The ABC drama focuses on the medical crew of a luxury cruise ship, who are tasked with looking after the many eccentric vacationers and their unique medical emergencies onboard. It’s a frothy soap with plenty of melodrama and weird medical showcases. If you ever wanted a cross between Royal Pains, The Love Boat, and the grosser moments in 9-1-1: Lone Star then this is the show for you.
Anchoring this drama is Max Bankman, the easy-going and charismatic doctor who leads the crew on their many voyages. He’s played by Joshua Jackson, a man who was practically tailor-made for this kind of character. Jackson has a laid-back but authoritative presence and manages to walk the fine tight-rope between drama, humor, and absolute nonsense that Doctor Odyssey revels in.
It’s hard to imagine anyone else pulling this off, especially as the show seems perennially on the edge of total nonsense (and has already inspired some fan theories that the entire thing is a metaphor for purgatory!) It’s early days so the series could go anywhere, but whatever happens, it’s just a delight to have Jackson front and center on a show. It’s a reminder that he is and has long been one of our great TV heartthrobs.
For an entire generation of fans, Jackson will forever be Pacey Witter, the best friend of Dawson and competition for Joey’s love in Dawson’s Creek. First introduced as a comic relief sidekick to Dawson, Pacey became a fan favorite thanks to Jackson’s fast-talking charisma and pathos. The Dawson-Pacey-Joey love triangle (one of the few truly interesting and believable love triangles in TV history) worked in large part because Jackson had such impeccable chemistry with both James Van Der Beek and Katie Holmes. Their dynamic was part classic screwball comedy, part ’90s Gen X teen angst, part soap opera. It may have been Dawson’s name in the title but it was Pacey who stole the show because of Jackson.
Five years after leaving the creek, Jackson headlined Fringe, a sci-fi drama that was positioned as a successor to The X-Files. He played Peter Bishop, the son of a brilliant but mad scientist, and member of the FBI’s new fringe science division. The X-Files parallels were obvious, but Fringe evolved into its own thing pretty quickly, balancing case-of-the-week drama with an overarching multiverse narrative that was devastatingly emotional.
A lot of Fringe, especially in its first season, feels like training for Doctor Odyssey. Jackson has a canny ability to ground the strange and unusual in something emotionally real without sucking all the fun out of the proceedings. As the show went on, Jackson got some of his biggest moments as an actor as Peter’s backstory was revealed and his relationship with his father put them both through the wringer. What Jackson did for soapy drama, he recreated with sci-fi.
Post-Fringe, Jackson’s TV work was largely dramatic: a couple of seasons on The Affair; the Hulu limited series Little Fires Everywhere; a reimagining of Fatal Attraction that everyone forgot existed. He was consistently great throughout, even if he didn’t get to steal as many scenes as his co-stars. He offered some of his most striking work in Dr. Death, Peacock’s true-crime anthology drama about Christopher Duntsch, a neurosurgeon convicted of permanently mutilating and killing his patients through gross malpractice.
Jackson eerily embodied the entitlement and false charm of a petulant sociopath whose butchery seemed to go well beyond mere incompetence. We see him as a bright-eyed young man brimming with confidence and ambition, then follow him through the decades as his own lack of skill comes up against his frightening access to power and medical control. He’s brilliant. In a just world, he would have been Emmy-nominated.
Jackson is no stranger to movies. He was one of the original Mighty Ducks as a kid, starred in Cruel Intentions the year after Dawson’s Creek launched, and has worked with directors like Stephen Frears and Wes Craven. But he’s never felt as urgent a presence in film as he has on TV, nor was he ever given roles as interesting as ones like Pacey, Peter Bishop, or Dr. Duntsch.
Television has grown more prestigious since Jackson’s career first launched. In the early 2000s, it was certainly never given the respect of cinema. “Real actors” had to go full Hollywood to be taken seriously, from George Clooney leaving ER to David Caruso abandoning NYPD Blue (and immediately crashing and burning with a series of flops.) Jackson wasn’t immune to this trajectory. After Dawson’s Creek ended, he took a shot transitioning to movies but nothing broke out for him. So, he made the smart move and returned to TV, where he’s flourished and grown more fascinating as a performer.
Being a TV heartthrob is not an easy job. It requires a specific balance of hotness (but still approachably cute and believably human), low-key charm, romantic appeal, and knowing gaze towards your presumably female-majority audience. Anyone can be sexy on-screen, but not everyone can be an enduring network star. Steering a show through potentially dozens of episodes can put an actor through the wringer, especially if said series goes off the rails as network TV has a habit of doing.
That Joshua Jackson has been such a consistent and welcome appearance on various shows for the past 25 years is a testament to his underrated talent and understanding of what his job entails. In that sense, Jackson was ahead of the competition. Now, the biggest and most acclaimed film stars of decades gone by are coming to TV for better work and greater audience recognition. Even Oscar winners want the security of a network show now. It’s not a downgrade but a normal career progression.
Jackson could go into movies if he wanted to. He could totally have a Josh Harnett-esque renaissance through supporting character roles and quirky genre projects like Trap. But TV is where he thrives and who could be mad at the chance to see Joshua Jackson on our screens every week, so effortlessly cool and talented, and eminently watchable? It’s what the medium and audiences deserve.
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