“Doctor Odyssey” finishes its first season on Thursday at 9 p.m., on ABC, and as of press time it still hasn’t been renewed (nor has it been officially canceled). My candles are lit; my fingers are crossed. I love this stupid — so stupid, oh God, stupid, stupid — show. The season thus far is available on Hulu.
Joshua Jackson stars as Dr. Max Bankman, the doctor for the luxury cruise ship the Odyssey. He works closely — extremely closely — with Avery (Phillipa Soo), a nurse practitioner who wants to go to medical school, and Tristan (Sean Teale), a nurse. “Love triangle” is too quaint a term, but “throuple” is too resolved. Both men are in love with Avery, though neither holds her full attention. In the sixth episode, prompted by a nourishing goal-setting exercise, they have a steamy, adoring and mutually enjoyable threesome. In fandom parlance, “shippers” are viewers who want the characters to get into a romantic relationship. And oh, “Doctor Odyssey” has plenty of ship.
I’m old enough to remember when a time when a devil’s threesome on network television would have been on the news. But here on the high seas, everyone is so sexually liberated that the show loops back around to being wholesome. Sexy, sure. Dirty, no.
“Odyssey” operates like “The Love Boat” in that each episode features new guests to both the ship and the show. Each cruise has some kind of theme, which inevitably leads to a series of medical crises, at which point our heroes take a brief break from all the sexual bliss and hobnobbing to save some lives. All the medical instruments and machinery are in a brushed gold instead of stainless steel because intravenous poles deserve glam, too.
The show was created by Jon Robin Baitz, Joe Baken and Ryan Murphy, and “Odyssey” feels like a lot of other Ryan Murphy shows, most especially “Nip/Tuck,” the lush, bonkers plastic surgery drama that ran from 2003-2010. But where that show was framed by the recurring prompt “Tell me what you don’t like about yourself,” “Odyssey” is a bacchanalia of self love, of acceptance, of validation. It can feel as if “Nip” got a gentle-parenting glow-up, its luridness revised for the more empowered, enlightened standards of today.
“Odyssey” is in some ways the inside-out version of “The Pitt” (streaming on Max), TV’s buzziest doctor show. Jackson’s Max and Noah Wyle’s Dr. Robby are both brilliant and ethical leaders with high standards. They are both haunted by their experiences at the beginning of the pandemic, Robby by his mentor’s death and Max by the fact that he was among Covid’s earliest patients — he was hospitalized and in a coma, near death. Both Max and Robby cope admirably with a partner’s reproductive choices. Both shows indulge in a bit of medical gore, and both use a sense of “Oh no, we don’t have the resources we need” to intensify the drama. In “The Pitt,” it’s for budgetary reasons; in “Odyssey,” it’s because they’re at sea.
But “Odyssey” is only sort of a doctor show. It is better understood as a fantasy, and not just because of fan theories that the whole show is Max’s Covid hallucination, or that the characters are all in purgatory or some such. This is a show where a straight(ish) man’s No. 1 fantasy is monogamous marriage and child rearing, and not only is he a doctor and former Peace Corps volunteer, he is also always wearing an all-white naval uniform. He loves reality television and sees depth and significance in it, not just mindless fun. He loves teamwork.
He once broke his penis — on account of its being so big and the lovemaking so vigorous — but “the body is a miraculous healing machine,” he says, and the experience even made him a better doctor. He entices patients to shed their hypocrisies and walk in the light. He emerged from the pandemic as more caring, more joyful, more attuned to the world, more open. Even BookTok romances don’t go this hard.
And he’s not the only, er, dream boat. The ship’s captain (Don Johnson) tells Max that the Odyssey is “heaven” for its passengers. That’s true beyond the snazzy vacation of it all because the themed cruises also mean the characters are among their people, the like-minded folks who share their obsession with, say, little rubber duckies, wellness nonsense or May-December romances. The various liars and grifters always admit defeat, and on the rare occasions that someone dies, you always get ample warning through corny slow songs and gentle, predictable character beats.
Much of the fun in “Doctor Odyssey” comes from its guest stars, who this season have included Kate Berlant, Bob the Drag Queen, Margaret Cho, Gina Gershon, Cheyenne Jackson, Margo Martindale, Fred Melamed, Amy Sedaris, John Stamos and Shania Twain (who recurs), among many many others. Everything is done in good fun and usually in gay rococo fun. The only true ailment here is shame, and Max and Co. have so many ways to treat and alleviate it. All the sex here is free of danger, coercion or violence, and all forms of love are studied and treasured.
I have no idea what’s coming in the finale, and while some fans are anticipating a twist, I think “twist” requires a kind of torsion the show is not capable of because it isn’t anchored to being any one thing. It’s already dopey and dreamy and diffuse, whatever plane of existence it’s on. It’s the beauty of being at sea: You can head off in any direction.
Margaret Lyons is a television critic at The Times, and writes the TV parts of the Watching newsletter.
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