Two people seem to work on a ton of shows. Taylor Sheridan ("Yellowstone," "Landman," "Special Ops: Lioness," and more) and then Ryan Murphy ("Nip/Tuck," "Glee," "American Horror Story," "911," "Feud," and so much more). Murphy makes weird shows and I generally quite enjoy them, with a newer production he is involved in being, "Doctor Odyssey." This is a show that has a mix of medical drama, relationship drama, is quite quirky, and everyone involved is generally super horny...which makes sense for a Ryan Murphy show.
"Doctor Odyssey," follows Doctor Max Bankman as he starts working on a massive and impressive cruise ship known as The Odyssey. Played be Joshua Jackson, as he's new to the boat in the first episode it is a clever way for the show to ease us into everything as we're, of course, new too. Max is assisted by two nurses during cruises--Avery and Tristian (Phillipa Soo and Sean Teale) and the boat's captain, Robert Massey is often important to the plot too (expertly portrayed by the always delightful Don Johnson). All of the main characters are intriguingly complex in their mix of hang-ups, interests, and nobody comes across as too one-dimensional. The cruise format allows weeks to have different themes and a variety of special guests too, which allows a lot of fun actors to swing by. There are lots of medical maladies to keep things intense as well.
As Johnson makes apparent in the first episode, people on a cruise want to live in a happy fantasy World so Max and his team need to keep everyone as safe as possible. As strange as it sounds, "Doctor Odyssey," really reminds me in some ways of a show that Ryan Murphy had nothing to do with (which is rare, I know). There is a bit of a vibe of the first season of, "Westworld," of all things to this show. It's a specially controlled environment where everything is perfectly designed and calibrated to make guests happy...so things obviously have to keep going wrong despite the, "Programming."
There aren't any human-like robots on, "Doctor Odyssey," of course, but cruise ships are big floating theme parks, in essence, and no matter how hard we try to make a theme park flawless, cracks will show eventually. "Doctor Odyssey," is a fascinating exploration of how a ship's crew tries to fix or at least temporarily remedy said metaphorical cracks. Is it realistic in some of its wild medical cases?
Hell, no, it is exaggerated to the extreme. Is it fun to see what crazy medical cases occur or watch as a zany love triangle forms between the medical crew? You know it is!
"Doctor Odyssey," is weird, sexy, clever, and quite often funny too. I've greatly enjoyed this debut season
and hope it gets picked up for another. You can view new episodes of the show by watching ABC on Thursdays or catch up on everything via Hulu.
5 out of 5 Stars (for this season so far).
