“Doctor Odyssey” distress summary: Pilot

Dick surj on a fucking boat.
Photo: Tina Thorpe/Disney

Did you get in? Have you hoisted the sail? Have you checked into your cabin yet? Have you, like the biggest television actors in America, seen the show that may single-handedly keep network television vital in 2024: Doctor Odyssey? Professional weirdo Ryan Murphy’s latest joint premiered on September 26th and combines the good humor of an 1980s American procedural with its shitty weekly emergencies 9-1-1 Series. Murphy’s recent shows on his old home base of FX have been confused and baroque, but on ABC he’s got what it takes, as the premiere episode of his new show on a luxury cruise ship proves. It stars Joshua Jackson as a doctor (Dr. Max, but people literally call him “Doctor Odyssey”) with a less mysterious backstory (he fell ill with COVID and decided to dedicate his life to having fun at sea) and the giving of Don Johnson to see from radiant Love boat Mood as a captain.

This show is incredibly silly, sunny fun and the whole thing is refreshingly stress-free, even if this one cruise ship is the site of more than enough emergencies to survive on ABC’s intervening Thursday night block 9-1-1 And Grey’s Anatomy. It really would be a floating deathtrap if Doc Odyssey wasn’t so damn good at performing complex medical procedures at sea. While each episode brings a new group of guests on board with their own problems, we’ll be keeping an eye on every disaster that occurs on deck (and overboard) throughout the season.

Too much shrimp
Rachel Dratch and her husband, Frasier’s boss at the radio station in the original Frasier, end up on the way to the infirmary after dinner. He has an allergic reaction to antibiotics but doesn’t take any. It’s Doctor Odyssey’s first night on board and so is he perplexed. However, nurse Avery Morgan (Phillipa Soo) worked on board the Odyssey for years and sees this all the time: Dratch’s husband has iodine poisoning from eating too much of the unlimited shrimp at the seafood buffet. This happens so often on the boat that there is a name for it: seal disease. These people are the reason Red Lobster went bankrupt, but then again, if I had a nickel for every time I consumed a medically problematic amount of shrimp, you know?

Broke Dick
It’s obviously a Murph joint when you’re only 16 minutes into an episode and a guy says he “broke my pee in half.” The medical team is called to a cabin where a man’s tail has been bent in two while, well, rocking the boat. It’s a penis fracture, something that usually happens when the girl is on top and comes down too hard; Doctor Odyssey knows this from his own experience as a student. The team sorts it out and tells the couple that they need to hold off for four to six weeks, but Phillipa Soo, NP, tells the couple that she knows a tantra sex specialist at the next port who can give them alternative ways to do it can show the completion of their marriage.

Waterslide Throat Kick
Seemingly immediately after overdosing on all the shrimp you can eat, Mr. and Mrs. Dratch find themselves in yet another predicament. The couple went down the water slide one by one, and as Rachel slipped, she kicked her husband so far in the throat that he was unconscious and unable to breathe. Doc Odd makes an incision on the man’s neck with a pocket knife (I hate this) and takes him to the infirmary to insert a tracheotomy tube and physically move his sternoclavicular joint back into position, which the nurses find very risky. However, Doc Odd goes against protocol and saves this sulk’s life a second time in one night. When the Dratches disembark at the end of the episode, they say this despite everything Despite it had the best week of their lives.

Man overboard!
Starting with Emergency #4, you’ll learn a little about how the structure of this show will work going forward. As an episode progresses, the severity of medical situations increases and the tone becomes increasingly serious. We’ll see the situations play out, either in flashbacks (water slide, broken tail, shrimp freak) or as they happen in the moment, as in the case of the young man who took Molly on the ship with his girlfriend, sneaking along to the nightclub her on the upper deck, where he stands on the railing and says “I am the king of the world!” thing and immediately falls overboard. Captain Don Johnson is alerted at the brig (terminology check?) and orders the ship to drop buoys, informing us that only 15 percent of those who fall overboard survive. The medical team sets out in a speedboat to find him, and Doc Odyssey undertakes what nurse Tristan (Sean Teale) calls an “epic” dive to save him from hypothermia. All in all, a sailing job for Doctor Odyssey.

Emotional Emergency of the Week
Tristan confides in his new boss, with whom he has to work every day, that he has had a crush on his colleague for years. Dr. Odyssey immediately turns around and snogs her. In Tristan’s face! While “Despacito” is playing!

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Avery Morgan’s title. She is a nurse.