Reviewer Rating: 3.8/5.0
3.8
Doctor Odyssey Season 1 Episode 2 It’s Singles Week! Do you know what this means?
Many people wanted to wear it, many people fainted.
Seriously, people are falling left and right. Why is this cruise so popular between this week and Doctor Odyssey Season 1 Episode 1?
After a rocky start, Max, Avery, and Tristan found each other’s groove relatively quickly, and considering how fast and furious the emergency on that ship was, they actually had no idea what to do. No choice.
One of the big questions raised by the premiere was people wondering how many emergencies there are on cruise ships. Is this whole operation really happening while people are doing Zumba in the pool on the deck and tucking into overpriced and under-seasoned prime rib?
There are mixed reviews about how much use medical bays on cruise ships have for anything other than sunburns, seasickness, etc., but this is prime time TV, folks!
Who wants to watch nurses and doctors on a ship without seeing their ridiculous behavior?
As mentioned, it’s Bachelor Week, and if the series is going to have a different theme each week, I hope there’s some creativity in the writers’ room, because that’s certainly a task!
Of the love triangle squad, Avery is the least excited about this week, and while she may sound cynical at first, she has her reasons.
The people on the boat had a lot of fun there, but it was also a bit of a cesspool, and as we later found out, sexually transmitted diseases spread across the boat like wildfire.
Avery was a very capable, compassionate, and kind nurse, and the boys loved her. But I’m glad they fleshed her out more during the hour to better understand the love triangle they were trying to sell.
Max and Ivory have more chemistry overall than Ivory and Tristan, although Max and Tristan’s chemistry actually transcends everything else.
But I digress. Ivory’s cynicism about Bachelor Week is more or less rooted in how she feels about her own trajectory and where she stands.
She’s living a good life on the surface, but she feels alone and wonders if it might have been better if she’d made some different decisions along the way.
Maybe she’ll become a doctor, fall in love, or find something better for herself outside the ship. She won’t know this because she can’t go back in time, but she can change her gift. This is something she can control.
Combining Avery’s inner questioning with Analisa’s rescue is a brilliant procedural thread. Annalisa’s predicament allows Avery to open up and finally shed her ironclad disdain for just about everything.
Max and Tristan made a deal last week to leave the Triangle and stop fighting over Avery, and Max is more committed to that than Tristan. But Tristan has also been obsessed with Ivory for much longer than Max has known they both existed.
Their kiss on the balcony comes at a vulnerable moment for Ivery, and I’m not sure if these two are just best friends. Still, Max catching them red-handed (and keeping silent about what he saw) is a way to continue to move the storyline forward.
While I’m not usually a big fan of love triangles with a clear winner, at least they leaned into this one and didn’t introduce it in the premiere, only to have it all forgotten about in the following weeks.
At this point, if that’s what they’re going to do, it’s going to be back and forth to me every week. What do you have to lose?
Ivory isn’t the only one with the backstory, as Captain Robert has had his own health scare, faced his own feelings as a widower, and dealt with Shania Twain.
Apparently, it’s all in a day’s work for the captain.
I didn’t catch Shania Twain’s character’s name (sorry!), but she reluctantly boarded that cruise ship and walked away having more fun than half the people on the cruise ship!
When we first meet Robert he seems a little pushy, going on and on about the importance of a perfect boat, but it’s clear to him that he puts his heart and soul into the job because it keeps him going .
The way he talks about his late wife is the way everyone wants their loved ones to talk about. He adored that woman; you could hear it in his words and see it in his face.
So meeting someone other than Shania Twain was an amazing surprise, as were the emotions that came with a surprise kiss.
Maybe it’s not stated explicitly, but this appears to be the first time in the year since his wife’s death that he’s been with another woman.
Sure, his passing out was horrific, but Broken Heart Syndrome is a very real thing, and in his case, it made sense, and that was the final word.
I love the chats between Max and Robert where they talk about life and moving forward, because that’s true for most of life, even outside of this particular scene.
That’s what this hour is about, right? As Max said, life comes with risks, but you have to get through it all and enjoy it as much as possible.
Singles week is not spent with in-depth personal information!
Elsewhere in the hour, Shania Twain wasn’t the only guest star, as Cord Overstreet found himself appearing on another Ryan Murphy show and was assigned Be that person on the cruise who has no shame in having a great time there.
Sam is the guy you want to avoid on a cruise ship, and the minute he says he’s not using a condom, well, you know the floating petri dish is ready to explode!
One would think this might be something to see on a ship like this. But do they have that many antibiotics to fight the spread?
The power of television, people.
There are a lot of deeper discussions about this series online, I can’t say if this is true or not.
All I know is that over the course of two episodes, a lot of attractive people boarded this fancy cruise ship and got into medical emergencies.
There are equally attractive people at every turn, ready to step in and perform surgery or do whatever they have to do to stop that ship from docking and get these people to the hospital.
Maybe this show is just that stupid. Or maybe it’s a metaphor for something else. Or maybe Max is still unconscious in Boston and this is his dream.
Friends, we have to keep watching to find out.
doctor notes
- Characters who are portrayed as “playboys” on shows like this are either annoying or lovable. I don’t know what kind of person Tristan is now, but he’s very kind to Kelly and you can tell it’s genuine. Give us more Tristan!
- Did I sense something in the brief interaction between Spencer and Ivory?
- Max and Tristan tell Avery about the scholarship, and their happy embrace is so cute. The love triangle isn’t going anywhere.
- What a nuisance to call passenger Sam a syphilis!
Well, what do you think of this series if you decide to stay after watching the first hour of it?
Are you here for the love triangle?
Do you like the series format?
What are your theories on what this all means?
Let me know in the comments section below!
You can watch Doctor Odyssey on Thursdays at 9/8c on ABC.
Watch Doctor Odyssey online
