Critics Hate It, but Audiences Love It—and I'm All About This Wild New TV Drama

With an embarrassingly low 5.7 out of 10 rating on IMDB and monstrously big premiere numbers (it’s ABC's most-watched drama in four years), Doctor Odyssey is my guilty pleasure appointment TV. It's bananas—each episode, the show follows pretty, glazed Joshua Jackson as luxury cruise ship doctor Max Bankman and his team of two nurses on cruises where the drama is as wild as the medical procedures they somehow have the facilities to treat. And did I mention the three start out the season in a love triangle? 

From a death at sea in which a human Ken doll fades during plastic surgery recovery (remember Ryan Murphy's 2003 hit Nip/Tuck?) to the penile fracture suffered on a honeymoon cruise, there's no telling what each voyage will hold for the band of horny healers on Doc Odd (our household nombre del amor for the show). One cast member said the show was conceived as "a little vacation every week" for the viewer and that's exactly what I get from this show, 45 minutes a week to completely escape from contemporary political, economic and ecological anxieties and imagine life going swimmingly.

This show gives me 45 minutes a week to completely escape from contemporary political, economic and ecological anxieties and imagine life going swimmingly

If you haven’t watched Doc Odd yet, tune in immediately because I foresee the 13-episode season sailing into choppier waters, ones you’ll need to develop sea legs to appreciate. Who knew there were so many hazards on a pleasure cruise? Besides the aforementioned fatality and snapped phallus, the first three episodes contain iodine poisoning, a syphilis outbreak, a copper poisoning and a punctured lung as well as something called “broken-heart syndrome” that feels like a heart attack, suffered by the Captain Robert Massey (Don Johnson).

By the way, Johnson earns my deep appreciation for showing up on set each week to utter straight-faced lines such as "Halloween. The one week where my great vessel becomes a clown car," and “When I was 18 years old, I worked a clam trawler out of Atlantic City, and ever since then, taffy tastes like broken heart and permanent sunburn.” (Let’s hope two-time Pulitzer finalist, co-creator and show writer Jon Robin Baitz, gets some big checks and awards season love for these gems, too.)