Doctor Odyssey

This is actually terrible.

3 stars for the all-in game ness of the players, despite a script that should be pulped for recycled toilet paper.

Near the beginning of episode one, the new doctor onboard tours the Odyssey, a lavish 5 star cruise liner. We tour right along with him. It's a sumptuous, fantasy of a ship. At one point, the doctor is led down a hall of burnished walnut, walking in a kind of formation and I thought "Bones!!!?!'" . And 'oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if this show took a turn toward Star Trek or even The Orville?'.

Not only did Doctor Odyssey choose the path more commonly taken, the single first script was packed with every cliche, trope and bit of bad dialog it could scrape from the bottom of Ryan Murphy's shoe.

Ugh.

I watched the entire first episode and I promise you, it just gets worse and worse.

I feel badly for the talent caught up in this mess.

Don't expect a serious medical drama here or a laugh out loud comedy.

It's light-hearted. A balancing act with the cruise theme with related-medical situation(s) of the week and the dynamics of the different characters.

The characters are all fairly likeable and with enough diversity for a 30+ audience demographics.

As another reviewer wrote Joshua Jackson in the lead does his best "Clooney" and is charming. With Jackson and Johnson, they got the Baby Boomer, and Gen X covered. The new faces Soo, and Teale covers Millennials and Gen Z.

The ultimate question is given the demographic coverage, can the characters make meaning connections to the audience based on the story and their performance to keep the show going.

I personally enjoy it as a nice distraction from reality shows, and serialized drama that takes themselves too seriously.

I don't think this show would win a lot of points for accuracy or realism, but I am really enjoying the escapism it provides me so far - go out weekly on a gorgeous looking boat with beautiful people shot in bright colors practicing impossible medicine? - why not..

The 3 main actors are well known and deserving of their street cred, they mesh well together, sometimes making you forget that they are supposed to not know each other, and I always find it refreshing when a show tackles interpersonal issues head on instead of forcing it (through lazy writing) into a conflict for the sake of drama - normal people talk to one another!

There are some continuity issues with the personalities of the characters, it feels like they haven't yet fully got it down, but I'm rooting for them - I'm having a great time so far.

Joshua Jackson does george clooney in the E/R on a boat. That seems to be the concept of this series. Joshua Jackson got the greyish hair, the george clooney voice and charm, heck he is a spitting image of george clooney, its quite amazing actually.

The other lead actors are miami vices Don Johnson and fresh face actors Phillipa Soo and Sean Teale. Acting is overall good, but the story has so far not made any room for anything challenging. Its been very simple, quick and superficial.

The story is as mentioned quite uncomplicated. Its slightly sitcom-ish and surrounds the emergency medical staff on a cruise ship.

The good of this series is its freshness and elegance. Its easy to digest.

The bad is that its too simple, too lighthearted. The characters are very much caricatyrs and not acting like real people. I for one prefer realness above actingness. This production also comes with 'the message'. Its everything from pro covid propaganda to, trans and other stuff.

Oh yeah, since the story takes place on a boat mostly at sea, the storyline is somewhat limited and most of the photage never give away that its played on a boat and it gets kinda stuffed and closed in.

6/10.

I do not normally watch medical dramas, but this one caught my attention with the added element of it being on a cruise ship. And it is just that, a medical drama on a cruise ship. Which made it stupidly awesome. Certain things are made better with an added element of cheese, like the Golden Bachelor/Bachelorette. This show is so cheesy and stupid that I will probably keep watching it anyway. It's a perfect, ridiculous, brain cell killing, destress show. Overused jokes? Check. Major plot holes? Check. Nonsensical storytelling? Check. It's basically perfect, if you can handle cringing for an hour.