We Finally Set Sail on Doctor Odyssey

Plus, Shirley Bassey's jewels, and the rest of the Thursday night ABC lineup.

Of all the new shows whose ads have besieged us during live sporting events, I have been least excited about Dr. Zachary Quinto Totally Isn’t House MD, and the one I harbored the highest hopes for — har, har — was Doctor Odyssey, a.k.a. Pacey Reunites With Boats, a.k.a. Grey’s Emergency Floating Clinic, which I think is in the Gnorfbun universe. Accordingly, I have left the former show alone, and watched Joshua Jackson’s live on Thursday night, because I knew we’d need to convene here to talk about it.

Tomorrow, Jessica is recording an episode of Extra Hot Great on this very topic, which is fun because you may get a TOTALLY different take on it from her, Tara, and Sarah — all three of them former Dawson’s Creek recappers and Pacey Witter scholars. The short version of my take is, if it continues in the vein of the pilot, this is a perfectly cromulent but weirdly cheap one-eye show, probably half an eye if I’m being truly honest, not quite fun enough or dumb enough to be great — but that could change, especially if Kevin’s theory about it turns out to be right.

First, the rundown: The Odyssey is a cruise ship on which Pacey has been hired to be the new physician. He has another name, but not even the show itself cares what it is; Captain Don Johnson refers to him as, I’m not kidding, Dr. Odyssey. As many on Twitter have pointed out, this is absurd, but to me only a LITTLE. Because let’s be honest, we have all probably seen a doctor here and there whom we’ve shorthanded as Dr. Dingus, or Dr. Doom, or whatever — we once had a local priest whom we called Father Death because he put a tragic story into every homily — but it is true that most of us aren’t calling them Dr. Riverside Drive Suite 104, and it IS a little dehumanizing to this made-up person that his boss immediately shooed away his name like it doesn’t matter. Then again, it really doesn’t matter — maybe Don Johnson the actor just couldn’t be arsed to learn anyone’s name, and he would not be alone, as I absolutely did not retain anyone else’s name on this show, either. There’s Captain Don, who is never not being Don Johnson, and there’s Nurse Practitioner Eliza Hamilton (Philippa Soo), and Nurse Surly (some dude who’s in love with NP Eliza). And that’s basically it. They float around and try to fix people’s on-board medical problems, often while in formalwear.

Doctor Odyssey is a Ryan Murphy show that airs the same night as Grey’s Anatomy, so of course the pilot includes a man breaking his penis, and also Rachel Dratch engaging in such comedy catastrophes as Kicks Husband in Clavicle While Coming Down Waterslide, and Husband Eats Too Much Shrimp.¹ But you know what it doesn’t include? Anyone else. This dumb boat is supposed to be a gigantic floating luxury party, but somehow the medical staff is only three people — maybe that’s normal; I haven’t gone on a cruise in part because I’m pretty sure I’ll get shoved overboard, which we’ve discussed before — and they are three out of your four listed regular cast members, AND those three medical professionals ALSO ALL LEFT THE SHIP to run a nighttime search and rescue, with one extra driving the tiny boat, because apparently they don’t have anyone else who can do that.² And Cap’n Don only has two people on the bridge with him steering the ship itself, both of whom are glorified extras. The very final scene had a Love Boat feel to it, where Pacey and Don stood there bidding farewell to their patients, and maybe that’s the direction they’re moving in — the list of upcoming guest stars includes Shania Twain, Gina Gershon, and Kelsea Ballerini. But even The Love Boat had seven series regulars at a given time, who all worked in different areas of the ship. This show needs more people.

Unfortunately, instead, it feels like ABC set out to make the cheapest possible version of this show, and that’s ultimately what could keep it from being TRULY fun in entertainingly bad way that I want it to be. Yeah, the sets are big, but they also look exactly like sets on a soundstage and there’s no one ON them half the time. Sure, we can’t all afford a cast the size of Grey’s Anatomy, but we could hit 911 levels. This idiot boat needs more characters on it — Eliza and Surly are one-note so far, and it’s impossible to invest in interpersonal drama when it only happens between the same three persons — but I would even settle for more background artists. No one is ever walking down the hallways except our leads. There’s one scene of two passengers at night on the deck and NOBODY ELSE IS AROUND; ditto a night chat by the pool between Pacey and Eliza. The dining room doesn’t seem crowded, the decks aren’t teeming with bodies, the clinic is huge and empty. It screams “we’re on a soundstage,” including that late-night ocean rescue, which the show obviously had to film in the dark to cover up the fact that they produced the lowest-budget version that they could. They DID hire a bunch of extras for a staff beach party scene — staff, what staff, WHO AMONGST THESE EXTRAS WORKS ON THE SHIP AND WHERE ARE THEY — but they shoved them on a six square foot patch of sand. Honestly, Dick Wolf’s Chicago shows, which are always just been Cheap Shondaland to me, look a thousand times more expensive. AND HAVE CAST MEMBERS.

Not Pacey, but the rule is that if you say the show’s name, this GIF must appear.

Having said that, once we finished the pilot, Kevin turned to me and said, “So Pacey is dead, and the ship is purgatory, right?” In truth, this was his way of processing how lackluster the show was — he was like, “SURELY there has to be a twist, because this CANNOT be all there is?” And neither of us is necessarily making this argument SINCERELY but it would explain some of the weird feelings the show left us with:

1. Pacey’s backstory is that he was Covid Patient Zero in his hospital, and hovered between life and death for a long time. AHEM. Right there, maybe he’s dead. Or still in a coma, or inside someone’s snow globe.

2. Sidebar: I paused the show to SHRIEK when Pacey revealed that once he survived Covid, he decided to choose joy in his life, which ultimately is what led him… TO TAKE A JOB ON A FLOATING DISEASE RAFT??? Cruise ships were ALSO ground zero for Covid! There is NO internal logic to this life decision! Pacey cannot have known there would only be six people per week on this stupid ship! Now, if he’d said, “I decided to commit my life to making sure cruise ships aren’t Pandemic Central anymore,” okay, but he didn’t. WHO SURVIVES BEING PATIENT ZERO AND DECIDES LIVING ON A CRUISE SHIP IS IMMUNOLOGICALLY SENSIBLE. Right. Nobody. So maybe he DIDN’T.

3. The sets being strangely empty lends them an eeriness that would fit with Supernatural Boat Drama.

4. Cap’n Don DOES have an air of menace about him at all times. If he doesn’t Know Things, then Don Johnson has made a choice to act like he does, just in case somebody comes along later and gives him something he was supposed to have known. A planner, that Don.

5. Also, you don’t really need a crew if the boat is just steaming itself along under the power of the Grim Reaper, or somesuch. I hope it turns out that Don’s ship controls are actually just Fisher Price.

6. Don ignoring Pacey’s name and calling him Dr. Odyssey makes some sort of sense if Pacey’s only job now is as a steward of the recently dead. It doesn’t MATTER who you are; you’re one with the vessel now, you’re the Ferryman’s henchman, you are not Whatshisname anymore.

7. Pacey is taking over from a man who mysteriously “left” because… he was old, I guess. OR PERHAPS HE WAS DELIVERED SOMEPLACE.

8. Okay, it’s sort of weird to bring souls chained to purgatory onto the ship and then break their penises. Why add injury to the insult of death? But maybe these are punishments, or tests — if they survive, they go to The Good Place, and if not, well. It could also ultimately be a test for the doctors. Like, if you can unbreak a penis like so many Toni Braxton hearts, you get a purgatory point for your punch card. If you incorrectly diagnose Rachel Dratch’s husband with an antibiotic allergy when he CLEARLY has some shrimp-specific maritime illness you didn’t study up on, you lose a point.

9. Speaking of penises, Pacey is kind of a dick — he has a heart to heart with Surly about how Surly is in love with Eliza, and IMMEDIATELY goes out and hooks up with Eliza on the beach while dancing and in full view of Surly. Later he’s like, “Yeah, shouldn’t have done that,” which… sir, you are never getting out of purgatory at this rate.

There are probably other reasons this theory holds water (har) — and Kevin certainly isn’t the only one workshopping this; he felt validated by a piece on one of the entertainment sites the next day making a similar argument, but also maybe dejected that he wasn’t the only one bravely carrying the flag for They’re All Dead. Personally, I plan to watch more episodes of the show through this lens and this lens alone. Because obviously I WILL keep watching; quite apart from my rule that pilots can be awkward and all shows (and writers’ rooms) need a couple episodes to warm up to themselves, I have lots of room in my schedule for a one-eye or half-eye show in which all I have to do every ten minutes is look up and see Pacey looking tan and handsome and suave, potentially in a “the underworld pays my salary” way. So we will definitely revisit this one, even just to see if it gets better on… whatever it considers its own merits to be, as well as the slightly more twisted scale I tend to use.

— Heather

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Thursday Night Television Corner

We might as well also tip our hats to the shows that are providing the bread in Doctor Odyssey’s Thursday night sandwich on ABC.

Good old 9-1-1 came out of the gate with a BEE-NADO episode, part one of three, in which, yes, a cast member absolutely does look up at the swarm of killer bees and say, “It’s a bee-nado.” Ryan Guzman has returned from the break with a terrible mustache that I really hope is his character’s way of making fun of the new captain, who himself has a mustache and whom they all find ridiculous. Because he is. I don’t love Buck either, sir, but yelling at people for creative solutions to deadly problems is counterproductive when you are a first responder. Anyway, the bees attacked a car, and a perfume launch, and then a plane, which promptly crashed straight into a jetliner carrying Ms. Angela Bassett. She’s gonna have to land that plane, and with a hole in its cockpit window, which is par for the course for a woman who last year survived a sinking cruise ship that had also been taken over by bandits. THIS is the kind of gloriously dumb stuff I want from my Ryan Murphy emergency shows. Wacky disasters! (Do we think the Santa Monica Pier has magically been rebuilt? How about the Hollywood sign? They got destroyed in a giant tsunami/mudslide both of which the show IMMEDIATELY forgot happened.) Middling actors! (My mother has rage-quit this show several times due to Buckley alone, although I’ve ascended — or descended — to a plane on which his acting skills are funny.³) Jennifer Love Hewitt making sympathetic faces while typing without using the space bar! Angela Bassett acting SO HARD because she would never turn her knob down to a seven, not even when everyone else around her has their dial set to, like, a four! Inject this dumb, dumb show into my veins, please.

And Grey’s Anatomy is limping along largely as you imagine. If you are a fan of the O.G. years, you might be interested to know they brought back Sydney, the overly perky doctor who appeared a handful of times in seasons 2, 3, 4, and now 21. Otherwise, the premiere was… you know. I care about maybe three of the new interns and none of the residents — there’s only really one, anyway, and it’s Jake Borelli’s whiny Levi, and he’s reportedly leaving this season — and Amelia is zzz. It was free of Owen and Teddy, which felt NICE. We got Jason George back from the late, lamented (by me; I liked it) Station 19, and Miranda Bailey is still the queen of my heart. But they need to bring in an influx of new doctors — not just interns, which has been the focus of their refresh attempts before — and then actually DO stuff with them. Meredith Grey never should have returned; her whole research storyline is so boring and smug and I think her time of relevance has passed. Every time Jackson makes an appearance — as he did in the premiere — I am afraid April is not far behind, and I do not need any more epilogues to that relationship. Please no. And they’ve made Debbie Allen’s character so nasty, besides which, hospital board and finance business is not that interesting. No one has ever watched this hospital soap opera and thought, “Tell me more about funding your studies.”

But, you know. I’m part of the problem, because I’m still watching. It’s been a long relationship and I’m in it until the bitter end. I cannot imagine Doctor Odyssey, or even 9-1-1, or almost any non-animated network show that isn’t produced by Dick Wolf, getting to season 21 anymore. Three cheers for longevity; whenever Dr. Odyssey finally shows up to sail these people to their cosmic end, I will absolutely be on that dock waving farewell.

— Heather

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Calling All Magpies

It’s been a while since we dug into the interesting auctions on offer from our friends at Sotheby’s but I bring glad tidings for my fellow magpies: On October 10 in Paris, Sotheby’s is hosting one of its “Fine Jewels” auctions, and included in the 287 lots are 71 selections from Dame Shirley “Goldfinger” Bassey’s collection.⁴ Sotheby’s points out, “Nearly all of the pieces feature diamonds – the gemstone most associated with Dame Shirley Bassey since she first sang the famous James Bond theme song ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ in 1971,” and they’re really not kidding. Overall, Dame Shirley has FANTASTIC taste in jewelry, diamonds or not, and paging through all of her pieces is a treat. Forthwith, please enjoy 15 selections you should definitely earmark in case you find yourself holding the lucky Powerball ticket tomorrow night:

1. Sotheby’s has this filed as “pair of diamond earrings,” but it’s actually a pair of (admittedly very chonky) diamond earrings and “a necklace composed of multiple rows of emerald faceted beads and diamond pavé-set spacers, decorated with two foliate open work motifs millegrain-set with brilliant-cut diamonds.” Those are a lot of words I only slightly understand! I can’t tell if those are EMERALD emeralds or what, but they…seem to be? Anyway, it’s glam. It would look so good on you as you slither into a board meeting in a black turtleneck, ready to take over someone’s company!

2. Dame Shirley certainly did not shy away from whimsy in her jewelry collection, some of which I’ve chosen to highlight here. One of the most charming items is this elephant-themed brooch and earrings set. I cannot resist the turquoise, and who doesn’t love an elephant? 

3. You know you’ve spent a lot of time in the Fine Jewelry section at Sotheby’s when you find yourself murmuring, “Six thousand euros is so cheap,” about anything — but six thousand euros DOES seem like a deal for this pair of ruby and diamond rings. I love how the pinky ring looks like a cobra! Wear it with your elephant earrings and really lean into the wildlife theme!

4. I’m sure you could get a knock-off of these rainbow-gem dangly earrings at Baublebar during Pride, but these are real. Plus, you’ll be able to say things like, “These old things? Oh, they belonged to Dame Shirley Bassey.” Then you can launch into your rendition of “Goldfinger” until everyone leaves you alone.

5. I’m frankly obsessed with this orange sapphire and diamond parure, and also consistently confused about why the Sotheby’s jewelry model wears her brooches so low down on her boob. (I mean, I get it; she has to leave room to place her ring-wearing hand on her chest above it. But it does look weird, and I think it distracts from the gems.) The whole thing is so perfectly autumnal. Wear it to get your first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the season!

6. Speaking of parures, a word I quite naturally learned from reading romance novels set in the 17th century, this one is WILD. It’s so colorful, so…encrusted? I want it, even if the brooch looks like a colorful, child-designed blob. The necklace is the real star; it’s gonna be perfect for your post-Lotto-winning life as a person who lives in an expensive beach community and runs a tiny shop selling weird glass art that also has a lot of earrings displayed on driftwood. (This shop will have extremely unpredictable hours because you only go in when you get bored, but losing that business won’t matter because you’re just doing it for fun.)

7. This next pair of lots is also tailor-made for a person selling eccentric glass art by the ocean, and perhaps solving local mysteries: Please behold this absolutely AMAZING cuff bracelet, and the related necklace and earring set. The bracelet is engraved “Xmas 1944 Evelyne with Love Bob.” Good going, Bob! You nailed that one. Unless Evelyne was a minimalist, in which case I can see how this eventually snuck its way out of her jewelry box and eventually into the hands of Shirley Bassey.

8. Okay, I’m not gonna faff around here. You should just click through and see this one. One hint: It involves an INSANE amount of cameos. (Complimentary.)

9. On the other side of the coin, maybe sometimes you just want a necklace that’s simply a massive amount of giant — but not so giant as to be vulgar — diamonds. After all, why mess with a classic?

10. Related, three absolutely fantastic diamond bracelets are on offer. (How was I supposed to narrow that one down? Snap up all three!)

11. And while we’re on the topic of diamonds, this bow-themed parure is so charming; I love that the pendant on the necklace detaches to be a stand-alone brooch. Sotheby’s even chimes in to note “diamonds bright and lively.” I wish I could say the same for myself!

12. Finally, we’ve arrived at the actual lot I’d personally want from an aesthetic viewpoint, except it might be a pain in the ass and it’s also ethically questionable. It unfortunately contains a restricted species — coral — so I guess if you’re an American who cannot resist this coral, emerald and diamond parure (and doesn’t think you’ll feel sad about the coral reefs every time you put it on), you have to fly to Paris, and then, uh, smuggle it back into the United States? Surely rich people have a work-around for these things. (Okay, I looked it up. You can import it if you get a permit and follow US Fish and Wildlife guidelines. The laws about coral imports are complicated, especially when vintage items come into play.) Hmm, this whole thing is getting too heavy for me. Maybe I’ll just stick to that trio of diamond bracelets.

— Jessica

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ICYMI…

What do Ellen, Anna Delvey, and Fyre Fest All Have In Common?

Only Jonkers In The Building

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Last Call

— The news out of the areas hit by Hurricane Helene is so distressing. We hope all Broads and their loved ones who found themselves in the path of the storm are safe and okay. USA Today has a helpful article rounding up ways to help. (I personally donated to World Central Kitchen.) — J

— I just learned from a very interesting piece in the Financial Times that Rebecca Hall, in addition to being an actress, is a very talented painter. Is this how one of us eventually ends up with a portrait of everyone’s favorite Sexy Robber Baron hanging over their fireplace? And by “someone,” of course I mean me. - J

— This is an absolutely fascinating article in The Cut about veneers, which also almost gave me a panic attack reading it. So now I’m making you read it, too! Not for people with dental anxiety. - J

— You’ve almost certainly seen this, but I’m still reeling that Drake Hogestyn — who was on Days of our Lives as John Black, Roman Brady, Forrest Alamain, and God knows what other names; he might’ve been a DiMera at some point also — died of pancreatic cancer. He was a soap legend, and a core part of decades of Days. I watched Izzy B die in his arms! I watched Eileen Davidson play five different roles that all somehow revolved around her love for John! And Doc! What will Marlena do?!? Real talk, though: All the tributes from his co-stars have been incredible and loving, and I imagine Deidre Hall — I haven’t seen one from her yet — is still really struggling with this one. John and Marlena were endgame, and that end came too soon for any of us. — H

1. I will note that Dratch made me laugh. - J

2. They also all went drinking at the same time while ALL the guests were on an excursion? I don’t think it works that way! Sometimes people don’t go on the excursion! Also what if someone gets hurt on the excursion? Someone needs to stay sober!! - J

3. They really should have let Oliver Stark use his native accent, because pretending to be American may be draining his talent battery.

4. If you’re a fan of the Dame, you might enjoy the retrospective I wrote about her airport style a couple of years ago. If you are unfamiliar with Bassey, her Wikipedia contains one of my all-time favorite post-divorce statements from a celebrity.