At Intolerant TV, we watch every new show on network television for the fall season—so you don’t have to. We don’t watch them for long, though. Instead of giving thumbs up/down or a certain number of stars, we let you know how long we were able to stand the pilot episode before turning it off.
It’s the Love Boat! Only sexier! Because cruises are totally not old people and unlimited buffets. They’re young, and hip, and relevant. That’s why we cast stars from two of the biggest shows of the 80s and 90s!
Establishing shots of a large cruise ship—the Odyssey in the title. A guy in a cruise ship uniform is trying to argue his way on board, but the woman at the dock is not having it. This is accurate. You cannot argue your way onto a cruise ship. They have stone-cold killers at those gates.
A woman in a cruise uniform shows up, and she has his badge.
This show is trying very hard to be sexy—the guy reminded the woman at the gate of the time he rubbed lotion on her back. So you’d assume he left his badge when he stayed over with the coworker, but no. She found it at the gas station, “next to the boner pills.” What? That kind of came out of left field and doesn’t really help develop anyone’s character … so kind of the opposite of what you’d put into a pilot.
Now the two are on the ship in some weird room filled with jars on shelves? I don’t know what is going on. They hate a third coworker and hope he died, because he’s old.
Don Johnson shows up. Is he the guy they hate? No, he’s the captain. And he says, “Six hours to showtime on this season’s maiden voyage. Still about a day and a half’s work to do, but it all comes together. Somehow it does, every year.”
Again, what? That’s like exposition that doesn’t say anything. It’s like the “welcome to the ship” video that plays in your cabin after you board. 90% of what’s been uttered on this show so far is complete throwaway.
The coworker they hate, who has had more character development than anyone else on screen, has been fired, because he was the doctor, and his misdiagnosis was blamed for a ship-wide outbreak of illness.
“I don’t need to remind you of the gory details,” says Don Johnson, then recaps it all anyway.
Now, we get more dialogue pulled from cruise company mission statements.
“The cruising world of today has to exceed passenger expectations. We live in very uncertain times—wars and worldwide pandemics—and nobody is going to venture out for anything less than total perfection. … We in this business must be at the apex of our game.”
He also, inexplicably mentions robot sex dolls—as in, no one will take cruises if they aren’t perfect. They’ll just stay at home with their robot sex dolls. Which, I have to say, are not the two options I consider when I have a week off for vacation.
No one talks like this. Any of this.
While captain Crockett talks about corporate synergies in the travel and tourism paradigm, the employees carp that they don’t want to work for another old man doctor. Because the doctor is going to be Joshua Jackson, who they will be pushing very hard as a sexy sexy man on this sexy sexy show. Aren’t they going to be surprised when their new boss turns out to be that hunk of grade A man meat? They’ll probably throw their robot sex dolls right overboard.
The employees decide that they should be the new ship doctor, because one of them is a nurse practitioner. And … because the job would still be unfilled six hours before departure? I really want to get to Joshua Jackson, but this show is utter trash. Nothing the characters say or do has any connection to anything. I’d say it reminded me of something written by AI, but AI has advanced past this. Monkeys hammering on typewriters have advanced past this.
Time of death: 3 minutes.
