‘Doctor Odyssey’ Episode 3 Recap

Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Doctor Odyssey Episode 3.

ABC’s Thursday nights have become the home of must-watch television. After the conclusion of 9-1-1’s harrowing three-part Season 8 premiere, Doctor Odyssey welcomes audiences to an unforgettable week at sea as “Plastic Surgery Week” officially gets underway. The episode opens up with Captain Massey (Don Johnson), Max (Joshua Jackson), Avery (Phillipa Soo), and Tristan (Sean Teale) surveying the “new faces” coming aboard the Odyssey — which includes the wife of the cruise line owner, Lenore (Gina Gershon), who has a serious lady boner for the Captain, the too-perfect Ken (Justin Jedlica) that Max seems to have his own boner for, and a surprise visit from Tristan’s mother (Constance Marie).

While the new passengers give the medical team plenty of drama to contend with (from frostbitten breasts to noses falling off), it’s Avery’s bad attitude that serves as the central conflict of Episode 3. Last week, Avery got some sweet wishful fulfillment, which saw Max ensuring that she would be able to receive a scholarship to pursue her M.D., but this week her inability to tolerate plastic surgery puts everything in jeopardy. Lenore boards the Odyssey with a chip on her shoulder where Avery is concerned, thanks to her past behavior during Plastic Surgery Week, and things only get worse after Avery turns up to a formal event dressed like a gondolier and then mouths off at Lenore in front of patients. Captain Massey attempts to smooth things over between the two women, but Avery goes and gets herself fired, and she’s oddly okay with all of it.

Tristan’s Got Big Mommy Issues in ‘Doctor Odyssey’ Episode 3

Max has a lot going on in this episode as well, so he doesn’t get too much of an opportunity to really react to Avery’s termination, but Tristan has big feelings about his sort-of unrequited crush being eerily alright with being given the heave-ho. When he questions her apathetic response, Avery goes in for the kill, reminding Tristan that she is neither his girlfriend nor his mother. And Tristan’s mommy issues don’t stop there.

Tristan isn’t thrilled with his mother turning up on the Odyssey unannounced, and he has good reason to take issue with her sudden appearance. As the episode unfolds, Tristan has to reckon with the fact that his relationship with his mother is a yo-yo. She comes and goes when it benefits her, and when she does turn up, she lovebombs him. When he does finally address his issues with their relationship, his mother seemingly feigns chest pains, which is likely something she’s done in the past when her behavior has been called into question, but unfortunately—this time—it’s a real medical situation.

After running a few tests and flipping through her little black book, the team discovers that her handwriting shows that she’s been steadily losing fine motor skills, and coupled with some memory issues, it’s evident that she has Huntington’s disease, which apparently runs in the family. With this in mind, Tristan decides to give his relationship with his mother another shot, but we’ll get to that in a little bit.

Max Is Forced To Face His Past in ‘Doctor Odyssey’ Episode 3

When Ken comes aboard the Odyssey, Max is immediately starstruck. Tristan coyly questions Max about whether he is fluid, which is played off as a bit of a joke, much to the chagrin of viewers hoping for the Max/Avery/Tristan love triangle to turn into a ménage à trois. But it should be noted that Max doesn’t technically say he isn’t. Max goes out of his way to make sure he runs into Ken so they can have a conversation, which then leads to the two of them taking a spin in the cryo chambers together. Every interaction they have is quite charged, but Ken has a date with destiny that prevents their flirtations from going anywhere. One evening, Ken comes into the medical bay to have Max check his recent surgical sites for sepsis, and everything looks fine. However, after Ken gets ready for bed (in a rather drawn-out sequence set to “Three” by Sleeping at Last), he is found unresponsive by housekeeping the next morning.

Max, Tristan, and Avery rush to treat Ken in his room, but they are too late. Much like the premiere, Max has flashbacks to his own brush with death while trying to revive Ken. Joshua Jackson may be pleading the fifth when it comes to the internet’s wild theory about Doctor Odyssey‘s potential plot twist, but there is definitely more than meets the eye with this series. As it is later revealed, the reason why Max was inexplicably drawn to Ken is because, while he was in isolation, on the verge of death, he watched the Barbie-themed reality TV series that Ken starred in. It is awfully suspicious that the person Max clung to while he was near-death would die under his watch on the cruise ship.

This revelation is made even weirder by how it is introduced to the plot. After Ken is wheeled away in a laundry cart and stashed in the cold freezer in the flower shop, Max is very clearly reeling from the loss. Avery checks in on Max and puts the moves on him — because nothing turns a girl on more than hearing about how death seems to linger around him. Is there a therapist aboard the Odyssey? There’s definitely something to be said about hooking up with your freshly fired subordinate while feeling depressed about the death of the patient that you hit it off with.

Doctor Odyssey may have rudely interrupted Max and Avery’s special moment with a commercial break, but rest assured, it seems like this ship has finally sailed. Tristan catches the pair putting their clothing back on when he wheels a seizing patient into the medical bay. The patient happens to be Lenore’s personal shopper, who is the only person she genuinely seems to care about. When Max’s suggestion about how to treat her puts her implants in jeopardy, Lenore is eager to take Avery’s second opinion, despite the friction between them.

‘Doctor Odyssey’ Episode 3 Wraps Things Up Nicely

As the episode draws to a close, it manages to stitch together all the plotlines rather nicely. With Lenore’s diagnosis looming over him, Tristan decides to humor his mother and agrees to have lunch with her during one of the excursion days — only she doesn’t turn up. He shows up for their reservation, and because she stands him up, he’s almost forced to give up his table for two. Fortunately, Max shows up in time to save him from embarrassment.

Tristan and Max have a very nice conversation about his relationship with his mother, and how it’s connected to his overreliance on Avery and his toxic pattern of falling for women who don’t really want him. When Tristan admits that he was never really in love with Avery, Max seizes on that as a blessing to pursue her. After a joke about Max being in a cryopod for the last five years (filing that one away for later), Tristan essentially gives Max his blessing, while noting that people have made relationships work with their subordinates. And yes, Avery is his subordinate again. Meanwhile, Avery lucks out once again. After saving Lenore’s personal shopper, she decides that she was never really serious about firing Avery, and, in fact, she intends to vouch for her scholarship application. Perhaps Avery was right to be so apathetic about the whole situation, because there were never any real stakes at play.

Max gets to have his own wish fulfillment this week, as Ken’s reality show co-stars arrive at the end of the episode to collect his body. Max gets to regale them about how their show essentially saved him while he was in the hospital, providing him something akin to closure. Ryan Murphy tries to make some sort of statement with this conversation, alluding to the fact that doctors aren’t particularly friendly toward patients who use and abuse plastic surgery, but the message is lost in Doctor Odyssey’s glossy patina. Next week, it looks like Max was right—death does seem to follow him, and in Episode 4, Avery’s going to be fighting for her life while Captain Massey fights to keep the ship on course.

Doctor Odyssey airs on ABC on Thursdays at 9 PM ET and next-day on Hulu.

Watch on Hulu