Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Doctor Odyssey Episode 6.

Last night’s episode of
Doctor Odyssey
touched on suicide and mental health. If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, there are many resources available, including
988
.

It has been a long two-week hiatus since the last episode of Doctor Odyssey, and Episode 6 came back swinging with some matrimonial mayhem. This week, The Odyssey played host to a dysfunctional wedding party that chartered a week-long cruise to celebrate the marriage of Lisa (Kelsea Ballerini) and Eric (Hudson Oz). While Lisa has plastered on a happy face to get through the week, it’s clear from the very first scene that there is trouble brewing in paradise for the couple, and as the episode unfolds, it only becomes more apparent.

“I Always Cry at Weddings” is the sort of episode that could only come from a series helmed by Ryan Murphy. It is a tragic episode that features suicide and the guilt of looking past the signs that someone you love is struggling. It is also an episode that finally pays off six episodes of simmering chemistry, sending audiences off with a long-awaited threesome and a sobering message about seeking help if you need it. While Doctor Odyssey is absurdist television that wraps everything in a glossy pastiche, the heavy weight of the subject matter is always there, even when it’s wrapped up in an eerie cover of “Human.”

You Can’t Have a Wedding Without a Ring(worm) on ‘Doctor Odyssey’

Doctor Odyssey has remained delightfully clever with its weekly medical cases, and Episode 6 is no different. The first case is pretty run-of-the-mill. The mother-of-the-bride (Margo Martindale) misses out on the first night of wedding merriment because she has suddenly come down with a terrible case of sunburn, despite being a pro at “laying out.” Her medical malady is easy to diagnose (even I instantly clocked it): she recently started antibiotics which caused her to be more sensitive to the sun.

The second case of the night was also of a sensitive nature. At the top of the episode, Captain Massey (Don Johnson), Max (Joshua Jackson), Avery (Phillipa Soo), and Tristan (Sean Teale) watched from above as the bride and groom listened to their wedding guests make toasts in their honor, including the best man, Bennett (Kevin Zegers), whose speech upset the bride. The scene revealed some pertinent details about the crew (namely, that the Captain is a sucker for love and Avery hates weddings) but it also laid the groundwork to trick the audience into thinking that something was going on between the groom and his best man.

Max, Avery, and Tristan respond to a sticky situation that Bennett has found himself in with one of the wedding guests, Deja (Annie Gonzalez). Much like the premiere, which featured a penile fracture, Doctor Odyssey takes a page from Sex Sent Me to the ER with a case of penis captivus. Which is an entirely real medical condition. Don’t look it up! Avery recognizes that this situation is going to be incredibly awkward for Deja, which will likely lead to her being even more tense, so she devises a plan: Max will ramble and keep the couple distracted while she uses a catheter to separate them. It works! Max tells an aimless tale about playing ding-dong ditch as a teenager and Avery saves the day.

While disentangling the unfortunate couple, Max notices some unusual-looking raised skin on Bennett’s torso and asks for him to come to the medical bay to be examined further. Bennett obliges, but he’s not thrilled with the diagnosis he receives. It seems that he has contracted a rare variant of ringworm, which happens to be incredibly contagious with prolonged exposure. A nightmare for a groomsman planning to work his way through the wedding party.

The next morning, the team pays a visit to the bride’s suite, where she is puking her guts out into an ice bucket. It seems that, in an effort to squeeze herself into a vintage Vera Wang wedding dress, she decided to double dose on Ozempic, and now she’s paying the price. Lisa wants nothing to do with their treatment plan, seeing as fluids will make her swell up, but her mother manages to convince her by convincing Max and Avery to do her a favor.

‘Doctor Odyssey’ Wasn’t Baiting Us After All
Image via ABC

Since the bride is down for the count, the mother-of-the-bride recruits Max and Avery to serve as her stand-in couple for the wedding rehearsals. Her goal is to have them go through all the motions of the bride and groom so she can record the whole affair for Lisa and Eric to review so they can hit their marks and pull off a picture-perfect wedding.

The faux wedding nearly goes off without a hitch. Max and Avery meet in front of the Captain, who walks them through an abridged version of their vows, but before their lips can meet to seal the deal, Tristan objects! He plays it off like he’s always wanted to object at a wedding, but it’s clear that he really did not want to watch Max and Avery kiss in front of everyone. As the duo walks back down the aisle, now as a trio, they’re all holding hands. It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it type of scenario, but Tristan is clinging to Max’s hand, fueling all of our theories! If tonight’s episode hadn’t paid off this blatant interest, it would have been time to call it bait, but it wasn’t, in the end.

After the rehearsal, Eric pulls Max aside to check out a rash that he’s developed. It is, unsurprisingly, the same ringworm diagnosis that Bennett received. Max (and the audience) are quick to assume that Eric must be sleeping with his best man, but as Max carefully questions him, it becomes apparent that he’s dealing with a much bigger situation than that. Eric all but admits that he is a sex addict and that he’s had dozens of partners in the past thirty days, who he could have given the ringworm to. Max does his best to try to calm him down once he starts spiraling, but Eric seems hopeless. When Avery and Tristan stroll into the medical bay, Eric comments about how Max and them have something “real,” something he’s lacking with Lisa, and it all seems very pointed that he doesn’t clarify if he’s talking about Avery and Tristan or Max and Avery.

Earlier in the episode, Avery reveals to Max that the reason she hates weddings is because she was previously married to her childhood sweetheart, who she discovered was having an affair with their long-time friend while on their honeymoon. Understandably, when she catches wind that Eric is cheating on Lisa, she wants to tell the bride-to-be, but that would be violating HIPAA. The medical team aboard The Odyssey may be walking HR violations, but they won’t cross that line. Fortunately for Avery, she doesn’t have to keep her lips sealed for too long. The following morning, they return to the bride’s suite to treat her very own case of ringworm. They play it off like it might just be a stress rash, seeing as Eric hasn’t given them consent to discuss his diagnosis with her. In addition to being a very superficial bride, Avery quickly learns that Lisa is not a girl’s girl. When Avery tries to subtly imply that Lisa might be having second thoughts about getting married because of the rash, while offering up a comparison to her own situation, Lisa quickly shoots her down as being jealous of her.

Related Phillipa Soo Weighs In On Those ‘Doctor Odyssey’ Fan Theories: “It’s Doing Its Job” Ryan Murphy is “that you’re talking to your friends about it the next day.”

‘Doctor Odyssey’ Gets Real, Real Fast

Throughout the episode, it’s clear that Eric is struggling. He looks miserable when he boards the ship with Lisa, like he’s just going through the motions. He’s distracted and irritable at the first dinner with the wedding party, and that outward sense of anxiety only gets worse when he watches Max and Avery fill in during the wedding rehearsals. Even when he’s having his breakdown with Max in the medical bay, it seems like something he’ll bounce back from. But he doesn’t bounce back from it. Doctor Odyssey tricks the audience into thinking that they’re watching a montage of Eric preparing for his wedding day. He admires Lisa’s vintage wedding dress on the mannequin, dons his tux, and looks every bit the ideal groom. Except he’s not walking down the aisle, he’s walking down the empty deck in the middle of the night. He takes off his perfectly polished shoes, leaving them neatly placed on the deck, and then jumps to his death.

His absence isn’t discovered until the next morning after the ship has been sailing for eight hours. Even if they were able to double back to where he may have jumped, at that height and at the speed they were traveling, no one could have survived the fall. Captain Massey gathers the passengers and tells them the honest truth, imploring them to lean on the resources the ship has to offer if any of them ever find themselves in Eric’s position. In the wake of Eric’s death, the trio learns that it wasn’t Eric sleeping with Bennett, it was Lisa sleeping with Bennett. In hindsight, Lisa recognizes that Eric was struggling with his mental health, and had been since they were all in college together. But she looked past them and pushed him to rally through his issues because she saw him as “husband material” and he was willing to do his best to perform the role she needed him to fill. Unfortunately, the pressure of giving her a perfect wedding day was simply more than he could handle. Despite how artificial Lisa is, both she, and her mother, seem genuinely remorseful for their role in Eric’s death.

‘Doctor Odyssey’ Ticks One Thing Off Its Bucket List

In the final minutes of the episode, Avery receives a late-night visit from Tristan, who wants her to join him in raiding the kitchen, which appears to be a not-so-uncommon occurrence for the pair. They sneak down to the kitchen and decide to feast on the wedding cake since it’s going to be thrown away anyway. Max finds them while they’re pinching food, and he’s more than happy to join in on the thievery. While this entire sequence is exactly what the doctor ordered, there is something so uncomfortable about watching three medical professionals gleefully eating the wedding cake of a dead man who jumped to his death mere hours ago. Sure, Eric’s death serves as a reminder about seizing the day, but it’s such a sharp and weird juxtaposition.

After the week they’ve been through and the sobering turn of events at the end of it, Max wants the three of them to focus on living. Following the conversation about Avery’s short-lived marriage and her commitment to traveling the world as part of her bucket list, Max decides that the three of them should come up with five life goals and then help each other achieve them. The three of them sit by the pool for a while, demolishing three bottles of champagne and the snacks they pinched. Tristan is the first to list out his life goals, which concludes with a life goal to have a threeway. Max and Avery seem shocked that Tristan hasn’t had one yet, considering he acts like Casanova, and it’s so clear where things are headed. Especially when Avery decides to piggyback off Tristan’s life goals with plans for a threesome of her very own.

At first, it seems like bait. It’s almost too good to be true. But it becomes even more apparent that this is really happening when the trio makes their way to Max’s quarters. Max reveals that he has had a threesome. It wasn’t a good threesome because the other participants were more interested in each other. But he’s had one. With a little goading from Tristan and Avery, Max decides to add having a good threesome to his bucket list. Avery seizes on the opportunity of a lifetime and suggests that three of them should make that a reality right now. Tristan thinks she’s joking at first, but the moment he realizes that he is about to get what he’s been chasing after since Episode 1, he’s on the sofa with her. Max watches, likely judging if he’s about to third-wheel his second threesome, but Avery makes it quite clear that he’s a wanted member of this ménage à trois. And that is how Episode 6 leaves audiences.

It will certainly be interesting to see how things play out with the three of them, considering how hot and cold Avery and Max were while they were dancing around each other. But, at least it looks like next week’s episode will have all of us singing H-O-T-T-O-G-O!

New episodes of Doctor Odyssey air on ABC on Thursdays at 9 PM ET and next-day on Hulu.

Only Ryan Murphy could deliver an episode like this.ProsOnce again, Doctor Odyssey delivers an unexpected mix of medical cases to solve, and creative dynamics with the passengers.Max, Avery, and Tristan are some of the most fun characters on television right now, and it’s fun to see them finally seal the deal. ConsAs amusing as it is to have suicide and threesomes juxtaposed, it feels in poor taste, to an extent.

Release Date September 26, 2024 Main Genre Drama Seasons 1 Expand

Stream on Hulu