Ryan Murphy’s newest television show, Doctor Odyssey, began airing on ABC in September 2024 and has since become a fan favorite. The show follows the medical team and the crew of The Odyssey, a luxury cruise ship captained by Robert Massey (Don Johnson). Returning nurse Tristan Silva (Sean Teale) and returning nurse practitioner Avery Morgan (Phillipa Soo) are joined by their new colleague, Dr. Max Bankman (Joshua Jackson), in Season 1, Episode 1, “Pilot,” and the rest, as they say, is history.

After a near-death experience as Connecticut’s COVID-19 patient zero, Max decided to change his life, which is what brought him to The Odyssey. Though it takes him some getting used to it, Max begins to love the eccentric and unexpected life aboard The Odyssey, and he especially finds himself bonding with Tristan and Avery- both personally and professionally. He also often makes connections with the patrons aboard the ship, which he certainly did in Season 1, Episode 6, “I Always Cry at Weddings,” which featured guest stars Kelsea Ballerini and Margo Martindale.

Every Week The Odyssey Looks a Little Different

The Odyssey takes a new group of guests out onto the Pacific Ocean every week, and each trip brings with it a new set of medical mysteries for Max and the rest of the medical team. In Season 1, Episode 1, “Pilot,” which was the launch of The Odyssey’s “season,” Max learned about “Seal Disease,” a common ailment Avery and Tristan have seen with cruise ship guests who have consumed too much shrimp too quickly, leading to iodine poisoning. Later in the same episode, a patient on his honeymoon experienced a penile fracture, which Max knew how to handle better than his colleagues, partially because he had once experienced it himself. Max, Avery, and Tristan teach each other things as much as they learn on the fly, which is part of what makes Doctor Odyssey so fun to watch.

In Season 1, Episode 2, “Singles Week,” the team dealt with three women fighting over the same man: a woman taking a diuretic that was stopping her heart and an unexpected heart problem Captain Massey experienced while also helping a woman whose lifeboat was found by First Officer Spencer Munroe. Season 1, Episode 3, “Plastic Surgery Week,” saw Avery nearly fired by the ship’s owner, Lenore Laurent (Gina Gershon), while Max lost a patient he had a personal connection to, and Tristan dealt with his mother. Max and Tristan had to perform an emergency appendectomy on Avery in the middle of a hurricane in Season 1, Episode 4, “Wellness Week,” and the rivalry between Max and Tristan — both for Avery and the costume contest crown — came to a head in Season 1, Episode 5, “Halloween Week.” No matter what week it is, there’s always something exciting happening on The Odyssey. Some fans even think The Odyssey might be too good to be true.

Kelsea Ballerini is a Gorgeous “Bridezilla”

In Season 1, Episode 6, “I Always Cry at Weddings,” Kelsea Ballerini made her acting debut as Lisa Parsons, a bride who had rented out the entire ship for her wedding to fiancé Eric Colby (Hudson Oz). After a shot of Lisa and her wedding party boarding The Odyssey through the ship’s iconic glass tunnel — set perfectly to “Going to the Chapel” by The Dixie Cups — the audience meets Lisa as she comes onto the pool deck, already upset with Corey (Rick Cosnett, best known for The Flash), The Odyssey’s Head of Housekeeping, for keeping windows open in guest’s rooms, making it impossible for the peonies Lisa requested in each room to “suffuse the air.” Corey tells her that he’ll see what he can do, and within minutes, Lisa has turned on a completely different part of her personality, shrieking, “I’m getting married!” as she finds her friends on the other side of the pool deck.

9-1-1 fans might recognize The Odyssey’s Head of Housekeeping, Corey (played by Rick Cosnett), as Julian Enes from the cruise ship arc in Season 7 of 9-1-1 . So far, Corey is a much better cruise staff member than Julian was.

Blonde, tan, and lithe, Lisa is a gorgeous bride on the outside, though her inside could use some work. Lisa becomes upset when her mother doesn’t show up for the welcome dinner — she’s in the infirmary, trying to deal with a sunburn she told Lisa she wouldn’t get — and when Eric’s best man, Bennet (Kevin Zegers, most recently on The Rookie: Feds), starts his toast, making jokes about how many women Eric has slept with. Lisa also has to deal with several ailments, including potential liver failure from a double dose of a semaglutide she’s been taking to fit into her wedding dress and a skin condition that confirms a theory the medical team already had thanks to conversations with both Eric and Bennet, though not in the way they are anticipating.

Lisa is particularly biting towards Avery when the nurse practitioner is caring for her skin ailment and hints that Lisa might want to listen to her gut and all of her surprise medical problems and not walk down the aisle. Avery didn’t listen to her own gut and ended up in a marriage that imploded on her honeymoon, so she’s trying to pass on some advice, but Lisa isn’t having it. “It must really hurt watching another woman succeed where you failed,” Lisa tells Avery.

Margo Martindale Stood Out as Mother of the Bride

The other major guest star in “I Always Cry at Weddings” was Margo Martindale, who joined the cast as Ellen Parsons, mother of the bride. Ellen comes through The Odyssey’s glass tunnel just before Lisa does, and her awe at what is before her really sets a different tone. On the pool deck, Ellen is planning to lay out and tan, covered in baby oil, and dismisses Lisa’s advice to self-tan, something she comes to regret later. As Bennet finishes his best man speech, the medical team is called to the infirmary, where they find Ellen covered in a deep sunburn and even some blisters. Having started an antibiotic for her rosacea — so she didn’t look red in the pictures — Ellen has developed severe photosensitivity, but Max promises that they are “experts in sunburn care” and that she’ll see her “beautiful golden Riviera tan” soon.

Margo Martindale has a storied career as a character actress — so much so that the acclaimed Netflix series BoJack Horseman wrote a character for her named “Character Actress Margo Martindale.” Martindale has also worked previously with Ryan Murphy, holding roles like Lucianne Goldberg in the third season of American Crime Story and as Maureen in The Watcher .

The next day, while Lisa is vomiting from her semaglutide overdose, Ellen asks Max and Avery to stand in for Lisa and Eric during the rehearsal so that everyone knows where to stand and finds it not so funny when Tristan jumps in to “object” before Max and Avery kiss. Ellen is there for Lisa every time she’s sick and is pleased to show off her “Riviera tan” to Max when he and the team arrive to treat Lisa’s skin rash. Martindale plays the doting Southern mother well and provides early opportunities for laughter in an episode that takes a darker turn around the 35-minute mark.

Lisa’s fiancé, Eric, visits the infirmary the night before the wedding to ask Max about a skin rash — the same one that Lisa and his best man, Bennet, have. When he reveals that he has been struggling with sex addiction, Max tries to help him, talking to him about how important it is that he’s getting help now and even giving him some medication that will help him calm down, but Eric dies by suicide later that night after going overboard. Learning about it the next day is jarring for everyone, but Martindale’s performance is a stand-out. Her devastated demeanor strikes an even deeper chord when she tells Ballerini’s Lisa that Eric’s body has been found and then tells Max and the team that she had known Eric was struggling but had wanted to give her daughter the wedding of her dreams, so she pushed aside her concerns about him. It’s a moment that will resonate with anyone who has lost a loved one to death by suicide and an important reminder that we must look out for one another. The episode also shows that even when people step in and help — as Max tried to do with Eric — some things are out of our control.

The Parson-Colby Wedding Inspired Bucket Lists for the Medical Team

Beyond the excellent performances from Ballerini and Martindale — along with an outstanding one from Hudson Oz, who was also in Ryan Murphy’s Grotesquerie — “I Always Cry at Weddings” also brought an interesting turn of events for The Odyssey’s medical team. While sharing the story of her marriage with Max earlier in the episode, Avery had revealed that part of what helped her move on from the devastation was a bucket list. Number one on that list was to see the world, which is how she ended up on The Odyssey. After Eric’s unexpected death, Max decided it was time the whole team made bucket lists.

While wandering The Odyssey in the wee hours of the morning, Tristan, Avery, and Max put their bucket lists together. The final item on the lists of both Tristan and Avery was a threesome, and when the trio returned to Max’s very nice suite, he revealed that he had already had a threesome in college, so it couldn’t be on his list. With some cajoling, he finally admitted that he was more of a spectator than a participant, so Avery insists he add “have a good threesome” to his list. From there, things escalate as one might expect, and the episode ends with the three main characters engaging in an intimate act that many fans had anticipated — perhaps even hoped for — from the very first episode of the show.

The main character’s threesome, perhaps notwithstanding, “I Always Cry at Weddings” was an episode that really tried to pull feelings out of its audience. The performances of Kelsea Ballerini and Margot Martindale made the episode what it was, bringing both levity and sincerity to a tough topic. While fans might not ever see Ballerini or Martindale in Doctor Odyssey again, their performances will absolutely be hard to forget.