Doctor Odyssey’s Cancellation Fits Right Into Our Fever Dream Theory (Just Let Us Have This One)

You didn’t think I’d let Doctor Odyssey sink without bringing back TVLine’s Fever Dream Theory one last time, did you?

Though all signs point to Doctor Odyssey being cancelled, the show hasn’t gotten the official ax from ABC (yet). Instead it received something much more poetic: The cast’s options for a second season simply expired, according to our sister site Deadline, meaning that as of today they are free to book other roles. If ABC does eventually want the medical drama to return, producers would need to re-sign all lead actors to new deals.

Let’s break that down for a moment: Doctor Odyssey is neither technically dead, though it practically is, nor is it functionally alive. One might say it’s stuck in a state of limbo, lingering between life and death. Much like a comatose Dr. Max, the series doesn’t exist in real time anymore, it only survives in the public consciousness over on Hulu. This has got to be a message, doesn’t it?

Let’s put the show — which I’ve argued over and over is stuck in Max’s subconscious — in its own state of purgatory. AKA limbo, albeit the pleasant one hinted at in the Season 1 finale’s dream-like beach party, where everyone’s dreams comes true and all our characters live happily ever after.

If we can treat ABC’s failure to renew Doctor Odyssey’s cast options as an informal cancellation, then I will use that same precedent when determining the validity of TVLine’s Fever Dream Theory. Though there’s no official acknowledgment that the theory is sound, the series dropped hints all season, including calling the ship heaven, giving max a twin, having Avery panic over a (false) pregnancy and killing off unimportant characters.

As we send our favorite soapy sudser out to sea, how about we just accept the Fever Dream Theory as fact? Let the gold-plated scalpels, the hot tub hallucinations and Shania Twain’s post-menopausal pregnancy speak for themselves.

Mariska Hargitay knows Capt. Olivia Benson better than any of us ever can or will. She has played Law & Order: SVU’s big-hearted, badassed sex-crimes cop since 1999. She has seen showrunners and scene partners come, go and come back again; she has stayed the course. From the character’s layered gold necklaces to her sensible-yet-stylish boots, Hargitay is Benson, and she’s earned the right to have her opinions about all things SVU treated as sacrosanct.

Except for one that she puts forth in a podcast interview released today. That nonsense is way off. (Sorry, queen!) Let’s talk about it.

Hargitay is Alex Cooper’s guest on this week’s episode of Call Her Daddy, an interview in which the Emmy-winner promotes her feature film directorial debut: My Mom Jayne, a documentary about Hargitay’s late mother, actress Jayne Mansfield. Eventually, of course, the conversation comes around to cover Hargitay’s tenure at her long-running NBC procedural. After Hargitay throws some flowers Chris Meloni’s way (“We are just connected. We are so close… We are so comfortable with each other. We deeply trust each other. We know, like, whatever he needs, I will always be there for him, and that’s mutual”), Cooper asks about the chance of Benson and Meloni’s Det. Elliot Stabler ever getting together romantically on the show. And that’s when Hargitay chooses violence.

“Maybe on the last episode,” she says. “I think that’s when they should be together.” She later adds that a Liv-El relationship should only happen “if it’s right. We’ll see when we get there. We are soulmates, in a way. We are. And I think that, I mean, Chris has had a profound impact on my life, my artistry. I think we’ve had a big impact on each other. And so Olivia and Elliot are… but let’s see where the story takes us, you know?” (Listen to the podcast here, or scroll to the bottom of this post to see the video.)

With all due respect to the woman who is the heart, soul and Gloria Steinem glasses of this operation, I’m going to make like Carisi here and object so hard that my vest pops one of its dapper buttons. Wait until SVU’s series finale to get Benson and Stabler together?! Nope, nope, nope.

This is not about my being an ‘EO’ ‘shipper — though I am one. The show itself, as well as Peacock’s Meloni-led Law & Order: Organized Crime, has spent seasons flirting with the idea of Elliot and Olivia being a couple. Since Meloni returned to the franchise in 2021, we’ve seen plenty of episodes hinting at a mutual attraction. His letter! The aftermath of the diner shooting! Liv Love Laugh! Good God, that scene in Olivia’s kitchen alone!

Second, even as a ‘shipper, I was not on board with their hooking up immediately after Stabler returned to the Dick Wolfpack. It wouldn’t have made sense in the story. Meloni’s character was grieving the murder of his wife and making some very bad, wildly unhealthy decisions. Even as recently as the aforementioned moment up against Liv’s fridge, Benson made it clear that her desire to kiss him was dwarfed by her fear about what would happen if things between them didn’t work out. “I want to, but I can’t,” she said, physically swaying as though her blood sugar were crashing — woman, a sweet treat was RIGHT THERE!

Meloni brought up the scene during his TVLine Spotlight conversation earlier this year. After telling me that he had “no idea” where his character and Hargitay’s are headed, smoochily speaking, he talked about how the close moment hadn’t achieved what he and Hargitay had intended.

“[We are] doing the best we can to make it honest, not make it bait. If we do bait, at least for me, I always do it with a wink,” he said at the time. “I think it’s good-natured, but maybe you guys are over that. And that’s valid.”
Everett Collection
I’d argue that it doesn’t have to be bait, especially given how much the two characters have grown since we first met them. A blend of age, perspective and lots of therapy has sanded down their sharper edges and made them more vulnerable, both to the world and each other. Why not try to see if those edges now fit together nicely?

But I’ve sung that song before. My biggest current gripe concerns this folly of pushing a Stabler/Benson relationship to the show’s ultimate end: When, then, are we to BASK? Why not give interested fans the enjoyment of watching the day-to-day of a life partnership decades in the making? I’m not saying devote entire episodes to their arguing over the electric bill or anything, but a little tenderness in between the shootouts and human trafficking busts wouldn’t go amiss.