'Doctor Odyssey' Succeeds Where 'Grotesquerie' Fails: The Ryan Murphy Paradox

After watching the first two episodes of Ryan Murphy’s latest FX series, Grotesquerie, featuring Niecy Nash, Micaela Diamond, and even Travis Kelce, I was almost convinced he could sustain a serial killer show inspired by David Fincher. It’s like an over-the-top, grotesque funhouse version of Se7en, pairing an alcoholic detective with a lustful, serial killer-obsessed nun. Right up my alley.

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm dwindled by the third episode. I barely made it through the fourth, and 20 minutes into the fifth, I paused to check how many episodes remained—five, including the one I was watching. That was it for me. Murphy had lost the plot, jumped the shark, backed over it with a construction roller, and fed its teeth to a kitten, just for good measure.

Grotesquerie might be the 15th Ryan Murphy series I’ve bailed on mid-season. This is par for the course for anyone familiar with American Horror Story. Murphy churns out seven or eight series a year, so it’s no surprise he seems to lose interest after three or four episodes—he’s already moved on to the next project. How many times have we seen this?

After giving up on Grotesquerie, the next two episodes I watched were, coincidentally, also Ryan Murphy shows: Joshua Jackson’s new series, Doctor Odyssey, and an eighth-season episode of 9-1-1. And here’s the thing: I genuinely enjoy Cruise Ship M.D. and Stella Grooves All Over Peter Krause. Admittedly, they’re not great, but the same quality that makes Murphy a terrible showrunner for serialized TV is what makes him perfect for episodic television.

A few weeks ago, I watched the pilot for Fox’s new series Rescue: HI-Surf, essentially Ocean 9-1-1, and was surprised at how tame it was. In one sequence, a guy, afraid to surf big waves, finally musters the courage, wipes out, and is knocked unconscious. Rescue workers swim out, bring him to shore, perform CPR, and save him.

That’s it? Murphy’s shows have so conditioned me that I fully expected a shark to appear, a severed leg used to fight it off, a jet skier crashing into a surfer during the rescue, and someone sinking into quicksand after CPR. Outrageous? Sure. But was I disappointed it didn’t happen that way? Absolutely.

The thing about Murphy and his creative partners is they’re great at coming up with outlandish ideas. And that’s fine when those wild storylines can wrap up in 42 minutes and reset the next week. That’s why 9-1-1 is going strong after eight seasons, why Doctor Odyssey could probably get seven, and why we’ll likely see another 9-1-1 spinoff. Strong characters help, but let’s be honest—the wild plot twists are what we love about these shows.

But that craziness doesn’t work over 10- or 12-episode seasons. Murphy’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach means that by episode three, the sink is gone, so he has to raid Home Depot for more sinks and smash them together until the plot loses all meaning.

In his procedurals, the stakes feel real every episode because he can bring in new characters who can live or die in under an hour. In his serialized dramas, though, he’s stuck with the same characters, so even when he kills them off, he often has to bring them back just to escape plot corners. His procedurals work for the same reason his serialized dramas fail—they’re wild, but they reset each week before reality totally unravels.

As for his true crime work? That tends to hold up, too, because he’s constrained by the source material, keeping things within the realm of reality. Murphy needs the guardrails of either time or real events to keep his brand of chaos in check.