Best Medicine: Sheriff Mark Needs Doc Martin More Than We Realize

Sheriff Mark Mylow is the kind of small‑town guy TV usually punishes for being earnest. 

Best Medicine opens after Louisa has already called off their engagement, and we meet him mid free‑fall, papering over heartbreak with jokes about his ”hot guy summer” and loud declarations that he is over her when he is obviously not. 

We never actually see the breakup, but every interaction since has filled in the blanks: years together, shared routines from Turkey Taco Tuesdays to ‘Pretty Little Liars’ nights, a wedding that was close enough to taste. 

Then Louisa pulls the plug and keeps orbiting him in a town too small to dodge her, and everyone acts like he should bounce back on their schedule. 

The karaoke duet in Best Medicine Season 1 Episode 5, where the whole bar roots for them to nail ”Cruisin”’ again as if nothing has changed, is a perfect example. 

Mark is expected to smile, sing, and slide neatly into ”friendly ex” mode while Louisa gets to rewrite her life. When he cracks in the Salty Breeze kitchen afterwards, it is treated as a wobble.

It should be a warning sign. A guy that loyal does not just snap back alone. He needs something — or someone — outside this triangle to help him process the version of his life that died off‑screen.

Louisa Did Mark Dirty, And Port Wenn Wants Him To Pretend She Didn’t

One of the sneaky cruelties of Best Medicine is how it normalizes Mark’s pain as background texture instead of really sitting in it. The show begins after Louisa has dumped him, so we get the aftermath without the context. 

What we do know is that they were together for years, that they were engaged, that they shared the same hyper‑specific comforts, and that Mark genuinely believed this was his endgame. 

In Josh Segarra’s words, when we meet him, he is ”0% over her” and trudging through the stages of grief in real time. That tracks with what we see. 

He masks with big energy and bad jokes, calls her ”the devil” in the pilot like a man clinging to the only narrative that hurts less than ”I was not enough,” then melts the second she brushes against the old version of them.

The karaoke in Best Medicine Episode 5 is brutal if you are looking at it from his side. The town eggs them on to sing Smokey Robinson’s ”Cruisin’,” a song they have clearly done together a hundred times. 

For Port Wenn, it is a chance to pretend nothing has changed. For Louisa, it is a safe hit of nostalgia; she can duet, smile, and walk away to keep chasing whatever her thing with Martin is becoming. Mark does not have that luxury. 

The second the performance high wears off, he ends up in the kitchen unraveling, asking the question the show keeps skating past: how do you go from planning a life with someone to being expected to sing with them as if nothing happened?

Louisa did not just leave. She left and then stayed right there, in his eyeline, at his haunt, in his job’s jurisdiction. And Port Wenn, bless it, wants him to be good about it. 

That is exactly why he needs something steadier than a bar full of people chanting for another duet. He needs someone who will not ask him to perform being okay before he is.

Mark And Martin Are The Odd Couple That Each Other Needs

The funniest twist in all of this is that the person best equipped to help Mark through this is the man he is steadily losing Louisa to. 

Segarra has talked about how, from Mark’s perspective, Doctor Martin shows up at exactly the right time: a human thundercloud who knows nothing about Port Wenn but everything about boundaries, routine, and how to hold the line when emotions threaten to swamp the job. 

Mark loves this town, maybe too much. He thrives on being everyone’s guy — the sheriff who rescues cats, runs events, sings karaoke, and never lets his smile slip.

Underneath that, though, is someone who has clearly built his whole identity around being Louisa’s person. Losing that and still having to be ”on” for Port Wenn would break a less sunny man. 

Martin, by contrast, is almost aggressively not on. His stoicism is social armor and a trauma response, but it is also exactly the counterweight Mark does not know he needs yet.

You can already see the shape of the friendship they could build if the show leans into it. Martin is disoriented by feelings; Mark swims in them and calls it Tuesday.

Martin needs someone who can translate the town’s chaos into something less terrifying than noise.

Mark needs someone who is not impressed by his “I’m fine, buddy” routine and who will quietly point out that forgiveness and denial are not the same thing. 

Imagine Mark processing that kitchen breakdown with Martin instead of trying to out‑laugh it.

Martin would not have the right words, but he would have the right silence — the kind that does not demand Mark be cheerful or noble or ”over it” before he is ready. 

In return, Mark could be the one to remind Martin that Port Wenn is not just a collection of symptoms and distractions. It is a place where people stay, screw up, and still deserve a shot at being loved again.

If Best Medicine is smart, it will let Mark lean on Martin as much as the town leans on Mark, and give us a friendship that is not about the woman between them so much as the ways both of them are quietly broken. 

Right now, the person who needs Dr. Martin’s brand of uncomfortable honesty most is not his patients or even Louisa.

It is Sheriff Mark, stuck in a life he thought he would be sharing with her forever, trying to figure out who he is when the song finally ends.

What do you think — does Best Medicine need to slow down the love triangle and give us more of this odd‑couple bromance instead? Tell us in the comments below!