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Tuesday, 27 September 2011 08:50

PanAm / Playboy Club

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pan am"PanAm" is one of a few new offerings that take viewers back to  a simpler time and place where kids were allowed to tour the cockpit of a jet and women wore girdles.  My main question to this would be "why?"

The nostalgia boom engendered by the hit show "MadMen" has found its way into this oddball drama which stars Christina Ricci, Kelli Garner, Margot Robbie, Michael Mosley, Karine Vanasse, Annabelle Wallis, Dean Lowrey, and Mike Vogel.  If you notice a preponderance of female leads it's because the show basically follows four young women as they pursue what is considered the epitome of 60's femnitude (made up word) - being a PanAm Stewardess. Glamour, elegance, travel!  And yes, that is the correct term for a woman in the air at that time before if became "flight attendant."

The eye-candy factor is decently high - all these women and dashing men are gorgeous.  I almost expected a bright shaft of light to blink off the young pilot's teeth when he smiled the first time.

As the stewardesses fly the maiden voayage of a new PanAm international flight, the show bounces back to how the flight crew either came to the company or came to the flight.  Christina Ricci is a last-minute addition as a purser because one of the girls (Annabelle Wallis) is MIA - as is supposedly her wont - and Ricci, a bohemian living somewhere is the bowels of New York, is actually dramatically choppered in to catch the flight "I won't let flight 123 take off without a purser!" 

Higher drama than this is hard to find - unless you're watching reruns of "The Love Boat."

We know Ricci is a bohemian because she has the requisite young, semi-angry and bearded young man writing his manifesto on a manual typewriter in her living room.  Further evidence is his dismismissive "You dropped your silly, blue hat" to which she responds that she's seeing the world or something.  Yeah, the dialogue ain't "West Wing."  (one of the exec producers is a former "West Wing" director.  

Some surprise is also dialed in and I won't spoil the viewing but there were a few eye-openers that might or might not keep the show on an edgier level.  Seen from a different angle and through a different lens these surprises also might sink the show - it remains to be seen what the creators and writers do with these weird little subplots.

I did actually enjoy this show because it's mindless, the production is pretty  (there's a nicely-appointed, odd scene in Cuba as Castro's political prisoners are released and a PanAm crew is there to fly them to freedom,) the various geo-locations are swell, and the acting is solid when necessary to the storyline.  What seems like a fully-functional airplane cockpit and cockpit made it all seem very big and fat but also very tight and clean.  Also, some old-timey music gave it a neato beat - I could dance to it just fine.

If "MadMen" is 60's sturm und drang then "PanAm" is 60's Catskills - the polar opposite- no one even smokes in this show!  Even a segement where one of the flight crew flees her wedding day is given a jokey, unreal feeling when her sister (also a stewardess) steals their father's Caddy and takes off across the well-manuicured, upper-middle class lawn so they can run away and be part of the circus - uh, flight crew. 

The pilot did well (show, not flying guy) among audiences but whether this show will find a continuing audience remains to be seen.  It's a bit inconsistent both in tone and story-telling. And by the end of an hour I was getting a bit tired of the seemingly endless promotion of an airline that doesn't exist any more but did for many decades and did set standards that are unhappily missing today.  The actual PanAm name/logo is now owned by a railroad company after the airline went belly-up and ABC had to license the rights from them.

"PanAm" has a Sunday slot (check your listings) and is available for review HERE if you missed the "maiden voayage."  I'm going to watch a few more eps and see how much girdle snapping I can tolerate.  Maybe the show will surprise me.

In stark contrast to the somewhat idealistic and fluffy PanAm "The Playboy Club" is as mean as the playboy club logo Chicago streets where the original club was born.

Eddie Cibrian (Nick Dalton) a lawyer and Playboy Club Keyholder who also comes from mob roots plays sex-tag with Laura Benanti as Bunny Mother Carol-Lynne and newly-minted bunny Amber Heard who has big ambitions to be a performer and sees the club as a stepping stone to the bright lights.

"If You Don't Swing, Don't Ring" is the Latin phrase on the gates on the Playboy Mansion in the early 60's as Hef is just building his empire.  In the pilot about those heady, early days when sexual mores were being stood on their head, more happens in the first twenty minutes than happens in the entire hour of "Pan Am" - well, at least more dirt.  And people actually smoke in this show.

Basically, Amber Heard is hot and everyone wants to fluff her bunny tail including some local mob boss who is overly amorous without permission.  This leads to some interesting moments as Heard's character become embroiled in a lot more than she bargained for coming from Ft. Wayne as an idealistic 20-something looking to make it big in Chi-Town.

amber heard"Playboy Club" has a gritty, dirty feel to it no matter what's happening.  The production colors are bright enough - blues, reds and yellows in the club abound - but they seem to struggle against the eternal darkness that surrounds the men and women here.  

Of course, the dark places are illuminated at times by (fake) Ike and Tina Turner production numbers done expertly and with as much energy as Ms Turner used to output on stage.  

There are subplots galore including some unexpected social commentary that surprised me - and not the typical race relations that you'd expect to see in a drama about that turbulent time in America.

Ciprian is brooding, capable, and intriguing as a defense attorney who has statehouse amibitions but will seemingly be forever tied to the mob from which he sprang.  The current mob boss' son (Troy Garity) is smooth and scary and seems to capable of causing a lot of mayhem for Ciprian.  Bunny Mother Laura Benanti is beautiful and powerful as an OB (original bunny) who is on the downside of her physcial beauty (she's still smoking hot) but the upside of her ambitions to rule the club.

All in all, I really liked this show and put it on a Season Pass immediately - not necessarily because it's so well-written (it's fair, at times very good) but because the characters truly intrigued me.  Not sure it'll succeed like "MadMen" but it'll have a good chance if they can maintain this pace.  

"Playboy Club" is on Monday nights on NBC. 
 

Read 2641 times Last modified on Wednesday, 05 August 2015 16:16
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Mark Sevi

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