Two episodes too late, IMHO. I tried to watch the debut and thought it was horrible.
Now Pan Am needs to crash too. This is the season of Mad Men ripoffs and they both sucked.
March can’t come soon enough.
Today, there was a whole category about Pan Am on Jeopardy, no doubt to hype the show. I was so disgusted by the obvious shill that I turned off the TV. :mad:
I am totally clueless about this kind of thing, but is that some kind of record for a major network’s fastest cancellation of a scripted show like this?
Three episodes seems like the show never got any kind of real chance (for the record, I wouldn’t watch a show called “The Playboy Club” at the point of a gun) to get it’s footing or to find it’s audience.
Of course, I remember a few years ago, that fine, upstanding Master Thespian Kelsey Grammer had an on-air anal abortion called “Hank” that was yanked after only 3 or 4 shows, which did my coal-black heart good to see…
I saw the first episode. It managed to convey the early 1960s, have a bunny kill (and cover up the killing of) a mob boss, lots of drama regarding the aging bunny and the bunny in the sham marriage and the horndog bunny bagging lawyer who used to be a mobster and the bunny in the jealous relationship, etc., and still remain one of the dullest imaginable hours on TV. (Sean Maher, who played a closeted gay man on the show, gave an interview in which he came out while discussing his character; wonder if he’s regretting that now.)
This and Pan-Am and a couple of other shows in development are clearly aiming for the MAD MEN market. I think too few of them realize there are only so many times we’ll sit through special episodes about the JFK assassination.
Probably not. I’m pretty sure that shows have gotten bagged after one or two episodes.
There have been shows that were so bad they were pulled off the air while the first episode was airing.
Not by a long shot. See Wikipedia’s list of shows cancelled after one episode. Plenty of scripted network shows included.
I have no idea how they’re going to work plots into Pan Am but it was nice to reminisce about the golden age of air travel. If they could work in an episode with the JFK TWA terminal that would be sweet.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are approaching Dallas. Those of you on the right side of the plane can see OH MY GOD!!”
I was watching Playboy Club, and they were doing a good job – well, good in the context of an absurd, derivative show – in adding more complexity to the plotting, additional characters, etc. I was enjoying it as a guilty pleasure.
Of course, I’m neither distraught nor surprised that it was canceled.
I literally could not watch more than 60 seconds of it. I have no idea why, it just had less than nothing happening that was remotely interesting to me.
What amazes me is the apparent belief that what is compelling and brilliant about Mad Men is the era. Certainly that adds a lot to the overall deliciousness of it, but it’s hardly the reason it’s so wonderful. How ridiculously simple-minded of the nets.
What was amazing was the uproar about the show before it ever aired. There was nothing racy about it unless you’ve never seen women in swimsuits before; the first episode of NYPD Blue was edgier and that was almost 20 years ago.
You probably forgot to turn the sound down.
It was a show about nudity with no nudity.
I did watch all three episodes, and it wasn’t good but it also wasn’t awful. It was soap opera, and soap operas are pretty much the same no matter what the setting. Every week is yet another melodrama, with sex and lies and betrayals and love and hate and murders and wackiness and realism be damned. Sure, it was totally unrealistic. But that wasn’t the problem.
Bunny clubs and their imitators started dying when topless clubs pushed them out. Every horny teenager in the country can go to Hooters and its imitators. There’s nothing special about waitresses spilling out of their costumes. Nudity, though, that’s still special tv, despite the internet.
A show about bunnies couldn’t deliver this. I’d bet a show about Playmates could. Put it on one of the pay cable channels and set it a decade later not at the Club but at the Mansion. Everybody came there for sex. Nakedness was everywhere. Celebrities were everywhere. Drugs were everywhere. It was true decadence and decadence always sells.
Obviously, Hef would never allow this to see the light of day as long as he’s alive. So we schedule it for next year. (Joke)
Playboy always sold decadence first and foremost. Sex was only part of the package, which is why Playboy was always top dog. Hefner understood that and none of his rivals did. (Well, Guccione might have but never had - or never wanted to spend - the money to do it right.) You could sell Bunnies as long as they represented decadence. They don’t now and haven’t for a long time.
Next to go: Charlie’s Angels.
I can only hope the painfully unfunny sitcom Whitney is the next to get axed (or moved to CBS, the reigning champion of painfully unfunny sitcoms).
In spite of the fact that it is painfully unfunny, Whitney just got the full season order. It’s not going anywhere.