NBC cancels Playboy Club after three episodes.

[Eve]

@DrFidelius

If I wanted to watch real life I would stay awake at work.

Do you mind if I use this as an embroidered sampler?

(By the way, there *was *a 1970s-era show a couple of years ago, Swingtown. It was excellent, and got axed after one season)

[Death_of_Rats]

@Exapno_Mapcase

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’t get to twitter from work, but appearently Hef tweeted that The Playboy Club should have been on HBO or Showtime for pretty much this reason.

[John_Mace]

It was terrible. Pan Am is slightly better, but I thought the pilot (hah!) beat out the 2nd show by a long shot. I don’t see a bright future for that one.

[Wheelz]

Aw, I didn’t think it was that bad. It definitely had a cheesy, soapy vibe but that can be fun sometimes. I was more impressed with Amber Heard than I expected; beautiful and she can act!

The second episode was better than the first. I haven’t watched the third yet (not sure if I will now, but probably). I was getting the feeling that it was eventually going to find its tone and settle into a lightweight nighttime soaper, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I guess if nobody was watching, NBC did what they had to do, but I like to see shows at least get a chance to catch on with audiences before the axe falls. It’s not like there are dozens of brilliant, groundbreaking shows just waiting in the wings.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@BrainGlutton

…the last years of what uberboomer Stephen King called “Atlantis” in Hearts in Atlantis. I wonder when these dramas will start focusing on the later '60s?

Speaking of Stephen King and the early Sixties: 11/22/63 - Wikipedia

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Eve

(By the way, there *was *a 1970s-era show a couple of years ago, Swingtown. It was excellent, and got axed after one season)

Oops. I was going to use this as my number one example of how such shows can’t work.

[Little_Nemo]

@Sampiro

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.

Amber Heard avoided this issue by coming out a year ago.

[ZipperJJ]

I finally got around to watching the 2nd episode of The Playboy Club the other night, and I found myself thinking “ugh, why do I make myself watch new shows? When will this be over?”

The next morning I woke up and read about its cancellation on the AV Club site. Yay!

I find Pan Am to be better too, but I’ve only seen one episode so far. I also just downloaded The Hour which I have to start watching as soon as I’m done with Dr Who.

[Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker]

Concerning “Swingtown:”

@Exapno_Mapcase

Oops. I was going to use this as my number one example of how such shows can’t work.

I actually liked it, too, but I also thought that the concept wasn’t sustainable, and that it would be best suited to a limited run.

[ftg]

Watched the first episode, scanned thru the 3rd. Pretty bad.

Eddie Cibrian hurt his foot on the set late Tuesday. They were still filming after the cancellation! That has to be a weird world to be in. But the producers have been paid to deliver a show, so they’re going to film it cancellation or not.

Sometimes unaired episodes of a canceled show get burned off somewhere else. They might even get aired in a foreign market. (This happened to the US version of Coupling.) And they even put out DVDs for just a handful of shows.

The show must go on. Until it doesn’t.

[AnalogSignal]

It sounds like there isn’t enough drama to sustain either the Playboy Club or Pan Am. The solution is to make the bunnies flight attendents on Pan Am. Then to cover all the entertainment bases, the passengers would compete in an in-flight talent contest. Viewers would vote on the winning passengers each week. The losing passengers would be thrown off the plane without parachutes unless a bunny uses a lifeline to save them.

[Alessan]

@Little_Nemo

Amber Heard avoided this issue by coming out a year ago.

From what I understand, she kept a foot in the closet and came out as a bisexual.

[Evil_Captor]

@Alessan

From what I understand, she kept a foot in the closet and came out as a bisexual.

Ah, bisexuals are closeted gays. They will be interested to learn that!

[Alessan]

I was making a joke, pardner. In fact, I’m more likely to suspect here of being a “Hollywood bisexual” who dates women solely to be “edgy” and titillate men.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@ftg

…The show must go on. Until it doesn’t.

Hard to argue with that.

[Merijeek]

@Elendil_s_Heir

Hard to argue with that.

Except when it is.

-Joe

[Evil_Captor]

@Alessan

I was making a joke, pardner. In fact, I’m more likely to suspect here of being a “Hollywood bisexual” who dates women solely to be “edgy” and titillate men.

Fair enough. Women have been known to do that sort of thing.

(Spoilered because the image contained, while not involving nudity, is totally NSFW):

For example, at cons.

[fiddlesticks]

The “Life” section on of my local paper here in San Antonio did a feature story on “Pan Am Style”, last week, I think (“Everyone’s dressing like a early 60’s stewardesses!”). Made me think that the show must be doing okay. Looks like it had a good first showing and the 2nd episode lost 19%. Guess it isn’t in immediate danger.

[Justin_Bailey]

@Spoke

Was that really a big surprise? As a Firefly fan, one problem I had with that show was that I could never understand why Kaylee was fawning over such an obviously gay man. He doesn’t play “straight” very well.

It’s really not surprising. I’m not going to say I knew (because I didn’t), but Simon had more sexual chemistry with Mal, Jayne and River (his own sister) than he ever did with Kaylee. At the time I thought it was supposed to show he was more or less asexual (and they did try to explain it in show with his “I’m in the wilds, so I have to be EVEN MORE of a gentleman” speech).

[suranyi]

@Stoid

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.

Is Mad Men that good? I’ve never seen it, but I hear a lot of people seem to like it. It’s just so hard to fit new TV shows into my schedule nowadays – I have so little free time.