The 1960s were filled with cliched phrases, impossibly gorgeous women and a never-ending loop of galvanizing music that made you feel as though you could sprout your own pair of wings and fly away to your destiny. At least, that's what ABC's new series "Pan Am" seems to think.
About 11 million viewers tuned in to watch the show's hour-long pilot episode on Sunday, Sept. 25 after its lead-in, "Desperate Housewives." It's humorous because "Pan Am" could be renamed "Desperate Stewardesses" and it would probably convey the show's plotline a bit better.
Though "Pan Am" did not take off as smoothly as it could have, it will probably be airborne longer than it should be, especially considering its pilot. And yes, the script for Sunday night's episode featured airplane-centric one-liners and metaphors about as cheesy as that one. The show's redeeming qualities lie not in its details, but in its potential trajectory.
While "Pan Am" originally appeared to be little more than an imitation of AMC's booming '60s series "Mad Men", its pilot differentiated itself by offering travel pornography and a cherry-pie outlook on the time period that "Mad Men" never offered. While "Mad Men" mocks the antiquated attitudes and technological expectations of the 1960s, "Pan Am" seduces its viewers with cotton candy clouds and gold-tinted film. In what seems to be the longest opening teaser in television history, "Pan Am" plays up the sheer thrill of travel to make viewers nostalgic for an era with an apparently bright future.
However, this shiny, $10 million episode stars a group of beautiful women with some ugly back-stories, including Laura (Margot Robbie), a new Pan Am stewardess who hopped on board after leaving her fiance at the altar. She apparently represents the innocence of the day and its impossibly bright future — so much so that TIME, to her and her sister's dismay, placed a candid photograph of her on its front cover.
Meanwhile, her sister, Kate (Kelli Garner), is not only chagrined by Laura's stolen spotlight, but is also burdened by an intelligence assignment for the U.S. government that she must execute on this very flight. Next in the line of dysfunctional females is Colette (KarineVanasse), the exotic French beauty who "loves surprises" — that is, until the man with whom she's having an affair and his family board the plane.
However, it is the least featured character, Maggie, played by the doe-eyed Christina Ricci, who attracts viewers' attention the most. First portrayed as a beatnik arguing about Karl Marx with her hippie boyfriend before being called to fill in for a missing stewardess, Maggie is more than a wafer cookie of a character. Compared to her saltine-cracker costars, she's a tall drink of water audiences will accept with relief.
Not surprisingly, these characters immediately find themselves inextricably wrapped up in drama usually reserved for hospital shows and reality television. "Pan Am" flies in the same network skies as "The Bachelor" and "Grey's Anatomy," appealing to an audience that expects a good television show to blend "House" with "Sex and the City" (1998-2004).
"Pan Am" is different, however, because writer Jack Orman, who rose to fame for his work on "ER" (1994-2009), reminds viewers that this idyllic series takes place during the Cold War, as American airline stewardesses double as spies against the Soviet Union.
Although every scene in "Pan Am" could serve as the end to a dramatic, CGI-obsessed film, the series has the potential to go somewhere other than the ABC hangar of short-lived, canceled shows: "Off the Map" (2011), "No Ordinary Family" (2010) and "Detroit 1-8-7" (2010).
This will be especially true if "Pan Am" finds its voice and tells the music department that silence is occasionally a good thing. All we want to do is watch the show without Bobby Darin constantly belting in the background. Just kidding. Who doesn't love Bobby Darin?
