By Jason Apuzzo. I’m curious as to what people think of the new trailer above for NBC’s forthcoming show The Playboy Club, as well as the clip below from ABC’s forthcoming series Pan Am. Both series are set in the early, swingin’ 60s – and both are looking an awful lot like Mad Men … in fact, almost embarrassingly so. Christina Hendricks and January Jones would seem to be owed some residuals, here.
It seems fairly clear that the major network Mad Men cash-in has begun, except that whatever ironic detachment and/or sophistication with which Mad Men approached the 50s/early 60s seems to be jettisoned here in favor of abject lifestyle propaganda and product placement (even of an obsolete brand, in the case of Pan-Am).
Due to their overall flavor of pandering, my sense is that the networks are going to have a difficult time selling these shows – although I certainly could be wrong. In any case, it’s fascinating to me that this is the turn popular entertainment is taking during the Obama era. Obama has always struck me as a 50s-style, Adlai Stevenson-type person in terms of his tight, disciplined personal demeanor, academic-style liberalism and Illinois background. Perhaps we are, in sense, going back to the late 50s/early 60s these days. Reader feedback is encouraged.
Posted on May 17th, 2011 at 2:39pm.
I grow continually less enamored of Mad Men. It seems to me that in this past season, the pretensions toward depth and social commentary have fallen away, and what’s left is an ever soapier opera.
I’m sure it’s difficult to keep these things going at a high level over multiple seasons. Even the best shows usually tap out after 3 seasons.
I like the idea of “Playboy Club” as Madman homage/sequel but I wonder if they will be able to keep from hitting the “feminist” food pellet button too hard and too often. Madmen, IMO was good because modern sensibilities were left under the surface for most of the series – which made the stories less predictable while laying a hook of when those themes would be emerging
As an asside, the Playboy Club concept also reminds me quite a bit of perhaps the first “Madmen” , Mirimax’s movie “Scandal” about the Christine Keeler affair in 50s Britain. A movie I’m quite fond of.
‘Feminist food pellet button’ is one helluva phrase.
Don’t know if she ever recorded it, but Laurie Anderson used to do a pretty funny routine about being chewed out by a Playboy bunny in New York while she, Ms. Anderson, was protesting the club and it’s equating women with animals. She was told by the bunny, “Listen, `sister’, this is a great job. This is the best job I ever had. If you want to protest the exploitation of women, why don’t you go down to the garment district and protest for those women sitting at a sewing machine for twelve hours a day for two bucks an hour!”
Apropos of nothing, I was in New York earlier this year and saw a crew filming a snippet of “Pan Am.” Nothing substantive, just cars parking on the street. I saw the show’s name on the clapboard and looked it up on IMDb when I got home. When I saw that it was set in the early 60’s, my first reaction was, “Oh, a Mad Men knockoff.”
Regarding copycat shows, isn’t it the case that sometimes networks will air them knowing they’re not that great, but with the aim of diluting the brand of the copied show? The idea being to ultimately rob it of its cachet and thereby freeing up some of its audience for the next trend. “Mad Men” may not draw huge numbers, but I’m sure it draws a desirable audience, and praise for it in the entertainment press takes up a lot of column inches.
They’re also taking advantage of the fact that Mad Men will essentially be taking a year off, as I understand it.
These shows look high-budget and well-produced, but yes, complete Mad Men rip-offs, in everything from their look and camera work to pretensions of sociological depth. The Playboy Club looks kind of awful, I think, celebrating a particularly noxious form of female objectification that has been prevalent in our culture ever since, and I wonder how long it will stay on the air. Too sexed-up for the high-end audience, too pretentious for the sex-obsessed, perhaps?
I think you’ve nailed it. These shows strike me as landing in a very dangerous gray-area of being merely pseudo-exploitative, rather than the full-on deal. I think part of the reason Mad Men has worked thus far is that the show keeps certain things just below the surface, so that you don’t always realize what fantasies are being engaged. Once you drag those fantasies out into the clear light of day, they often come across as tawdry or – even worse – dull.