New Show [Pan Am] Thread - Please put your seats and food trays in their upright position.

Gnome-Interruptus

So, there is a new show on TV that you should watch called Pan Am

Here is the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_(TV_series) - Sorry, link broken by the new forums, cant figure out how to fix it.

The show is very reminiscent of Mad Men, both in the quality of the writing and the time period.

Sorry for the short OP, I'll add more to it as the show goes on.

Apothe0sis

My impression: This is really bland. What is it with the bland, big budget 60s period drama this season?

Girlfriend's Impression: Awesome. This show is awesome. I can't wait for more.

Gnome-Interruptus

Apothe0sis wrote:

My impression: This is really bland. What is it with the bland, big budget 60s period drama this season?

Girlfriend's Impression: Awesome. This show is awesome. I can't wait for more.

So neither the sisters family plot nor the missing stewardess plotlines grab you?

dbrock270

A cheap cash in on the success of Mad Men in my opinion.

Gnome-Interruptus

dbrock270 wrote:

A cheap cash in on the success of Mad Men in my opinion.

The only similarities to Mad Men is the time period. Thats like calling every family based sitcom a cheap cash in on god knows what show from the 60's.

tsmvengy

Gnome-Interruptus wrote:

dbrock270 wrote:

A cheap cash in on the success of Mad Men in my opinion.

The only similarities to Mad Men is the time period. Thats like calling every family based sitcom a cheap cash in on god knows what show from the 60's.

That's why it's a cheap cash-in.

Robos A Go Go

Saying that they merely take place in the same time period hardly covers the extent of the imitation, since they're also covering similar themes and aesthetics.

Pan Am is more similar to Mad Men than a show about the early days of the Cultural Revolution, even though all three would take place within the '60s.

KalTorak

Haven't watched it, but one review I read said that it basically tres to copy the look and glamour of Mad Men without any of the deconstruction.

Robos A Go Go

There's also supposed to be some kind of subplot about spies, which seems like a cheap way to compensate for the lack of substantive content.

Gnome-Interruptus

Robos A Go Go wrote:

Saying that they merely take place in the same time period hardly covers the extent of the imitation, since they're also covering similar themes and aesthetics.

Pan Am is more similar to Mad Men than a show about the early days of the Cultural Revolution, even though all three would take place within the '60s.

Fine, why dont we try elaborating on what themes Pan Am is copying from Mad Men that arent inherent to a story placed in that era? Many of the aesthetics were also present in the films "Back to the Future" and "Catch me if you can" which you would be hard pressed to claim are knockoffs of Mad Men.

Also what if the spies are meant to be the substantive content though? I mean, how can you complain about a plotline that you havent even bothered to experience/watch, and say that the show is lacking content?

Fatboy Roberts

Does everyone smoke in this, or just "bad" people?

Gnome-Interruptus

I can only really recall two characters smoking, neither of whom were particularly "bad", and both of them were later redeemed to some effect.

The third instance had a character reference wanting a post coital cigarette, but I dont think we actually see him smoke at all.

CptHamilton

I'm not sure how they can make a show out of what I saw in the pilot. The only possible airplane stewardess stories that they didn't hit in the first episode that I can think of are mechanical failure/crash landing and hijacking. So presumably it will be a bunch of interpersonal drama about women who are conveniently always on the same flight crew. Or they'll just go all-out with the spy plot and make it into some kind of weird Charlie's Angels on a Plane thing.

Mad Men worked, I think, because the show started off being Donald Draper's story. Other characters had arcs, but primarily it was about Don D.'s life and how these other people fit into it. Eventually the other characters became sufficiently interesting in and of themselves for it to expand out into an ensemble show with Draper as just one character among several. Pan Am seems to be trying to just start out as an ensemble show, which, in my opinion, doesn't work well for this kind of character-driven drama; it doesn't spend enough time focused on one character for me to really care about what happens to them. It also felt like the writers really wanted to hammer on the point that these aren't just stewardesses; they're women taking control of their lives and seeing the world.

Gnome-Interruptus

I could swear the Mad Men pilot had a lot of time spent developing Peggy too. With Pete, Roger, Betty and Joan all providing interesting dynamics on Don/Peggy.

Overall, I'm not going to fault Pan Am for missteps that they may make, and will grade them on what they have actually done so far. And so far, the characters have been well written, and their interactions have been fairly believable.

KalTorak

The Mad Men pilot was sort of a Don/Peggy double-shot; it was clear that the main focus of the show was Don, but we were introduced to him (and Sterling Cooper in general) through Peggy; she was new to the office, so she got to be the audience surrogate and we learned more about her than the other characters because she got so much screentime.