Pan Am’s headliners are four female flight attendants: Collette
(Karine Vanasse), Kate (Kelly Garner), Laura (Margot Robbie) and Maggie
(Christina Ricci). Their stories are pretty bland, but have enough juice
that I will come back for at least one more episode (for the record, I did not
watch the second episode of The
Playboy Club). Vanasse is the token foreigner, who everyone wants to be
because duh, she’s French and has unapologetic sex in faraway lands.
Garner and Robbie are sisters, the former being the shorter ginger who no
one believes in (sad) but who is picked up by the CIA to track evil Russkies
abroad. Robbie plays the hotter sister who runs away on her wedding day,
because she is a Strong Woman. Finally, Ricci’s character is an intellectual
who will clearly be a feminist in the next decade but for now, is
quenching her thirst for knowledge by traveling the world. I actually enjoyed
her character the most, finding Ricci’s part well-acted and very
committed; but I think that’s mostly because I associate her
with dramatically opposite roles, like Wendy Addams and the girl from Casper. We have yet to fully
meet the other characters or the show’s male leads, although it seems that
Michael Mosley and Mike Vogel will slip into the roles of Hot Captain With
Female Lead Romance next week.
While the storylines are slightly contrived, I feel that at least Pan Am has somewhere to go,
pun intended. The various places the show can take us might make some
interesting trysts, and the plane itself is a neat setting, one that we
did not get to fully enjoy in Lost.
Furthermore, what I find refreshing is the obviousness of the
escapism. Many shows that transport us to the past or future do so as
grandiose metaphors, leaving the viewer thoughtfully questioning everything.
“She’s wearing a polka dot dress. That must be a metaphor for the unoriginality
of her life. I think that’s what they’re saying…Maybe that’s a metaphor
for my life!” Not so in Pan Am. These characters are unabashed about the
fact that they want to run away from the world, and they want you to come
with them. Just go ahead, fly away with the girl from Casper. No thinking
required.
Of course, I’m sure there is a deeper message, which in the case
of Pan Am might be to show us how ironic—and iconic—the sixties were.
Example: lack of TSA, but super-scrutiny into last names ending in “-chov”
or “-chev”; freedom from sexism while bound by sexism. That’s sort of cool, but
frankly, I don't care much either way. I would rather the show leave out the
deep analysis and continue to separate itself from Mad Men by staying in the air and out of the
office, as I think it did half-successfully in the first episode. I would
also appreciate a guest appearance by Jack and/or another member of Lost. Wouldn't that
be fun?
All in all, Pan Am just didn’t have much of an impact, good or bad. But I will watch next week’s episode, because a little Sixties fashion and spies on a plane are good enough for me—at least for now.
The “RealTalk Reviewer” will be a recurring guest on Rambles and
Reviews and thinks that planes were so much cooler in the Sixties.
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