Inside Television with Alan Sepinwall

'Pan Am' - 'Pilot': The spy who served me

What did everybody think of the new ABC period drama?

By Alan Sepinwall Sunday, Sep 25, 2011 11:00 PM

Margot Robbie and Kelli Garner in "Pan Am."

Credit: ABC

I already posted my review of ABC's "Pan Am." Now it's your turn. Whether you're a fan of "Mad Men," watched "The Playboy Club" or not, what did you think of the new drama from Jack Orman, Tommy Schlamme and company? Were you surprised by the minimal amount of Christina Ricci? Did you like all the flashbacks, or would you rather the show stay in the passenger cabin? And will you be watching again?

Have at it.

Alan Sepinwall
Sr. Editor, What's Alan Watching

Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com

Related Searches: Pan Am, Fall TV 2011, Christina Ricci, Kelli Garner, Margot Robbie, Karine Vanasse, Mike Vogel, Michael Mosley

benscripps

I was intrigued enough over the summer to check it out.

Halfway through the pilot, I turned it off. Wasn't particularly impressed, seemed pretty predictable. The French woman had an affair with one of the passengers? Yeah, saw that coming. The bride ran off from her own wedding? Go figure. The stewardess has to plant a fake visa on a Russian spy? Not predictable, but also not believable. (I know there was supposedly a book which claims flight attendants were used for espionage purposes, but I was under the impression it was more for "information gathering" than actual James Bond-type stuff.)

I tried, I really did. I love "Mad Men", and the idea of that series on board a plane piqued my interest, but this series just didn't work.
September 25, 2011 at 11:31PM EST Reply to Comment
- Jesse Pinkman You might want to watch the entire pilot for the whole spy plot.
  September 25, 2011 at 11:44PM EST
- dannyf Ginia Bellafante?
  September 25, 2011 at 11:56PM EST
- benscripps It wasn't just the spy plot that turned me off--and it's certainly possible I would have enjoyed the resolution on the spy plot. It was just everything put together just plain lost my interest. Halfway through, I realized that, aside from the spying flight attendant, I had seen these characters before and really didn't have a lot of interest in continuing. This really was one of the fall shows I was interested in, but it didn't work for me.
  
  And no, Danny, I'm not Ginia Bellafante. But I will apologize nonetheless for not liking the show. If you enjoyed it, more power to you. :-) Me, not so much.
  September 26, 2011 at 12:31AM EST
- Tracey Spoiler coming: I was actually relieved when the passport-swap thing turned out to be merely a test, because I found it ridiculously implausible that they would take someone with no espionage experience and ask them to do something that dangerous. Much smarter to take an actual CIA agent and implant them in the stewardess program. But yes, in the end, all they really wanted her to do was gather information, and they were just checking to see if they could trust her. But when the agent at the other end turned out to be British... I had a little trouble believing that our agents were cooperating that much with the Brits. The spy business was a very paranoid one.
  September 26, 2011 at 8:55AM EST
- webdiva Yeah, the spy biz *was* a really paranoid thing and still is, and still, the CIA back then really did try to recruit civilians back then, even journalists, instead of placing their own among them: no need for a solid 'legend' (fictitious background) for each agent that way. And some folks cooperated willingly, the ninnies, because they figured it was the patriotic thing to do.
  September 29, 2011 at 5:33PM EST
Anne

I liked it and will watch it again.
September 25, 2011 at 11:40PM EST Reply to Comment
Anne

I liked it. I will continue to watch it.
September 25, 2011 at 11:41PM EST Reply to Comment
echos myron

This sucked pretty badly. Any comparison to Mad Men is ridiculous and unfounded.
September 25, 2011 at 11:47PM EST Reply to Comment
Foz

Needed moar Christina. The spy story was interesting, sloppy but interesting. Everything else was forgettable. Pretty clothes though!
September 26, 2011 at 12:19AM EST Reply to Comment
amg

I agree its no Mad Men by any stretch. Its a bit like comparing a summer blockbuster to an indie film that swept Cannes. Both might be about, say, a sports team, but they'll likely have a radically different artistic feel. Here, the Spy plot feels a bit like a way to insert overt drama easily (and thus a bit lazy.) But I'll watch the next episode. I like the potential it has for bringing a bit of that subtle commentary on the 60's to my TV while Mad Men is off the air, but its obviously nowhere near the same thing.
September 26, 2011 at 12:31AM EST Reply to Comment
ghoti

I didn't like this at all, but I'll probably watch at least once more. I missed out on some great shows because I judged them by their pilots.

Plus I give any show with an AfterScrubs cast member a bunch of slack!
September 26, 2011 at 12:58AM EST Reply to Comment
gregel

I loved it. It was absolutely GORGEOUS. Hope it's around for awhile. Poor Mike Vogel. He loses the Captain America gig, the Star Trek gig and now, Bridget. He just can't win.
September 26, 2011 at 2:05AM EST Reply to Comment
BOb

Sorry Alan but gonna have to disagree with you. This was spaciously directed with style and great cinematography, but it wasn't written well. I was surprised it was a veteran writer. It was a commercial aimed at women to join the company.

A line actually was, "Buckle up. Adventure is calling." The spy subplot felt like they didn't have enough material for a regular look at stewardesses and had to inject some intrigue into it. The French stewardess was named Colette? Really? I don't know how realistic it would be to have four highly educated women go into that profession at that time. Maybe they couldn't do anything else, but making them namedrop Hegel and speak three or four languages easily gave the impression of trying too hard to make their thesis of feminism in the skies. And the capper was the little girl who looks at them with awe at the end. It was a commercial. Plus, I don't usually care about this, but in this summer of The Help, wouldn't it have been better if a woman wrote the story of four women?
September 26, 2011 at 2:18AM EST Reply to Comment
- AJ "It was a commercial aimed at women to join the company."
  
  I sincerely hope that's a joke
  September 26, 2011 at 5:09PM EST
berkowit28

Given that there can't be much mileage in product placement for a product that is defunct, I wonder how they decided to make it about PanAm rather than TWA.
September 26, 2011 at 3:41AM EST Reply to Comment
- PanAm was much more iconic than TWA. PanAm was the US's flagship carrier until its collapse.
  September 26, 2011 at 7:45PM EST
- webdiva True: PanAm meant the romance of travel, and the flight attendants were encouraged to perpetuate that myth (not that they needed to be asked, given their travel perks).
  
  But like nearly all looks back at the '60s, including Mad Men, it's been sanitized and simplified. I've only seen the pilot, so I'll give the writers a chance to change that and grow the stories into something more complex -- but it ain't there yet. Still, I'll probably watch, given that I'll already be taping Masterpiece in order to watch The Good Wife and nothing else is on at 9 central that tempts me.
  September 29, 2011 at 5:37PM EST
- webdiva What I'm really wondering is how much better this show might be if they were producing it for cable (HBO? FX? Showtime??) and got better writers. We'll see.
  September 29, 2011 at 5:40PM EST
Tracey

Hmn... well, I gave this a shot because of your positive review, but I wasn't overwhelmed. I didn't see enough of the sexism or the liberation that was supposed to be there.

The writer probably isn't old enough to remember exactly how demeaning those kinds of jobs were, and I suppose I should be comforted by the fact that people today can't even imagine that. Real stewardesses didn't object to the girdles because they provided protection from the constant butt pinches they were routinely subjected to by heavily lubricated passengers. And frankly, a lot of the stewardesses were in it to meet the kind of rich men who were common passengers on such flights, a good way to get their Mrs. degree. About the only sexism I saw here was one horny co-pilot, and we see characters like that on TV all the time.

I had a hard time believing that everybody recognized that one stewardess from the magazine cover, because frankly they all looked like they were molded on the same machine anyway. She didn't have any distinctive feature that would make me say, "hey, that's you!"

They did do a good job of conveying the sense of glamour and adventure that jet planes used to have, the luxurious experience it was, rather than waiting on a long line to be x-rayed or molested, then on a long line to have a DMV reject check you in, then on a long line to actually board the plane, at which point you have no place to put your stuff because somebody else already filled your overhead compartment with their things, then sit on the tarmac for a few hours waiting for the plane to clear before you can even use the bathroom. Yes, I'm old enough to remember a time when it wasn't like that. The shots of the jet in flight were breathtaking. But I don't know if this can sustain ... um ... anything. What are they going to do for plots?
September 26, 2011 at 9:08AM EST Reply to Comment
- webdiva Absolutely true about the girdles, the inspections, the butt-pinches and slobbering drunks who leered and grabbed anything they could, and the fact that flying (for the passengers, anyway) was so much more enjoyable then. There really was a high standard of service, too, which you don't see not without a first-class ticket on but a handful of airlines. And yeah, the goal of nearly every stewardess was marriage and/or a life in some exciting foreign capital with enough money to enjoy it. These gals, especially on the international flights, weren't aiming for the house with the picket fence but for expensive downtown co-ops, jewelry, and nice wardrobes ... with lots of first-class travel in between. It's isn't like they were trying to be rocket scientists, Supreme court clerks, or pediatric surgeons. They weren't the bored, trapped ones reading The Feminine Mystique.
  September 29, 2011 at 5:47PM EST
The last scene of the French stewardess subplot felt like a scene from the Love Boat. A scene that I saw about 75 times on the Love Boat. Not good.

On the plus side, at least the pilots were wearing the correct watches.
September 26, 2011 at 9:54AM EST Reply to Comment
Stephen P.

I quite liked it actually. I guess I'm just a sucker for the pretty, and this sure was pretty. Especially the French lady. I don't care if her storyline was lame, when she was onscreen I was paying attention.
September 26, 2011 at 11:16AM EST Reply to Comment
Tom

I liked it more than I thought I would, but one thing really bothered me. It seemed like they were racing through the plot just to set up the rest of the series. This seems to be happening more and more. Why must every show try to get to a status quo as quickly as possible. The introduction of characters can happen gradually; that is part of storytelling. I felt like both the spy storyline and the French woman's storyline could have been stretched out (and thus fleshed out) over a few episodes instead of quickly establishing hard and fast characters. I'm not sure if I want to tune in to just see their stories; I would have rather spent more time being introduced to them and understanding them.
September 26, 2011 at 12:45PM EST Reply to Comment
marjorie lewis

I wanted to like it, but I didn't. I too got bored halfway through and found the whole "spy" subplot implausible and silly. It did look good and I liked Christina, but that's it. I was pretty disapointed.
September 26, 2011 at 12:48PM EST Reply to Comment
- webdiva You have to have lived through the '60s to believe how *much* silly, illogical and now unthinkable crap really did go on. And that's **before** the stoned-out hippies, er, flower children appeared.
  September 29, 2011 at 5:55PM EST
Genevieve

It was pretty good. I'm staying put to see how it evolves. The cast seems solid.

I do like Karine Vanasse, who plays Colette, because I've seen her in many projects before. She's a Canadian actress who's worked mostly in French, so unknown to the US audience, but she's a very good dramatic actress (I recommend "Polytechnique"). I hope they give her interesting stuff to do.
September 26, 2011 at 1:56PM EST Reply to Comment
Scott Rosenberg

Admittedly, this is not the type of show I'm generally drawn to, but I did watch and found it to be unimpressive given the critical praise that preceded it. The episodic plot itself wasn't particularly interesting. Colette was the only one given something nuanced and interesting to work with, but the final blow of the wife knowing all along felt disingenuous, and it seems clear that she will be playing fourth-fiddle to the other girls going forward. The expository aspects of the episode were fairly perfunctory, squandering the chance to establish the show's feminist undertones in an emotionally valid way, relying instead on overbearing statements in the A-plot. Moreover, I was fairly annoyed that in an episode where we're first meeting the characters that they focus so much time on they mysterious Bridgette whose not part of the show, instead of showing us more of the other girls' backgrounds. Because getting to know four people dressed and styled identically in 42 minutes was easy to begin with.

On a broader scale, I'm concerned with the limitations of the set-up. If it's just going to be this one flight crew together on this one plane flying New York to London and back, I don't see how it scales into future seasons without veering into melodrama or ridiculousness. The people behind Pan-Am are too classy for a transcontinental locked-room murder mystery, but come the middle of the second season, I'm just not sure what there will be left to do that's better.
September 26, 2011 at 3:38PM EST Reply to Comment
tshoot1

Better than I thought it would be. They paid a lot of attention to details. Early B-707s did have those "organ-pipe" engines. The "Worldport" terminal at Idlewild (soon to be JFK). Helicopter taking off from the roof of the PanAm (now MetLife) bldg on Park Ave. Great stuff!
And, you just had to love those uniforms on the girls.
September 26, 2011 at 4:44PM EST Reply to Comment
- webdiva Yeah, expertly tailored PanAm uniforms in that bright blue always did make all other uniforms look blah and old. I still get a kick out of seeing the old PanAm (now MetLife) building, and I always did love both the Worldport (terminal 3) and Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal (terminal 5) -- they were all so futuristic. Fifty years later, most airports don't look that far into the future: most look industrial instead, the exception being Helmut Jahn's international arrivals building at O'Hare and its neon ceilings. Even so, Jahn's building seems more contemporary than futuristic. There's nothing about it that seems to hint at, let alone promise, a better tomorrow.
  September 29, 2011 at 6:09PM EST
Stan

I liked it. The actors are juuuuuuuuust good enough that it was fun to follow them on what could have been a lot of hackneyed storylines.
September 26, 2011 at 4:47PM EST Reply to Comment
josh_litten

I can certainly see why Dan thought this was the best new fall drama. By no means does the pilot stand up to former hits like Lost, The West Wing, etc., and the comparison to Mad Men, while necessary due to the 60s period drama nature, becomes thin when you look at it from a more sophisticated angle.

Thankfully, I didn't come into the show expecting Mad Men on a Plane, and I didn't come away disappointed. Given that the show lacks any actors with real weight or gravitas (no, Christina Ricci doesn't count), I didn't find any of them to be poor really, and I was intrigued enough by David Harbour in what I assume will be a heavily recurring role.

Plus, the show is just PRETTY. Like, really pretty. From the sets to the music to the costumes to the people. Since I'll usually be watching this on DVR anyway as it's a distant third behind football and Breaking Bad, I have no problem keeping this one around.

Because sometimes even a fan of heavily acclaimed drama just wants a fun, pretty, kinda hokey show.
September 26, 2011 at 5:37PM EST Reply to Comment
GarySF

The husband was an idiot to sleep around with the French stewardess with a wife who looked like that!

As long as they keep up the loving shots of the legs and girdles of those women, I'll keep watching.
September 26, 2011 at 11:38PM EST Reply to Comment
Longshot7

I was bored. It's totally the Love Boat.
September 27, 2011 at 1:40AM EST Reply to Comment
AP

A bit too much inspirational music playing in the background. The entire pilot had the feel of a Disney movie.
September 27, 2011 at 1:59AM EST Reply to Comment
- rockknj Well, this is a Disney production. They had a big presentation at the D23 convention in Anaheim couple months ago.
  September 28, 2011 at 2:52PM EST
AP

For me, there was a bit too much inspirational music playing in the background. The entire pilot had the feel of a Disney movie.
September 27, 2011 at 2:01AM EST Reply to Comment
- AP Woops, double comment. I thought the comment didn't go through because the text was deleted after my captcha didn't go through the first time!
  September 27, 2011 at 2:03AM EST
Euroviewer

I do not really understand why a lot of people are mentioning "Mad Men" which is an entirely different show but yes it happens to be set in the Sixties which is as far as I am concerned the only common thread. Let me say I loved this show and probably only because it looks soooo good. The production values are astounding. Yes it is going to be very light weight drama but that is it's intention. Yes I am not so sure about the spy angle but just sit back and relax and watch this show's beautiful sets. It looks so classy. I just loved the last scene were the stewardess catwalked to the plane. I can see why the BBC has acquired this series for broadcasting in November. ps Alan I love your site and insightful reviews and articles. Cheers
September 27, 2011 at 7:14AM EST Reply to Comment
Kenya

The setting promises storytelling potential, but the writing doesn't lead me to believe it will be realized. There's so much about this show that hits you over the head with the "message." There's the overly dramatic instrumentals, which mostly felt unearned like the triumphalist music for a new clipper jet in the first five minutes. (Admittedly, I liked Darin's Mack the Knife as the outro.) The theme of Pan Am stewardess as proto-feminist was in Maggie's changing the world from her jet speech to the bride deciding she wants more from life than housewifery to the little girl at the end re-imagining her possibilities. Working my way through the new Fall 2011 shows, this may be the best of the bunch, but the pool wasn't very deep.
September 27, 2011 at 3:28PM EST Reply to Comment
RKD2999

The spy angle seemed to be shoehorned in, but I was surprised to find out later that Pan Am airlines was "a company notorious for combining flying and spying". http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/09/25/scott-van-wynsberghe/
September 28, 2011 at 9:59AM EST Reply to Comment
George P

I've loved MadMen since it's start, i still believe is better than Breaking Bad (which i also like).. which is flashier, but MM is deeper.. this aint even in the same league as AMC powerhouses, but it couldnt be considering is for a broadcast network, and the broadcast network it is for... but in the league is playing, in my humble opinion, good enough that I will keep watching.. had great production value, plot & script had good elements, and some weak ones too.. the characters have potential.. i really like Ms Ricci, and hope she will get more to do, since she can serve to mark the pace for the rest of the ladies.. I was ready for a mediocre MM rip off, and found out that they're playing the same game in different levels, and different goals, and that's ok.
September 28, 2011 at 10:22PM EST Reply to Comment

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'Pan Am' - 'Pilot': The spy who served me

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Comments

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Jesse Pinkman You might want to watch the entire pilot for the whole spy plot.

dannyf Ginia Bellafante?

Anne I liked it and will watch it again.

Anne I liked it. I will continue to watch it.

echos myron This sucked pretty badly. Any comparison to Mad Men is ridiculous and unfounded.

Foz Needed moar Christina. The spy story was interesting, sloppy but interesting. Everything else was forgettable. Pretty clothes though!

ghoti I didn't like this at all, but I'll probably watch at least once more. I missed out on some great shows because I judged them by their pilots.Plus I give any show with an AfterScrubs cast member a bunch of slack!

gregel I loved it. It was absolutely GORGEOUS. Hope it's around for awhile. Poor Mike Vogel. He loses the Captain America gig, the Star Trek gig and now, Bridget. He just can't win.

AJ "It was a commercial aimed at women to join the company."I sincerely hope that's a joke

berkowit28 Given that there can't be much mileage in product placement for a product that is defunct, I wonder how they decided to make it about PanAm rather than TWA.

PanAm was much more iconic than TWA. PanAm was the US's flagship carrier until its collapse.

webdiva What I'm really wondering is how much better this show might be if they were producing it for cable (HBO? FX? Showtime??) and got better writers. We'll see.

The last scene of the French stewardess subplot felt like a scene from the Love Boat. A scene that I saw about 75 times on the Love Boat. Not good. On the plus side, at least the pilots were wearing the correct watches.

Stephen P. I quite liked it actually. I guess I'm just a sucker for the pretty, and this sure was pretty. Especially the French lady. I don't care if her storyline was lame, when she was onscreen I was paying attention.

marjorie lewis I wanted to like it, but I didn't. I too got bored halfway through and found the whole "spy" subplot implausible and silly. It did look good and I liked Christina, but that's it. I was pretty disapointed.

webdiva You have to have lived through the '60s to believe how *much* silly, illogical and now unthinkable crap really did go on. And that's **before** the stoned-out hippies, er, flower children appeared.

Stan I liked it. The actors are juuuuuuuuust good enough that it was fun to follow them on what could have been a lot of hackneyed storylines.

GarySF The husband was an idiot to sleep around with the French stewardess with a wife who looked like that!As long as they keep up the loving shots of the legs and girdles of those women, I'll keep watching.

Longshot7 I was bored. It's totally the Love Boat.

AP A bit too much inspirational music playing in the background. The entire pilot had the feel of a Disney movie.

rockknj Well, this is a Disney production. They had a big presentation at the D23 convention in Anaheim couple months ago.

AP For me, there was a bit too much inspirational music playing in the background. The entire pilot had the feel of a Disney movie.

AP Woops, double comment. I thought the comment didn't go through because the text was deleted after my captcha didn't go through the first time!

RKD2999 The spy angle seemed to be shoehorned in, but I was surprised to find out later that Pan Am airlines was "a company notorious for combining flying and spying". http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/09/25/scott-van-wynsberghe/

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Anne

I liked it and will watch it again.

Anne

I liked it. I will continue to watch it.

echos myron

This sucked pretty badly. Any comparison to Mad Men is ridiculous and unfounded.

Foz

Needed moar Christina. The spy story was interesting, sloppy but interesting. Everything else was forgettable. Pretty clothes though!

ghoti

I didn't like this at all, but I'll probably watch at least once more. I missed out on some great shows because I judged them by their pilots.

Plus I give any show with an AfterScrubs cast member a bunch of slack!

gregel

I loved it. It was absolutely GORGEOUS. Hope it's around for awhile. Poor Mike Vogel. He loses the Captain America gig, the Star Trek gig and now, Bridget. He just can't win.

AJ "It was a commercial aimed at women to join the company."

I sincerely hope that's a joke

berkowit28

Given that there can't be much mileage in product placement for a product that is defunct, I wonder how they decided to make it about PanAm rather than TWA.

The last scene of the French stewardess subplot felt like a scene from the Love Boat. A scene that I saw about 75 times on the Love Boat. Not good.

On the plus side, at least the pilots were wearing the correct watches.

Stephen P.

I quite liked it actually. I guess I'm just a sucker for the pretty, and this sure was pretty. Especially the French lady. I don't care if her storyline was lame, when she was onscreen I was paying attention.

marjorie lewis

I wanted to like it, but I didn't. I too got bored halfway through and found the whole "spy" subplot implausible and silly. It did look good and I liked Christina, but that's it. I was pretty disapointed.

webdiva You have to have lived through the '60s to believe how much silly, illogical and now unthinkable crap really did go on. And that's before the stoned-out hippies, er, flower children appeared.

Stan

I liked it. The actors are juuuuuuuuust good enough that it was fun to follow them on what could have been a lot of hackneyed storylines.

GarySF

The husband was an idiot to sleep around with the French stewardess with a wife who looked like that!

As long as they keep up the loving shots of the legs and girdles of those women, I'll keep watching.

Longshot7

I was bored. It's totally the Love Boat.

AP

A bit too much inspirational music playing in the background. The entire pilot had the feel of a Disney movie.

AP

For me, there was a bit too much inspirational music playing in the background. The entire pilot had the feel of a Disney movie.

RKD2999

The spy angle seemed to be shoehorned in, but I was surprised to find out later that Pan Am airlines was "a company notorious for combining flying and spying". http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/09/25/scott-van-wynsberghe/

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