The Televangelist: ‘Pan Am’ Season 1, Ep. 2

“We’ll Always Have Paris” was largely about women trying to be independent or forge an identity for themselves, and being alternatively punished or deeply conflicted about the results.

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  • ABC.com
  • You wipe those salacious thoughts right out of your head, Mister! I’m warning you!


I’ll start things off by throwing an assist to Nancy Franklin’s great New Yorker piece on fall TV in general and “Pan Am” specifically, because as regards the latter she hits the nail on the head in saying, “The show makes me think of the difference between Truman Capote’s novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and the movie version: “Pan Am” feels like a watchable version of something whose core has been removed.” That about sums it up. While it’s easy to remain captivated by the look (the hair! the dresses! the thick black eye liner!) it still leaves something to be desired.

?But there are glimmers of deeper thoughts, and though they aren’t necessarily very deftly handled (and that nauseating Disney-fied score underneath everything doesn’t help), they do have my Over Used But Apt Word for this show: potential. “We’ll Always Have Paris” was largely about women trying to be independent or forge an identity for themselves, and being alternatively punished or deeply conflicted about the results. We get a double dose of this from Maggie, a character whose pitch-room character traits were spoken out loud by Ted: “You’re smart, you say what you think and you’re scrappy.” Maggie lives in the East Village and refuses to wear girdles, and last night’s “out of the box” moment was mouthing off about the weigh-in followed by having to stab (“more of a poke”) a handsy passenger. Ted presumes himself to be her white knight - in both instances he pulls her from danger at the last moment. But Maggie is not appeased by his gestures, and would presumably rather be fired over it than leave the lecherous man to prey on someone else. It’s a tricky path since Maggie is working at a job and in an industry who would clearly faint at the thought of, to use a much more modern term, “girl power.” The world is changing, slowly, and Maggie’s scenes so far seem to show her as one of the first to try and break clear through the barriers.