Between seasons four and five, Mad Men took a nearly 17-month break from the air. While Breaking Bad to a summer schedule, a vacancy for mid-century period pieces opened up. Enter The Playboy Club and Pan Am, two pretenders to the throne that each got the ax while Mad Men was prepping its return. Befitting its subject matter, The Playboy Club was the more shameless offender in this arena, playing up all of Mad Men’s pre-sexual-revolution steaminess and pre-women’s-lib leering without any satirical edge. The Playboy Club also tried its hand at a pseudo Don Draper, going so far as to put the back of Eddie Cibrian’s head on prominent display in a promotional sizzle reel.Pan Am opted to draft off of Peggy Olson’s pluck, putting Kelli Garner at the head of a group of stewardesses (from a time when they were still called “stewardesses”) that included former Wednesday Addams Christina Ricci and future Harley Quinn Margot Robbie. With a prominent espionage subplot and flashy New York-for-foreign-destinations photography, Pan Am tried valiantly to be more than its period trappings, but its ratings failed to justify the show’s price tag. Sony Pictures Television spent on the pilot; despite that investment, a mid-season showrunner swap, and the studio’s recent aggressiveness with resuscitating canceled shows, Pan Am was permanently grounded in the spring of 2012. [Erik Adams]
