Tag Archives: The Playboy Club

Fall 2011 Review: The Playboy Club

18 Oct

Of the two set-in-the-early-‘60s shows (Pan Am is the other), Playboy is  making much more of an effort to be Mad Men.  I’m not going to say that’s exactly what it is, or that it’s ripping if off, or anything of the sort, but I’ll make the mild comment that of the two shows, Playboy Club is clearly leaning more in that direction.

The Playboy Club is about the title location in Chicago, about a few of the girls who work as bunnies there, and about the manager and one particular key-holder (I guess you need a key to enter) named Nick Dalton who is a mysterious figure running for state attorney general but with a past that ties him to the mob.  The first episode is centered around a new bunny, portrayed by Amber Heard. Nearly the first action of the show is a man attempting to rape Heard.  Heard, helped byDalton, accidentally kills him, resisting the rape, and then finds out he’s a powerful Chicago mobster. Dalton and Heard bury the body and invent a story that she went back to his place to sleep with him, ruining his relationship with another bunny in the process.  They have to keep up the cover, while Amber Heard learns more about the salacious and exciting world of being a bunny.  There’s a vague hint that she has some sort of mysterious background which could have come out if the show lasted longer.

Unsubtlety is a hallmark of the first episode of Playboy Club.  It’s the ‘60s, and times-they-are-a-changin’!  That point couldn’t have been made more blatantly.  Literally, there’s narration at the beginning and end of the episode by Hugh Hefner basically saying as much (apparently the narration is only in the pilot).  The civil rights movement is on!  The one African-American bunny gives an incredibly unsubtle monologue about the opportunity working in The Playboy Club provides for someone of her race.  Gays have no rights!  One of the other bunnies and her husband live together in a sham marriage because they can’t come out with their homosexuality at the time.  We get it Playboy Club, you’re trying to put yourself at the heart of the cultural and political changes of the ‘60s.  Next time remember that these things work better when there’s at least a modicum of subtlety.

I’m fairly confident the main draw of this show is the attractive women wearing little clothing.  Not that that’s not a real draw, but there isn’t really much else.  That said, I’ll damn the show with faint praise by saying it’s not quite as bad as I thought it would be.  It’s not a truly terrible show; what I’ve found at least this year so far is that the worst comedies are significantly worse than the worst dramas.  It’s kind of offensive, and it’s attempt to say that these women are really not being objectified, but that they’re rather on the edge of a new femininity doesn’t really work.  The problem with the show more than that was just that it was boring.  Nothing happened in the episode that made me want to tune in for another one.

I realized The Playboy Club is cancelled already as I post this, but at least it’s nice to know there was no big loss there.

Will I watch it again?  Well, it won’t be on again, but no, I wouldn’t have anyway.  It wasn’t truly awful but it wasn’t by any means good either.  The only friend I know who watched all three episodes admitted a large part of his choice was made because of the scantily clad women.

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The Zeljko Ivanek Hall of Fame: Eddie Cibrian

12 Oct

I had literally never heard of Eddie Cibrian before I watched The Playboy Club but after doing a little research I had stumbled upon a true TV all-star.

His first role was in an episode of Saved by theBell: The College Years and he followed that up with a spot in a The Young and the Restless.  He then appeared in one episode of anthology series CBS Schoolbreak Special in 1995 and then in the following year appeared in single episodes ofBeverly Hills90210 and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.  He had a co-starring role in the next television season in David Hasselhoff’s Baywatch Nights.  From 1997 to 1999 he starred in the short-lived daytime soap operaSunsetBeach. As Cole Deschanel, a character who, well, it’s a soap opera, so everything.  During those same years he appeared in a couple of TV movies, 3deep andLogan’s War: Bound by Honor.

He was in a couple of films around the turn of the century, and in 2001 an episode of Citizen Baines.  He got his biggest role yet (and still) as a co-star in NBC’s Third Watch, which showcased police officers, firefighters and paramedics inNew York City from 3 to 11PM, the title Third Watch.  Cibrian portrayed firefighter Jimmy Doherty for the first five years of the series (there were six total which I want to point out is about three more than I thought there were).  He had some gambling problems, he slept with his wife’s sister, running his first marriage, and then eventually ruined his best chance for a second marriage, and got shot at the end of the first season.  He eventually got back with his first wife, got promoted to Captain, and disappeared from the show.  He appeared in an unaired pilot for a show based on John Grisham’s The Street Lawyer as the title street lawyer.

After he left Third Watch, he starred in one season of the supernatural Invasion as Park Ranger and marine biologist Russell Varon.  He also appeared in nine episodes of Tilt at about the same time. After Invasion was cancelled, Cibrian became the lead character in the one season Vanished the next year as FBI Agent Daniel Lucas, who takes over the search for the missing wife of aGeorgiasenator after another FBI agent is murdered mid-way through the season.  Caught without a regular role, he appeared in a number of shows, including an unaired pilot for Football Wives, an American adaptation of the british smash Footballers Wives, single episodes of Dirty Sexy Money and Criminal Minds and two of Samantha Who?.

He appeared in seven episodes of Ugly Betty and three episodes of The Starter Wife.  He starred in Northern Lights, a TV movie on Lifetime based on a Nora Roberts novel, in 2009, with LeAnn Rimes, who he cheated on his wife with and later married.  In 2009-10 he starred in a season of CSI:Miamias Jesse Cardoza, as a detective who returns from LAPD to work inMiamiwhere he started.  He was killed while in the lab which was poisoned by serial killer Bob Starling.  He appeared in three episodes of Chase and then got a starring role in this current season’s The Playboy Club on NBC, which was the first show cancelled, after three episodes.  He played Nick Dalton, a mysterious lawyer running for state’s attorney with ties to the mob.

Oh, and he was also in also in a boy band with two other actors from 1996 to 2001 which was unheard of in the US but had a top 10 hit, “Into You,” on the Canadian charts.

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Fall 2011 Preview and Prediction: NBC

14 Sep

(In order to meld the spirit of futile sports predictions with the high stakes world of the who-will-be-cancelled-first fall television season, I’ve set up a very simple system of predictions for how long new shows will last.  Each day, I’ll (I’m aware I switched between we and I) lay out a network’s new shows scheduled to debut in the fall (reality shows not included – I’m already going to fail miserably on scripted shows, I don’t need to tackle a whole other animal) with my prediction of which of three categories it will fall into.

These categories are:

1.  Renewal – show gets renewed

2.  13+ – the show gets thirteen or more episodes, but not renewed

3.  12- – the show is cancelled before 13)

NBC is the only other network (aside from the CW) debuting shows this week so we’ll take them on second.  Up All Night and Free Agents start tonight, everything else in coming weeks.

Up All Night – 9/14

Failed sitcom all-stars Will Arnett (Running Wilde) and Christina Applegate (Samantha Who, though I’m being harsh since it somehow ran two seasons, as did the late ‘90s Jesse) unite as a couple having possibly hilarious difficulties managing their work and professional lives.  Maya Rudolph and Nick Cannon co-star.  Going for it is a modicum of positive buzz and the claim that Will Arnett has managed to tone down his Will Arnett character which he perfected in Arrested Development and honed as a recurring guest star in 30 Rock.  Going against is it is the fact that I still don’t have a ton of confidence in Arnett as a leading man and the previews didn’t look particularly funny.

Verdict:  13+ – they’re backing it too hard for anything less – it honestly has a good shot at renewal, and if it’s actually hilarious I’ll instantly want to change my opinion, but I’m maybe unfairly having trouble seeing it succeed

Free Agents – 9/14

Hank Azaria and Kathryn Hahn star as public relations employees who end up in bed together and struggle to maintain professionalism at the work place.  It’s based on a British show of the same name, and carries over Anthony Head as the cocky boss character, who has apparently taken the “Stewart” out of his name since Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It also features Apatow-movie that guy and former The State member Joe Lo Truglio as a security guard.  Some people like it so far, but it’s going to need more than that to survive on what might be the wrong network for it.

Verdict:  12- – outside of The Office, I feel anecdotally at least that these British adaptations tend to struggle (Worst Week, Coupling, Life on Mars) and aside from me wanting to see Giles from Buffy back on TV, something’s got to go, and I don’t feel like the network has too much riding on this one

The Playboy Club – 9/19

One of two series set in the early ‘60s, inspired by the successful use of that time period in Mad Men, The Playboy Club seems the less interesting of the two (Pan Am on ABC being the other).  Starring Amber Heard as a new playboy bunny who enters the family, it promises as much sexploitation as you can get on network television.  That seems like about it, though.

Verdict: 12- – I’m probably being harsh, there’s enough network support to get it through midseason probably, but I just don’t have a lot of hope for it – if a series has to move on from the early ‘60s, I’m putting my money on Pan-Am

Whitney – 9/22

No series has gotten as much advertising push behind it for NBC, and no series has made a worse impression in my mind due to the constant terrible advertising.  From Whitney’s rant about how stupid we men are to wear jerseys even though we’re not on the field, we can relate to just how much Whitney doesn’t understand men, but in a comical and observational way.  Maybe I’m being harsh, but it looks bad and the buzz doesn’t sound a whole lot better.

Verdict:  13+ – Far too much press for it to fade away after only a couple of episodes, it looks to me like this year’s Outsourced – NBC will really, really try to make it work, but it just won’t – it’s a bad fit for the Thursday night block

Prime Suspect – 9/22

Mario Bello stars in this police procedural also at least loosely based on a British show of the same name which starred Helen Mirren.  I don’t really see the hook other than it’s a female cop in a bureau dominated by men and she’s full of attitude and vigor and whatnot.  Honestly, it looks pretty generic to me, but I’ve read a surprising amount of positive press and I really like Maria Bello, so I’m going to grant it some leeway, not every show need be innovative to be good.

Verdict:  Renewal – something on NBC has to get renewed before Smash comes around in February, and hey, police procedurals seem to be working out pretty well for CBS

Grimm – 10/21

As The Playboy Club is one of two new series set in the early ‘60s, Grimm is one of two new dramas dealing with fairly tales (Once Upon A Time on ABC the other).  The main character is an Oregon homicide detective who learns that he is descended from a long line of “Grimms” or hunters whose mission is to keep humanity safe from supernatural fairy tale baddies which came through stories to inhabit our world.  Wikipedia describes it as a “fantasy/mystery/crime drama.”

Verdict:  13+ – I really wanted to use the line that it’s chances for survival are Grimm, but this is probably the NBC show I have the least basis for taking a stab at, I have absolutely no idea what to expect, which leads me take the easy way out and guess in the middle

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