Recently, I’ve been putting down fewer and fewer thoughts on my blog. The biggest reason for this is Twitter lets me throw out quick thoughts and then my pent up thoughts tend to dissipate¹.

With that out of the way, I guess it’s time to talk about Pan Am, the new period drama about a flight crew aboard a Pan Am plane in the 60′s. I’ll be talking obliquely about certain plot points that aren’t obvious based on the short description above, so if you’re wary of spoilers and have yet to watch the premiere, this is where you stop reading.

I really enjoyed the pilot, a lot more than I ever expected to, even when early summaries started talking about the spy subplots, something that would normally guarantee a positive reaction from me². The flashbacks were a clever way of moving the action outside the frame of the plane, and continue to prove that flashbacks are awesome sauce. All the characters felt unique in a way that often doesn’t happen this early in a series run.

And from a purely aesthetic perspective, I loved the look of it. Even if Mad Men weren’t well written, acted, and directed the look and feel of the 60′s would make the show enjoyable, and that is if anything more true of Pan Am. The old school stewardess look is fantastic³, and the sheer pleasure the show exudes when showing a plane boarding is escapism in its own right given the current depressing state of air flight. This was a time when flight was a fancy, and the show excels when it’s selling you on the glamour of it all.

Of course, everything is glamourous at this point. The show is selling itself, so its best foot has been put forward. You’ve got sexy women wearing a fetishistic uniform, the intrigue of cold war espionage, and the hints of intrigue in the characters’ pasts. It all comes together to make a show that is incredibly enjoyable. The question that remains is whether or not the show will follow through on its promise, which is what next week will be all about. I know I’ll be there.

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Footnotes

1. A related reason is that posting those smaller thoughts on this blog wouldn’t look right in its current incarnation, something I’m looking into fixing but it ultimately a fair way away [↩]
2. To be fair, when I did ultimately get to those parts of the story, they were immensely exciting to me. [↩]
3. Maybe it’s for the best that flight attendants can be of any gender, and they no longer have to wear girdles and fit into specific weight to height ratios, but it made for a very pleasant flight. [↩]