Mad Men Look Back on Playboy and Pan Am
TV’s Distorted Gender Nostalgia Isn’t Selling
In a way, it’s too bad NBC’s much-hyped Playboy Club was unceremoniously dumped after merely three episodes. True, the writing was awful and the concept controversial, but for a minute there it brought on a serious conversation about how women are depicted on TV, and about the meaning of our newfound nostalgia for days when women were just starting to find their way into the workplace.
Indeed, NBC’s struggle to frame a titillating show about Chicago’s Playboy Club in the early 1960s as a tale of female empowerment was doomed from …
