New show review: "Pan Am"

This was not on my original list of new shows to watch. It didn't get great reviews from everyone, but it didn't get terrible ones, either. It's no Mad Men (nothing is, of course) but I'm a sucker for a period piece.

And actually, here is where I will say one of the very few bad things I will ever say about Mad Men - for all the show's appeal, it's a show about men. Yes, women figuring out their place in the world during the tumultuous 1960s is very well done in the characters of Peggy, Joan, and yes, even Betty, but Mad Men's ensemble cast boasts about triple that number in main male characters. I feel like Pan Am might be the women's answer to Mad Men, exploring what it was like to be young and single and in an exciting career in the 1960s.

I hate flying, so I could never imagine actually wanting to be a stewardess, but flying has become so commonplace and mundane nowadays, I think we tend to forget, at least those of us my generation and younger, that back in the 1960s, flying was new and it was exciting and it was glamorous. Sure, the women were eye-candy for wealthy men, but it was a way for young women to support themselves not as secretaries at the advertising firm of Sterling Cooper Draper & Price, but in a way where they also got to see the world.

Also, I love Christina Ricci and Michael Mosley is my secret television crush...

Wow, I'm getting vertigo just watching people fly on tv. And not even in a real airplane. And I KNOW it's not a real airplane. This may become a problem...

Wow, I just teared up a little bit at the failed-wedding scene with Kate and Laura. I totally dig sisters who don't like each other but who love each other...

Okay, final verdict: I could do without the Cold War era spying subplot. It's a little too melodramatic. And kind of unneccessary. And even with that pseudo-darkness, the pilot was bit too bright and shiny...not to beat the dead horse that is comparing Pan Am to Mad Men (even the TITLES sound similar!) but whereas Mad Men makes me feel like I've actually dropped into the 1960s, or like I'm watching a documentary about that era, Pan Am's pilot (ha ha...get it?) made me feel like I was watching a 21st century idealized drama about the 1960s. But, despite all that, I think I might be hooked. At least for a little while...

"Pan Am" airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on ABC.