The Playboy Club "Pilot" Review

The Playboy Club could be the worst new series of the season; however, a pilot's never a clear indicator of what a show's capable of over the long-haul of the season, so Amber Heard's new show might work in the future. The pilot, though, is atrocious. The series could very well receive the TV season's first cancellation because only five million people tuned in for the Playboy period piece. I'll be surprised if the show's around in late October.

There's a great deal wrong with the series. For starters, the Nick Dalton character's supposed to be an iconic and charismatic character. Eddie Cibirion's Don-Draper rip-off entered this world with nothing but stands on the cusp of having everything--tons of money and Amber Heard. Unfortunately, he doesn't have Jon Hamm's magnetic screen presence or a Matthew Weiner script to work with. His back story is contrived and uninteresting. Years ago, he worked as a handy man in the mob (the most powerful mob in Chicago). Dalton abandoned the Family when he began working as an attorney. For three years he won case after case which put him in the position to run for state attorney. We learn that the Don possesses the power to destroy Dalton's goals or help them.

The Don of the mafia frequents the Playboy club where new bunny, Maureen (Amber Heard), just began work. She's a shy cigarette girl. Her duties are vague, so she finds herself in trouble when she abandons her duties to dance with men who ask for her hand. She dances with Dalton's former boss for several seconds until he feels her ass. Uncomfortable, she leaves him to dance with another man. Bruno, the mob boss, feels insulted, so he corners Maureen in the back room and attempts to force himself on her. Maureen resists. Dalton enters to help her but Bruno overpowers his former lackey, tries to climb on the girl, and receives the heel of her shoe in his neck, which kills him--this is the inciting incident for the A arc and it's so bad.

As I speculated, the incident draws Dalton and Maureen together. Furthermore, the incident draws Dalton back into his mob days because Maureen denied suspicion by announcing that she went home with Nick. Nick's history with the mob makes him a suspect because of the aforementioned damage Bruno could've inflicted on his career. There are scenes designed to be tense because we know Maureen and Nick hid the body; however, scenes between Nick and his old mafia friends lack the intended dramatic intensity because of weak writing and poor acting. The actors who portray various mafia characters are bland with mannerisms and inflections borrowed from any generic mafia movie while Eddie Cibriano probably hired Jon Hamm's acting coach so he could learn how to be Don Draper on NBC.

The Playboy Club aims to be a series about female empowerment. The general idea is no one but bunnies had the power to choose who they were in the 60s. Sean Maher's subplot about a secret organization designed to allow homosexuals to live as they wish is juxtaposed with the freedom of the nightclub. The political agenda of the show's been pushed in the media but no one's bought it because a show centered around playboy bunnies is the wrong platform to commentate on sexual politics, especially when it's a Hugh Hefner voice-over calling attention to the empowerment his company's given women.

I didn't like the episode at all. I loved watching Amber Heard but she can't turn a lousy pilot into a good one by herself. I have no interest in watching any more episodes or writing another word about it.

THE YOUTUBE CLIP OF THE WEEK