Yup, there's actually a lot more TV out there that I tuned into this year. A couple of sitcoms, some very, very bad shows that I spent far more time watching than was necessary, and a couple of shows that ended up languishing on my DVR for so long that clearly something was amiss with them. So I tossed together a couple of brief paragraphs, nothing that goes into great detail, but somebody out there may like 'em.
Of the numerous themes and plot strands thrown at us during the pilot for ABC's big '60s melodrama, the one that stuck with me was the representation of gender. One of the last scenes in the episode sees two pilots talking stewardesses over drinks, one of them telling the other how the Pan Am ladies are 'above' ordinary women, like goddesses of the skies. So much so that it looks like its every little girls dream to become a stewardess when they grow up. But through the pilot we see how 'regular' most of these women are, all experiencing the same struggles and personal entanglements that everybody else experiences, even in 2011. Okay, maybe not the secret intelligence stuff, but same difference.