• No direct copying of ‘Mad Men’, unlike ‘The Playboy Club’ (which I don’t dislike), which puts three close copies of ‘Mad Men’ characters, Don, Joan and a prettier Peggy (since it’s Playboy), in a ‘Crime Story’ story.
• ‘Mad Men’ raised the bar for period detail and this more or less reaches it.
• One criticism I read somewhere: most airline pilots back then were WWII vets, too old for the soapy stories here but that’s OK; it’s a show.
• Blond captain: either borrow my Murray’s pomade or get a haircut, you beatnik.
• The computer-drawn 707 is goosebump-raising realistic.
• I don’t understand all the buzz about Christina Ricci. They’re all beautiful but she’s the least so and I don’t like that Maggie’s a beatnik but hey, they existed.
• Margot Robbie, the most modelly stunning of the four, was born in 1990. I get it. I’m old now. And this Aussie does a perfect American accent.
• The pilot’s uniform looks a lot like a Navy officer’s blues.
• So far, so good on little PC sermonizing. Just style, sex and soap storytelling (it has that genre in common with ‘Mad Men’ without ripping off characters and storylines); good unironic nostalgia.

Labels: history, television