I'm not really sure how to begin this review.  I don't have much to say about Thor which I guess can be interpreted as I didn't like it, but that's not true.  I found parts of it to be delightfully entertaining, campy and fun.  My previous knowledge of Thor began and ended with "I think he's a Viking God with a big hammer."  So I was open to anything that Kenneth Branagh brought to the table.

Chris Hemsworth does a fine job as the title character.  He is Thor from the very beginning.  There's no sappy montage of his birth to his training as a warrior.  He's full of swagger, built like Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco on steroids.  He's a big boy with a big hammer and he likes it.  Thor is the heir apparent to his father Odin's throne of Asgard. I keep wanting to write Isengard.  Odin played by Anthony Hopkins, whom I'm sure agreed to this role solely out of loyalty and friendship to Mr. Branagh, is an old school warrior who is tired.  That's all I pretty much got out of his performance.  Anthony Hopkins is very tired.  Then we have Thor's younger brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) who looks nothing like his blonde father and brother. He's very quiet and calculating so clearly, he's our villain.  At Thor's coronation, the Frost Giants of Jotunheim return to reclaim some box that Odin took as a souvenir from their bitter decades-long war.  The Frosties (as I like to call them) are quickly killed off by a giant mechanical guard known as the Destroyer, but Thor isn't satisfied.  He wants vengeance and undermines the truce against Odin's wishes.  Along with Loki, female warrior Sif (Jaimie Alexander), and the Warriors Three (Tadanobu Asano, Josh Dallas, and Ray Stevenson), Thor travels to Jotunheim and we get our first big battle set piece with the Frosties.  The digital effects are pretty good here and Thor gets to show off his hammer a lot.  I had no idea that hammer could be used in so many awesome deadly ways.  Odin comes to Thor's rescue and as punishment strips him of his powers and banishes him to Earth.  He crashes in a New Mexico desert where Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), Darcy (Kat Dennings) and Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) find him.  Foster is a storm chasing scientist who is purely in the movie to serve as Thor's love interest.  Minimum attention was paid to developing Foster so I can't entirely blame Portman for her bad acting.  From there, there's a lot of back and forth between Loki's plotting in Asgard and Thor trying to find his identity and his hammer on Earth.  The story is all over the place and frankly, it felt like I was watching two movies at once.  I enjoyed spending more time on Asgard than on Earth.  The design of the Kingdom of Asgard is what I remember the most, it's visually interesting with loads of bright colors and fantastic sets.  I really liked Idris Elba as Heimdall who guards the observatory, the celestial portal that connects the various realms.  He's fantastic and so is the portal. It's gorgeous and so was that rainbow bridge.

Thor, like all the rest of the Marvel franchises are stepping stones to The Big Movie The Avengers, set to come out next year directed by Joss Whedon.  Clark Gregg makes an obligatory cameo as SHIELD Agent Coulson.  He easily has the most enviable job in Hollywood right now.  Jeremy Renner pops up for a few minutes as Hawkeye which I found incredibly distracting and pointless.  I don't know who Hawkeye is, but I do know that Renner isn't just some extra so why was he in the movie?  Why was he with Agent Coulson? What does he have to do with Thor?  Compared to Captain America, Superman, Iron Man, Batman and Spider-Man, Thor doesn't even belong in the same category.  Perhaps that is unfair, but that's all I have to compare it too since this is a comic book movie.  I just didn't find Thor to be an interesting character and the story failed to engage me. 

One of the best shows this fall season comes from Showtime.  Homeland is about a Marine sniper named Sgt. Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) who is rescued by American Special Forces in Iraq after he was declared M.I.A. for eight years.  He's found in an Al Qaeda bunker and emerges looking like Saddam Hussein.  Not a pretty sight. Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) is a CIA analyst who gets tipped off by her Iraqi informant that Brody might have been turned by Al Qaeda.  With the government and the media turning Brody into a poster boy for the war, Carrie's conspiracy theory could get her fired and/or imprisoned. 

Carrie is known for her obsessive detail to work and you see how that drive both hurts and helps her.  After landing in some diplomatic hot water, she's pulled out of Iraq and is back working the desk at Langley. She's undermined by her boss, CIA deputy director David Estes (who has some ulterior motives of his own) and is challenged by her mentor, Saul Berenson, played by Mandy Patinkin.  Saul is skeptical about her theory, but from the few scenes he shares with Carrie, we know that he inherently trusts her instincts.  Carrie hires a two-man crew to set up an illegal surveillance of Brody's home. Come hell or high water, she's going to find evidence to back her story.  If that wasn't enough, here's another bombshell: Carrie is on medication for bipolar disorder--a secret that she's been hiding from everyone.  So is she just uber-paranoid or does her obsessive work habit always make her this intense?  I think this role was probably written for a woman in her late 30's, but Danes is convincing as a hardened experienced CIA analyst.  She's given a lot of strong material in the pilot and pulls it off admirably.  If I were to nitpick one scene, it'd probably be the interrogation briefing between her and Lewis.  She comes off just a little bit too much like an inquisitive college student. 

What makes Homeland so engaging to watch is Damian Lewis.  He's a terrific actor (Band of Brothers, The Forsyte Saga) and as Sgt. Brody, he conveys so much through his body language and expression.  He's stoic and doesn't talk that much in the pilot.  In fact, much if not all of the information we learn about Brody comes from other characters.  So Lewis is able to cultivate this air of mystery that makes you sympathize with him, but also makes you uncomfortable. In the back of your mind, you wonder if this is for real or if this is just a really good performance he's putting on. Morena Baccarin (Firefly) plays his wife Jessica.  As she deals with her husband's PTSD, she's now struggling to rebuild her fractured family and after presuming her husband was left for dead, she has to tie up that hot affair she's been having with another Marine.

Homeland deals with similar counterterrorist themes as 24.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching Jack Bauer hunt down the bad guys down with no moral authority or ethics. With Homeland, it has the same intensity and suspense as 24, but it's far more nuanced and character-driven. 

Suburgatory is in very familiar territory.  It's Easy A meets Mean Girls meets Juno set in the suburbs.  Jane Levy plays Tessa, a Manhattan born and bred teenager who is uprooted from the big city to the suburbs after her father George, played by Jeremy Sisto, finds a box of condoms in her room.  To see Jeremy Sisto play a father of a teenage girl is just another sign that I'm growing old. I still remember him in Clueless. Rollin' with the Homies.

Tessa is smart and sarcastic and likes to make clever and ironic observations about everything and everyone.  Creator Emily Kapnek, who used to write for Parks and Recreation, does a great job of making Tessa relatable and likeable enough without her coming off too smug or annoying.  Some of the jokes hit the mark like when a country club woman falls into a pool while texting and when Tessa makes fun of how all the pretty girls follow their mothers out of the salon carrying enormous frappacinos or sugar free Red Bulls.  Much of the pilot focused on Tessa’s first day of school.  She meets Dalia, the resident Mean Girl, and later meets her mom, Dallas played by Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm).  Dallas looks like she belongs on one of Bravo's Real Housewives shows, but Hines' thoughtful performance really stood out.  Whether in Curb or in Waitress, Hines always delivers a genuine performance even when she's playing a caricature.  When she gives Tessa a feminine bra as a gift (she is appalled that Tessa only wears sports bras), the two share a sweet bonding moment. Tessa isn't ready to embrace her as a surrogate mother, but she quickly realizes that Dallas doesn't want to play that role either. She's just there to be supportive. 

Sisto and Levy have a good rapport.  A funny montage of teen rebellion ends with a scene where Tessa says: Dad and I expressed our feelings through passive-aggressive reference books: "Is Adoption for You?" for him, "How to Become an Emancipated Minor" for her.  I hope the writers give George more to do other than being the new single father in the neighborhood.  Alan Tudyk (Firefly) pops up for a few quick scenes playing George's old friend.  Tudyk has great comedic timing so it should be fun to see him play opposite Sisto who is more understated. I hope the writers utilize Tudyk's versatility.

Side note: I was totally surprised to see Rex Lee from Entourage pop up for a quick second playing the high school counselor and for a second I heard Jeremy Piven's scream out "LLOYD!"

Terra Nova was one of the new shows I was most looking forward to watching because it had dinosaurs, time travel and Steven Spielberg attached as a producer*.  And really, who doesn't love dinosaurs and time travel?!  A lot has been written about the pilot's budget and changes, but did it all the publicity pay off?  Eh, yes and no.

It's the 22nd Century and Planet Earth is pretty much like the Earth from Pixar's WALL*E. People need masks to breathe because the air is too nasty, overpopulation is a huge problem and everything is just grimy, dirty, and brown. But there are no fat people so yay Earth! The human race needs to survive and in some garbled poorly written exposition we learn that scientists found a way for us to travel back 85 million years.  A lottery is in place to divvy up the haves from the halves not.  Enter the Shannon family.  Elisabeth (Shelley Conn) is a doctor and her husband Jim (Jason O'Mara) is in jail for beating up a population control officer.  The Shannons have three kids which is a big no-no.  You're only allowed two kids per couple.  Elisabeth earns a free pass to Terra Nova because she's a doctor and doctors are a pretty big priority when you're starting a new civilization in the land of the dinosaurs.  Jim manages to sneak his way into Terra Nova after stealing someone's identity card. The story remained largely focused on the family which turned out to be really disappointing and boring.  The children are straight out of central casting.  They have a hot-headed teenage son whose sole purpose in the first episode is to get into a life or death struggle with a pack of rabid dinosaurs.  There's the smart girl named Maddy who is always ready with a fact or two about the Jurassic Period and then we have precocious Zoe who is just there to look scared or adorable. Blah.  Conn and O'Mara are fine, though both aren't given a lot to do.  O'Mara does take his shirt off so you can check that box off, ladies. 

The world of Terra Nova is much like what you would expect: lush scenery, bright exotic fauna and flora and of course there's the dinosaurs.  The colony is run by Nathaniel Taylor played by Stephen Lang who more or less reprises the same role he played in Avatar.  Terra Nova's infrastructure is very impressive: the Shannons' house is filled with nice furniture and everything is clean.  Shoot, I want to live there. You have organized open markets and children are encouraged to leave home and be self-efficient.  But not everything is coming up unicorns and rainbows: a band of rebels called "The Sixers" live on the outskirts of the compound.  They don't like Taylor's style of management and like to steal ammunition and food.  I didn't find them threatening at all. 

And then we have the dinosaurs.  Terra Nova is a huge upgrade from Primeval, but I wish we could have seen more since that was FOX's biggest selling point.  You never got to see any of the dinosaurs up close so how am I supposed to admire the CGI effects?  There were too many quick shots of dinosaurs slamming into trees or vehicles and that one big chase scene with T-Rex was all wide shots.  In any event, the producers promised us dinosaurs in every episode so I'll reserve my final judgment.   

*There are 11-12 producers attached to Terra Nova.  Too many cooks in the kitchen is never an encouraging sign.  Despite having Steven Spielberg listed in the opening credits, his track record as a TV producer is abysmal. 

According to Adweek, ABC and Sony Pictures spent some $10 million on the pilot and boy, did it pay off.  Pan Am is the best looking new show on television and its pure escapism.  Director Tommy Schlamme (The West Wing) deftly handles multiple storylines as we follow the lives of four stewardesses at a time when flying was still a glamorous and exciting adventure.  Christina Ricci is the most recognizable actress in this ensemble and she plays Maggie, a beatnik who brags to her roommates that she does the job because "I get to see the world." And that's the biggest theme running through this pilot: the idea that women equated flight with opportunity.  Kelli Garner and Margot Robbie play sisters Kate and Laura.  There's a small hint of rivalry, but they are close enough that Kate encourages Laura to run away from her own wedding and join her as a stewardess.  Kate takes pride in what she does while Laura, who is new to the job, feels embarrassed that she's the new cover girl on LIFE magazine. Karine Vanasse is Colette, a French woman who finds out that her traveling boyfriend is actually married with kids.  This totally played into the occupational hazard idea that I predicted would show up somewhere.  The ladies have to endure periodic weigh-ins, girdle checks and above all else they must act discreetly or lose their jobs (Oh, Colette!) And let's not forget the two pilots who actually fly the stupid plane: a baby-face first year captain named Dean (Mike Vogel) and his douchebag co-pilot Ted (Michael Mosley).  Thankfully, we don't spend too much time with them because they're dull and I want to spend more time with my girls.

There’s something for everyone on Pan Am and after watching the pilot a second time, I came away even more impressed with how much they were able to squeeze into a 45 minute episode.  Maybe it was too much, but I didn't mind.  I assumed that Christina Ricci would be our lead actress, but she's not.  Maggie takes a backseat to Kate and Laura which I thought was an interesting move editorially.  I've always liked Ricci and she plays Maggie with a lot of confidence and swagger.  We learn very little about her other than that she was suspended for not wearing her company-issued girdle.  I was expecting a short scene where she rails against The Man and puts her feminist foot down, but I'm glad we didn't get any of that because it's too easy and lazy to stick that in there for character development. Kate, on the other hand, is a spy!  It's the Cold War so I guess this makes sense?  Whatever, I love spies.  She's recruited by another stewardess-spy, a pretty British blonde named Bridget (Annabelle Wallis), whom we're introduce to via flashback.  In Rome, Bridget sets up a lunch with Kate only to have an agent posing as a tourist flat out ask her if she wants to be a spy because she can speak different languages. In 1963 America, this is how you win the war. Go USA! Kate is instructed to switch passports with a Russian passenger on transatlantic flight.  Of course things don't go as planned, but Kate improvises and gets the job done.  Later, we find out that the Russian is actually MI-5 and the whole passport switch-a-roo was a test.  Kate passed and our dashing British spy tells Kate that she's replacing Bridget as his contact.  What happened to Bridget?  Well, at the close of the episode, everyone is out at a bar and a sad Bridget secretly watches them through a window.  Hmmmm...what's her deal?  The rest of the girls, Laura and Colette, I think will fill in the gaps.  Colette looks like she'll be the show's hopeless romantic (well, she is French) and Laura is pretty and left her fiancé at the altar so who the heck knows what role she'll play.

On the surface, the show does a very impressive job of selling the Jet Age. The sets are big, sleek and polished, and the special effects look even more so.  We bounced around from New York, London, Rome, and Cuba and all of it looked great.  The Clipper Majestic featured in the pilot looked heavily digitized, especially during the take-off and cutaway shots in the sky, but I think it added to the first-class airline luxury look. The bright blue Pan Am costumes really popped on screen which I liked a lot.  And finally, a show about the 1960's would be lost without making good use of Frank Sinatra's "Come Fly With Me" and Bobby Darin’s version of “Mack the Knife."  Overall, Pan Am has a promising future.

Before you see a single frame, you hear a cough.  Then the movie opens with Gwyneth Paltrow snacking on some peanuts at an airport bar. The words "Day 2" comes on the screen. Soderbergh lets the camera linger on her tired face as she takes a call on her cell phone and she coughs again. From the trailer, we know she's going to be dead soon so this isn't jet lag.  The camera then focuses in on her cocktail followed by the credit card given to the waitress who then taps her nimble fingers on the electronic screen.  All these carefully placed close-ups of potentially contaminated objects totally sets the mood* for the next 90 minutes.  Oh boy, it's time to break out the Purell, kids.

*Did anyone else notice the random coughing that could be heard off screen in first 15 minutes? I barely had 10 people at my screening so I know my mind wasn't playing tricks on me. Nice way to manipulate the audience, Mr. Soderbergh.

Paltrow plays Elizabeth Emoff, who arrives home to Minneapolis to her doting husband Matt Damon after a business trip to Macau. But before we know it, she's foaming at the mouth from a terrible seizure and things just escalate very fast from there.  The speed with which the movie kills off Paltrow is par for the course because with this virus, no one is safe.  A flashback to Emoff entertaining clients in a casino gives us the first clues we need.  We see everyone Emoff came into contact with. From there, we jump to Tokyo, London, Chicago and back to Minneapolis as the movie quickly establishes all the pieces, much like in Traffic, where Soderbergh's efficient camera work really works well here.  We're never confused about which narrative we're following and we get to track this ruthless virus as it spreads globally. 

Those tasked to find a vaccine are the good scientists at the CDC.  Enter Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) and Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) who lay out a plan of attack.  Cheever hands off test samples to Dr. Ally Hextall (a wonderful Jennifer Ehle) while Mears flies off to Minneapolis to investigate Emoff. Mounting causalities start to pile up and the uncooperative city health officials are more concerned about who will pay for the body bags and quarantine centers. You gotta love government bureaucracy in the face of a crisis.

Through Dr. Hextall, we learn the biology behind the virus which has been tagged "MEV-1." We learn how it attacks human cells and how it mutates.  If there was a stand-out performance in this large ensemble cast of A-list actors it would belong to Jennifer Ehle. Aside from one scene with her father, most of her time is spent spitting out medical jargon, moving test tubes around or running lab work.  Yet she delivers the dialogue with intelligence, confidence and ease.  I immediately felt comfortable with her and I had complete faith in her abilities to find a vaccine.  I admit that I probably felt that way because she played Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth. I mean, there is no way that Elizabeth Bennett would ever let us down, right?

As for the rest of the cast, Soderbergh does an amazing job of juggling all these big time movie stars.  Every actor was given a chance to put their best foot forward.  Matt Damon has a small, but memorable role as Mitch Emoff.  He's immune to the virus and spends most of the movie trying to protect his teenage daughter. Frustrated and angry over the lack of information, resources and failing infrastructure, Damon reacts to all these obstacles the same way we would. In one scene, we see him witness a home invasion and the look of despair, panic and defiance on his face was spot on.  Jude Law plays a conspiracy theorist named Alan Krumwiede who runs a blog called Truth Serum.  He's a Glenn Beck type, preaching to the public about how pharmacological companies are doing everything possible to profit from the pandemic while promoting and benefiting from sales of forsythia, a holistic cure that he swears will save everyone. He's the only character that comes closest to being the villain.  I liked how he walked around San Francisco in a self-made biohazard suit. The only thing that bothered me was Law's accent.  It kept changing from Australian to British Cockney. I could nitpick about his crooked front tooth, but that seems trivial.  I'm not sure if that detail added anything to his character. 

There are two minor parts of Contagion that I don't think worked well.  A subplot involving Marion Cotillard as a WHO investigator in Macau rang a little false to me. She is kidnapped by her Chinese handlers who want their village to be the first ones to get the new vaccine. She strikes a deal, but when she finds out that the village were given fake placebos, she presumably runs back to save the kids.  I didn't buy any of that. Cotillard does what is required, but she is given so little to do. Then there is Elliot Gould who plays Professor Ian Sussman.  He's the guy the CDC turns to when they don't have any answers.  He cracks the code, but is quickly shut down by the CDC. And then you never see or hear from him again.  Gould does get a great line in a scene with Jude Law where he says "Blogging isn't writing. It's graffiti with punctuation." Oh snap. 

What I admired most about this movie was how it laid out a very convincing and honest picture of what would happen to us if a severe pandemic were to occur. It doesn't tell you which side to support or who to believe.  There are no good guys or bad guys.  Contagion definitely brought out the inner hypochondriac in me. Since I saw the film, I've been hyper-conscious about not touching my face and washing my hands.  And riding the subway during rush hour...don't get me started. 

I'm not going to compare the American remake of Prime Suspect with the British original.  There are plenty of opinions on that matter and I think it's unfair to judge Maria Bello against Helen Mirren and vice versa. Let's just all agree that the British original is the superior and Mirren was a pioneer. Bello plays Detective Jane Timoney who is very good at her job, but the men she works with don't respect her and one in particular really hates her and is gunning for her dismissal.  The role of a confrontational cop is a natural fit for Maria Bello, an actress I have long admired for playing edgy assertive women.  She can hold her own against the bad guys and her immature colleagues. She has a sharp tongue which often lands her in trouble with her live-in boyfriend played by Kenny Johnson. 

The obvious and biggest flaw in the pilot was the rampant sexism.  The guys in the precinct don't respect her because they think she slept her way into their squad.   They jump ahead of her in line to catch the next case, one guy sticks her with menial work and her boss, played by Aiden Quinn, offers the same empty handed promises of a better tomorrow.  The only man that stands out from the club is Det. Reg Duffy (Brian F. O'Byrne) who openly despises her.  There is one memorable scene at the end of the episode when he declares all out war and his rage is a little unsettling. I'd like to see more combative scenes between him and Bello.  Given that it's 2011, the sexism seen in this pilot is very dated and I hope the writers recognize that and treat the subject more appropriately going forward.

Putting that aside, the "case of the week" is a poorly conceived home invasion murder.  Timoney goes about solving the case the way most female TV detectives go about solving a case: reach out to the kid who witnessed mom's murder, get them to talk when they're playing with crayons and crack the case.  I shouldn't forgive the writers for their laziness, what with all the time spent showing us how horrible Timoney's co-workers were treating her, but what a dud of a first case. 

I'll be watching Prime Suspect every week.  I really like Maria Bello and since I've been a loyal fan of Law & Order SVU and The Closer, NBC never had to worry about getting me on board with a female-led cop drama.

When you get Jesus Christ (Jim Caviezel) and Ben from Lost (Michael Emerson) together on a new show created by Christopher Nolan's screenwriter brother Jonathan (Memento, The Dark Knight), you go in with relatively high expectations, right?  The pilot for Person of Interest unfortunately was so incredibly boring.   

Michael Emerson plays Finch, a billionaire who developed a post-9/11 counter-terrorism government surveillance program.  Frustrated with Homeland Security's bureaucracy, he's gone rogue and wants to use his technology to prevent crimes.  The only hitch: this program of his only spits out a Social Security number which may identify the future criminal or the future victim.  The muscle in the operation is Reese played by Jim Caviezel.  Reese is a former special ops agent who is now fighting depression and he's homeless. The back story on how and why he got that way is something I'm assuming we'll learn in future episodes.  Finch recruits him, cleans him up and sends him out on the street to hunt down suspects.  

Caviezel sucks all the energy out of this show.  He's basically sleep walking through the entire pilot and delivered his lines in monotone.  But when he's given some action scenes, he executes them well with a lot of energy and spark.  On the other hand, Emerson does what he does best: He plays his cards close to his chest. We love that about him and it's the biggest reason why his performance as Ben Linus on LOST is legendary.  But when the two actors are together on screen, it's a big letdown.  The chemistry isn't there and I kept thinking what a wonderful thing it would be had the producers cast Terry O'Quinn as Reese.  Then there's Taraji P. Henson who plays Detective Carter.  She gets wind of Reese's little side project and starts investigating him.  I had no idea she was on this show and I don't know why CBS chose to neglect their only female character in their marketing campaign. Henson is no shrinking violet so why wasn't she included?

Going forward, Person of Interest isn't a show that I'll watch again.

Of all the new comedy shows set to launch this fall, I was most interested in New Girl starring Zooey Deschanel.  I'm always tempted to write The New Girl, but okay, okay, FOX you win, New Girl it is. Deschanel's greatest strengths as an actor are her abilities to play vulnerable, endearing and sweet.  Here, you get all that in big doses, but you also get to see a more playful comedic performance which I liked.

After catching her boyfriend cheating, Jess moves into an apartment with three guys.  Most of the pilot revolves around how Nick, Schmidt, and Winston react to Jess' quirks and idiosyncrasies.  She loves Dirty Dancing, she likes to sing to herself and she's clueless when it comes to flirting with boys. The pilot doesn't do a great job of making any of the characters three-dimensional, but hopefully as we see more episodes that stuff will work itself out.  Nick is the nice guy who is a bit of doormat when it comes to romance, Schmidt is the douchebag who gets all the good one-liners and Coach is the Alpha Dog.  As with all comedies about a single girl and dating, there has to be a plotline about unrequited love and I predict that Nick is going to be one that falls in love with Jess this season. 

FOX marketing did one helluva job. There were countless on-air promotions, billboards and print ads featuring Deschanel smiling, laughing and acting like, well, Zooey Deschanel.  I questioned why FOX decided to release the show on iTunes, Hulu, OnDemand and FOX.com weeks before last night's premiere. I figured no one would watch the show once it made its big debut and ratings would be in the tank, but I was wrong, so very very wrong. Wow, America, you really love Zooey!

The three biggest themes as I looked over my notes on The Playboy Club were these:

1. Amber Heard's hair needs to be more consistent. Pretty!

2. Love the set pieces, makeup and costumes.

3. Eddie Cibrian, you are no Jon Hamm.

Call me shallow, but what else is there to write about after watching the pilot?  The central story focused on Eddie Cibrian who plays power attorney Nick Dalton.  The writers tried very hard to sell us the idea that Dalton is one very cool customer who likes his drink, his Bunnies and has ties to the mob.  He squints a lot when he delivers his lines and he has cute dimples.  That's all I got out of his performance.  Cibrian reminds me a lot of Alex O'Loughlin on Hawaii Five-O. Both men are handsome, but they have zero on-screen presence, charisma or personality.  Dalton wants to be the next State's Attorney, but will the mob jeopardize his career?  I don't really care. This is going to be a major problem with me going forward, if the writers continue to push the idea that Nick Dalton is the leading character on a show called The Playboy Club.

The show has a lot of eye candy, headlined by Amber Heard as the new Bunny Maureen from Ft. Wayne who has aspirations to be a singer. When she's nervous, she bites her lower lip.  I guess that's sexy and that's pretty much all there is to learn about her. I'm not familiar with Amber Heard's previous work so I'm not sure if the material is selling her short, but she does a fine job with what she's given. We have Brenda, the club's lone black bunny, who in this pilot at least, only shows up to offer support to Maureen. At one point, she does refer to herself as the "chocolate bunny."  Alice pretends to be engaged, but is secretly a lesbian who wants to open a chapter of a gay rights group. She talks in a very annoying high-pitched voice.  The best thing about the pilot was Carol Lynn played by Tony Award winner Laura Benanti.  Naturally, her introduction is a song and dance number on stage.  She's tagged as the over-the-hill Bunny who has been working at the club for a number of years, knows where the books are kept, is having an affair with Nick Dalton and in the last 30 minutes becomes the Bunny Mother. She and Maureen have a couple of pow-wows where both sides declare their unspoken jealousy of each other. 

You don't get to see too much of the Playboy Club itself, just set pieces, which was disappointing. If the place was so legendary and grand than why not let the camera follow Maureen around and give us the grand tour?  I thought it was a nice touch to have Hugh Hefner's voiceover monologues at the start of the show and at the very end, describing how the Playboy culture empowered women ("Bunnies were some of the only women in the world who could be anyone they wanted to be") and gave people the chance to reinvent themselves and feel important.  Did I buy his message?  No, but I don’t think this show aims for social change. And since it has Hef's blessing, I highly doubt we're ever going to get to see some of the darker seedier stuff that happened at the club.  I think that stuff would make for some very interesting storytelling.

On a side note: Amber Heard's hair needs to be more consistent for continuity purposes.  From one scene to the next, it changes from flat to bouncy and back again.  It's distracting and I don't like it when I can tell when they re-shot a scene.