The Heart and Soul of Springfield is the Maison Derrière

So apparently The Playboy Club is cancelled. And also apparently it was subversive, if by subversive one means "taking timid steps towards reflecting contemporary social reality." Of course, Mad Men (from whose notes The Playboy Club wholeheartedly cribbed) did it first; but chickened out (after nearly 3 seasons; plus, it hasn't yet returned from its hiatus so maybe it doesn't count as a TV show any more). On the other hand, Mad Men doesn't suck, which was The Playboy Club's problem from the beginning. And I do mean beginning: I only lasted 15 minutes into the first episode before abandoning the show as an uninspired drama hoping its sex appeal would conceal that fact.

The thing is, The Playboy Club was doomed by trying to ride phantom coattails. Mad Men's coat isn't made of sex appeal. I dislike pretty much all of the characters on M. M., and I can't say I'm all that interested in the advertising industry. But the show is ethnographically captivating (in the same way that 1993's The Age of Innocence is, although for different reasons). I can't find the ref but I read somewhere that M. M. is uncommonly popular among higher-income viewers. The appeal of M. M. is not that of the average television drama. T. P. C.'s first episode was about a murder, which seems to be standard prime-time–drama fare: its main differences from other p.-t.–d.'s are being set in the 1960s and having its women (pardon me: "girls") spend most of their screen time in their 1960s underwear. It was plotted and costumed for the typical p.-t.–d. viewership but the marketing tried to exploit M. M.'s sophistication, suggesting it was a show for M. M.'s audience. Which it wasn't; it was M. M. for the Six-Packs. But the Six-Packs don't watch M. M., so that wasn't a draw (OK, OK, I'll be nuanced: some were disgusted by the association with the porn industry, some thought it would be too snooty, and some watched anyway because boobies); and even before it aired it was clear T. P. C. was going to be tawdry, which turned off the M. M. viewership. Plus it, you know, sucked. So those of the M. M. viewership who took a test drive didn't purchase.

The cancellation of T. P. C. might have something to do with wingnut-dominated cultural discourse, but I'm inclined to think it had more to do with the success (particularly the lack thereof) of the show (which may have had something to do with wingnut-dominated cultural discourse but I suspect had more to do with not being something anybody wanted to watch). Networks might be a little more sensitive to the explicit demands of the right than to the hopes of the left, but the dollar drowns us all out. It was an orphan bastard.