“Pan Am” recap: Episode 10, “Secrets & Lies”

Kate looking apprehensive. Credit: ABC

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve recapped Pan Am. I almost thought I had forgotten how. But, it would seem that I haven’t. What is different is that I really don’t have much vitriol towards this episode, unlike what seems like the countless others, even though there have only been nine previous episodes.

Okay, a quick recap of the synopsis: Bridget comes back, having been cleared of whatever mess she was in with MI-6 and is now a private citizen. This causes direct problems for Colette because she is currently in a pseudo-relationship with Dean. However, she realizes that she can’t win because Dean still has feelings for Bridget. Bridget ultimately tells Dean who is really is and why she had to lie low, and after a lot of soul-searching, Dean goes back to Bridget, leaving a sad-but-resigned Colette alone. Meanwhile, Ted is being a jerk about his escalated relationship with his old friend Amanda. He confides in Laura about not being able to get in Amanda’s pants, and Laura tells him that he should be a gentleman about it, that some girls like to wait for marriage. He takes her advice, and grows into more of a man in the process. Maggie is dealing with her budding romance with Congressman Rawlings and her hatred for his politics. Lastly, Kate is facing the fallout from her killing the counter-intelligence operative; she is being forced to lie on a polygraph test in order to save her and her British handler’s lives. She has trouble dealing with her actions, but she ultimately succeeds. This would have gotten her clean out of the spy life forever, but, it is heavily alluded that she stays on, even after going through all of the rigamarole.

Okay–I am actually going to try to make this brief and concise because I’ve also got to recap Sherlock, and seeing how that show is feature-length, I’ve got a lot more ground to cover. But that doesn’t mean this review will be horrible and not detailed. ENOUGH TALK, let’s get to it. (If I sound like Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes in this review, blame it on exposure, as I’m writing this right after rewatching the latest episode, and I still feel like I’m stuck in the story.)

All right, so I actually liked this episode. I actually liked it a lot. To me, it felt like it was as near to the level of the pilot episode as any episode has been. I felt tension, excitement, sadness, and, ultimately, relief. I also felt confusion and annoyance, but that’ll be discussed later. But, on the whole, there was much less annoyance and confusion and much more happiness and satisfaction.

The Good

The ’60s!: Hey, who missed the ’60s in Pan Am ? I sure did! And we’ve finally arrived in the ’60s in this episode! Now, of course, we’ve seen the ’60s–the “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” speech, Haiti, the Cold War, but we’ve never really seen the pop culture-side of Pan Am until this episode. In this episode, we got a smorgasbord of pop culture–references to Robert Redford (whom Dean looks nothing alike), The Beatles, Barefoot in the Park, the song “Secrets” (with both the original Beatles version and covered version by Nikki Jean playing in the episode) and “The Times They Are A-Changin’ were peppered throughout the episode. Love it.

Realism!: Another thing to love is the increasing attention to detail. Colette and Kate were at work with other stewardesses with Laura and Maggie being off, meaning that someone has realized that it’s unrealistic to have all of the same stewardesses flying together all of the time. There seemed to be more attention to hairstyles, as well, since there were a lot more beehives going on this episode (however, Dean’s hair is still a sore point). And can we talk about the extras? They have never looked better clothed or styled. They look period-appropriate, at least to my 23-year-old eyes.

More character conviction!: Dean is a hurt soul over his former girlfriend! Colette is the silent, strong, but tortured individual! Ted is a horny idiot who has to learn to respect girls! Laura is a girl who is trying to break out of her naivety one step at a time! (And there’s even a bit of continuity with her budding interest in photography that stems back to the episode in which she reveals that she’s posed nude.) Maggie is a staunch liberal who is disgusted with herself for falling for a staunch Republican! We finally get a sense of who these people are in a concrete sense.

The plot!: Lastly, the plot was MILES ahead of the plots of past episodes (“Ich Bin Ein Berliner” notwithstanding). Things went at a good clip, not a lot felt forced, and it felt like an actual episode of an actual show that respects its audience. I want to believe that the new showrunner has tightened everything up. If so, I’m totally grateful to him.

Amanda sporting an elaborate beehive. Credit: ABC

Like I said, there’s not much that I didn’t like. Even so, let’s discuss it:

LauraxTed: UGH. I would leave it there, but I’ll explain my feelings on this. Why is this happening? Why was that scene with Laura lovingly looking at her pictures of Ted just shoehorned into this episode? Did we just totally write off Joe? If so, that’s kind of a shame, seeing how much explosive potential there is for us to learn more about our characters and how they react to big-ticket topics such as racism. For real, this time. The episode with Joe dealt with racism in an obligatory fashion. I want to see it dealt with in a more practical fashion, if that makes sense. I want to see how our characters really would react to Laura dating a black man. Then we’re really going to see what’s up.

However, I think the idea of this episode is to, for the most part, separate the wheat from the chaff. I think that the showrunner might have wanted to keep the parts of the first half of the series that worked (i.e. Bridget, the dynamics between Maggie and the congressman, Kate’s spying, Colette’s strength, apparently LauraxTed) and throw away the parts that didn’t. If that includes the Joe episode, that’s cool. I can deal with it. But if I’ve got to deal with it, then LauraxTed has got to make sense. There needs to be some sort of real substance to their relationship. A real backstory, not that stuff that was called a “developing romance” in the first half of this season. I need something that’s actually awesome.

Ted looking rich and expensive. Credit: ABC

Colloquialisms: I’m not sure if the slang phrases “do it” and “get in girls’ pants” was used in the ’60s. According to cougartown.com, the60sofficialsite and fiftiesweb.com, those slang words did not exist in the ’60s (but, “knocked up,” something I thought was only about 30 years old, did). So, was it an error to use those terms? Yes. Does it help us in the 2000s figure out what he’s talking about? Sure. But I’m sure there was something else Ted could’ve said that could have gotten the job across as well as be time period-appropriate. Something like “cop a feel” or “make it”/”making it”.

Is Dean always hostile?: I know he’s got a reason to be mad at Bridget (even after callously not showing any feeling toward her first lie of being desperately ill)–even if she was sick, he could have thought that she had cheated on him due to all of the men (her spy handlers and contacts) she was talking with while they were together. And he’s got a reason to want to make Colette believe that he’ll stay with her even though his heart is torn up. But this guy’s emotions seem very basic to me. He’s either happy or mad. Where’s his range of emotions in between? It might be unfair to compare him to Sherlock since these two shows and these two characters are at different levels of acting dexterity, but it could be easy to portray Sherlock Holmes in a similar basic way. Sherlock’s goal is to be a human machine so he hates emotions. An actor could easily do wrong by the character and make Sherlock only manic and insufferable. But, Benedict Cumberbatch brings a lot of emotion to Sherlock, more than what some people have expected from a character like Sherlock. Especially in this second season, we see Sherlock as being afraid, confused, lustful, intrigued, saddened, embarrassed, affectionate, compassionate, apologetic, sorrowful, as well as manic and insufferable. For such a character that could be played one-note, he shows a surprising level of humanity. What do we see from Dean? He’s either in control/stoic, flirty, angry, or turned-on. Not much of a range. Even though Dean is supposed to be hurt, he just sounds angry to me, not hurt and angry. I don’t know. I’m not trying to bash Dean in every recap, but that’s just how I feel. He’s either angry or not angry.

Sanjeev alert:

No Sanjeev in this episode, but take a look at this interview I conducted with Sanjeev himself, Kal Parekh! He’s a really nice, grounded guy as well as a guy who’s very honest about his character and the potential Sanjeev has for the show–very refreshing, if you ask me. If you haven’t been on the Sanjeev bandwagon, then hopefully this interview will finally make you a passenger . Here’s a snippet:

Sanjeev is the only member of the crew who is a person of color. How do you think this, along with the fact that the time period is the tumultuous ’60s, affects your character? 

I myself questioned this, and also had asked Jack Orman (writer, producer). He simply said Pan Am was  International, so why not! That was it. Yes the time period was full of exciting changes and tragedy but Indians were allowed to immigrate to the U.S. after 1946 in small numbers.  Many of them were educated in U.K. and would come to the U.S. for some time. From what I have heard from family members, by the ’60s Indians were assimilating into the American culture. They weren’t fighting for a cause and didn’t go through racism as much as other minority group. It may be rare, but having a character like Sanjeev is not impossible.  If the show makes it to another season and they decide to explore Sanjeev’s character, it would be great to see how the major events in that decade affect him and what his back story is.

Make sure to read it!