There’s a sad little sweepstakes on TV every fall: “What Show Will Be Cancelled First?” This year the winner, to absolutely no one’s surprise, is on NBC, suffering the worst ratings of any fall premiere season ever, clear across the board. And the ‘winning’ show? The Playboy Club, starring, among many others, Latino actor Eddie Cibrian.
This isn’t a major blow to Latinos on TV (though it’s certainly not great news for Cibrian, who’s had to endure a long line of one-season wonders, from Tilt to Invasion to Vanished to Chase). Cibrian’s role was really not much more than a less-than-entirely-successful knock-off of Jon Hamm’s sleek dark-haired ladykiller on Mad Men, an icon of white anglo success c. 1961. Meanwhile, Cibrian’s own Latino background went unnoticed and unmentioned during the promotion of the show. And though it’s never good to see anybody lose a gig, there was no large contingent of Latino talent in front or behind the Playboy cameras.
And it’s not as if NBC didn’t give it every chance. It was touted as one of the glitziest new one-hour shows of the season, given a plum 10P slot, and —when its opening night ratings impressed absolutely no one—it was still given a second and even a third chance. But even after a soft start, things went from bad to worse, with double-digit decreases in viewership with every new episode. Now CBS (at least according to Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood) is pulling the plug, shelving the remaining episodes that are already in the can, and replacing it as of Oct. 31 with Brian Williams’ new primetime newsmagazine, Rock Center with Brian Williams. (Hasn’t NBC run out of variations on their “30 Rockefeller Center” address for the names of TV shows yet? Apparently not.)
Some shows work from the very beginning; others struggle and ultimately find an audience; some just never come together. And Playboy wasn’t done in by its past-tense ambiance (ABC’s Pan Am is doing pretty well for a newbie, and it’s set in the same time period) or its hokey plots—hokey plots are the bread and butter of hour-long network TV. This one just didn’t gel—ever—and now it’s gone for good.
No word yet on whether its other completed episodes will be ‘burned off’ on Saturday nights, shown on the web, or tossed to the wolves. We’ll let you know. Meanwhile, you can watch all three of Playboy’s existing episodes on NBC.com, right here. But watch fast; no telling’ how long they’ll be there.
