The Playboy Club premiered last night and as far as first episodes go, it was better than I had expected! The show takes us back to Chicago in the ’60s when Hugh Hefner‘s famous bunny-filled hangout was a place that only key-holders had access to. Oddly enough, I’m pretty sure the show’s exterior shots of the club belong to the only strip club in Chicago I’ve ever been to – or maybe all strip clubs look like that at night.
As the episode begins, we’re introduced to club key-holder Nick Dalton (played by Eddie Cibrian), who is a tall, dark, handsome, dimpled and well-connected attorney. I did my best to squash my personal feelings about Cibrian, but since his character seems smarmy, too, I guess I didn’t have to try too hard. He is close friends with club manager Billy Morton, who is your usual schlubby sidekick-type of guy.
Maureen (played by the foxy and out Amber Heard), is the new bunny on the floor and has aspirations to perform on their stage. She stops in her tracks to watch Carol-Lynne (Laura Benanti), the very first bunny, singing her songs and shaking her tail for the crowd of guys in front of her.
Soon, she’s brought back to reality by two of the bunnies who have been there for a little while, Alice (Leah Renee) and Brenda (played by Naturi Naughton from that group 3LW! Remember them?).
Pretty quickly, Maureen gets asked to dance by an old, gross guy who looks like he sweats a lot and smells of meatballs and old parmesan cheese. When he starts to get grabby, Maureen gives him a slight push away and dances into the welcoming arms of someone less pervy. Nick watches Maureen and poppa likes what he sees. Unfortunately for Nick, his girlfriend, none other than Carol-Lynne, is watching him watch another bunny and she is not pleased.
Speaking of not pleased, the old sweaty molester man isn’t all that happy with Maureen turning him down. His obvious course of action? Take her to a back room and try to rape her! Just when it seems like all hope is lost, Nick walks into the room and tries to get the old guy off of her. The meatball must’ve had a high-protein lunch because he is able to keep Maureen down while hitting Nick in the nards and sending him backwards into a set of lockers. Inexplicably, the old meatball doesn’t flee the scene, he goes back to attempting to rape Maureen. This turns into the worst mistake of his life as Maureen does a swift Single White Female to his throat and kicks a big old hole in it with her stiletto. Nick looks at her and asks, “Do you have any idea who you just killed?” Turns out he was the big boss in the Bianchi mob family. Suddenly, we’ve got a show everybody!
Nick quickly helps Maureen clean the mess up and, for some reason, he seems very knowledgeable when it comes to disposing of a dead body quickly. We find out later that he’s got some past connections to this crime family – some of which is due to Mr. Bianchi taking Nick in as his own at some point in his childhood.
The two go back to Nick’s place where Maureen showers and, for whatever reason, it seems totally appropriate to come out only wearing one of Nick’s button down white shirts.
He says he’ll help her, but she needs to go back to acting as though nothing ever happened. Before they can discuss further, Carol-Lynne makes a surprise visit and spies Maureen’s dirty clothes clumped up on the kitchen counter. She, very reasonably, gets pissed and goes to collect her things, only to find Maureen hiding in the closet. (I will take that as a gay metaphor even though I know it really isn’t one.) Soon after, she leaves and when Nick goes to look for Maureen, finds that she has left, too.
Back at the club, Alice is on the phone with her husband and we find out they’ve got a big secret they’re hiding that no one can find out about. The club bartender, Max, and his girlfriend, Bunny Janie, are sexing it up in the bathroom. He proposes to her right in the middle of leaning her up against the sink and she says no. More secrets to come!
Maureen tries to sneak her way back in to her room but Brenda is wide awake and wants to school her on all things Nick Dalton and why he’s not a good guy to go after but who everyone wants to go after anyway.
Mr. Bianchi’s wife calls Billy’s office to see if her husband is there. He pretends like he doesn’t know who she’s talking about, which probably isn’t the best idea for his own safety. It seems as though he has other things he’s worried about though because later, he finds Carol-Lynne going through his files. When he catches her, he fires her, prompting her to run to the big guy, Hef.
Soon after, Carol-Lynne comes back to Billy’s office basically to gloat that Hef has now put her in charge of the bunnies. As her first act of business, she goes to their dressing room and starts to hand out orders about how they should smile, dress and act. She says, “I’m here to be the Bunny Mother, like a ‘House Mother,'” and now I have to pause and think about how surprisingly great that Anna Faris movie, The House Bunny was. With Carol-Lynne in charge, the girls have more thigh showing, can’t date or slip into places with key holders.
Inside the club, Ike and Tina Turner perform and I want to tell Tina to run girl, run! Get away from that a-hole. Maureen and the other bunnies get called out to shake their tail feathers. Amber Heard – I mean, Maureen can’t wait to get into the center of all that sexy tail shaking! When the music stops, Nick whispers to Maureen to keep doing what she’s doing. It’s too bad there are some mob guys watching, one of whom points Maureen out as the woman who had danced with Mr. Pervy the night before.
Not one to be put in his place, Nick gives Carol-Lynne some earrings and she calls him out on his BS. It’s around this point in the show that I realize she’s probably my favorite character so far. When she leaves Nick, she finds Maureen and tells her to follow her to the back room. It seems as though Carol-Lynne might be ready to get rid of the new blonde bunny but, instead, she offers her some actual training and tells her to be careful around Nick because he’s friends with people she really doesn’t want to find out about.
When she leaves their meeting, one of the creepy mob guys finds Maureen and asks if she wants to tell him what happened last night. She says she has no idea. He repeats himself. She says she went home with Nick but flirts and says it’s a shame he didn’t talk to her first because otherwise she would’ve gone home with him (and what I’m guessing are clammy palms). She adds that if he takes his hands off of the knife in his pocket and comes back to ask her out in a few days, she still might. She’s not so dumb after all – she’s crafty and nasty and I like it.
Inside the club, we see how people lived when there were no cell phones: They asked the servers to give them a rotary phone to call a someone else two tables apart. In the coat check, Alice calls her husband and we find out he’s gay and has a totally hot boyfriend! Score for him! But wait, there’s more! While the rest of the bunnies are getting into their hot little outfits in anticipation of Hef’s arrival, Alice goes home to meet up with her gay husband at the Mattachine Society, where Chicago’s gays get to be themselves. Sally, a red-headed Mattachine member, looks like she’s ready to be herself and get gay with Alice. You guys, we’ve got a gay and a lesbian in one show! High fives and “haaaaay girls” all around!
The episode ends with Ike and Tina back on stage and the bunny girls getting cray. Maureen stops and stares longingly at the stage and I hope she’ll have a few cocktails and join the other gal pals over at the Mattachine Society.
That may be all for this episode, but it seems like this is what we can look forward to this season: Gambling, people running from the mob, people dating people in the mob, sex, maybe even gay sex, people getting beaten up, cigarette smoking, people’s families having problems with their lifestyle choices.
In my opinion, there’s a big opportunity here to do a lot of great things. I’m excited to see where this all goes, especially with Alice’s marriage but also with Carol-Lynne and her role with the club. What did you think of the episode?
Since you made it this far, you deserve some gif(t)s. You’re welcome.
