ABC’s swingin’ ’60s throwback Pan Am—the frothy Shirley Temple to Mad Men’s bracing belt of scotch—has not been canceled, despite numerous Internet reports to the contrary. The rumors of its demise that have riled fans both genuine and hypothetical, who planned on watching it someday but guess they won’t bother now, all sprang from a single source: Actress Karine Vanasse, who plays the stewardess who is not a spy nor a proto-feminist but is French. Earlier today Vanasse tweeted, “Well, we received THE call, #PanAm is only coming back for one more episode after Christmas. But up to the end, we'll give it our all!” Yet once more illustrating why you shouldn’t necessarily take tweets from actors as official statements on network decisions, ABC immediately sent out a damage control press release assuring everyone that no, it still intends to air all 14 of the Pan Am episodes that had been ordered so far, including five that will screen early next year. Of course, so far that’s all the network has planned for Pan Am, but ABC avows that just because it’s not interested in making more of them does not mean the show has been canceled, and it won’t make an official decision on its fate until next spring. You know, when it can safely cancel it without decimating the ratings on the episodes it’s now trying to burn off.
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