Tuned Out

NBC Cancels The Playboy Club. Sean Maher Still Gay, Though

The first casualty of the 2011-2012 television season is NBC’s period drama, The Playboy Club, which depicts the young women who work at the infamous gentlemen’s club in the early 1960s and the men who habituate it. The show has been axed after just three episodes with no plans to air the remaining run—which means we’ll never know what happens to the couple bearding for each other who secretly work for The Mattachine Society, an early LGBT activist group.

Sean Maher, who played a closeted man married to a lesbian bunny, made headlines just last week when he announced in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that, like his character, he too was gay. Recently—but before the announcement of the show’s cancellation—Maher told AfterElton.com that he’s thrilled with the public response to his coming out. “I’m still overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support,” he says. “I expected a positive response, but I did not expect such a large scale of positive responses, especially from the media and within the business, too.”

It’s a shame the show got cut—Maher said his character was going to have some interesting storylines. “I do become [Eddie Cibrian’s] campaign manager. So I am in the club a lot more,” he told AfterElton. “Again, still doing the storyline with my wife, and we see the Mattachine Society grow in size, and we’re introduced to my partner, and we see another Mattachine meeting.”

Hey, NBC, why not just make the remaining episodes available on Hulu or NBC.com? They’re just gathering dust, right?

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