The lipstick feminism that characterized empowerment narratives of 70s-era American television, from “Wonder Woman” to “Police Woman,” had obvious shortcomings. The catch about these faux-feminist tales was that the women were powerful only when they were sexual. They were operating within typical female sexual codes assigned to them by patriarchal power structures before really transcending them.

Looking at this fall’s television schedule, it seems we’ve reverted to this retrograde sensibility. Female characters dominate primetime narratives, yet they exist only in the world of Jiggle TV. Charlie is still instructing his Angels, rescuing them from the drear of their dead-end lives so we can see them running around in spandex. Hugh Hefner’s puppy-eyed playmates strut around bars in their twee bunny suits in “The Playboy Club.” The stewardesses of “Pan Am” fulfill every vintage mile-high club fantasy.

It’s easy to contextualize this trend in recent television. In an age when we’re more obsessed with “Mad Men” than ever, we can excuse television as the opiate of the masses. It satisfies our thirst for an escapist fix. Providing eye candy by way of scantily-clad femmes makes the pre-Nixon era look benign and romantic. Perhaps this is what we need in a time like ours with Occupy Wall Street, when we’re forced to treat optimism with caution.

To oversimplify this fall’s reasonably intelligent new shows to a simple case of misogyny is, however, to do a great disservice to their subtleties. I’d like to suggest that these shows–when pulled off with aplomb, at least–offer a more poignant feminist message than we’d initially be willing to give them credit for.

While it’s true that the risible new “Charlie’s Angels,” for example, is deserving of this kind of distinction, that’s mainly because it fails to create female characters of any consequence or depth. Whereas the original angels had a modicum of personality–most of all Kate Jackson’s refreshing, intelligent presence–these angels come across as soulless automatons.

Contrast this with NBC’s “The Playboy Club”, unfortunately nipped in the bud too early, and ABC’s “Pan Am.” Both shows take a retrograde archetype–that of the hyper-sexualized naïf–and, placing her in a pre-feminist era, turn the stereotype on its head. These heroines aren’t centerfolds immune to the exploitative venom with which they’re treated. They are sharp. These women understand that the men around them reduce them to bodies and, accordingly, they navigate their worlds with an acute sense of self-awareness.

This kind of tongue-in-cheek rendering of the pre-feminist era is exactly what television needs. Both shows project a subtle feministic subtext without seeming anachronistic. It’s an especially far cry from the contrived hipster drivel of “New Girl,” for example, where kewpie doll Zooey Deschanel immediately enlists the help of three male roommates after she finds her boyfriend in bed with another woman. Something like Deschanel’s “gee golly” persona, or, say, the self-effacing abrasiveness of “Whitney’s” Whitney Cummings, is an archetype that forgoes presenting women who are intellectually stimulating or capable of taking care of themselves.

Television doesn’t seem to be well-adjusted to the idea of a woman feeling in control of heroine identity as a sexual being. That “The Playboy Club” met its premature demise speaks volumes about our collective inability, as a television-watching nation, to digest more nuanced portraits of sexually independent women. The most intriguing heroines of this season, no matter what the most loyal She & Him fans tell you, aren’t the dorky klutzes who don’t know what to do after their boyfriends leave. Rather, they’re the ones who radiate quiet, unassuming intelligence and resolve in the face of exploitation.