Pam and Tommy Review: Behind the Tape Lies a Raunchy But Haunting True Crime Story
The post Pam and Tommy Review: Behind the Tape Lies a Raunchy But Haunting True Crime Story appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: While not officially a part of the American Crime Story family, Pam and Tommy is a spiritual sister to that series. Not just because co-showrunner D.V. DeVincentis wrote three episodes of The People vs. O.J. Simpson, but because the Hulu limited series, on the surface, hits that sweet spot at the intersection of ’90s nostalgia, superstar casting, and scandal.
The twist is that this is a true crime story where the crime is barely recognized as a crime, because it takes place during a time where we didn’t have the words to describe it. Centered around the journey of a celebrity sex tape from a rock star’s safe to a brand new world known as the World Wide Web, the eight episodes bring together a tumultuous rock star, an iconic model/actress, and the dawn of the internet for a captivating story told with such energy and pop that it comes as a shock, when it reminds you what a violation it ultimately is.
Remember the Time: Bopping back and forth in time, Pam and Tommy unexpectedly starts off as an episode of an HGTV home renovation show, as carpenter Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogen) struggles to deal with the capricious demands of his client Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan), the notorious Mötley Crüe drummer who just married Baywatch star Pamela Anderson (Lily James) after a wild four days.
When Tommy fires Rand and refuses to pay him back for lost costs, Rand — a student of world religions and believer in karma — decides to literally take karma into his own hands and get revenge by stealing Tommy’s safe. The guns and jewelry, Rand pawns, but it’s the unlabeled Hi8 tape that’s the real prize, as it contains over an hour of intimate footage of his former boss and new wife.
In the mid-90s, the average person might not have known what to do with such a tape, but Rand’s not an average guy; he’s a one-time porn star who still has friends in the business, like his former director Uncle Miltie (Nick Offerman). Together, they try to sell the tape to the big adult film studios in town, all of which (being professional organizations) refuse to touch the clearly stolen tape without signed release forms from its subjects.
But then, Rand has a brainstorm about setting up a website to sell the tape, because you can be “totally anonymous” online, and Miltie sets up an operation that becomes quite the moneymaker… for a lot of people who aren’t Rand. Meanwhile, Pam’s dealing with a TV role that demeans her, a volatile husband she barely knows, the premiere of her first big feature film, and all the stresses of pregnancy when news trickles out that the stolen tape is getting around, in a massive way.
Like It’s 1995: If you put 10 years of real-time research into the decade that was the 1990s (which is to say, if you lived through them), every detail you see on screen rings true. It’s hard not to sense the immense pride that the production takes in featuring a vintage Starbucks coffee cup in the Seattle offices of a porn start-up, or in nailing the way in which the graphics on a mid-90s web page used to slowly load onto the screen.
In general, Pam and Tommy thrives in those details, especially the hair and make-up (all credit to those teams here). Lily James’ transformation, in particular, is staggering, especially when we see a pre-fame Pamela in flashbacks, who’s only barely recognizable as the same woman. It’s the sort of visual element that really is necessary to nail, because central to the legend of Pamela Anderson is her appearance, and how as much as she personally owns it, it’s still used to demean her.
Just a Girl: The involvement of director Craig Gillespie, who executive produces and directs multiple episodes, including the premiere, is not much of a shock if you’ve seen I, Tonya. The two projects share a lot of the same DNA: 90s period piece, not-too-bright criminals at work, Sebastian Stan being a nightmare husband, near-constant needle drops. But to the show’s credit, he’s not the only director, with Lake Bell, Hannah Fiddel, and Gwyneth Horder-Payton also helming episodes.
This feels relatively essential, given how central Pam is to the story: Of all the characters based on real life figures, she’s easily the most sympathetic, because (as the series does make clear) she did nothing wrong. She made a sex tape with her husband, they locked it in a literal safe, and bad people stole it and made sure millions of people could see it. Yes, Tommy’s also on the tape, but it’s different for Tommy, something which gets hit home very hard by the series but maybe needs to. Pam did nothing wrong. She was the victim of a crime.
At times the conversations around the implications of this sex tape are muddled, but that’s because these people are trying to talk about things that there simply wasn’t language for yet — at least by today’s understanding. Stealing a video tape and sharing it with the world might not have sounded like an act of assault in the ’90s, but Pam and Tommy makes it crystal clear that yes, it was.
Naked and Famous: As has been previously reported, at one point in the series Tommy Lee has a conversation with his penis (Jason Mantzoukas), a genuinely hilarious moment that maybe still should have been cut, given that it’s a bit out of balance with the rest of the series, which otherwise handles the sexual content associated with the story with a great deal of grace.
In fact, not that this is usually the sort of thing a piece of content should be graded on, but the amount of nudity shown on screen feels exactly right for the subject matter — James as Pam never feels exploited in the more intimate scenes, while Stan as Tommy is probably the most on display, in keeping with the nature of the character. It helps, of course, that we know that nothing we’re seeing is actually real nudity (though if Stan wants to say that that’s not a prosthetic, there’s no one here to stop him).
Meanwhile, a great deal of time and attention is given to selling Tommy and Pam as one of the great loves of our time, and some of the most plainly enjoyable moments are the ones that feature the young couple just basking in their passion for each other. (One particularly charming sequence features them belting out “Getting to Know You” from The King and I, one of several moments where music cues are chosen to deliberately clash with Tommy’s hard rock edge.
But it’s a tricky thing to combine with how Tommy’s violent temper always threatens to cross the line into abusive (in real life, Lee was in fact sentenced to six months in jail in 1998 for spousal abuse of Anderson, something which the series only briefly acknowledges). Of all the elements that feel fictionalized, their relationship perhaps feels the most out of touch with reality — though, of course, the only people who only know what’s happening in the heart of a romance is the two people involved.
Bullets With Butterfly Wings: Performance-wise, James is simply staggering as Pam, finding depth and nuance to the role while always remaining true to Pam’s essence. This is a story about a woman brought low by the world, and the choices Pam makes to try to take back her power make perfect sense when seen though her eyes. And the chemistry with the pure uncut Id of Stan’s take on Tommy is explosive;
Meanwhile, Rogen as Rand represents a fascinating presence, attempting to defy any good-or-evil categorizations. He’s a criminal, but in the name of what he sees as justice. He’s not that bright in some ways, but pretty sharp in others. He thoughtlessly exposes an innocent woman at her most intimate, but is also a romantic still in love with his ex-wife. Thanks to being played by Seth Rogen, it’s kind of impossible not to like him, at least a little bit. But to think of him as anything resembling a hero feels like a huge mistake.
As for the rest of the supporting cast, Offerman is a disturbing delight in his limited screen time, with a mullet for the ages, while Andrew Dice Clay shows up for a few scenes as the heavyweight who provides the initial cash for Rand and Miltie’s tape-distribution operation and demands rigorous payback. It’s Clay as Butchie who’s the most direct source of villainy here, though quite honestly, no one male comes off great here.
The Verdict: One interesting side effect of a story that’s largely about people who aren’t the most intelligent folks is that you can’t look to those characters for profound revelations as to the themes of the piece; yet, somehow, Pam and Tommy manages it.
“I feel terrible for women. You have to deal with us,” Rand says at one point, with which his ex-wife Erica (Taylor Schilling) agrees: “Yeah, you are not the greatest gender.” It’s the sad smile on her face when she says it that says it all; the same sort of resignation that leads Pam to make the choices she does. Things aren’t necessarily that much better in the year 2022 than they were back then. The one thing that’s better is that at least today, we can acknowledge these events for what they were: a crime.
Where to Watch: The first three episodes of Pam and Tommy premiere February 2nd on Hulu. Subsequent episodes will be released Wednesdays.
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Pam and Tommy Review: Behind the Tape Lies a Raunchy But Haunting True Crime Story
Liz Shannon Miller
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