My main thought after finishing Pam & Tommy was “Why?” Why make a miniseries that had clear good intentions – centering the theft and release of the duo’s sex tape as an extreme violation of privacy and something that turned Pamela Anderson into a late night punchline while her husband Tommy Lee was treated as a god – yet saddle it with so much weird, dark comedy that you often end up obscuring those lofty goals in favor of a cheap laugh? And why tell a story that was very much of its time – when’s the last time you thought about Pamela Anderson or Tommy Lee? – but fail to really tie it into the greater impact it had on society as a whole, with the private images of the rich and famous routinely stolen (you may not have thought about Anderson, Lee, or their private sex tape made public, but I’m sure you can rattle off a number of famous folks whose private images and videos have been released without their consent in the ensuing years). So, what was the point?
Well, as best I can tell, the point was to push the boundaries of what you can do on television* and provide the vehicle for Sebastian Stan (Tommy Lee) and Lily James (Pamela Anderson) to turn in two eerily accurate performances as the titular couple at the center of the series. The writing and the story itself aren’t all that impressive – it ultimately doesn’t show us much we didn’t already know or couldn’t figure out from the events themselves, and the goal of showing how Pam was treated doesn’t really pan out – but the performances by Stan and James are spot-on without falling into the realm of mimicry. It’s a tough needle to thread, and the duo manage it well.
*There’s already been a bit written on it, and I would be remiss not to discuss it myself, but I’m pretty sure the major takeaway most folks will have if they watch the series is the sequence where Lee has a full-on conversation with his penis (voiced, naturally, by Jason Mantzoukas). Does it fit the character of Lee they’ve created (brash, impulsive, probably with a screw loose)? Absolutely. Does it, upon watching the whole series, feel tonally out of place with the darker themes explored in later episodes? Absolutely. So, still not quite sure just what the end goal was there, but it will certainly get people talking.
Unfortunately, that’s about all that there is to recommend in Pam & Tommy. Unlike other 90s screwed over women rehabilitation series (American Crime Story’s two attempts – The People vs. OJ and Impeachment – were more successful, although Impeachment also fell into some of the same traps as Pam & Tommy, in making the focus less on telling the “real” story and more on getting some sensationalist elements included), the narrative that Pamela Anderson was a victim (which she absolutely was) gets lost in the bells and whistles surrounding that arc. Because you see, in addition to Anderson and Lee as central characters, the series also spends a great deal of time telling the story of Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogen, who also produced the series), the guy who stole the tape and tried to sell it.
For those who might not remember (or had not even been born in 1996), Gauthier was a carpenter working for Lee. When Lee fired him and then stiffed him on his payment, Gauthier decided to get even and broke into Lee and Anderson’s home and stole a safe. He ended up obtaining a tape of their honeymoon*, and since he had a background in the porn industry, Gauthier had the contacts to try and sell it. There were no takers – no one wanted to get sued for selling a clearly stolen tape – and Gauthier and his partner, Uncle Miltie (a good Nick Offerman) opted to create a website and sell the tape themselves. Naturally, things spiraled out of control, but Gauthier also didn’t understand why what he had done was wrong – Lee had screwed him over, so he screwed Lee. The focus of his portion within the miniseries being that Gauthier, like anyone who watched the stolen tape, didn’t think about how its release would harm Anderson, the innocent victim in all this.
The series spends so much time working to teach Gauthier – and by extension, the audience – his lesson about what he did to Anderson and Lee that it shortchanges its titular characters in the end. We see Lee become angry and violent, but also unable to see why the tape has a greater impact on Anderson’s life and mental state than his (although there are a couple of scenes that make sure we know Lee was a victim as well). We see Anderson struggle with the tape’s release, but don’t really get any scenes of her dealing with it head-on – so much of James’ screen time is alongside Stan, that while we get individual scenes of Lee dealing with his feelings regarding the invasion of privacy, we never get any of Anderson doing the same. It’s a real missed opportunity as James is excellent in the role and absolutely could handle the heavy lifting required. Without these key character beats, the series turns out to be a case of more lip service for a titillating tale of sex, drugs, and rock and roll and not the more complex, layered character piece the writers think they’re telling.
While things are a bit better now when it comes to something like a celebrity sex tape, we certainly haven’t evolved much as a society. And that would have been a much more interesting angle for the series to take. Things were awful for Anderson and Lee in the wake of the tape’s release, but they would be just as awful today – and the tape would have spread far further far faster. The emotional pain suffered was what should have been at the heart of this story. Instead, it ended up being a story that was more about a guy realizing he violated a woman by publishing her private moments to the masses and not about the very real cost of those actions. A disappointing series with two stellar performances is still a disappointing series.
Pam and Tommy premieres on Hulu on February 2. All eight episodes were provided for review.
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