Pam & Tommy — Review
Minor Spoilers
When I first heard about the show, “Pam & Tommy,” I was more than skeptical that it would be something I’d watch. There are any number of other shows that I have yet to watch (one is “Euphoria” which I promise to start this week), and a show about the couple that ruled the mid to late 90s seemed fine but not worth my time. As a preteen I loved Pamela Anderson Lee. I can’t say I watched “Baywatch” but I knew exactly who Pam was. When I got the internet (referred to as the “World Wide Web” in the show) one of the first things I watched was the Pam and Tommy sex tape. I was a dumb teenager that had a Hewlett Packard desktop and a 56k modem, and, after watching “Barb Wire” on Cinemax one late night, I was on a mission to see the hardcore sex tape. I saw it. It was great. It was also stolen and was never meant for my eyes. When Sabastian Stan and Lily James were cast in the titular roles, I grew even more skeptical. Time had passed, and then I saw the trailer for the show. Oh look, there’s Seth Rogen. Oh nice, that’s Nick Offerman. I started to lighten up on the idea of watching the show. Boy am I glad I did.
The first three episodes of “Pam & Tommy,” are currently streaming on Hulu and boy has it been a fun watch so far. I had not read the Rolling Stone article by Amanda Chicago Lewis, so I’m happy to go into the show without knowing the story. The tale starts with Rand Gauthier (Rogen), a contractor who’s working on a sex room for Tommy Lee in his LA mansion. After running up a big tab on the contracting job, Rand confronts Tommy (Stan) who eventually fires him after Rand accidentally walks in on Pam (James) looking for Tommy. Rand launches a plan to get paid regardless of being fired and breaks into the Mansion, stealing a safe. What he finds besides jewels, guns and some personal trinkets is a tape; The Tape. At first I was a bit conflicted watching the first episode. In the end, the tape was the property of Pam and Tommy and no matter what the reason for Rand stealing it, he did steal it and that is wrong. We now know how incredibly wrong it is to steal porn. Not just celebrity sex tapes but porn that finds its way to any number of Tube sites. The Fappening was a horrible, terrible invasion of a lot of people’s privacy. No matter how much of an asshole Tommy Lee is, that doesn’t give Rand the right to steal his property.
That being said, this show has Tommy Lee’s penis talking to him (voiced by Jason Mantzoukas) in the mirror and that in and of itself is enough to keep me watching this madcap heartfelt show. Lily James is playing Pamela Anderson with a tremendous amount of gentleness and charm. Two scenes really jumped at me. One is her talking about Jane Fonda and her love of everything Jane represents to her. The other is where Pam and Tommy are in bed watching television and “The King and I” comes on. In that scene we also get a very humanizing glimpse of Tommy Lee, who talks about his nephews. It was a moment of heart that breathed life into what could have just been a trashy show. That’s what I’ve loved about the show so far, the humanizing of these characters who are real people.
It also helps that there is a ton of 90s nostalgia for me to chew on. Nostalgia is a double-edged sword at times. We can get lost in it. We can beat the drum of a better time and condemn all that is new as “not as good as back in the day.” That’s the great thing about the show is that we know how to do nostalgia right. “Pam & Tommy” cleverly put this nostalgia in the show. After finding the tape, Rand visits his old friend Uncle Miltie (Offerman) an adult film director. The two become partners in distributing the sex tape. After being shut down by every porn distributor in Los Angeles, the two give up. Rand gets a call from his now separated wife Erica (played by Taylor Schilling) to come over and help her fix her toilet. Rand scowers the greater LA area trying to find the part, and then turns to the internet, which then gives him the grand idea of putting the tape on the World Wide Web. This leads to Rand explaining what the World Wide Web is to Uncle Miltie. It’s going to be interesting watching this show if you have always known the internet, because the conversation these two have in this scene is so funny and aging for me.
I am definitely in on watching this show. It has enough heart, laughs and 90s nostalgia to entertain and is just intriguing enough to find out how it all plays out. One thing I will say is this show suffers from what most streaming shows suffer from; there’s this look that is almost in-between film and television that can be distracting at times. It’s this muted color look that just bugs me. There’s also this spirituality that runs as a through line for the narrative that’s very intriguing. Check out the first three episodes on Hulu now, with new episodes dropping Monday at 9 pm.
