‘Pam & Tommy’ Review: A Wild Rollercoaster of Sex, Crime, and Tragedy

Pam & Tommy, the sordid tale of how Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s private sex tape was stolen from their personal safe and then shared with the public, will immediately grip you in its proverbial embrace. More than merely being a lurid recreation of one of the ’90s biggest entertainment industry scandals, it’s a curious examination of America’s lust for intimacy (and our habit of dragging our most beloved women down). It’s a show that alternately titillates its audience and then indicts them for being titillated, along the way becoming a tragic paradox of itself.

Premiering exclusively on Hulu on February 3, the series is worth watching for Lily James’s phenomenal, career-redefining turn as Pamela Anderson. However, the strengths of the series are ultimately undercut by its own wild ambitions. It wants to be a darkly comic true crime tale, a tragic love story, a cruel satire, and a reclamation of Pamela Anderson all at the same time. Ultimately, these divergent tones don’t come together in perfect harmony. For all the show’s strengths, it’s also dogged by the question: if all Pamela Anderson wanted — and deserved — was for the sex tape scandal to go away, then isn’t rehashing the story in a splashy 2022 streaming series doing more harm than good?

Pam & Tommy is a retelling of the infamous “Pam & Tommy” sex tape scandal of the mid 1990s. Pamela Anderson was a Playboy cover girl-turned-TV star, best known for playing CJ in the popular syndicated series Baywatch. Tommy Lee was the rascally drummer for ’80s metal band Mötley Crüe. The two met in 1995 and within four days were married. Naturally, their union sparked tabloid attention. However, later that year, an explicit, self-made videotape showing the two in the deep throes of passion started circulating. What most people didn’t realize is the recording had been stolen from Anderson and Lee’s home by Rand Gauthier, a contractor who wanted revenge on Lee for terminating him without pay. Instead, the media seized upon the video, using Anderson’s history as a nude model and TV sex symbol to further humiliate her. The scandal was so culturally omnipresent that I even heard about it as a sheltered sixth grader.

Hulu’s Pam & Tommy retells this story from the perspective of those caught up in its maws. The first episode, “Drilling and Pounding,” focuses almost exclusively on the perspective of Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogen). We see him as a wronged working class stiff, embarking on a ludicrous heist to bring vengeance upon the asshole — Sebastian Stan’s rather cartoonish Tommy Lee — who wronged him. By starting the story here, Pam & Tommy is able to explain the human emotions that propelled him to steal the sex tape. The problem, though, is that this creative decision briefly shunts the show’s true star, Pam Anderson (Lily James), onto the sidelines. It’s not until Episode 2 (“I Love You Tommy”) that we begin to see Pamela Anderson as a human being, and not merely as a beautiful empty vessel there to carry the weight of men’s desires. From there, the show feels torn between reveling in the wild underbelly of Los Angeles’s porn underworld (which, to be fair, is quite amusing) and portraying the tragic martyrdom of one Pamela Anderson Lee.

Pam & Tommy’s tonal shifts can be attributed the show’s EP Craig Gillespie, who also directs the first three episodes of the series. The Australian director has carved a niche for himself in recent years with films that re-examine women vilified by pop culture. In the case of the Oscar-nominated I, Tonya, Gillespie reframed the story of Tonya Harding to show just how much life had beaten down the Olympic figure skater. The film boldly argued that Harding — who, interestingly, was saddled with a sex tape scandal of her own — could be both the victim and the villain of her own life story. His more recent, family-friendly offering, Cruella, uses camp and humor to similar effect, this time reinventing literal Disney supervillain Cruella de Vil as a punk rock heroine. It’s clear Gillespie wants to give Pamela Anderson a similar reexamination in Pam & Tommy. What doesn’t work, though, is the fact that Anderson is a pure victim here. She is portrayed as a kind, inoffensive soul who finds herself sexually violated by the public en masse. Her career is ruined by the scandal and her marriage thrown into chaos. The dark comic bits seem to undermine, if not mock, the sorrow she feels.

Throughout the series, Anderson just wants the nightmare of the tape’s infamy to go away. The disturbing irony is that as much as Pam & Tommy works to retell the story in favor of Anderson, the show’s very existence must perpetuate her pain. Pam & Tommy is a piece of art caught in a Catch-22 with its own self. It reframes the “sex tape scandal” as a violent act done to Anderson and Lee, thus educating a modern audience about how they ought to perceive the event. But in order to do so, Pam & Tommy resurrects the pain and shame of that very violation.

What’s even trickier about all this is Pam & Tommy is provocative storytelling, worth watching for the wild swings the show takes. While I don’t think everything in the series works, a lot of elements do. It can’t be stressed enough how phenomenal Lily James is as Anderson. She not only fully channels the iconic actress but manages to strip her down, emotionally speaking, to her angelic core. Series co-producer Seth Rogen plays Rand Gauthier as a schmuck with a heart of, well, not gold, but not total shit, either. Sebastian Stan’s Tommy Lee seems like a mocking caricature of the scandal-ridden rock star at first, but as the series goes on, comes full circle by highlighting his true saving grace: his deep love for Pamela. Pam & Tommy, in its later episodes, also features fascinating directorial turns from Hannah Fidell, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, and Lake Bell. Pam & Tommy is interesting. It’s entertaining. It’s also messy, chaotic, and potentially works against itself.

Hulu’s Pam & Tommy is a rollercoaster ride of a miniseries, full of broad satire, total heartache, and uncomfortable truths about the way our society abuses women in the public eye. Whether or not the show does enough to reclaim Pamela Anderson’s image is maybe not up to me, but Anderson herself.

Where to stream Pam & Tommy