TV Review: Hulu Has A Win With Pam & Tommy
Watching Pam & Tommy was riveting, in part, because it is a much richer tale than what we can expect. It is a story of the “little guy” having ENOUGH of being bullied. A tale of a couple trapped in their lust for each other while having NO IDEA who the other is when crisis strikes. Moreover, it is a take on the varying degrees of “cancelling” someone, and whether we persecute celebrities, morally, because, to us, they are not people as much as symbols we can use to compare what we see as our OWN, REAL humanity.
With the rising dominance of HBO MAX, Hulu is stepping up its original series’ game, and Pam & Tommy gives us all the details behind the sex tape and laundry list of jokes and moral takes it summoned during the 1990s. Before Kim & Ray J, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s sex tape was one of the most sold, of all time, in part, because of their endowments and fearlessness when it comes to stretching and twisting them into varying positions. The show, almost instantly, sets up a carnal freedom between the couple that makes me wish tv actors could get Oscars because Lily James (Pam) and Sebastian Stan ( Tommy) are too good.
Stan is so ridiculously self-absorbed as Tommy Lee, you almost feel bad for him. He is a hot idiot who defines love, literally, with the consultation of his talking penis. Yes, it was a hallucination but also….. no. He is a walking ego and not the brightest bulb, but even an ego wants to be loved and loving. Enter Lily James as Pamela Anderson who does wonderfully to show Pam is light. There is a genuine sweetness and loveliness to her take on Pamela Anderson that made me feel extremely bad for her, especially as the season proceeds. She turns Pamela into an emblem of how men can be fascinated by our body, enough, to fall in love with us, but never deeply enough to protect us. Nearly every male gaze that falls upon her does so while imagining a sexual act and she knows it. Sure, her knowledge may have gotten her gigs like, Baywatch, but that is career. When it comes to love, you need more than your body… you need heart, and she REALLY wants Tommy to have that for her… and he tries….
Seeing Pam & Tommy’s love story is like watching a hot mess take on how to spot “red flags” and run away from them. The chaos these two bring to each other is intoxicating, both figuratively and literally, but it takes a turn when Seth Rogen’s Rand and Nick Offerman’s Uncle Miltie steal and post their honeymoon, sex tape on the internet. So begins a whirlwind of public chasing, persecution, infatuation, and an ultimate question…. Are we too obsessed with celebrities? This question permeates as we see Rand use the sex tape as a “revenge plot’ of sorts against Tommy Lee for not paying his construction workers, which included him. From the beginning Rand’s crush on Pamela and mild obsession with Pam & Tommy’s exuberant lifestyle sets him up to be trapped by Tommy’s bullying demands and low funds. He does everything “his boss” says and when it comes time to pay up, he gets shamed. Those type of wounds don’t heal quickly because admiration becomes jealousy when shamed.
In a world of STAN culture and when a lot of “cancellations” are born from whether or not you have properly bowed down to a fan-group, Pam & Tommy becomes an analysis over how our relationship with celebrities diverge and distract from our relationship with ourselves. Rand’s poverty is palpable, and Rogen emanates the desperation and frustration that can be born from wanting a better life like, “Pam & Tommy’s” and the crushing that can occur when you find they are just as regular and manipulative as anybody else. When the fantasy cuts, he aims to destroy their reality, without mercy and, hopefully, for money. Thus, as the paps and public swoop over our leading couple, I can’t help but feel bad, again for Pam, because in the same way celebrities can feel they own the world, the world can feel like it owns them.
Poor actions are, often, responded to with poor actions. In essence, two wrongs don’t make a right and Tommy and Rand were jerks to each other and Pam paid. Like collateral damage, her body becomes a trending discussion, and if she was not the “Baywatch Babe” that video might not have ever seen light. Yet, she was a celebrity, and the world loves to scope celebrities’ lives and bodies like a scientist with a microscope. Still, Rand returns to his dingy, barely rentable apartment and Pam & Tommy cry a mansion. Oddly, everyone felt owned by someone else or rather the other. New episodes come out on Hulu every Thursday.
