The first episode of “Pam & Tommy,” Hulu’s wild ride of a biopic TV series about the early years of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s marriage and their stolen sex tape, is titled “Drilling and Pounding.” There’s all kinds of home renovation going on in their mansion, see, and if you somehow didn’t get the smirky-winky double entendre, the episode features Seth Rogen in a splendiferous mullet as Rand Gauthier, a carpenter working in the couple’s Malibu home (who would eventually steal their sex tape and distribute it), going to town with a nail gun downstairs while the newlyweds are upstairs audibly taking the episode’s title to heart.
That Gauthier was an electrician in real life rather than a carpenter is probably too inconvenient to mention and ruins the nail gun joke that, as a scene-setters go, is laying it on pretty thick. The thing about “Pam & Tommy” is that it wants to have fun right up until it wants to be serious. The tonal clash is intentional, between the whirlwind mid-’90s romance of the “Baywatch” star and Motley Crue drummer — fueled by sex, drugs and a raucous courtship in Cancun — to something distinctly stomach curdling when their private homemade tape becomes a very public obsession. I get the idea behind the show’s structure, I’m just not sure it actually works.
That’s because so much of it focuses on Gauthier, presented here as a shambling sad sack whose motives are given a lot of consideration. (For the sake of clarity, I’ll refer to the real-world people by their last names and their characters by their first names.) When Lee fired Gauthier, refused to pay his outstanding bill and also apparently pointed a shotgun at the guy, a revenge fantasy was plotted into a reality and this is worthy context — to a point. But Pam and Tommy — you know, the two victims of the crime — are sometimes disconcertingly sidelined in this retelling.
Which is a shame because as the central couple, Lily James and Sebastian Stan dive into their roles with an enthusiasm I found hard to resist. With these particular characters, once you get the shorthand visuals right — Anderson’s tousled platinum hair and Lee’s tattoos — you’re most of the way there before they even say a line of dialogue. The transformation works a little better with James, who physically disappears into the role in a way that Stan doesn’t. But they both have the mannerisms down cold and it’s a terrific balancing act they pull off, contrasting the pair’s hard-partying impulsiveness with their surprisingly cozy domestic life at home. (I love the production design detail that has their bedroom awash in serene, cream-colored everything, down to the wall-to-wall carpet, which is entirely at odds with Lee’s image.) They live a cosseted life and have bought into the ridiculousness of the celebrity bubble they inhabit, even as they each experience professional frustrations — Pam on the set of “Baywatch,” where it’s made clear she exists to be ogled, and Tommy as he sees the ascendance of grunge rock forcefully pushing him and his bandmates aside.
Individually and together, they are never less than human, no matter the chaos around them, and they are wonderfully besotted with one another. It’s hard to know if their marriage would have lasted regardless of the tape — in 1998, when Lee was sentenced to six months in jail for spousal battery against Anderson, the judge noted his long standing pattern of resolving problems with violence — but the release of that tape without their consent was most assuredly a violation that brought considerable stress and conflict into their home just a year into their relationship. This was the Age of Alta Vista, when the internet was a relatively new phenomenon. Welcome to going viral.
Anderson bore the brunt of the jokes and the indignities. According to a recent profile in Variety, the creatives involved in the show both in front of the camera and behind it (including co-showrunners D.V. DeVincentis and Robert D. Siegel, as well as “I, Tonya” director Craig Gillespie) felt “they were on a mission to correct that record — and in particular, perhaps find a little recompense for Anderson.”
Here’s why that vindication angle rings hollow: Anderson has no involvement with the show and reportedly isn’t thrilled about its existence. So the very act of vindicating her requires … re-violating her. Re-exploiting her. And the series understands this on a very basic level: “When something bad happens,” Pam says to a reporter she’s invited into her home, “all I want to do is move on, move past it, put it behind me.” If you understand her philosophy enough to write that line of dialogue, then presumably you’d also understand this period of her life isn’t something she probably wants to see dredged up all over again. And yet here we are.
The series can’t quite square that circle.
Many people not named Anderson and Lee made a lot of money from that tape; it has generated $77 million, according to a note on screen before the final end credits. Now an entirely different group of people not named Anderson and Lee are profiting from this saga almost 30 years later
Let’s circle back to Gauthier, who set all of this in motion. We’re clearly meant to sympathize with him and his skuzzy-mopey incompetence, even as we’re disgusted with his choices, and “Pam & Tommy” is unequivocal that he ultimately saw the error of his ways.
But this appears to be wishful thinking on the part of Rogen and producing partner Evan Goldberg (who jointly developed the show). The 2014 Rolling Stone article on which the series is based — an in-depth narrative about how and why the tape was stolen and what happened in the aftermath — suggests no remorse whatsoever on Gauthier’s part.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite: “Every once in a while, he’ll tell someone he was the guy who stole the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee sex tape,” the article notes in closing. “Almost no one believes him. But he likes the fact that he contributed this small token to the world, and he’s always enjoyed watching the tape itself.”
Why “Pam & Tommy” chooses to frame Gauthier in a sympathetic light becomes a singularly if unintentionally interesting question underscoring the entire series.
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'PAM & TOMMY'
2 stars (out of 4)
Where to watch: Premiered Wednesday on Hulu
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