Condescension is an ephemeral concept; it exists only as an idea. You cannot see it, feel it, touch it or taste it.
Not unless you are watching “The Thing About Pam,” a new NBC miniseries about Pamela Hupp. Here is a show that drips in condescension, it swims in condescension, it showers in condescension.
Its whole moist purpose appears to be to make the viewer feel smugly superior to the people of Lincoln County, Missouri.
St. Louis-area viewers need no introduction to Hupp, the Troy, Missouri, woman who was convicted of one murder and has been charged with another, the 2011 death of Betsy Faria. Faria’s husband, Russell, was convicted of that killing in 2013 but acquitted in a later retrial that focused on flaws in the prosecution’s case that ignored evidence that Hupp could have been the murderer.
Police theorize that the man she was convicted of killing, Louis Gumpenberger, was chosen at random and murdered in a harebrained scheme to throw suspicion off from the Faria murder.
And on top of all that, Hupp’s mother fell to her death from a balcony in 2013, and Hupp was the last person to see her alive.
You’d think that this bizarre and outlandish story would make a fascinating miniseries. You’d think there is no possible way it could be so boring.
Much of the problem lies with the decision to take what would make a tight, two-episode series and stretch it into a flabby, six-episode saga.
All that extra time is spent strenuously looking down on the inhabitants of Lincoln County.
Look at the tacky Christmas decorations! Listen to the funny accents! Watch Pam mix cherry syrup into her Big Gulp-sized cup of Diet Dr Pepper! See the “I [heart] dogs” bumper sticker on Pam’s car!
The show’s creators clearly think that bumper sticker is the funniest thing they have ever seen.
Two-time Academy Award winner Renee Zellweger, who is also executive producer, stars as Pam. Deep inside a fat suit that makes her appear a little heavier than the real Hupp ever was, she speaks her lines with her tongue deep inside her prosthetically enhanced cheeks. To Zellweger’s credit, she makes every word that escapes Pam’s lips sound like a transparent lie. But she plays the role as broadly as possible.
Subtlety is dead everywhere in this series. Judy Greer plays the county prosecutor then known as Leah Askey as unjustifiably confident in what is presented by the show as her spectacularly limited abilities. Glenn Fleshler unkindly plays Russell Faria as a slack-jawed yokel.
In comparison, Josh Duhamel emerges relatively unscathed as defense attorney Joel Schwartz. Schwartz is depicted as the only intelligent person in the entire cast — presumably because, as the narration puts it, he “rolled into town” from the big city of St. Louis.
About that narration: In an embarrassingly shameless self-promotion, the series credits NBC’s “Dateline” for riding in like a knight on a white stallion, digging into the story and exposing it. Perhaps they were unaware of earlier reporting by such local outlets as the Post-Dispatch and KTVI.
“Dateline” correspondent Keith Morrison, who is cursed with perhaps the smarmiest, most self-satisfied voice in the world, narrated five “Dateline” episodes about Hupp over the years, and he also narrates this miniseries. The narration is not just disruptive and unnecessary, it is also pompous, sophomoric and banal.
When Betsy Faria leaves her loving mother for the last time, Morrison intones: “It’s hard to know when a goodbye would turn out to be important. Who would ever think that this goodbye would turn out to be … forever?”
While the narration is clearly the low point, the series does manage a few relative highs, if you can stick with it long enough to get to them. The inherently interesting courtroom scenes are crisp and well-handled. They even fail to insult the viewers’ intelligence, which must be why they stand out.
Local viewers will be pleased to see that a few exterior scenes were actually shot in Troy, though others clearly were not. Keep an eye out for palm trees in the background.
You know, the famous palm trees of Troy, Missouri.
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'THE THING ABOUT PAM'
Where to watch: Debuts 10 p.m. ET Tuesday on NBC
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