Pam & Tommy: Drilling and Pounding
February 3, 2022 10:56 AM - Season 1, Episode 1 - Subscribe

Handyman Rand Gauthier seeks revenge on the celebrity client who stiffs him.

Set in the Wild West early days of the Internet, Pam & Tommy is based on the incredible true story of the Pamela Anderson (Lily James) and Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan) sex tape. Stolen from the couple’s home by a disgruntled contractor (Seth Rogen), the video went from underground bootleg-VHS curiosity to full-blown global sensation when it hit the Web in 1997. A love story, crime caper, and cautionary tale rolled into one, the eight-part original limited series explores the intersection of privacy, technology, and celebrity, tracing the origins of our current reality TV era to a stolen tape seen by millions but meant to have an audience of just two.

The first three episodes dropped on Hulu on Tuesday.
posted by kitten kaboodle (8 comments total)
 
Eeeeverything about this is the kind of thing I run away from as fast as I can (two-bit celebrities, sex scandals, people being terrible, idiots on parade, way too much of people's personal things like nudity and sex, violations of privacy, the way women are treated in a rape culture), but unfortunately it's got my boo, Sebastian Stan. Don't make me suffer alone!
posted by kitten kaboodle at 11:07 AM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]


I'm just sort of mystified that Lily James, who seems to usually be cast in bookish nerdy roles, is cast as Pamela Anderson in this. And yet it looks like she's up to it, from the promos? Wild.
posted by Kyol at 11:26 AM on February 3, 2022


Going in, I didn't expect to find Pamela Anderson such a sympathetic character, but I absolutely did.

Tommy Lee, on the other hand, I'm not seeing that way at all. In The Dirt (yeah, I like watching fictionalized versions of terrible real-life people), Machine Gun Kelly plays him as sort of an idiot manchild, while, in Pam & Tommy, Stan plays him like someone who'd lived like Tommy Lee for the last ten or fifteen years. He really nails the complete and total lack of empathy.
posted by box at 11:31 AM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]


I made a mistake in this post--apparently it's the first four episodes that dropped this week. I will be making posts for all the rest of them today.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 12:12 PM on February 3, 2022


We watched episodes 1 & 2 last night. I'm a sucker for anything hair metal related. The makeup folks really nailed Pamela Anderson with Lily, looks just like her from the Baywatch days. In Tommy, I think we are seeing what 10 years of extreme wealth and a life surrounded by yes-men who have a financial stake in your bands does to a person.
posted by COD at 5:27 PM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]


Well, apparently Hulu is saying they have four episodes, but they actually don't, so I should have stuck with IMDB's info page instead of that one. The fourth ep is available next week. Grrrrrr. I really detest Hulu.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 6:49 PM on February 3, 2022


I'll be watching these threads with interest. I have all of the same reservations you do, kitten kaboodle, and the same reason for being interested in watching it. I like Stan as an actor and am curious to see what he'd do with a role like this. (Plus, I'll admit, I'm curious if some of those piercings are real or juts make-up effects.)

At first, when I was reading about this show, it sounded as if it was going to be a modern examination of how Anderson was really unfairly affected by the fallout from having this tape get out there, and I was interested in that aspect of the story. Then I read that it was really going to be about a [sorry spoiler] made-up redemption arc for Seth Rogan's character, and that turned me right off.

Now, I'm counting on you guys to watch this, critique it and (by the end) give me a much better sense of whether it would be worth my time or not.
posted by sardonyx at 7:53 PM on February 3, 2022


Between this and I, Tonya, in which the same director, Craig Gillespie, also cast Stan as a dirtbag (Tonya Harding's husband/abuser Jeff Gillooly, who sold their sex tape), they're chronicling some of the sleazier aspects of American celebrity in the later part of the last century; I'm somewhat embarrassed that I find it as compelling as I do, and am not sure that simply having lived through the real-life events is a good enough excuse, but I did and I do. I've never been a fan of the Crüe so I have no problem believing that Lee was the worst sort of celebrity dirtbag. One thing that I didn't get (it may have been mentioned briefly during the scene at the porn production place; I need to start turning closed captioning on automatically on my streaming services) was that the carpenter who stole the tape (his trying to pass himself off as a big shaggy dog with the fake-fur rug was kind of hilarious) was a former porn actor himself; going from a performer to being a carpenter is sort of the opposite of Harrison Ford's career path.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:40 AM on February 5, 2022 [1 favorite]


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