Hulu’s Pam & Tommy Turns a ’90s Punchline Into an All-Too-Human Tragedy

This review original published January 26, 2022

In recent years, pop culture has (at long last) been attempting to wrestle with many of the damaging and problematic assumptions that were freely promoted and we therefore all generally held in the 1990s, particularly when it comes to famous women. Back then, we—and our media—loved misogynistically blaming women for their own problems, condemning their sexuality, denying their agency, and generally treating their open and obvious pain as little more than the butt of late-night jokes. And it’s taken the better part of three decades for us all to realize that this was not just deeply and profoundly wrong, but that these misunderstood women deserve a shot at, if not redemption, at least some sort of cultural reassessment and reset.

As a result, over the past five years, we’ve seen a steady stream of prestige entertainment properties that attempt to both reclaim and reframe the lives of these women, positioning their stories as award-winning dramas rather than tawdry tabloid soap operas. From Tonya Harding (I, Tonya) to Monica Lewinsky (Impeachment: American Crime Story), Britney Spears (Framing Britney Spears), and Anita Hill (Confirmation), pop culture seems to finally be ready to admit that we did these women dirty and they deserved better from all of us.

Hulu’s Pam & Tommy is the latest drama offering in this vein, an incisive, occasionally heartbreaking, and often laugh-out-loud funny exploration of the volatile relationship between former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee and the global scandal that followed in the wake their very private, very adult home video being leaked. And to be clear, the series is fantastic, anchored by transformative performances from stars Lily James and Sebastian Stan, as well as a crystal-clear sense of purpose. Because in this version of events, both Pam and Tommy are victims several times over, and no matter how many dumb decisions they may make, the Hulu show that bears their names never lets us forget that fact.

But despite its often uncomfortable subject matter, Pam & Tommy smartly never takes itself too seriously. After all, this is also a show where there is, as many of you have probably already heard, a sequence in which Stan’s Tommy has an extended conversation with an animatronic version of his own penis. (It namedrops several of the rocker’s previous girlfriends.) The show is full of nudity, a subplot is largely set in a porn studio, and there are dozens of references to the dirty things people (read: mostly men) like to get up to online. The show also pokes fun at the overblown nature of celebrity lifestyles, marvels at the awkward newness of this phenomenon known as “the internet,” and indulges in plenty of overblown 1990s nostalgia. (RIP Tower Records, we miss you.)

But underneath all the arch commentary about the rise of grunge and the unreliable nature of modems is something much darker: an acknowledgment that our society then didn’t—and quite possibly still doesn’t now—view women like Pamela Anderson, who based much of their careers on physical attractiveness, as worthy of anything close to respect or sympathy. There’s a lot to love about James’ chameleon-like depiction of Pam, but nothing so much as the actress’ slowly dawning horror that not only does almost no one care about the devastating invasion of privacy the release of her sex tape represents, a disturbingly large portion of society seems to think she deserved what happened to her. And all because she had nude pictures taken professionally.