Pam & Tommy premieres with three episodes on Feb. 2. New episodes stream weekly on Wednesdays.
What a difference 27 years makes. That’s how long it’s been since the infamous Pamela Anderson-Tommy Lee sex tape scandal exploded into the zeitgeist and changed both of their lives forever. Most look back at that time and remember it as either the punchline to a lot of late-night jokes, or, well, just the titillating opportunity to see celebs having sex. Three decades later, the limited Hulu series Pam & Tommy goes back to revisit those seemingly hedonistic times with a lot of bizarre context and some sobering truths.
Starring Lily James as Baywatch actress Anderson and Sebastian Stan as Mötley Crüe drummer Lee, the eight-part series contextualizes the couple and the general discourse about celebrity at that time, and then folds in the very unexpected story of schlubby freelance contractor Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogen). Don’t worry, you’re supposed to ask, “Who?” about that Rand guy, who ends up becoming the self-professed “agent of chaos” in the whole sordid affair.
The first episode, "Drilling and Pounding," is essentially Rand’s story, which explains how he came to be working on the bespoke sex bedroom suite commission by Tommy Lee for his Malibu mansion. After a final nail in the humiliation coffin at Lee’s hands, Gauthier snaps and plans the intricate robbery of Lee’s safe to 1) teach him a lesson and 2) get some financial remuneration. What he finds inside the safe, along with guns and jewelry, is a tiny Hi8 tape that will change everyone’s lives.
Lest you think Rand’s story is actually the focus of the series, the subsequent episode, "I Love You, Tommy," establishes the round-robin approach of storytelling, where each episode focuses on a specific player in the interconnected story. The perspective of Lee and Anderson starts here, charting their whirlwind romance and marriage. Director Craig Gillespie drops us right in the middle of their existences, making us voyeurs to their silly first meeting and then their Ecstasy-laced, club-filled courtship. Collins and Stan do stellar work here, nailing their performances especially when it comes to recreating not only the astoundingly accurate physicality of the pair, but the couple’s shared airheadedness and lizard brain impulses they can’t seem to tamp down. They aren’t mocking the people they’re portraying. Rather, they masterfully capture the subtle comedy of these outlandish personas while also conveying the weird innocence of how much they were really into one another.
And that’s key to the series, because the cast, Gillespie, and the writers of the first three episodes (Robert Siegel and DV DeVincentis) are deadly serious about making everyone in this offbeat tale real and not caricatures. Despite the absurdity of Gauthier’s plot, Rogen plays him as a sympathetic nebbish, pushed too far by life’s disappointments but ultimately possessing a very big conscience, which spurs his karmic guilt. And even though Pam and Tommy are introduced to us via their excesses, most vividly brought to life when Lee has a Molly-induced chat with his very animated penis (as voiced by Jason Mantzoukas), the series then makes equal efforts to normalize them as humans. We get to see Lee wrestling with his place in the music industry, Anderson’s genuine efforts to be a better actress despite being marginalized on Baywatch, or even their sweet yearning to be parents.
All of it lays the groundwork for what’s to come in future episodes as Gauthier plans to sell the tape for profit, igniting the dawn of internet porn and celebrity sex tapes. His ill-considered need for revenge escalates into a series of increasingly bad decisions that throws his life into turmoil and victimizes the couple to a scale that no one could have seen coming from such an innocuous, private, safe-stored sex tape. And while the first three episodes are a bit inconsistent in establishing tone and pace, the series does get stronger as it gains traction. The more confident it is in detailing the personal ramifications of the crime, the more poignant and resonant Pam & Tommy becomes as a piece.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/5SuBbl3LX
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming
No comments:
Post a Comment