Pam & Tommy (2022) TV series | obiter dictum

I have never watched Baywatch. I watched Sid & Nancy film though. Just last night for the fifth(?) time in my life. The reason for that was the new series available on Star via Disney+, called Pam & Tommy. The latter is centered around two people having the time of their lives during 1990s: Canadian-born American actress, model and activist Pamela Anderson, and the Greek-born American Tommy Lee, the drummer of the 80’s rock ’n’ roll & glam metal giants Mötley Crüe. The film on the other hand is centered around iconic Sid Vicious, the bassist of infamous, scandalous Sex Pistols of 1970’s Britain’s punk scene, and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. It’s about squatting, drugs, punk scene and music industry. It developed a cult following, and the actors Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb had received awards for their performances. In our context here, I think, it can serve as a comparison of how different are the realities of the 90’s LA when compared to 70’s London, where Sex Pistols grew out of the habitat of music and fashion, particularly that of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's boutique named SEX. Sex Pistols had already managed to introduce the music industry to extremes that were hitherto unseen when Mötley Crüe was born, which is to say that for someone like Tommy Lee there were already blueprints available of how to go about getting to the top of rock ’n’ roll fame. Some 15 years on, and, as Sebastian Stan’s Tommy Lee points out in Pam & Tommy series, “I have sold 50 million albums; money is not an issue.” I think, during their 80’s career Mötley Crüe had managed to make the most of the examples that were available to them when they were just upstarts back in 1981.

I don’t exactly know what I expected from Pam & Tommy before watching it. As per usual, I tried to avoid knowing anything beforehand. For me that approach works to an extent – my Twitter over time had been attuned and configured in such a way that I end up seeing the latest headlines and teaser paragraphs from articles anyway. So I knew it’s going to be about the infamous sex tape, and I knew that Pamela Anderson never showed any signs of having an interest in being involved in helping the producers and actress Lily James. Which is not what one could say about Tommy Lee though, who reportedly had responded to Sebastian Stan in connection with the latter’s role in the series. So I speculated that perhaps this is going to be, same as The Dirt, something that helps to remind people of how wild and important Mötley Crüe have been in rock ’n’ roll history. Or, what was more believable, someone had managed to pitch an ingenious idea about how to make money off a leaked private sex tape, only in a form that doesn’t infringe on anyone’s rights. I was in for a surprise though. In a good way.

Seth Rogen as Rand and Nick Offerman as Uncle Miltie in Pam & Tommy series. Source

I’ve never watched the sex tape itself. I genuinely feel disgusted by the idea of watching people who had never agreed to be watched. I have to say that, after watching three episodes up to now, I feel like there are parts in Pam & Tommy series that echo that disgust, but it becomes palpable only when I see two very different lifestyles compared. Indeed, it doesn’t feel like producers wouldn’t have wanted to show the bitter little guy Rand (played by Seth Rogen of Donnie Darko and Future Man) as a loser leading a rather shit*y life, and looking as a representation of such, while for the big guy Tommy everything is so dandy, life is like a computer program written to not contain any particular troubles. Tommy has seemingly got everything, living the little guy’s dream. He can even have conversations with his own body parts if he has some important decisions to make in nice hotels. Whereas Rand collects unpaid bills and spends his life in company of friends in low profile porn industry with people who surely aren’t anything like that woman who was the cause of the end of Tommy’s previous marriage (this latter part is not in the series though), or the actress at the cinema in The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle.
So how do two such characters as Rand and Tommy meet?
Well, it just so happens that losers like Rand are sometimes part of the life program of winners like Tommy, when Tommy needs something rather expensive done in his house. So basically our loser Rand knows how to do expensive things winners like Tommy need. To be honest, so far not only I find this story as one that contains some conflicting stuff; I see this way of doing justice to Pamela Anderson (source) to be a bit peculiar one. But then, perhaps I shouldn’t mention justice here at all – I mean, what kind of universal justice is that when from a cute Playboy bunny you have to go to become an international pornstar with zero intention of ever doing so? I don’t have an answer to that. But in a way it's good to see that Rand, who at one point in the series describes himself as a carpenter, is certain that one can do stuff like trading on the Internet anonymously without being found out, and feeds that belief to other people around him; belief that makes it easier for law enforcement to eventually find someone like him. I guess this should happen in one of the upcoming episodes, but what I'm most eager to see is how the early Wild West culture of the World Wide Web will be handled here - it indeed is, in my opinion, part of the modern history, and as such will be remembered at least as long as Internet exists.

Lily James as Pamela Anderson in Pam & Tommy series. Source

What I liked about Pam & Tommy is, firstly, the way it depicts Pamela Anderson. (Hats off to Lily James.) As an I-never-was-a-fan person I did not expect scenes of rehearsing lines for a role in front of the husband with all his praise and support. I didn’t expect Tommy serving food to Pam. I didn’t expect a rant about Jane Fonda. This is that part where I was surprised in a good way. I guess this could indeed be the case of justice served here because that is not a Baywatch star from a leaked sex tape we see in Pam & Tommy, but a wife, an actress, a person with life and thoughts that matter.
Secondly, celebration of life. There is a fair deal of that as one would expect from series involving someone from Mötley Crüe. I think with lockdown measures seeming to expire soon, there is something to learn in Pam & Tommy about having a good time. Just don’t be a kind of person who people are afraid to talk to about payment in advance because they think you won’t understand where they're coming from.

Never forget to have a good life.

Peer Ynt