There are countless horrifying moments in Hulu‘s Pam & Tommy, but one scene in Episode 4, “The Master Beta,” left me feeling as raw as a picked-open scab. (Yeah, that bad.) It comes halfway through the episode: Pamela Anderson (Lily James) discovers that the crew of Baywatch is watching her private, stolen sex tape with husband Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan) right there on set. The way the sequence is shot feels cut from a horror film, with Pam playing the part of an ingenue walking into a serial killer’s trap. Only instead of being stabbed, she’s humiliated.
The scene where Pamela discovers her Baywatch co-workers watching the tape hammers home the central thesis (and contradiction) of Pam & Tommy. The theft of the Pam Anderson/Tommy Lee sex tape was an act of violence and the more we drag its contents into the public sphere, the more we violate Pamela Anderson herself.
Pam & Tommy attempts to reframe one of the most scandalous stories of the 1990s through our modern lens. In 1995, Pamela Anderson married Tommy Lee in Cancun after only known the Mötley Crüe drummer for four days. Their whirlwind courtship sparked tabloid interest, but the plot of a disgruntled contractor made their union notorious. After Lee fired carpenter Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogen) without pay and held him at gunpoint, Gauthier decided to steal Lee’s safe. Gauthier only expected to find pricey weapons, jewelry, and some petty cash, but there was also a private tape shot shortly after the couple’s wedding. Unluckily for Pam and Tommy, Rand Gauthier had connections in the adult film industry and used those to sell the recording online.
Pam & Tommy Episode 4 “The Master Beta” opens a few months after the theft, when Pam and Tommy finally realize their safe — and the tape — has been stolen. Tommy tries to reassure Pam that no one’s going to see the tape. He even goes so far as to hire a private investigator to track down Rand (to little avail). Through this all, Pam tries to focus on the positive. We see her cooing over her unborn baby’s ultrasound, planning for movie stardom, and meditating in her trailer on the Baywatch set. It’s during this last scene, that there’s a knock on the door. Pam has been called to set. This is where everything comes crashing down.
Pam leaves her trailer with an oversized jacket on and a smile on her face. She’s joking with a crew member about his kids. The whole energy of the scene is that of sunny professionalism. The show even makes sure to stress how Pam naturally treats her co-workers like equals. Like fellow human beings. Then, she hears her own voice echoing between the trailers. She pauses and suddenly appears to be totally alone. Pam nervously looks around and soaks in what exactly she’s listening to: her own sex tape.
Pam finally discovers a crowd of her male coworkers huddled around a monitor. As she approaches them, the voyeurs slowly peel away, with only a hint of shame on their faces. Given that none of them offer apologies, you can intuit it’s the guilt of being caught and not actually watching the tape. She finally has to eject the tape herself and wonder what it is and where it came from. The first answer she already knows, but it’s the second question that propels the rest of the episode. (She and Tommy have to go to the library of all places to find an internet connection.)
While the scene sounds innocuous on paper — a woman discovers people watching a tape — it’s shot with the same kind of creeping dread as something from Showtime’s Yellowjackets. It’s the way Pamela is lulled into a space of security and then besieged by the nightmare keeping her up at night. It’s in how she looks around, waiting for someone to pounce. And it’s in the horror of Pam’s colleagues chortling through a stolen video of her having sex with her husband at her workplace!
This one scene in Pam & Tommy hammers home just how much the ubiquity of the tape facilitated a mass violation of Pamela Anderson. But in doing so, we don’t just see Pam’s face. We see the tape itself. Meaning that once more we are guilty of collectively dragging this woman through hell. And that scene is hell incarnate.
Where to stream Pam & Tommy