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Positive:
30
Mixed:
12
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
ColliderFeb 7, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The show performs an impressive turn around the halfway mark, reeling us into the personal lives of the people at the center of the scandal and telling an even stronger story about celebrity, the paper-thin divide between publicity and privacy, and what happens when human intimacy is swallowed up by glossy headlines.
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IndieWireJan 26, 2022
Season 1 Review:
“Pam & Tommy” is funny, emotional, and an incisive look at a story many still believe they know. James and Stan are astounding, with the former completely transforming herself physically and utilizing that to show Anderson as the fully realized person she was never allowed to be.
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The Daily BeastFeb 2, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Pam & Tommy is far more than a sniveling, pervy time machine revisiting a salacious sex scandal that’s been mocked for decades. But the genius is that it is also that: sniveling, pervy, and canny about the scandal and the mockery that piqued all of our attention in the first place.
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Feb 1, 2022
Season 1 Review:
To say that “Pam & Tommy” transcends its source material wouldn’t be giving it close to enough credit. ... The opening episodes, in which Rand is so mistreated and Tommy so loathsome, evolves into something much deeper and richer than an exploitation flick about good-looking stupid people. ... It’s all about Ms. James, though, who disappears inside the role of Pamela Anderson and makes her something epic.
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Jan 26, 2022
Season 1 Review:
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.
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Feb 2, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The eight-episode Hulu miniseries, which premieres Wednesday, is fast-paced and entertaining, as it gives us the couple’s whirlwind romance and their absurd excesses. ... But “Pam & Tommy” offers a consistent layer of cultural criticism just below the surface, the bass underneath all the catchier high notes.
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Jan 26, 2022
Season 1 Review:
As a dramatization of events that have slipped into history, “Pam & Tommy” is part of a crowded genre. But its curiosity and sensitivity toward its subjects set it apart. ... James’ Pam is an outright triumph, both of acting and of special-effects makeup. ... The Rogen story, about the contractor who cracked the couple’s safe to pilfer the tape, can’t find its tone over much running time.
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Jan 26, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Pam & Tommy repeatedly acknowledges the unfair toll the sale of the tape took on Anderson’s life, even as it’s wildly entertaining most of the time. Pamela Anderson never got to have a Jane Fonda-esque second act, and maybe couldn’t have even if Rand Gauthier had never entered her husband’s life. But here, she at least gets her story retold in a far kinder and more endearing way.
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Feb 17, 2022
Season 1 Review:
"Pam & Tommy" doesn't make fun of them or their relationship, but shows it for what it is: a match made in the stars. James' physical transformation is astounding (she's aided considerably by prosthetics), and she finds the warmth within Pam, the naïve small town girl with dreams that perhaps outweighed her talents. Stan is clearly going for it in the role of Tommy, and he softens some of the rocker's harder features and less desirable traits; he makes him lovable.
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Jan 27, 2022
Jan 31, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Like several of the other series in this genre, Pam & Tommy struggles to land on an ending. ... Still, until that point, its cultural excavation is entertaining and comically sexy and scary and sad, a bit provocative. It’s enough to satisfy that cultural-revisitation urge: the desire to be surprised by a story you thought you already knew.
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CNETJan 26, 2022
Jan 26, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Some viewers are going to love those first three episodes and then complain about the reduced pizzazz in the next five. And other viewers are going to get so turned off by how bro-y the first three episodes, all directed by Craig Gillespie, are that they won’t have the patience to get to the last five, all directed by women. ... James is giving a wonderful performance, making Pamela less of a caricature with each episode.
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Jan 26, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Pam & Tommy is at its best when it confronts the harsh realities of the tape, which was much more than just a pivotal moment in pop-culture history. ... But, thanks in part to the decision to split time between Pamela and Tommy and Rand, Pam & Tommy fails to really dig into any of these themes, nor does it explore the power dynamics of Hollywood in any meaningful way.
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Jan 26, 2022
Season 1 Review:
There's something outright gutless in the fairy-tale vision of the central relationship. It's a romance of musical serenades and goofy flourishes that barely acknowledges the marriage's harsher realities. Pam's heart is in the right place. I just wish it didn't waste so much time dicking around.
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RogerEbert.comJan 31, 2022
Season 1 Review:
To the show’s credit, when it actually sits down long enough to reckon with the innate misogyny of the sex tape’s appeal and the way it’s affected its subject, it succeeds mightily. But there are too many balls in the air, and its tongue is planted too firmly in cheek, to avoid sabotaging itself.
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Feb 11, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Critiquing Pam & Tommy as a single, unified work is hard because it’s such an awkward hybrid of genres and ideas. ... I enjoyed this show. It made me think about Anderson differently—as someone who’s survived extraordinary victimization and typecasting and who’s managed to redefine how she’s perceived. But the series, which so often feels like it’s trying to atone for our old mistakes, seems intent on pointing out ethical transgressions while looking right past the notable void at its own core.
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Jan 26, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The series is worth watching for Lily James’s phenomenal, career-redefining turn as Pamela Anderson. However, the strengths of the series are ultimately undercut by its own wild ambitions. It wants to be a darkly comic true crime tale, a tragic love story, a cruel satire, and a reclamation of Pamela Anderson all at the same time. Ultimately, these divergent tones don’t come together in perfect harmony.
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The TelegraphJan 26, 2022
Season 1 Review:
What the scene ultimately confirms is that Pam & Tommy is more interested in laughs than in drawing serious conclusions from the scandal and its role in catalysing modern celebrity culture. This true life sex caper is fabulously frisky. But also as tacky and insubstantial as one of Lee’s tattoos.
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Jan 26, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Whiplash settles in as the series vacillates in tone, trying all at once to be a crime thriller, a raunchy sex comedy, a critique of the media, and a reflection on a very famous woman's inner turmoil. It never figures out how to effectively tie those elements together, nor is it able to successfully make the case that Gauthier's story is just as important as Pamela's.
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Mar 1, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Rogen’s Gauthier is sketched out more confidently than any other character. The alluring, trashy chic aesthetic of “Pam & Tommy” is a smoke screen for a series that is reluctant to give its protagonists—the lovers it would purport to raise to a classical perch—any real depth.
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Feb 2, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Pam and Tommy — you know, the two victims of the crime — are sometimes disconcertingly sidelined in this retelling. Which is a shame because as the central couple, Lily James and Sebastian Stan dive into their roles with an enthusiasm I found hard to resist. ... Why “Pam & Tommy” chooses to frame Gauthier in a sympathetic light becomes a singularly if unintentionally interesting question underscoring the entire series.
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Feb 1, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Those two components—the humanist look at victims of a crime and the free-wheeling black comedy of witless perpetrators—are never successfully married. Each half has its merits, particularly in a handful of sharp performances, but the mighty, summative synthesis they are supposed to reach by the end arrives forced, sledgehammered over our heads.
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Jan 26, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The best thing this frustrating crime caper has going for it is its cast. Sebastian “Winter Soldier” Stan captures the manic machismo of Mötley Crüe drummer Lee in full, chaotic flower. If Lily James, the British period drama stalwart, leans into Anderson’s breathy ditziness to an extent that feels slightly mean, at least she makes an astonishing physical transformation into the Baywatch star.
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