Pam & Tommy Review: The Master Beta (Season 1 Episode 4)

Pam & Tommy Season 1 Episode 4, “The Master Beta,” continues to showcase the stunning abilities of the series cast and crew as the infamous sex tape becomes public, and Pam and Tommy’s lives begin to unravel. 

The difficulty in enjoying Pam & Tommy revolves around reconciling the guilt attached to watching a show about a woman who never wanted it to get made.

That show being a marvelous creation — one that underscores the implications of compromised privacy to a woman’s integrity, worth, and wellbeing — helps that guilt, but can’t wipe it away completely. 

At the very least, the show keeps its promise of protecting Pamela Anderson’s innocence. “The Master Beta” gives Pam the most sympathetic lens yet, as she begins to suffer traumatic emotional impacts that result in a miscarriage.

It’s something that in reality, happened to Pamela Anderson before the sex tape ever leaked. The show rearranges the timeline in order to properly highlight how destructive the sex tape leaking was to Pamela’s real life.

It’s a smart storytelling maneuver, helping the show maintain its beating heart of empathy. That’s never more true than in the episode’s final moments when Pam reaches her limit, and destroys a paparazzi’s windshield. 

Every action has a reaction, and all of Pam’s decisions are clearly reactions resulting directly from the sex tapes ramifications. 

So, yes, Pam & Tommy does what it can to keep Pamela Anderson the victim. That doesn’t relieve it, however, from being an intimate story about someone who has vocally asked for it not to be told.

The show also continues to maintain too much focus on Seth Rogan’s Rand. It’s not just the wasted screen time (although that’s certainly part of it), but the lens in which the series shoots him — as an earnest, hardworking man who just can’t take a mean celebrity bullying him anymore. 

In some ways, focusing on his “side of the story” feels like justifying Rand’s actions, which is insulting to the situation, and to the people victimized by it.

There’s no doubt Tommy Lee is a pompous rock star who owed Rand money and unfairly fired him, but that doesn’t translate into leaking someone’s private property into the world for compensation.

There’s nothing to feel bad for, here, yet the show tries hard to paint him sympathetically. 

Maybe the show wants its audience to simply laugh at how pathetically unprepared Rand is to launch such an insane revenge plot, but the screen time the character gets still feels egregious. With an eight-episode order, the show doesn’t need to care so much about the schmuck who decided to try and take down Pamela Anderson.

James and Stan themselves — although still grappling with too little focus — continue to deliver absolutely incredible performances. Both work hard to find small moments of heart and humor in an otherwise chaotic situation.

As outrageous as the pairing is, the two actors make the relationship itself feel unbelievably authentic.

Stan is so comedically talented and endearing, he almost feels too likable. The real Tommy Lee isn’t quite as charming as Stan makes him out to be, but it certainly works in showing the audience what Pam could possibly see in him. 

As for James, she continues to be a revelation — the sole reason Pam & Tommy feels acceptable, despite real-life Anderson adamantly refusing it.  She is magnetic on screen, making Pam feel gut-wrenchingly human as she faces an intense barrage of highs and lows.

Moments with James are what leave me craving more. I’d rather watch Pamela navigate her way through her sexist and misogynistic Baywatch workplace than spend twenty minutes and episode following Rand around as he aimlessly attempts to evade the cops for a crime he very much committed.

More Pam and Tommy. Less everything else, please. 

 

What did you think of this episode of Pam & Tommy? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Pam And Tommy airs Wednesdays on Hulu. 

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