'Pam & Tommy' review: You'll need a long shower after watching this 8-parter

WHAT IT'S ABOUT In February, 1995, after a hurry-up courtship — very hurry-up — actor Pamela Anderson (Lily James) and Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan) were married. The happy newlyweds then proceeded to make a home tape — an infamous one. Lee later stored this "sex tape" in a safe back in the garage of his palatial Malibu estate, then forgot about it. This eight-parter — produced by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Robert Siegel — explores what happened next: Lee hired, then fired, a carpenter and one-time porn actor, Rand Gauthier (Rogen) who sought revenge and compensation by robbing Lee's home. Instead of ready cash, Gauthier found that safe and that tape, which he then took to a porn producer, one "Uncle Miltie '' (Nick Offerman.) How to sell a stolen tape? That's at the heart of "Pam & Tommy," which then explores how the sex tape was ultimately sold to Seattle-based pornographer and internet entrepreneur Seth Warshavsky (Fred Hechinger, "The White Lotus") who made millions off it.

MY SAY There were probably few ways anyone associated with the Tommy Lee/Pam Anderson sex tape came out looking good back in the '90s, and not all that many ways they do here either. The optics in this series can be pretty bleak, notably one scene in the second episode meant to be funny but is shocking and revolting instead.

In fact, comedy usually is the intention here until it's not. "Pam & Tommy" wants to be (and occasionally is) slapstick in the early episodes, then morphs into "Boogie Nights" and finally FX's "American Crime Story" by the middle and late ones. Porn gives way to story lines about evolving fair use laws, and how a new technology (the internet) was to shape the public consumption of private lives. The pornography industry itself was about to be revolutionized by Pam and Tommy and their tape. There's a lot of that here too.

But what this eight-parter really wants to do — and almost does — is re-humanize a dehumanized Anderson, by turning her into a proto-feminist who goes to battle over her dignity and personal privacy. By the outset, she's already been commodified by a world of leering "Baywatch" fans and a hypersexualized TV industry. She's fallen and is about to fall some more.

That's the setup and to an extent the series, too. So what then is the problem? One is that "Pam & Tommy '' can't get out of its own way, or out of the way of those optics. It begins with a pair of caricatures (Pam and Tommy) so vivid that by the third episode it becomes nearly impossible to see them as anything else — the tabloid Pam and Tommy who nearly broke the baby internet. Stan's Tommy Lee is an obnoxious boor with a short fuse. James, who's good in this, does give Anderson an extra dimension, but rarely agency. She's the victim of her own fame and her own decisions — poor ones, for the most part — but never quite understands why she is. Self-reflection is not one of Pam Anderson's strong suits in this portrayal.

Then, there's everyone else — losers and hardcores, low-rent crooks and hustlers, like Rogen's Gauthier and his pal, Uncle Miltie. (Andrew Dice Clay also has a cameo in this, as a mobster who buys the tape.) No one comes out well here, and nothing comes of nothing. It's a miserable payoff, the journey not much better. Worse, you'll need a long shower after watching.

BOTTOM LINE James is good in this; otherwise dumb … and dumber.