‘Pam And Tommy’ Episode 6 Recap: “Pamela In Wonderland”

Pam & Tommy Episode 5 (“Uncle Jim And Aunt Susie In Duluth”) closed on Tommy assuring Pam, of their current crisis, that they’re in it together. But Episode 6 (“Pamela In Wonderland”) further isolates her in a hell of other people’s making. In April 1996, the “present” timeline, Tommy’s not around; Pam is submitting to her deposition with only Tommy’s lawyer, Sandy (Paul Ben-Victor), at her side. The defense lawyer, Bruce Hendricks (John Billingsley), is on the offense, making the process as demeaning for Pam as he possibly can; “Do you recall how old you were the first time you publicly exposed your genitals?” is the first question we see him ask her.

The brutal deposition scenes are intercut with flashbacks to the most significant bends in Pam’s road to success. In August 1989, she’s on the mainland, attending a B.C. Lions game with her brusque and dismissive boyfriend, Wayne (Brent Antonello). Though she initially declines a cup of Labatt’s, Wayne overrules her, saying she might want it later. And she’s probably glad she’s holding it — and wearing a beer-branded t-shirt — when the Labatt’s Cam finds her in the stands.

Pam goes through a cycle of poses, preening to shy, that may be practiced but may just as likely be proof of her innate talent for pin-up modeling — and sure enough, a Labatt’s marketing VP soon locates Pam’s seat to give her his card. On a break from her waitressing job, she calls him, and soon she is adorning a Labatt’s poster. It’s hanging in her and Wayne’s bedroom when she gets a phone call from Playboy, inviting her to the Mansion to take some test shots. Pam is thrilled, but a possessive Wayne orders her to call back and turn down the offer. Pam refuses; Wayne throws something heavy at her head; she ducks; she leaves. You can’t have projectiles flying around the moneymaker like that!

Hendricks’s question about whether Pam considers posing nude to be a sex act takes us to October 1989, and Pam’s arrival at the Playboy Mansion, mother Carol (Dendrie Taylor) in tow. Pam is moderately apprehensive before getting in front of the camera, but the photographer (Adam Croasdell) promises they will only do what she’s comfortable with, and she has the time of her life.

Afterward, Hugh Hefner pulls Pam aside to say women like her only come along once in a generation, and advise, “Separate your price from your worth. You do that, you can be any version of Pam you need to be.” Pam purrs that women have been doing that for centuries. (She’s…certainly doing it with Hef, in this moment!) I understand that the show wants to draw a sharp distinction between Pam’s modeling for Playboy and what Guccione is threatening to do with her image in Penthouse. However, I feel like we would have all understood the difference between consenting to pose nude and having frames of a stolen sex tape published against her will without portraying Hugh Hefner as a nurturing feminist mentor and a pornographic photo shoot as a wholesome play date, you know?

Anyway: in bed at the hotel that night, Pam tells Carol she’s been thinking she might want to augment her breasts — going up no more than two cup sizes. “I think God made you perfect just the way you are,” says Carol. “But if you want to try to top Him….”

As we know: she did, and posed for Playboy a half-dozen more times. Hendricks knows that Pam received a “near-negligible” increase in her rate with her most recent covers, so he theorizes that she might have wanted to use her image to make more money at Penthouse; but given the vicious antipathy between the two magazines’ publishers, perhaps she thought a clever way to do that while preserving her important mentorship with Hefner would be under the guise of a leaked sex tape: “Perhaps you can provide a reason as to why you and Mr. Lee would make a pornographic tape, if it wasn’t — like all your other pornographic activities — for the purpose of financial gain?” Is this the reason Pam and not Tommy is being deposed: they actually think this is possible and that she did it behind his back?! Or is this question, like all the others, simply an attempt to push Pam past her limits so she gives up and withdraws the suit?

To wit: no sooner has Pam denied Hendricks’s conjecture than an assistant wheels in AV equipment: Hendricks is going to make her watch segments of the tape, supposedly so she can verify the identities of the people in it.

Naturally, Pam is horrified, but Sandy only apologizes to her, and the tape rolls. (Gail was right: since Pam didn’t say no to a conference room full of men when Tommy dragged her in with them, she has even less ability to say no to the men in this one.) Around a flashback to Pam and Tommy snuggling by a campfire, fantasizing about the five kids they want to have together and pledging only to spoil them at Christmas, Hendricks attacks: couldn’t other motorists have seen her while she was going down on Tommy while he drove on the highway? Did she care? Isn’t it possible other boaters could have approached and seen them having sex in the bow of her boat on Lake Mead? Was that prospect exciting to her and Tommy? This line of questioning drives Pam into the bathroom, to vomit. Even the court reporter intimates that this is the worst deposition she’s ever seen. This is extremely gross, so…I hope so?!

In the episode’s last flashback, Tommy gravely tells Pam the tape might contain footage of their first child’s conception, so he’s going to go put this “family artifact” in the safe. In the present, Pam returns to learn that Hendricks still has more (presumably hideously insulting) questions for her, but Sandy notes that it’s 5 PM, so they’ll have to pick it back up another day. They absolutely will not, Pam tells him privately: if he doesn’t stop this, she’s going to get another lawyer. Sandy follows Hendricks to negotiate, and Pam is trying to collect herself when the cleaner enters. “I’m sorry we left such a mess,” Pam quietly tells her on her way out. Men — some she knew, some she didn’t — have made the mess that left Pam here. Why is she the one apologizing? …Just kidding, we all know why.

VHS Rewinder

• We can’t know whether it was Lily James’s choice or Hannah Fidell‘s direction that makes it look like Pam is grimly smiling while applying her lipstick for the dreaded deposition.

  Either way, it’s an effective moment.

• I’m not sure why there’s a fake address on this Labatt business card?

  The real office is 207 Queens Quay W., Suite 299, in Toronto; there’s no Queen’s Quay in Montreal, and their zip codes start with H. And before someone yells at me that they don’t want to get in trouble for letting viewers know where it actually is: it’s a public business.

• On the other hand…

  Pretty good research on this poster design!

• When Pam storms out on Wayne, he asks where she’s going and she yells, “America!” Canadians say “The States,” and Executive Producer Seth Rogen knows that.
• After throwing up mid-deposition, Pam tidies herself up and then regards herself in profile.

  Because of the way the show has diverged from the actual historical record on the timeline of her pregnancies, I can’t tell if this is supposed to show us how she’s still mourning the loss, or wondering if she might actually be pregnant again. We have two more episodes to find out.

Television Without Pity, Fametracker, and Previously.TV co-founder Tara Ariano has had bylines in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Slate, Salon, Mel Magazine, Collider, and The Awl, among others. She co-hosts the podcasts Extra Hot Great, Again With This (a compulsively detailed episode-by-episode breakdown of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place), Listen To Sassy, and The Sweet Smell Of Succession. She’s also the co-author, with Sarah D. Bunting, of A Very Special 90210 Book: 93 Absolutely Essential Episodes From TV’s Most Notorious Zip Code (Abrams 2020). She lives in Austin.