Summary
Pam & Tommy’s second episode flashes back to the couple’s first meeting, their whirlwind romance, wedding, and moving in together.
This recap of Hulu series Pam & Tommy episode 2 contains spoilers.
One of the most famous movie endings is that of The Graduate where the two lead characters, having suddenly upturned their lives, sit on a bus as the camera lingers on them breaking out of the rush and starting to consider their future. A similar moment occurs mid-way through Pam & Tommy’s second episode. No longer fueled by sex or ecstasy, they realize they don’t know the first thing about one another. Their relationship was built off of lust and provocation, the show argues, which certainly helped to pull the media’s attention towards them.
Pam & Tommy episode 2 recap
But first, we get a brief glimpse of the tape that would make the news, re-enacted, and viewed through the eyes of the two men who started watching the last episode. The show then cuts from the grainy tape to the real deal itself; the video grain fades to digital smoothness.
Then we’re back in time, to their meeting. At a club, Pamela declares herself “done with bad boys,” a promise that lasts about as long as it takes for Tommy Lee to introduce himself (Lee quickly drops the woman he’s kissing as soon as he sees Anderson). And by introduce I mean he licks her face and thus begins a relationship based (as the show depicts) almost entirely on horniness.
Anderson declines to stay out with him but offers her number, which he endlessly abuses, leaving voicemails saying he’ll go to Cancun with her. In a different light, Tommy’s actions are downright stalker-ish, and though the show doesn’t seem particularly invested in portraying their relationship as anything other than consensual, there’s a manipulative undercurrent to his actions.
This continues in Cancun, where he’s a breath of fresh air amongst the stuffy middle-aged blowhards she’s supposed to be entertaining. They go to a bar (shown an excruciatingly long Steadicam shot that shows no purpose other than to depict the staircase Anderson and Lee must have walked up to get there). They party out their attraction, and go home together, stripping naked and revealing their private parts.
Lee is portrayed as a perpetual bad-boy, using prank names and getting angry at wait-staff, which is frankly more characterized than Anderson gets. There are many montages of them doing ecstasy and clubbing, as well as exploring each other’s bodies in a sweet way. This eventually leads up to Tommy realizing Pamela is “the one.” The first person he explains this to is, of course, his p***s; voiced, naturally, by Jason Mantzoukas. It’s an unnerving special effect for sure, as his p***s, speaking literally for itself, flops around and name-drops all the other beautiful celebrities he could be sleeping with.
Even though he hasn’t had sex with her yet, after four days of partying he’s ready to propose, and the two find the first priest who’s willing and they marry on the beach. After consummating the marriage in a Breaking Dawn style display of hotel room destruction (they F**K, the show is screaming at us), we get to the aforementioned award exchange. Suddenly stripped of substances and shrouded by *gasp* clothes, they are forced to make small talk. He likes horror movies, she likes rom-coms, etc.
The ending
They land into a swarm of paparazzi and decide to work on a house together. But Lee can’t hold his anger inside when a photographer snaps pictures of them in the yard and nearly yells at the next person who appears. This person turns out to be Lonnie, from the last episode, who introduces Lee to his team, including Rand, who talks Lee’s ear off about a tattoo and is delighted to see Anderson.
Eating french fries in bed (the one thing they can agree on), she turns the TV from Baywatch to The King and I, one of her favorite movies. Lee is not impressed and turns every personal question his new wife asks into an innuendo, even when she talks of her desire for motherhood. When “Getting to Know You” comes on, she sings along, and she and Tommy dance around the bedroom, sharing a moment. But director Craig Gillespie’s camera lingers on the camcorder atop the TV, recording their private moments…
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