History Series / PamAndTommy

* TheNineties: Pamela Anderson's sex tape scandal blew up in 1996, and the trailer features people using [[UsefulNotes/{{VCR}} VHS]] and dial-up Internet access, which are technological mainstays of the era. It also contains a lot of 90s music and pop culture references.

** The bikers that Tommy sends after Rand attack the first person they see at the porn studio, and despite having a photo (an old porn video cover) where it is clear he looks nothing like Rand besides white and male, still assume it's him.

** Rand definitely doesn't seem to be the brightest bulb on the tree, even though many of his crimes do come off as planned. He does ample preparation for the robbery, but succeeds partly through dumb luck (his partner bails on him but he still goes through with it, the guards barely missed him on the security cameras and a driver might have seen him). The contents of Tommy's safe are enough reward for a simple caper, but he gets too greedy when he then tries to profit off the stolen sex tape. His attempts to sell the tape to legitimate dealers completely fail for legal reasons that should have been obvious, he doesn't realize that his stolen tape can be stolen from him, and it takes him forever to realize that Miltie has ripped him off. Butchie, the LoanShark he and Miltie went to to fund their bootlegging operation, has to point this out to Rand, ''in the middle of torturing him''. His first attempt at being an enforcer for Butchie fails when he fumbles his bat onto the ground and his confused victim just gets on his bus and rides away.

* NoHonorAmongThieves: Once it looks like the tape business will blow up in their faces, Milton takes the profits and goes for an extended trip to Amsterdam, leaving Rand to face the music. This includes leaving Rand to explain why the mobster they borrowed money from is not getting his money back.

* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Pam honestly wants to avert this, telling her friends that she wants a stable relationship with someone who treats her well and with whom she can build a real home and family. However, she is quickly won over by Tommy and pulls into the same habits as before.

* AmoralAttorney: While most of the lawyers in the series are portrayed as this, the lawyers representing Penthouse Magazine are portrayed as particularly scummy, asking humiliating and invasive questions to Pamela in an attempt to rattle her. Pam's own lawyers also push her to sue Penthouse so they can make more money, despite Pam pointing out that this will only draw more attention to the tape.

** When Tommy has Pam meet with a team of lawyers to discuss suing Penthouse to prevent them from releasing the tape, Pam correctly worries that doing so would cause them to release the tape anyway out of spite and attract more press. The lawyers basically treat Pam and her concerns like air, but sure enough, once Penthouse gets sued, publisher Bob Guccione calls it a First Amendment issue and decides to release it in retaliation. Pam's publicist Gail Chwatsky is the only person who acknowledges that Pam was right.

* DoubleStandard: When the sex tape gets out, Tommy Lee is hailed as a hero. However, Pam faces greater scrutiny in the eyes of the media and the studio putting out her movie, and is the only one called to testify in the deposition regarding the lawsuit against Penthouse.

* DramaticallyMissingThePoint: Tommy is so used to being the defendant in court cases that he initially thinks that the judge throwing the lawsuit against Penthouse out is a good thing for them and his lawyer has to explain to him what it really means. This is contrasted with Pam's reaction who clearly expected the verdict to go against them and is devastated when her fear is confirmed. It also confirms Pam's earlier fear that Tommy did not treat the case as seriously as she did.

* FromBadToWorse: Once the sex tape gets out it starts to spread everywhere, and there is little anyone can do to stop it, especially when it gets on the internet. Episode 5 shows the situation growing significantly worse once Penthouse gets a copy of the tape and decides to release parts of it when Tommy and Pam sue. This gets the attention of the press, spreading the news to mainstream outlets that previously decided it wasn't news.

** Tommy is absolutely correct in that Bob Guccione of Penthouse was willing to release the sex tape in order to get back at Hugh Hefner. However, he didn't realize that suing him would only escalate things rather than shut them down. Unfortunately, threatening him with a lawsuit turns it into a free speech issue from Guccione's perspective, and the judge sides with Penthouse.
** The lawyer for Penthouse in episode 6 may seem harsh for going after Pam Anderson, trying to create a narrative where Tommy and her willingly created a sex tape that they would sell to Hugh Hefner and Playboy, and that they aren't trying to protect their privacy, using Pamela's history with Playboy against her. While harsh and sexist, it's also the lawyer's job to do this to protect his client's interest.

* OpenMindedParent: Pam's mom is very understanding of her career ambitions, being okay with her posing in Playboy as well as wanting to undergo breast enhancement surgery.

* SlutShaming: Pam predicts this is what will happen to her once news of the tape gets out. Tommy practically proves her correct when he tries to downplay the issue by saying that no one is seeing anything that they haven't seen before from Pam. [[spoiler: Once they lose their suit against Penthouse, Pam is proven right.]]

** The fifth episode features a scene where Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx confront the members of Music/ThirdEyeBlind over the latter being given a bigger recording studio than Music/MotleyCrue. Stephen Jenkins (the frontman of Third Eye Blind) has said that such a confrontation never happened in real life, that their first album was not recorded in Los Angeles, and at the time the series took place he had never even heard of Motley Crue.

* RageBreakingPoint: After being fired by Tommy who refuses to pay the thousands of dollars he owes, Rand initially considers suing Tommy until he's told that the legal fees would likely end up being more than they money he lost. Instead, Rand decides to trust that karma will intervene and punish Tommy Lee for his terrible behavior. But when Tommy points a gun at Rand and refuses to let him recover his tools he left at the job site, Rand decides to take matters into his own hands.

* DrugsAreBad: In-Universe Pam wants to give a corny stereotypical monologue on {{Baywatch}} that fits this trope to a T.

** All of Rand's plans have obvious holes in them: He first tries to sell the tape to legitimate porn dealers, not realizing they obviously won't touch a stolen sex tape and open themselves up to litigation. Then, when he hits upon the better idea of selling it on the Internet, he doesn't worry about Pam or Tommy tracing it back to him, even though he has a known grudge against Tommy, installed their security system, and that he personally pitched the tape to every major porn company in L.A. He also doesn't realize that the tape he stole and is illegally selling can be stolen from him and sold too.

* OpenMindedParent: Pam's mom is very understanding of her career ambitions, being okay with her posing in Penthouse as well as wanting to undergo breast enhancement surgery.

* StopHelpingMe: Pam feels this way more and more about Tommy as his well-intentioned, but reckless ways just end up causing more problems for her.

* DramaticIrony: Rand comes up with the idea to distribute the tape on the World Wide Web, because this way, no one will ever find that he and Milton were behind it. Since we are watching a TV series about the scheme, we know that he is completely wrong.

** Rand definitely doesn't seem to be the brightest bulb on the tree, even though many of his crimes do come off as planned. His attempts to sell the tape to legitimate dealers completely fail for legal reasons that should have been obvious, he doesn't realize that his stolen tape can be stolen from him, and it takes him forever to realize that Miltie has ripped him off; the LoanShark he and Miltie went to to fund their bootlegging operation has to point this out to Rand, ''in the middle of torturing him''. His first attempt at being an enforcer for Butchie fails when he fumbles his bat onto the ground and his confused victim just gets on his bus and rides away.

** Tommy is absolutely correct in that Bob Guccione of Penthouse was willing to release the sex tape in order to get back at Hugh Hefner. However, he didn't realize that suing him would only escalate things rather than shut them down.

* KarmaHoudini: While Rand has to deal with the consequences of his criminal actions, his partner-in-crime Miltie steals their money and escapes any retribution or commeuppance by [[RunForTheBorder moving to Amsterdam]], spending the next several years on an uninterrupted HookersAndBlow binge.