History Series / PamAndTommy

* VillainHasAPoint: Butchie, the LoanShark Rand and Miltie visit, has mob connections and is fond of EnhancedInterrogationTechniques. However, he is correct that Miltie has ripped him off by fleeing the country with the money they made and points out to Rand what an idiot he is for not realizing this until he has it spelled out for him. He allows Rand to work off his debt by becoming an enforcer.

* JerkassHasAPoint: 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.

* InstantHumiliationJustAddYouTube: Or the World Wide Web in this case, as hundreds of VHS copies of the Lees' honeymoon sex tape circulate.

** 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. 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.

* TeenyWeenie: Rand has one, at least compared to the average porn actor, which is part of what led to his brief stint as a porn star.

* 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.

* PoliceAreUseless: After being told by the LAPD officers that burglaries usually go unsolved, Tommy and Pamela hire a private investigator to recover the contents of their stolen safe. It doesn't take the private investigator very long to figure out that Rand was is the culprit after asking Tommy if anybody would want revenge against him.

** In a flashback sequence to 1989, Pamela's boyfriend objects to her posing for Playboy because he doesn't want the entire world seeing his girlfriend naked. This leads to the end of their relationship.

* FailureMontage: Milton and Rand shop the tape around to a collection of decreasingly reputable porn companies, and get shot down by all of them.

** 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, and at the time the series took
place he had never even heard of Motley Crue.

* AluminumChristmasTrees:
** Yes, Tommy Lee really had a conversation with his penis in the run-up to his wedding with Pamela Anderson. In real life, however, it was entirely one-sided.
** Also at play with Rand's use of phone books to find a plumber who has the part he needs (before realizing that he can use the Internet for this purpose) and the notion of copying the sex tape onto VHS cassettes for distribution, as opposed to just posting the footage on the Net (see also ItWillNeverCatchOn).
** In one scene Rand mentions Alta Vista as an example of a search engine. Although many younger viewers may have never heard of it, in the early days of dial-up internet Alta Vista was up there with Yahoo as one of the most popular search engines on the web.

** 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, and at the time the series took place he had never even heard of Motley Crue.

** Once the news keep brewing for a while, Burt from L.A. Times has to reluctantly green-light article about the whole sex tape scandal, despite hating the concept on principle. Simply because everyone else is going to write about it anyway and he can either join the flow, or be sacked for ignoring "the big news".

* DestructiveRomance: Tommy and Pamela get married despite ''barely'' knowing one another. It's to the point that Tommy is shocked that Pamela is a fan of "The King and I" and is a bit put off by her knowing all the words to "Getting to Know You" as he expected her to have tastes more in line with his own.

** A reporter fights with her boss at the LA Times to run a story about the sex tape, and the writers on the Tonight Show try to pitch jokes about it to Jay Leno. Both groups are turned down because their superiors think it's not a big enough news story.

* FailureMontage:
** Milton and Rand shop the tape around to a collection of decreasingly reputable porn companies, and get shot down by all of them.
** Alicia has an extended one when trying to pitch the sex tape scandal story to the chief editor of ''The L.A. Times''. She eventually succeeds.

* 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.

* BadBoss: Well, bad employer. Tommy doesn't pay the guys who are working on his house, expecting them to pay for the building material out of their own pockets. When Rand goes back to get his toolkit after being fired, Tommy forces him off the property ''at gunpoint''.

* IgnoredExpert: Inverted. Pam is the only one in a room full of lawyers to point out the major flaw in their strategy of suing Bob Guccione, that it will draw ''much'' more attention to the tape and invoke his wrath and cause him to respond by giving him more publicity to the tape. Needless to say, that's exactly what happens.
-->Yeah... {{Beat}} You need to sue.

** Pam tells Tommy that the situation regarding the sex tape will be different for her than for him, correctly pointing out that where Tommy will be treated as a hero, she'll be treated like a slut.

* JerkassHasAPoint: Tommy is absolutely correct in that Bob Guccioni 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.

* DeaderThanDisco: HairMetal basically died the moment grunge burst on the scene and Motley Crue has sunk to irrelevancy during the time the series is set.

* 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.

** Milton and Rand shop the tape around to a collection of decreasingly reputable porn companies, and gets shot down by all of them.

* AbsenteeActor: Rand, played by Seth Rogen, is missing from the fifth and sixth episodes even though Rogen is third billed in the series and his character was responsible for the tape getting out in the first place.

* BrokenAce: Tommy was a rock superstar in the 1980s, but after hair metal fell out of fashion in the early 1990s in favor of grunge, Tommy isn't nearly as famous as he used to be. It's clear that he's aware of this and is somewhat bitter about it.

* OnlySaneMan: Pamela Anderson is the only one to really realize how disastrous the sex tape will be as well as how the strategy of suing people for distributing it will only make things worse. Tommy brushes the impact off, and Rand and Milton are too caught up in their greed to realize the damage they are doing.

* LongList: The private investigator asks Tommy Lee if anyone has a grudge against him, and he comes up with a long list of fellow musicians [[NoodleIncident and for some reason John Stamos]].

* BingeMontage: Downplayed; after opening the safe, Rand uses the money found therein (and the money he gets from pawning the jewelry and guns also found therein) to pay his bills before blowing some of it on alcohol and getting wasted.

** 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...

* StupidCrooks: 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.

** For Rand, he's stuck living with his ex Erica and her girlfriend, and is in the process of being kicked out. He is found by the Butchie loan shark once they discover that the sex tape has gotten out and is forced to pay back the money he is owned. Rand tries to extort it out of Tommy Lee, but Tommy gives him an epic TheReasonYouSuck speech before Tommy burns the money rather than give it to him. He's completely abandoned by Miltie who is living it up in Amsterdam. Unable to pay back the money, Butchie forces him to work for him and collect money from other derelict clients. Rand reveals his role in stealing the sex tape to Erica, who promptly throws him and and condemns him for violating Pam and Tommy's rights. It ends with Rand beating up the derelict client, and admitting he deserves all the crappy stuff that has happened to him.