ZELLWEGER SPINS DOPPELGÄNGER

TRUE CRIME SERIES SPOOFS BROADCAST JOURNALISM SHOW

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The Thing About Pam (2022) is a satire of a true crime story starring Renee Zellweger in a facial prosthetic and a body suit.

In this limited television series, the NBC production crews deconstruct the wrongful conviction of Russ Faria.

A voiceover is provided by NBC broadcast journalist Keith Morrison in a spoof of his NBC true crime show, Dateline. These intertextual references recur throughout the narrative.

Zellweger introduces her character Pam Hupp as a Missouri suburban entrepreneur raising money for her family in any which way she can, such as flipping real estate.

The constant slurping on a supersized big chill drink sets the tone for a kind of non-cholent walk through the true crime story that begins with sprinkling everything with the same Christmas magic dust that Santa Clause uses to sneak down chimneys on Christmas Eve.

Then there is a giant bean bag chair that Pam flops down into ever so briefly to take on the appearance of an elf in Santa’s workshop only after being portrayed as awkwardly overweight as a result of continuously slurping in the sugar from the corner store fountain drink.

The talented Zellweger is only able to pull off the sloth-like character with assistance from the hair and make-up and wardrobe departments, and perhaps also the special effects department, after her Oscar winning performance as Judy Garland a few years ago, in Judy (2019).

Director Adam Kane fittingly takes on the black humor motif in sync with the flippant way the Missouri housewife and entrepreneur treats others as mere pawns in play to her growing fortune.

The continuous use of a music score to bump up the suspense of the scenes underscores the magic along with Christmas home movie tricks, such as carrying bags suddenly appearing and the film speed being accelerated.

Kane has some inventive camera shots that straddle the production between a limited television series genre and a feature film genre. Creativity is also evident in some transitions from scene to scene. 

The cast has also been carefully chosen to support Zellweger’s Pam as opposed to Zellweger’s Judy or Bridget Jones characters.

The first part of the script deals with the justice system and how the wrongfully convicted end up in prison.

Pam becomes a convincing witness for the prosecution of the victim’s husband even though everything points to Pam as the real murderer.

Judy Greer, who plays the County Prosecutor, shows how the stereotypes and small town biases blind the justice system participants. Then career aspirations get in the way of admitting that mistakes have been made along the way.

County Prosecutors are elected in the State of Missouri. And the director’s camera shows how the pressures of reelection prevents everyone from seeing the truth.

The script also explains how the court can play double standards with the rules of evidence in a kind of willfully blind one way track to convictions, even though the accused are considered innocent by law until proven guilty, and can only be convicted when there is no doubt as to their guilt.

The satire is also infused with a kind of suspension of disbelief that occurs in gaming as the accused’s alibi is his involvement in a weekly board game involving participants assuming the characters of wizards and trolls.

Zellweger then shows how Pam becomes a pariah in the community even after Russ is convicted, with many people still being suspicious of Pam’s involvement.

The series does not end there, although mercilessly containing only 6 episodes, since the Pam character becomes a bit repetitious after four episodes while the plot thereafter becomes driven mainly by the evolving guess work about how this true crime story will ultimately end.

The Thing About Pam is streaming on NBC.