The Truth on Pam Hupp: “The Thing About Pam” is a six-episode documentary-series on NBC telling the story of how Pam Hupp killed Betsy Faria

My dad typed in the channel number for NBC’s nightly news, only to reveal a bloody and gruesome scene of a woman stabbing her neck with a ballpoint pen — not exactly the informative piece I was looking for.

It turns out that we were watching the season finale of “The Thing About Pam” produced by NBC — and not brought to you by KSHB — and to say I was intrigued is an understatement.

The show follows self-proclaimed businesswoman and mother of two Pam Hupp who has murderous tendencies and is wrapped up in a coverup scheme to preserve her monetary value. And get this — it’s based on a true story.

But as I started actually watching the show, the dramatic tone that I witnessed on my introduction was not a testament to the rest of the other five episodes. The overarching tone is comedic and lighthearted, with a witty narrator and exaggerated scenes that are pulled straight from the sensational mind of Pam. 

I did enjoy the unique narrative twist, different from any other crime show I’d seen, but at times it feels almost mocking of the situation that happened in real life. There could be an extremely emotional scene, and the narrator pops in to make a joke and then transition to the next scene.

This issue sort of resolved itself as the show went on. The tone became a bit more serious and the writers definitely learned when and where to use the comedic timing of the narrator in certain outlandish scenes.

Though the tone was never truly consistent throughout the show, the outlandish story itself is what kept me around to see the ending.

The execution of the show overall is pretty average, with no real hook that keeps the watcher around and nothing unique with the visuals or the writing. But after the first two-ish episodes, the intrigue sets in and the story keeps you emotionally invested and hoping for justice to prevail.

Speaking of justice, the character Joel Schwartz — a defense attorney portrayed by Josh Duhamel — is by far the best thing about this show. I have to say that his background in soap operas made his performance convincing and extremely entertaining. Everything from the way he carries himself to the annunciation of his dialogue to simply the writing of his character is perfect.

Not to mention that the scenes with him and his assistant attorney Nate Swanson were some of my favorites. Their on-screen chemistry and back-and-forth was absolutely captivating and really brought me into the story. It almost felt like I was sitting with them in their office trying to piece together evidence strong enough to prove Pam guilty.

Besides Joel Schwartz, another character portrayed well is Pam, played by Renée Zellweger. She had a combination of a Southern drawl and an emphasis on physicality and facial expression. She did a great job at making the character truly hateable, so, again, hats off to the writers. The only thing that kept me from being completely in love with the character design was my automatic attribution of Zellweger to Vanessa from the “Bee Movie.”

There are a lot of things that I do like about Pam and how the writers made her, like the “I Love Dogs” sticker on the bumper of her car. The sticker is used ironically a handful of times throughout the show, as she displays aggression towards dogs in general.

This sort of indirect characterization only happened twice that I picked up, but is actually something I wish I could’ve seen more in the show. It would’ve been a nice key to tie all of the episodes together and continually reinforce her hidden, grotesque character.

Though, the show does emphasize several other things that never really pan out, leaving me confused as to where I missed a piece. In the first episode, Pam buys her signature drink — a large soda with a pump of cherry flavoring — from the gas station store she frequents. The narrator emphasized the receipt she used to purchase the drink in a very particular fashion. 

It led me to believe that her receipt would be used as evidence against her somehow, but really the statement was referring to receipts in general, as the timestamp on one would be used to convict someone else of murder.

In general, clarity issues are present throughout the show but are often resolved or can be figured out by the viewer at some point.

One of my biggest grievances was simply the conclusion of the show. In order to sum up the events that followed the eventual conviction of Pam for murder, clips of the characters doing next to nothing — like walking down stairs or taking a phone call — and then looking up at the camera ran across the screen with short sentences of text explaining their situations. 

I’ve seen this lazy-looking ending too many times. I just wish that there was more creativity in the final summary of the aftermath of the conviction, as the show likely won’t receive a second season to undo the mistakes of the first one, as it’s been promoted as a limited series.

Still, the show was overall worth its six-hour watch time. Being exposed to the crazy story of Pam Hupp is something I likely would have never been exposed to if it weren’t for good old NBC.