National Endowment of the Parts: Pamela Anderson's New "Documentary" Series Pam, Girl on the Loose on E!

Pamela Anderson has a new reality show on E! that, God love her, she actually refers to without irony over the opening as an “eight-part documentary series,” as if it were something funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and hosted by Ted Koppel. Of course, the fact that the fully endowed Pam: Girl on the Loose is wedged between the Playboy-bombshell-wannabe series The Girls Next Door and the L.A. tanning-salon reality series Sunset Tan does confer upon the 40-year-old Baywatch/Playmate alum a sort of boobular gravitas that commands whatever passes for respect in the pantheon of wank-off icons. And with the show’s style of washed-out videography, Pam’s random acts of nakedness are given a safe-for-airing, still-sexy gloss that looks better than that disconcerting technique of fuzzing out nipples on other shows, which always makes it seem like they’re melting.

So, yes, Pam has still got it, and can make narrating segments while twirling in a bathtub look like the most natural segue in the world. And though we’re made to feel that we should all be lucky that Pam has deigned to go the follow-me-camera-boys! way of such reality — ahem, docu-series — pioneers as Nick and Jessica, Ozzy, the late Anna Nicole, Hulk Hogan and Bobby Brown, the more likely response is that this kind of justify-my-life project was probably inevitable for someone who admittedly seems to blossom as a personality in the presence of lights, cameras and oglers. Ms. Anderson has her rules, however, and the one we’re meant to gasp at is that the children are off-limits for the show. “You will NOT see the kids,” she declares to the celebreality-addicted viewer. Love the hard line you’re taking on the sanctity of famous mommyhood, Pammy, but I’m pretty sure a certain large contingent of your fans don’t really want to see your kids, either. Her puppies, on the other hand, certainly get a workout.