‘The Thing About Pam’ Episode 1 Recap and Review: “She’s a Good Friend”

NBC’s limited series The Thing About Pam stars Academy Award winner Renee Zellweger (nearly unrecognizable in a fatsuit) as convicted murderer Pam Hupp. Based not only on a true story but a podcast of the same name, The Thing About Pam recalls the events surrounding the murder of Betsy Faria and the wrongful conviction of her husband, Russ.

Episode one – “She’s a Good Friend” – opens with narration by NBC’s own Dateline correspondent, Keith Morrison. Jumping right into the murder without any leadup, Betsy’s shown lying dead on the floor. Her husband, Russ (Glenn Fleshler), is on the phone with 911. He tells the operator he just got home from a friend’s house and discovered his wife has killed herself.

Cue an odd montage of Pam going on about what a wonderful person she herself is. She’s a businesswoman, a loving wife, and an amazing woman.

So it begins…December 27, 2011. Pam phones Betsy (Katy Mixon) and right off the bat she’s pushy. Betsy informs her she’s good; she’s with her family and she’s happy. Pam points out she’s around a lot of germs and insists she should come and pick her up. Pam seems to practically be bullying Betsy into submission, telling her she’ll come over and take care of her. Pam also says Russ should just stay at his friend’s house. When Betsy protests Pam insists, claiming she doesn’t mind driving.

The time’s now 4:04pm as we go through the day and the events immediately prior to Betsy’s death. Her husband’s at a hardware store while Pam’s at a convenience store, getting her pop and buying a necklace. All of this is caught on camera.

At 5:30pm, Pam shows up to retrieve Betsy from her mom’s house but she’s not ready to leave. She’s having fun playing a game and Pam insists she’ll sit and wait.

Meanwhile, Russ is with his friends and texts Betsy. She informs him Pam showed up at her mom’s and will be taking her home. As Pam’s backing out of the driveway, Betsy’s mom, Janet (Suanne Spoke), comes running out saying she didn’t get a goodbye hug. Pam seems to be in a hurry and tells her next time. As they drive away, Keith Morrison chimes in, “It’s hard to tell when a goodbye will turn out to be important. Who would ever think this goodbye would turn out to be forever?”

Pam seems to be in a hurry to drive Betsy home, so much so Betsy asks her if she’ll slow down. Pam plays it off as if she didn’t know she was speeding. Pam changes the subject and suggests they watch a movie together when they get back to Betsy’s. Betsy’s simply too tired but once again Pam won’t back off. She suggests just a show then.

Betsy tells Pam she and her kids wanted her to know that Russ has been so sweet. She admits she knows Pam isn’t the biggest fan of Russ. Betsy becomes emotional, confessing she knows Pam will be there to help her girls when… She doesn’t get to finish that statement because they pull into her driveway at 7:04pm.

Pam says she has to call her husband to let him know she’s at Betsy’s; she tells her they need to leave a message together. Keith Morrison narrates the situation, saying, “Those little things like timestamps for an alibi… The question is will it stand?”

A short while later, Pam’s now alone sitting in her car as she leaves a message for Betsy letting her know she’s worried about her and wonders if she (Betsy) is mad at her or ignoring her on purpose. Pam calls Betsy’s mom, acting concerned she can’t get a hold of Betsy. She thinks Betsy might be mad at her, adding to her lie by claiming Betsy wanted her to stay and watch a movie but she insisted Betsy needed to rest. Betsy’s mother is worried she might be “in a bad space again.”

9:01pm. Russ leaves his friend’s house while Keith Morrison asks, “Leaving a friend’s house, do we notice the time? Should we?”

Russ stops off at an Arby’s before going home. As Russ throws his receipt on the floorboard of his car the camera zooms in on it, taking note of the date and time (9:09pm). He arrives home at 9:38pm and discovers not only is his dog locked outside on the front porch but his wife Betsy is dead on the floor.

Once again we’re treated to his 911 call and we hear him say, “My wife killed herself.” The operator asks how she hurt herself. He states she’s got a knife in her neck and her arms have been cut.

He’s still on the phone with the operator when the police show up and ask if there’s anyone else in the house. An officer escorts Russ outside.

More police arrive as Russ is sitting outside on the grass. An officer takes off Russ’s jacket to collect it as potential evidence. The officer then wraps him in a blanket as Russ looks at his dog through tear-stained eyes. Keith Morrison points out Russ’s beloved dog had been left outside the house.

As lead detective Ryan McCarrick (Mac Brandt) and Captain Mike Lang (Adam David Thompson) get to work inside the house, McCarrick points out one of her socks is partly hanging off while Lang notes there are signs of a struggle. Plus, the knife hanging out of her neck doesn’t seem like a suicide to them.

Right away they assume the husband did it. (It’s a well-known fact in a murder investigation the spouse/partner is always a suspect.) They both feel his 911 call was over the top. Another officer points out that Russ didn’t have a single drop of blood on him, but also states he could have washed it off. Detective McCarrick tells the officer to check every inch of the bathrooms and laundry to locate where he washed it off.

Inside the house, a detective notices some throw pillows are in a weird spot while outside Russ is being led into the back of a police car. He asks where he’s going and an officer responds, “We just need you to come down to the station and answer some questions about your wife.”

As the car drives off, the detective asks the young officer how his first homicide’s going. He admits he thought it would be harder to solve. It seems the police have blinders on, and Russ appears to have gone from number one suspect to “it’s obvious he did it” status.

While Pam and her husband, Mark (Sean Bridgers), are talking it’s obvious she’s freshly showered as she’s sporting wet hair. She’s complaining Janet got Betsy’s daughter a giant beanbag chair that must have cost a thousand dollars. The whole time Pam’s talking, she’s ironing. She suddenly stops because she burned what she was working on – a $20 bill. Apparently, she was ironing money that whole time. Pam puts that $20 in a literal piggy bank that says “Pam’s $$$”. (It’s worth noting the “s” in Pam’s is written backward and so are all three dollar signs).

Russ is taken to an interrogation room and questioned. They ask how long he and Betsy have been married and he answers 12 years. The detective suggests they must have had their problems and Russ admits they’ve had their bumps; they were even separated at one point. Russ confesses they didn’t get along for a bit, but then they found this new church and worked it out.

Detective Merkel (Jesse Scott Egan) fires off some questions including a demand to know their pastor’s name. After Russ tells him, the detective asks if he goes to Morningstar. He says he knows Pastor Mike and that he’s a great guy. The other detective continues the questioning and asks if the family gets along. Russ mentions they found out their daughter Lily stole some money from Betsy’s mom.

The detective wonders if Betsy was sick or depressed enough to kill herself. Russ reveals she had cancer. After explaining how the cancer spread to her liver, he asks if he’s allowed to use the restroom.

Keith Morrison’s back again and asks viewers, “Look at him and decide: do you see a killer? DA Leah Askey is about to decide for herself.”

Captain Lang calls DA Askey to deliver the news there’s been a homicide – a big one. He says the victim was stabbed, “I don’t know 20, maybe 60 times.” (Big difference in 20 and 60.) Lang also lets her know they have the husband for questioning right now. Askey (Judy Greer) informs him she’ll be there first thing in the morning and asks if he read him his Miranda rights. By the look on Lang’s face, the answer’s definitely no. However, he tells her yes before suddenly asking her to hold on and running off to the interrogation room.

Lang bursts through the door signaling to the other detective to step outside the room. After stepping back into the room, McCarrick eyes the camera while telling Russ to bear with him, it’s been a long day, but somehow he forgot to run over his rights with him. As he does so he keeps eyeing the camera. Russ cuts him off, questioning if he’s being arrested. He wonders if he needs a lawyer. The detective tells him, “Only if you did something wrong.”

Pam’s lying in bed the next morning when her phone rings. It’s a police officer calling to inform her of Betsy’s death. She lets the officer know her husband’s working but she’ll be home.

We see officers show up at Betsy’s mom’s house, then as Pam’s combing her wet hair her doorbell rings. Before answering the door, she grabs a tissue to begin her act. When she opens the door, she’s greeted by officers – not the detectives. Pam immediately starts questioning them about what happened to Betsy. They inform her it’s an active investigation so they aren’t at liberty to discuss details.

Back in interrogation, detectives inform Russ that so far they’ve found 52 stab wounds; he’s not going to be able to convince them it’s a suicide. Russ is in shock and can’t believe his wife was murdered. “You think I did this?” asks Russ, suddenly realizing the police think he’s responsible. They ask him to go over his story one more time and specifically ask who took Betsy home. He gives them Pam’s name.

Meanwhile back at Pam’s house, she goes over her typical nights with the two officers…working at a women’s shelter, visiting her mom who has Alzheimer’s. After gaining their sympathy she lets them know that on top of that she’s been helping with Betsy by taking her to chemo appointments.

One officer circles back to the events of the prior evening. She recalls they got to Betsy’s at 6:30pm and while still in the car they left her husband a voicemail. The officer says her timeline doesn’t add up; it must have been later because the drive alone was 30 minutes. Pam tries to cover up her mistake by blaming her confusion on an accident at work in which she hit her head. Weirdly, she goes on to say she has a great memory but when she’s asked how long she and Betsy sat in her car and talked, Pam replies, “Gosh, I don’t – I don’t know, I’m not sure. I don’t remember.”

The questioning gets even stranger when she tells them Betsy stayed at her mom’s all weekend but didn’t have any clothes with her. When they ask why she stayed at her mom’s, Pam tosses in the tidbit that the house is Russ’s and he wouldn’t let Betsy put her name on the title. They ask, again, why she was staying at her mom’s. Pam claims Betsy didn’t like the drive and didn’t want to go home.

Back in the interrogation room, Russ is describing Betsy and Pam’s friendship. He’s talking about what a good person Pam is, unaware she’s telling the cops he and Betsy aren’t separated now but that would change because they have been separated six or seven times. She informs them Russ “does a lot of pot” and smokes in the house with her cancer and all. Pam claims it’s because of Russ’s temper that Betsy’s daughter Mariah moved in with Betsy’s mom. The officer asks if he was ever violent with Betsy. Pam says he was mean to her verbally.

As she elaborates on her lies, we’re treated to clips of whatever version she’s regurgitating. She now claims Russ’s car was in the driveway when she dropped Betsy off. One officer asks if Pam went inside the house and she says for a bit. The other officer points out she already said she didn’t go inside. She then says Betsy asked her to. Pam, not very good at keeping her story straight, alters her story and claims she walked her to the door because she found it strange Russ’s car was there and no lights were on.

They ask to see her phone and as they are checking it she’s willingly giving up too much information that they didn’t ask for, including what she ate when she got home.

She suggests they should look for a letter Betsy was going to send to her (Pam) about Russ putting a pillow over her face. She begins describing this bizarre story about Russ playing this game where he would put a pillow over her face and say, “This is what it’s going to be like when you die.”

Russ adamantly declares to the police he did not do this. They insist there’s too much evidence against him. They try to use Pastor Mike and his faith as a weapon against him, wondering what God would think. Russ doesn’t budge. He tells them they would know he didn’t do this.

As the officers are getting in their car Pam asks if she should be worried about Russ. They inform her they’re keeping him at the station.

DA Leah Askey shows up just as Russ is getting on his knees to pray. Lang insists Russ will break soon. She replies, “You were promoted to homicide supervisor, what, a month ago?” He corrects her and says six months. She thinks it shows. Askey asks for the autopsy report and wonders why he still hasn’t asked for a lawyer.

Pam shows up at Betsy’s mom’s house and presents her with a gift. Pam claims she bought it for her because it made her think of Betsy. This is an obvious lie as the gift is the necklace with a heart-shaped pendant we saw her purchase at the convenience store before Betsy was murdered. Janet wonders who would do this and Pam jumps at the chance to point the finger at Russ. Pam tells her the police are holding him and that they came to her house asking all kinds of questions about him. Janet insists he would never do this.

Episode one ends with Keith Morrison saying, “She’s family. She’s there for you. She’s your neighbor. She’s your friend from church. She’s the one you never see coming…but that’s the thing about Pam.”

The Thing About Pam Episode One Review:

Fans of true crime, whether it be episodes of Dateline or podcasts, will either love this new series or hate it – there won’t be any middle-of-the-road reactions. Delving into actual events that inspired episodes of Dateline as well as the podcast the series is named after, The Thing About Pam attempts to build the case against Pamela Hupp while focusing on the immediate rush to judgment surrounding Betsy’s husband, Russ. The limited series mirrors the podcast, complete with narration by Dateline‘s Keith Morrison.

Here’s the thing most true crime fans aren’t into…gimmicky stories and corniness when it comes to a brutal crime. With that said, The Thing About Pam episode one has a difficult time walking that fine line of not giving in to a caricatured version of a villain. The series turns some of the investigation’s real-life participants into bizarre, dim-witted characters who seem a little too inept to be believable.

That said, the first episode had a lot of ground to cover. Episode two might do a better job of digging into the minutia and working toward a less irreverent tone, given the horrific murder at the heart of the story.

• The Thing About Pam Episode 2 “She’s a Helper” Recap
• The Thing About Pam “She’s a Star Witness” Recap
• The Thing About Pam Episode 4 “She’s a Loving Daughter” Recap
• The Thing About Pam Episode 5 “She’s Not Who You Think She Is” Recap
• The Thing About Pam Episode 6 “She’s a Killer” Recap