Who is the real Angelyne?

That’s question that is at the heart of Peacock’s new miniseries, Angelyne.  The obvious answer is that Angelyne (played, quite well, by Emmy Rossum) is a Los Angeles icon who, in the 80s and 90s, was known for having her image plastered on billboards across the city.  The billboards usually featured a provocative picture of Angelyne, her name, and a phone number that one could call.  Billboards, of course, are used for advertising and Angelyne was advertising herself.  What service did Angelyne provide?  She provided the service of being a celebrity that people might actually run into while walking or driving around the city.  She drove her pink Corvette across Los Angeles, waved at tourists, and sold merchandise to her fans.  She even twice ran for governor.  Before the Kardashians and the explosion of social media, Angelyne was famous for being famous.  And when people asked who Angelyne was before she became Angelyne, she replied that she had always been Angelyne.  Sometimes, she said she was someone who had come to Los Angeles from another state.  Sometimes, she said that she was a literal angel, sent down to spread peace and help people believe in themselves.  Other times, she suggested that she was an extra-terrestrial.  Perhaps her most honest response was that she was whatever the person looking at her wanted to be.  People saw Angelyne and they projected their own feelings onto her.

Filmed in a manner that combines faux documentary footage with flashbacks, each of Angelyne‘s five episodes focuses on someone from Angelyne’s past as they talk about their role in Angelyne’s enigmatic life.  Often times, they seem to be struggling to come to terms with the fact that they’re obsessed with someone about whom they actually know very little.  A smarmy reporter (Alex Karpovsky) and a twerpy filmmaker (Max Allen) both investigate Angelyne’s past and it’s hard not to resent their efforts to bring her down to Earth.  (The reporter, at one point, actually says that Angelyne lost her right to privacy when she ran for governor, as if anyone seriously believed Angelyne was going to be the next governor of California.  Seriously, most viewers will want to smack him.)  Cory Hunt (Philip Ettinger), the lead singer of a band that Angelyne was briefly a member of, tries to take credit for creating her persona but he’s never credible and Angelyne even interupts their flashbacks to say that he’s lying.  Wendy Wallace (played by Molly Ephraim) struggles to come to terms with the fact that her father, Harold (Martin Freeman), not only bankrolled Angelyne’s billboards but also neglected his family to “manage” Angelyne’s career.  Angelyne’s assistant, Rick (Hamish Linklater), devotes his life to supporting and protecting Angelyne but sometimes, even he has to take a break.

All of them get their chance to tell their story and, as played by Rossum, Angelyne gets to tell her story.  Not surprisingly, Angelyne’s story often differs from the stories being told about her.  Frequently, a flashback will come to a halt as soon as Angelyne announces, “That’s not what happened.”  When the twerpy filmmaker claims that he got Angelyne to admit the truth about who she was before she remade herself as Angelyne, Angelyne pops up to tell us that it never happened.  Even after the “truth” of Angelyne’s past has been revealed, Angelyne shows up to assure that the story isn’t true and, if it is true, it’s only halfway true and it’s impossible not to respect Angelyne’s refusal to accept or admit to being anyone other than a Los Angeles icon named Angelyne.  The miniseries suggests that Angelyne is someone who dealt with unimaginable pain and trauma by creating herself as almost a cartoon of what it means to be a celebrity.  The miniseries also suggests that, at the very least, Los Angeles should be thankful that she did.

In many ways, Angelyne feels like a superior companion piece to Hulu’s Pam & Tommy.  Both miniseries are about the curious nature of fame and the America’s bizarre celebrity culture.  The main difference is that while Pam & Tommy was thuddingly literal and featured Seth Rogen wandering around with that stupid mullet, Angelyne is stylish and imaginative and there’s not a mullet in sight.  Whereas Pam & Tommy struggled to justify its existence, Angelyne features a scene where the title character flies a UFO over Los Angeles.  Whereas Pam & Tommy presented Hugh Hefner as being a benevolent father figure, Angelyne features a scene where Angelyne tells off a smug Hefner and informs him that there’s nothing his magazine can do for her that she can’t do for herself.  For that scene alone, Angelyne deserves to be seen.