NBC's true-crime drama, The Thing About Pam, ended its six-episode run in a thrilling finale, which finally saw the story of the murderer and master manipulator Pamela Hupp come to an end. Based on real events, this episode concluded with Pam's (Renee Zellweger) sentencing after she pushed her luck too far.
Previously in The Thing About Pam, you have seen the dynamic sociopath conjure up lies and scenarios in an instant to evade every shred of doubt about her in Betsy Faria's (Katy Mixon) murder case.
However, with Russ Faria's (Glenn Flesher) retrial and subsequent Dateline coverage, she slowly started blowing her cover, culminating in a finale where she is finally caught in her web of lies and negligence.
However, viewers may still be trying to figure out how the clever Pam gave herself away. Read on to find out what happened at the end of Episode 6 of The Thing About Pam.
*Major spoilers ahead
The Thing About Pam ending: The limit to lucky escapes
In the final episode of The Thing About Pam, Pamela tries to outdo her previous efforts of winning back everyone's loyalty by plotting something much bigger than she had done before. She planned to involve a random stranger by deluding them into thinking it is a Dateline production and paying them, and framing them as an associate of Russ Faria, hence proving Russ is the murderer.
After a failed attempt, and all signs pointing to her failure, she pushed on with her plan by involving a mentally and physically disabled man named Louis Gumpenberger. Despite her failed attempt at getting him to say what she wanted, she shot him five times and, with a note, tried to prove that he was linked with Russ.
She claimed that he got into her car with a knife and later chased her inside the house, where she shot him in self-defense. However, a bit of negligence on her part ruined the plan and got her arrested instead.
Price of negligence: Pamela Hupp's downfall
Pam cooked up a sparsely convincing story that may have gotten her out of the situation if she had managed to clean up everything afterward. Almost in a foreshadow-like manner, the beginning scene in Pam's home showed her discussing murder novels and how criminals make one mistake that leads to their downfall. Pam made multiple.
A day after her testimony, she was police picked her up from her home and took Pam to the interrogation room. The lead detective in the case had figured out that Pam was the murderer by citing many proofs that Pam had forgotten to take care of.
First of all, the man Pam killed was disabled, and hence it was impossible for him to physically do the things Pam claimed he did. Secondly, by tracking Pam's cellphone, the police figured that she was near the dead man's home an hour before the murder.
Finally, they found currency notes with adjacent serial numbers to those Pam had in the dead man's pocket. On realizing she was trapped, Pam tried to kill herself with a pen in the police washroom.
But the police reached in time to save her. With all this evidence, the police figured out that Pam had lured Gumpenberger into her home to frame Russ and kill him.
Pam pleaded an Alford guilty plea, not confessing to the crime but accepting the evidence. She was sentenced to life, ending her sociopath spree.
The six-episode run ended in an intriguing finale. All the episodes of The Thing About Pam are now streaming on Peacock.