Pamela Anderson has high hopes for ‘Stacked’

Pamela Anderson is embarking on some career resuscitation.

No, she’s not taking a bunk in the “Surreal Life” house.

Rather, she’s mocking her own tabloid-inflated image in a TV sitcom.

In “Stacked,” premiering tonight at 8:30 on Fox (KAYU-28 in Spokane), Anderson plays a sweet but vacuous party girl who decides that she’s had enough hangovers and bad dates.

Looking to change her life, she wanders into a bookstore called “The Stacks,” where one of the dweeby owners – who can’t help but notice her considerable, um, assets – offers her a job.

“It’s a bit of a stretch,” jokes Anderson. “But it’s fun to kind of poke fun at yourself.”

In tonight’s episode, Anderson’s character laments her bad choices in boyfriends. At a bar one evening, two guys were hitting on her, she says. Guy No. 1 was kind and considerate and had a good job, and guy No. 2 was “drunk, covered in tattoos and licking my face.”

“Guess which one I leave with?”

“And that’s true,” says series creator Steve Levitan. “That’s how she met (ex-husband) Tommy Lee. He came up to her and licked her face.”

Through her failed marriage to rocker Lee and near marriage to Kid Rock, Anderson, 37, has become a tabloid staple and the poster girl for bad relationships.

But “Stacked” is not a down-market comedy, Levitan says.

“I think people have certain expectations that this is going to be something really kitschy,” he says. “You don’t necessarily picture Pamela Anderson in something like ‘Frasier,’ but that’s what we’re hoping for.”

Says Anderson: “I’m just glad I’m doing a real show and not a reality show. To me, the people who watch reality shows are the same people who read the supermarket tabloids.

“It’s so great to have a real job and work with real writers and real actors.”