7.5/10. They did it, ladies and gentlemen! The first genuinely good episode of this show! I was told that things picked up when the focus turned to Johnny Cochran, Marcia Clark, and Chris Darden, and I’m glad to see that’s borne out, as those characters can boast the three best actors on the show (thus far, at least) and the most interesting character motivations.
True to the title of the episode, race factored in heavily here, and maybe I’ve just been primed by the superior Made in America O.J. documentary, but I appreciated how ACS translated that vital and important part of this trial into personal stakes. It basically turned race-infused events in Johnny and Chris’s pasts as motivating their actions here. Sure, there’s some poetic license and embellishment, but it works in the way that TV works, so I’m willing to give it a pass for the most part.
The opening scene with Johnny getting pulled over in 1982 is a little on the nose, but the actor pulled it off well, and it’s a harrowing thing to watch, especially when he goes from being calm and polite to getting angry when the cop starts talking to his daughters. It creates nice subtext when Johnny says he’s “seen this kind of thing before” in terms of cops going down the wrong path and “making a better case.” I don’t know if Johnny’s own experiences were truly the origin of the “the cops planted evidence” defense in the OJ trial, but it works well as setting up a character’s motivation.
The same goes for Chris Darden talking about the way he felt judged unfairly, even leered at, because of suspicions that he was an Affirmative Action admit. There’s a sense in which, ironically for somebody trying to put away O.J., he does not want to be seen as someone who got to where he is because of the color of his skin, but rather as somebody who earned his seat at the table on his own merits. That causes him to take risks and perhaps even be rattled by all the racial tumult in and around the case.
And what’s really interesting is the way he essentially gets it from both sides. Johnny and the defense writ large are, charitably, pragmatic, and less-charitably, cynical, about the racial elements of the case. They’re happy to stage OJ’s house, or intimate that Chris is an Uncle Tom, or do whatever else they can to make this trial about black and white rather than the murder of two people. It’s clearly disorienting, to say the least.
But he also gets it from his own team. What’s incredibly interesting is, again, the relationship with Marcia. On the one hand, she clearly uses Chris in certain situations – the opening, Furman – because of the color of his skin and the “optics” of it. What’s aggravating is the way she deflects it, pretends that Chris is making too much of fuss or pretending that she doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he raises these issues. There’s a certain sense of obliviousness to her and to Gil about the racial component to this case. The scene with Robert Morse and his rich buddies gossiping about the case, but waiting until “The Help” is out of the room speaks to the same idea. It’s the quiet ugliness of thinking your own world extends to everyone else’s.
The cinch, however, is that Marcia really does believe in Chris. She really does pitch for him to take over as co-prosecutor when Bill suffers his heart attack. She believes in Mr. Darden. She is subject to the same biases and blindspots as Gil, but if anything, she’s less cynical about it than anyone, willing to play to the jury because of Chris’s race, but genuinely wanting him at the table for his talents and abilities as a lawyer apart from it. It’s the first bit of genuine complexity in this show, and it’s welcome.
Not everything in the episode is perfect. Cuba Gooding Jr. trying to spit out lines about OJ’s own complicated relationship with his race comes off pretty stilted and awkward, and I think it speaks to the ways in which only certain actors can overcome the writing on this show. And there’s certain points – Marcia complaining about the staging of OJ’s house for instance – where the show again underlines points the audience should be able to understand on its own a little too hard.
But for once, the show seized on a theme, filtered it through the genuine real life events of the case, and managed to use it to progress the story, develop the characters, and add some potent social commentary to boot. I’m as surprised as anyone, but this was a quality episode of television.
The thing at the end is so creepy
Shout by DeletedBlockedParent2016-12-23T13:36:32Z
Evidence doesn't win the day. Jurors go with the narrative that makes sense. We are here to tell a story. Our job is to tell that story better than the other side tells theirs.