5 out of 5

Created by: Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski

covers season 1: The People v. O.J. Simpson

I mean, holy god, people, where do you go from here?  I don’t feel like this show was recognized as American Crime Story – a crime-focused anthology much in the vein of American Horror Story, explaining Falchuk and Murphy as producers – though thank Christ you don’t feel a moment of their lickety-winky-split hyperactive story-telling style here – it was recognized as the O.J. show.  And maybe this trial won’t mean much some years from now; maybe it doesn’t mean much now.  It didn’t really mean much to me when it happened, but was I so engrossed in the show because it filled in details I peripherally absorbed at the time, giving it more weight?  I don’t know.  Regardless, knowing that this was based on real events, and witnessing how well the show walked the line between Guilty / Not Guilty, it’s hard not to consider how massive this was – if not from a race perspective, than from this being one of the first moments that it felt like media directly influenced the results.  One can make an argument that that stems back to old school Hollywood, and for sure, there’ve (probably) always been hands diddling with public perception, but this really was an all-eyes-on affair that began to pave the way to reality shows and Facebook updates.

So back to my question: what do you follow this season up with?  (The answer is Hurricane Katrina, apparently, so we’ll see if the appeal remains or if a True Detective season 2 womp womp occurs.)  But: if I sit back for a moment, and step away from the “this really happened” aspect of the show, I must say, it would not have worked without the impeccable casting, and acting, and balanced writing and paced but exciting directing.  Maybe the material was so meaty it couldn’t help but be a win, but the show wasn’t the sensationalist clap-trap it could have been: I really felt like it dug pretty deeply into how manipulative and tormenting the whole affair was for everyone.  Cuba Gooding Jr. does play O.J. rather brusquely (though perhaps that was true to his behavior at the time, no idea), but even his “character” gives us moments of humanity, despite, yeah, the overwhelming sensation the he’s guilty… which the show doesn’t avoid, of course, but more plays to the way that, to my suburban-neighborhood-white-kid existence at the time, it seemed we all felt.  That this trial was ridiculous, that the answer was obvious.  Again, American Crime’s method of navigating this was brilliant: it doesn’t deny it, but it finds a way to justify our principles positions and emotions through and through.

And maybe next season will be a bomb.  And maybe if you were an O.J. addict, this show didn’t give you anything new.  But I think this is one of those rare occasions where the “real” quality of the story required the creators to ground it more than usual, or rather that the outlandishness can be presented with a straight face – no TV padding needed – because it really happened.

What I’m trying to say is that this was amazing TV.  I can’t fully say it would have been as such without the history to prop it up, but I can say that it would have been difficult to craft something as compelling without that resource.

The show brews a discussion in my head about how this trial changed the world.  To be able to boil something down to base elements which can trigger that is worthwhile; to do it and have it serve as gripping entertainment at the same time… is something too meta for me to effectively explain.  The five star rating will have to be enough.