The 7 greatest things about the brilliant, campy 'The People vs. O.J. Simpson'
When Ryan Murphy, the guy behind "Glee", "Nip/Tuck" and "American Horror Story", announced that a spin-off of Horror Story would focus on the most high-profile crime of the 20th century, it seemed like a home run in the making. About five minutes into the premier earlier this month, it was clear our expectations were too low. This was a grand slam.
We should note that the show, "American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson", airs on FX, a FOX-owned network, but that fact can't enhance our love any more because, frankly, nothing could. This is a "get excited on Tuesday morning because the show's on tonight" thing, a phenomenon I haven't experienced since "Lost". (And new episodes of "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse", because if I have to watch Minnie's Bowtique for the 500th time, I'm going to have to create a "hard liquor" Mousekatool.)
In short, the whole thing is television perfection. Here are seven reasons why:
1. John Travolta
You might think it's easy to select the definitive Travolta role from his 40-year career: Tony Manero, Danny Zuko, Vincent Vega, Chili Palmer and the whatever-he-was in "Battlefield Earth". But no. No, my friends. That was all a prelude to his expressionless, closed-lipped, deep-gazed representation of Robert Shapiro. Travolta commands the screen with such absurd panache that you can't tell whether he's in on the joke or treating this like his "Citizen Kane". Either way, he nails Shapiro so much that it makes me want to sign up for LegalZoom.
2. Travolta's makeup
Though Travolta has done plenty of unrelated facial preparation to play Shapiro, it's the makeup artists who are the true stars. It's like they used super glue, double-sided tape and the silver paint worn by the Tin Man to turn John into 1994 Shapiro. And I mean that as the highest compliment.
3. The over-the-top acting is great, but the real acting is just as good
First off, kudos to the makeup people, again, who made Sarah Paulson a spitting image of Marcia Clark and Courtney B. Vance into Johnnie Cochran. But maybe they seem so real because they're acting the hell out of this show. They balance the perfect amount of solemnity and camp while portraying the central figures of the trial of the century.
All awards shows are inherently stupid and meaningless, but since they exist it'd be a crime if both didn't win whatever award they'd be eligible for at the Emmys. If they're robbed of that "honor," maybe that's what the next season of "American Crime Story" could be about.
Paulson, in particular, commands the screen every time she's on it, in addition to smoking more fake cigarettes in the first four hours than Don Draper did in the entire run of "Mad Men". Who knew Marcia Clark was fond of trips to flavor country? The rest of her team is also great. The guy who plays Chris Darden displays the perfect amount of intellect and showiness, while Bruce Greenwood turns down his usual acting smarm to perfectly play D.A. Gil Garcetti. There's surprising nuance in a lot of these performances, which is tough when you're delivering lines about how the last thing F. Lee Bailey (a tamped down Nathan Lane) won was a drinking contest.
4. The nostalgia
Drew Magary wrote a nice piece on Deadspin about how the show and all the O.J. nostalgia doesn't do it for him because he lived during its time and doesn't need a dramatization to reinforce what he watched live. I thought I was in the same boat -- I don't like fictionalized television shows or movies of recent events, much preferring documentaries. But the O.J story is a different animal.
There's something voyeuristic about it all. We think we know all that happened, but realize the machinations that were going on behind the scenes. The scenes are only based in reality, but it's fascinating to see Travolpiro come up with the idea of playing the race card. You'd probably forgotten how long it took Johnnie Cochran to come aboard the Dream Team. Seeing the cell The Juice (as David Schwimmer calls him at least 200 times throughout the show) stayed in during the trial is one of those things you realize you'd probably thought about a lot in 1994, making it jarring to see today, like you're seeing something you shouldn't.
I lived the O.J. saga, too, as much as any middle-schooler from suburban D.C. could, coming home from school to watch the trial on the special channel the local cable provider created specifically for the proceedings, reading about it every day in The Washington Post and poring through articles in a relic of the olden days called a "newsmagazine." (We were a Newsweek house.) I couldn't get enough then and I can't get enough now.
Yeah, I know everything that's been put out about the chase, but the dramatization about the reaction of both sets of lawyers, O.J.'s family, Kardashian and Shapiro was something no one had seen. I've seen that "30 for 30" on the O.J. day (which ACSTPVOS gave a wink to in Episode 2, when Darden's father (?) was watching Arnold Palmer's final round at the Open), but that's only from a news perspective. The drama here is a whole new way into the story. You can't take any of the show as gospel, but you can't really take any of the "facts" to be either.
5. Ross from "Friends" as Robert Kardashian
It's the rare actor who can make you forget about their iconic television role that they played for hundreds of hours on shows that air dozens of times per day over decades. Frankly, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss is the only one to completely rid herself of her most famous role, though Alan Alda (who carved out a niche as a delightful bad guy in so many movies), Jason Segal (great script choices), Jennifer Aniston (not-so-great script choice but enough of them) and Matt LeBlanc (reasonable chance you haven't seen him since "Friends" ended) came close.
David Schwimmer does not. Every time you see him, you're fully aware this is Ross Gellar playing Kim Kardashian's dad. And it's so, so good. If the dictionary ever added "stunt casting" to its pages, it would just do a side-by-side composite of Ross crying after one of his divorces on "Friends" and Kardashian crying in O.J.'s bathroom the morning of the Bronco chase. You keep waiting for him to suggest that O.J. and Nicole were merely on a break.
6. The oh-so-subtle way the show handles the Kardashian children.
Every time the show gets to the Kardashian kids, it's about as subtle as Kanye on an open mic. This is an actual line that opens the (excellent) third episode, as Robert Kardashian takes the kids out for a Father's Day breakfast: "We are Kardashian. And in this family being a good person and a loyal friend is more important than being famous. Fame is fleeting. It's hollow. It means nothing at all without a virtuous heart." Get it?! Because they end up being THE Kardashians!!!
But nobody wants or expects subtle Shakespearean foreshadowing from a show like this. It's not wink-wink, it's wink-wink, nudge-nudge, cough-cough, point-point, punch-punch, get a whiteboard and spell out "these innocent Kardashian kids end up becoming the fame-whore Kardashians you love to hate." It's tremendous. But even if the lack of subtly did bother you, it'd be forgotten the instant you began wondering whether a 13-year-old Kim Kardashian actually had a poster of Jonathan Taylor Thomas on her wall.
7. The only negative: Cuba Gooding
He's not in the campy "so bad he's as amazing as Brando in 'On The Waterfront'," a la Travolta and Schwimmer. But he's also not good, mostly because he seems to be playing Rod Tidwell in trouble rather than O.J. Simpson. It's an interesting choice and one that might have been a good idea, as doing a straight imitation of O.J. was ripe for disappointment. If Murphy wanted that, he just should have hired Tim Meadows. But in a show so good, Cuba's struggles don't detract -- they might add. Because while the miniseries centers on O.J. Simpson, it's not about him at all. It's about lawyers, legal proceedings, race cards, juries, judges and John Travolta's makeup -- a Dream Team effort, if you will.
American Crime Story: The People Vs. O.J. Simpsons appears on FX at 10 p.m. every Tuesday. Past episodes are available on demand.
