I do want to get into the entertainment and creative issues a bit. I will not claim to have watched the OJ trial as closely as Kevin did, but I did follow it very closely - apparently a hell of a lot more closely than the people who made this series. But there are not just factual errors here - though these grate in particular since so much of this is easily available, well known and in the public record. But the creative choices are really baffling.
As I heard about this show I was pretty much determined not to watch it; I assumed it would be a tabloid ratings grab not worthy of much time. Then I noticed it was on FX, a cable network that has brought some of the best drama to television in the last decade. That track record was enough to get me to watch it - I have now seen two episodes (is that all that have aired? I am watching it On Demand and have lost track of actual airing dates). For me, the abiding question about this production is: "Why is it so bad, when it is backed by a distributor which has had such a great track record?" If you told me it was being aired on E! or Oxygen I would understand, but FX? Can this just be a pure ratings payday for those guys? The amount of exposition they put into the mouths of the key players is absurd, on the order of: "pardon me, I am an angry black assistant DA who is down with his people and skeptical of the LAPD, can you tell me where the bathrooms are?". As cringe-worthy is the number of call-outs to a generation or two that apparently knows and cares more about the tabloid star daughters of Rob Kardashian than his role in the story being told. But what surprises and irritates me the most so far is how much of an apology the series appears to be for Clark, Gil Garcetti and the LAPD. It may be that later episodes will flip this script, but that assumes a minimum level of quality that would keep the rational viewer around long enough to see it. By the end of that trial I thought OJ Simpson had probably killed his ex-wife and Ron Goldman. I was also certain that the prosecutors, LAPD detectives and Crime Lab and bungled their job so badly that it would be a violation of their oath for a jury to find him guilty based on the evidence actually presented in court in that trial (as opposed to evidence discussed in the media, or presented at the later civil trial). Of course it is tragic when a probably murderer gets away with it, but in a free society it is even more of a tragedy when the reason he got away with it is the arrogance, incompetence and prejudice of the representatives of the state. Any attempt at telling this story that somehow manages to make Marcia Clark the victim is profoundly and irredeemably flawed. On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 12:24 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote: > ... or whatever the f*ck they're calling it. I won't speak to its > entertainment value, or the creative/stylistic choices made, or how > sympathetic the series is to certain extremely unsympathetic people. I will > say -- as someone who earned notoriety for merely watching the trial -- > that I could write an entirely new book on the number of things that were > wrong in the first episode. And I mean I can get into the smallest > details, like the melt-point of the Ben & Jerry's ice cream found at the > crime scene, or the amount of traffic on Bundy the night of the murder, or > how long it really took for crime scene photos to reach Marcia Clark, or > which DDA was actually in charge of the Simpson case, but honestly, I'm not > going to bother. I watched the trial 20-years-ago. I wrote extensively > about the trial 20-years-ago. Two people are still dead, two children grew > up without a mother, and I'm not watching any additional episodes of this > crapfest. > > -- > Kevin M. (RPCV) > > -- > -- > TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "TV or Not TV" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
