This show fascinates me. How did The People v. O.J. Simpson go from one of my most anticipated hate-watches to maybe the best new show of 2016? What’s remarkable about The People is that none of its characters, especially in “The Dream Team,” come out smelling like roses. Strangely enough, the only seemingly decent person on the show is a Kardashian, due in no small part to David Schwimmer’s subtle, humane performance.
“The Dream Team” was all about race. The last two episodes have flirted with the idea, commingling it with the toxic and permissive celebrity culture in Los Angeles, but this is the most it’s ever been made explicit in this show. “A lot of black people think he’s innocent,” Chris Darden explains to Marcia Clark. Clark argues that O.J. wasn’t exactly a pillar of the black community, and even if he was, so what? “They just don’t want to believe it.”
And that’s exactly what O.J.’s team looks to capitalize on. And here’s where the racial issue gets really complicated and thorny. Investigator Pat McKenna turns up files on Mark Fuhrman saying that working with the LAPD has turned him into a bigot, a bombshell that Robert Shapiro immeidately turns and drops in the lap of the New Yorker. Once again the press is being utilized – weaponized, really – for the second time this episode, which begins with O.J.’s Time cover being discussed. “Pretty crazy, huh?” the newsstand owner asks Dennis Schatzman. “They made him blacker.”
Of course, at the beginning of the episode we saw Time‘s photo editor adding some chiaroscuro effect to give O.J. a haunted, tragic look, but what it boils down to is: white people don’t understand how this will look. Optics are a huge part of “The Dream Team,” as Gil Garcetti even points out to Clark. He’s concerned about running for mayor, and is more likely to get a mixed-race jury in the downtown courthouse as opposed to Santa Monica. Then it gets truly icky: Shapiro tries to convince O.J. to hire Johnnie Cochran, using euphemisms like “We need someone who can communicate with a downtown jury,” which is lawyer-speak for “we need a black lawyer.” Clark isn’t innocent of this either, enlisting Darden to prosecute A.C. Cowlings for aiding and abetting, whic- h she says will help them establish O.J.’s guilt…but it sure sounds like she needs a black lawyer prosecuting a black defendant.
“The Dream Team” is at its best when exploring issues of race, which were such a huge part of the Simpson trial. It’s fascinating to look at in 2016: the LAPD is unquestionably an organization of racist bullies, so it stands to reason that an avowed bigot like Fuhrman would plant evidence to convict one of the most famous black men in the country. However, is there any doubt, in 1994 or in 2016, that O.J. is guilty? It’s a contradiction that The People v. O.J. Simpson keep coming back to.
This is, in many ways, a transitional episode, and as such it feels a little light on impact. It all leads up to one thing: Cochran joining O.J.’s defense team, which he mainly does because he’d hate it if someone else got any of the glory for getting O.J. acquitted. So a lot of the episode’s run time is spent introducing new characters, like Alan Dershowitz or F. Lee Bailey (a wonderful Nathan Lane). Does it feel like so much wheel-spinning? To an extent. But the trial was really divided into two halves: the non-Cochran half and the Cochran half. “The Dream Team” was really the calm before the storm.
A Few Thoughts
- “I’m not black, I’m O.J.” is a good line that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
- Props to Selma Blair for imbuing Kris Jenner with more decency, thoughtfulness, and humanity than Jenner actually possesses
- “We need to stop thinking of this case as a slam-dunk.”
- “Cochran. Motherfucker.”
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