Watched by more people than the Super Bowl, O.J.
There is now a statewide manhunt for O.J.
Simpson was on the lam.
Credit: FX
Later, Brokaw referred to the unfolding drama as Shakespearean.
Nearly 100 million people tuned in to watch O.J., a larger audience than watched that years Super Bowl.
Advertising rates were gouged to all-time highs.
FX
Pizzerias across the country ran out of cheese.
MORE ONTHE PEOPLE VS. O.J.
is news, entertainment, and sports!
FX
And thats whyThe People v. O.J.
By necessity, the episode deals the most with O.J.
This installment is also the best showcase for the strength and weirdness of John Travoltas acting as Robert Shapiro.
All the inherently odd qualities of thePulp Fictionactor (Adele Dazeem, anyone?)
It was a great party!
Bob, Garcetti growls, find your client and deliver him.
Worse that the day I was diagnosed with cancer.
wrote before escaping in the white Bronco with A.C. Cowlings.
Here is where the show departs significantly in substance from Jeffrey Toobins bookThe Run of His Life.
What the show doesnt reveal is that Kardashian had already cleaned up O.J.s syntax.
(Meta-references to the Kardashian family abound in the background of this scene.)
He thanked me for everything I did for him.
Travoltas line reading is virtually identical to Shapiros on that afternoon.
Across town, Johnnie Cochran is watching.
What a prick, he says.
Robert Shapiro is focused on his number one priority: Robert Shapiro.
NEXT: Marcia Clark questions the over-the-top Bronco chase coverage.
Perhaps it did at the time, as well.
These uninformed narrative nondescriptions somehow made the chase even more hypnotizing for the rest of the nation.
The Broncos route wasnt all that Jennings didnt know.
from a news van nearby was put on the air with Jennings.
On his radio show the following Monday, Stern compared the anchorman to a piece of wood.
Peter Jennings should be on suicide watch, he crowed.
There are two white Broncos, shes told.
A.C. Cowlings worships O.J.
so much he bought the identical car.
That same quasi-eulogy on TV also connects the narrative to Cochran.
He is observing two technicians editing the same clip package while waiting in a TV studio for an appearance.
Gentlemen, he says.
The last I heard, the man was still alive.
If the LAPD is involved, Cochran says, referring back to O.J.
We should let history be our guiding principal.
One says, Were not cheering for O.J.
Were booing the LAPD.
Elsewhere, Chris Darden is visiting his parents house.
In an interesting touch, his father is watching golf when Chris arrives.
made his money, he split and never came back, Darden says to them.
Well, hes got the cops chasing him, one of the neighbors says.
Once the sun has set and O.J.
has returned to his Rockingham estate to surrender to police, the elder Darden approaches his son.
As both men watch TV, the father offers prescient advice: You stay the hell away from this.
NEXT: Why the Bronco chase was never introduced in Simpsons trial.
About a third of this episode takes place inside the white Bronco and by virtue, inside O.J.s head.
That Smith & Wesson .357 magnum had been gifted to O.J.
five years earlier by a man named Earl C. Paysinger, an LAPD lieutenant.
The regret that O.J.
And secondly, the cache of money and disguises that were confiscated from the Bronco.
Why wasnt this incriminating evidence ever used against O.J.
The decision was made relatively early and in a word the problem was very simple: sympathy.
The disguises could be dismissed by defense witnesses who would say that O.J.
used them for avoiding the celebrity spotlight in public.
Cowlings claimed that the money was his own.
And, per Toobin, The full story of the chase might require several more weeks of testimony.
(Remember that the jury was sequestered.)
And once again, Murphy & Company continue to nail just the right music cues for maximum accentuation.
And that runs the gamut from high to low in this episode.
