Anyone watching? I would never have given this a second thought since I was sooooo not into the story when it was a real story. In fact, I used to kid that I could be on the jury, since I purposely ignored every bit of news I possibly could. And now with the whole Kartrashian thing, well…
But a good friend recommended this, and i watched the first episode OnDemand last night. Wow. It’s really good. Good acting, good pacing, good writing, good editing… I was shocked.
My only complaint would be some of the casting. “Ross” as the Kardashian dad. Sorry, but he’s too typecast. But the bigger problem is the lead-- Cuba Goodings. He doesn’t look anything like OJ, and they make no effort to make him look so. OJ seemed larger than life, and CG looks like he’s about 5’ 6". I mean, he’s black, but that’s it.
Still, I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of it.
Unlike you I disappeared into the trial. Watched all I could and even spent most nights during the trial watching it and then after that switching to Geraldo Rivera who basically just dealt with the days events and anything Simpson trial related. I found it very interesting and the best soap opera I’d ever seen.
I really liked the 1st episode. The callout of the Kardashian Kids was a bit obvious but other than that most everything worked. Even Travolta didn’t bug me and that’s a very rare thing.
I liked picking up on things happening in the first episode that were big in the trial but I won’t go into them as you probably didn’t and I don’t want to spoil that element for you.
Over all it was excellent and ending on a great moment.
I’ll be watching it again tonight with the wife who had and has no interest but will “give it a try” to see if it’s something we can watch together.
I haven’t seen the show, but I’m reminded of a Bill Maher joke at the time. Whether you were watching the trial or not was the hot topic of conversation. Maher: “So many people claim to not be watching it. For me, people who claim they’re not watching the trial are like people who say they don’t masturbate; I believe you but you’re missing something good!”.
Like you, I watched pretty much every minute of the trial as it happened. That’s the reason I haven’t watched this show. I’d be very interested in your comments. How is Lance Ito portrayed?
If you don’t want to put spoilers in the thread (although everyone knows how it came out:rolleyes: ), will you PM me?
Trivia: watching this trial is where I first heard the term “cell phone.” There were mobile phones (usually brick or bag phones-- my husband used a bag phone while he was hooked up to the dialysis machine), but I don’t remember what we called them.
I watched the trial, read the books and saw episode 1. Though I generally like Cuba Goodings, I think he was miscast and unconvincing as Simpson. He’s at the same time, too sympathetic, but lacking the requisite smirk, the easy charm or the presence.
The rest of the cast was okay, in a movie of the week kind of way.
OJ has just gone with A.C. Cowlings in the Bronco. So the trial hasn’t started. It’s 10 episodes long AFAIK and only the first one has been shown.
The spoilers I was talking about were procedural things done during the collection of evidence that I know will come up in the trial. Just didn’t want to flag them as they weren’t flagged in the episode.
This is a mini-series? Thought it was a movie. Only set the DVR to record the first one, I guess. How many have been aired? I haven’t seen any of it yet, but I’m very interested. I was also pretty wrapped up in the whole thing at the time.
It’s too a superficial thing to be causing me this much trouble, but Cuba’s physical slightness is hard for me to overcome. Like the merits of the show disappear from me every time he shows up on screen.
I watched it and was pleasantly surprised, though I agree that Gooding was not the right casting choice for Simpson. I love that my girl-crush Connie Britton is playing Faye Resnick.
I don’t remember ever hearing that Simpson had failed a lie detector test, though of course it wasn’t admissible in court.
It makes me very sad that the media circus overshadowed the two murder victims and the issue of domestic violence.
Gooding may not resemble OJ but I think his performance is great. Don’t care much for Travolta… was Shapiro really like that?
I lived in LA during the 80’s and actually worked just a few doors down from the infamous Italian restaurant in Brentwood. The national coverage was constant… I can only imagine the local coverage. Since we moved in 1989 I didn’t have to deal with it but had a good background.
I’d watched the initial car chase, but beyond that tried to avoid it as much as possible, not to much success, unfortunately, but I tried.
I have no interest in watching the show, and the commercials I saw for it were uniformly awful looking.
Cellular phones. I remember thinking it sounded weird at first when they started dropping the “ular”. Then it just became normal, only to sound weird when you’d hear a Brit talk about their “MO bile”.
Speaking of additions to the lexicon, I believe (just from personal recollection) that this trial gave us “play the race card”, and “the N-word” (not the word itself…referring to it that way).
Travolta reminded me of False Face in the old Batman series.
So far, I am liking it and plan to watch every episode. I wished they had set up the relationship between OJ and Nicole from their engagement/marriage to the breakup to the murder.
The only “entertainment” that comes close to the Simpson thing was the Lindburgh kidnapping or more recently in a somewhat lesser way the Anna Nicole Smith saga.
Watching the first episode I couldn’t recall who the actor was playing Mark Fuhrman. I looked it up on IMDB and it’s Steven Pasquale who I haven’t seen since he was Sean Garrity in Rescue Me. Strangely on IMDB he is, unlike most of the cast, only listed as appearing in one episode yet my recollection was that Fuhrman was the feature of the early trial action. Any thoughts/ideas.
It’s the same format as American Horror Story (& from the same producers); each season will feature a new storyline, but based on real events instead of wholly fictional. All the celebrity actors play other celebrities is kinda funny so far, but I doubt that’s intentional. I predict this show its going to be filled with narm, which is hard to avoid given how ingrained the trial is in pop culture. So far the only thing I could take seriously was the answering machine message Sydney left for her mom; that was unsettling. And at the other hand of the spectrum we had the Kardashian girls making a spectacle of themselves in public.
I wasn’t going to watch it, had enough of it the first time around, but there was nothing else one that I wanted to see. It was engrossing. A lot of details that I didn’t know before, eg, failing the lie detector, how OJ talked without a lawyer but basically babbled and no one called him on it, that Shapiro actually asked OJ if he did it (thought lawyers didn’t ask that). Most of what I know, I got from Dominick Dunne’s monthly columns in Vanity Fair.
Cuba Gooding Jr was miscast but once the low-speed chase is over, I think the attention will shift to the other actors around him. Travolta’s face looks frozen (Shapiro is still alive and must be having fits) but I like Schwimmer’s Kardashian. I just read that he was a religious man and standing up with OJ must have tormented him once he realized; sad.
Anybody know if all of the above actually happened?
I particularly like how the entire story as presented so far seems plausible… no one is being set up as a total liar. Looking forward to tonight’s episode.
I think perhaps you’re confusing OJ with American Crime – which is the same producers as American Horror Story, and (like AHS) features the same cast in different roles each season.
