Yeah, it’s like “we got a black guy, what else do you want”? CGJ may be a fine actor (I really don’t know) but he’s not OJ. He’s just not.
My recollection of the real-life trial was that he was called back toward the end of the trial, and the defense had a field day with his hiding behind the fifth:
“Did you plant the evidence presented in this trial?”
“On the advice of my attorney, I invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment not to answer, on the grounds I may incriminate myself.”
There was no coming back from that. The gloves, maybe, but not that.
He comes back later. When the prosecution has called a witness, if the defense thinks he’s lying, all they can do is ask him about it. I suppose they could also try to put contrary evidence in as part of their cross examination, but you need to be able to lay the foundation with that witness - for example, if they have a tape of Furhman saying the N-word, they might have to play a bit of it, ask Furhman “do you remember this conversation? is this you?” and they’d be dependent on him saying “yes” to do that to lay the foundation.
More likely, defense waits until the prosecution rests, then as part of their case they put on impeachment witnesses (people who would testify and say “yes, Furhman used the N-word”, etc.) Reading the Wiki article, this is apparently what happened. It says Furhman also came back to testify himself about whether he had ever falsified police reports or planted evidence, and that’s when he pled the 5th… though this was outside of the presence of the jury and so likely was during a hearing just to decide what evidence should be allowed in.
In case anyone’s interested here’s some fact checks for last week’s episode. The jury stuff was even weirder in real life; apparently Judge Ito actually started sending them field trips (as in the kind students get) to relieve the boredom. And here’s the rest of the Dancing Ito sketch. 
Hard to believe that after all that was learned about Fuhrman he still got a job as a crime pundit for Fox News.
I found it hard to believe the prosecution let Ito stay on the case, they knew they were losing at that point already.
I think he fits in very well with Fox.
Some more fact checksfor people.
There’s one confusing thing about last night that I didn’t understand. We last saw Furhman in episode 6 or 7, his cross examination delayed by the defense requesting to hear Rosa Lopez because she was due to leave the country. Anyone know the real timeline of Fuhrman’s testimony? I don’t mind they saved the best stuff for the end, but it was weird to hear from Fuhrman a bit then forget him for a few episodes.
I went back to watch Fuhrman pleading the 5th from the actual trial, there’s no surgarcoating that, it was devastating. Cochran and co. did a good job shifting the debate from OJ to the LAPD. I mean, even knowing what we know now, if that guy was the one who found your key piece of evidence, no matter how ironclad the rest of the prosecution’s case was, how can anyone not have at least a smidgen of reasonable doubt that something, somehow, might have been tainted in Fuhrman’s presence?
A few notes about the last couple episodes:
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I really liked watching the fictionalized version of what the jury went through. Nobody could have known about it except the jurors themselves and most of them haven’t said much. I especially like the debate between watching Seinfeld or Martin, I almost forgot that I liked Martin back then too. But how more jurors didn’t go stir crazy and try to abandon the trial I don’t know, they were in jail as much as OJ was during that 9 month sequester.
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I thought Cuba did a terrific job in mimicking how OJ put on those gloves. He got the grunting, the facial expressions, his actual movements down pat. A lot of people didn’t like his casting as OJ but I think we can look back and see it wasn’t a bad choice at all. The only thing I wished they had shown was how quickly and easily OJ slipped off the gloves once the demonstration was done. Seriously, go back and watch that footage, he whips them off like they were nothing.
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I choose to believe Marcia and Darden fucked when they went up to Oakland. In my mind, they made a secret pact to get together after the trial and one day, maybe in the future, or maybe it already happened, on a balmy, sunny beach, Marcia walks up to Darden shirtless working on his boat and they hug and disappear inside.
I’m really sad this series is coming to an end. They still have a ton to cram in next episode. They HAVE to have “If the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit” and after setting up Kardashian as the moral center of the defense, they have to have the shot of his face as the verdict was being read. Other than that, there’s the closing statements, trial aftermath, the huge divide in reaction between black and white viewers. Hell, they could do a whole episode on just public reactions. Then there were the press conferences by both sides to put a final stamp on the trial. A lot to cram in for one hour.
I’ve enjoyed the series very much. Sarah Paulsen as Marcia Clark and Courtney B. Vance as Johnnie Cochran have both been incredible and Emmy-worthy. David Schwimmer, who I’ve previously considered to be a very one-note actor, has also been superb.
Another performance, albeit it a small one, was Connie Britton’s portrayal of wanna-be starlet Faye Resnick relishing the 15 minutes of fame and attention that was finally coming her way, the horrendous death of her friend a mere footnote. Connie Britton is fantastic in just about any role that comes her way. The woman can flat out act.
Darden was interviewed on ET last night and is very evasive when asked if he and Marcia ever did anything. He did say he can count the number of women he’s kissed on one hand and the correspondent immediately asked “Is Marcia Clark one of those?”
I just started watching the show last week and I am all caught up now. It’s really good. I remember when it happened; I was in my mid-20s and watched the Bronco chase on TV along with everyone else. It’s funny the things that are on the show that I’d forgotten about.
The real epiphany for me, like many of you have said, is seeing what Clark was going through. Paulsen has been stellar, but I also have new respect for Clark. She took a lot of heat for losing that case but my goodness did she get her feet cut out from under her, time and again. Completely sympathetic.
Paulsen has been the best performance, Gooding the worst (not his fault - he was woefully miscast). I’m a little surprised we never saw Kato on the stand - we didn’t, did we? I remember that being a big deal.
Since the actor who played Kato (Billy Magnussen) is fairly well known and next week is the finale, I think they must have cut some of his scenes.
The real Kato didn’t like the episodes he was in because he felt it made him look like a freeloader. Can’t think how anybody would get that impression.
[QUOTE=Skammer;19221303…Paulsen has been the best performance, Gooding the worst (not his fault - he was woefully miscast). …[/QUOTE]
I agree. I like Cuba but he’s just wrong for the role. Blair Underwood would have been very good, he’s always seemed to have something a bit edgy lurking underneath that handsome exterior. Jamie Foxx would have been perfect but has bigger fish to fry than TV miniseries.
So any legal people want to help me out here? Ito’s decision to allow some of the Fuhrman tapes in was correct, right? That they contradicted prior testimony and they should have been relevant to discredit him. Yes, it was inflammatory and it seems to me that it muddied waters unnecessarily, but at the same time, it was a legit GOTCHA moment.
Talking about real life, am I remembering correctly that after the OJ trial they re-opened a bunch of Fuhrman’s old cases?
Fuhrman did get convicted for perjury, so it must have happened after the trial and all that stuff came out
They address that point; there was a risk that if the People pushed for a mistrial double jeopardy might attach and they’d be unable to retry Simpson. Also they’d already spent $6,000,000 of the taxpayers’ money at this point.
How double jeopardy play into it if the trial isn’t resolved? Is it simply the idea that the trajectory of the trial turned south, so the state wants to bail and start over?
Fact checking thelast episode,lotsof stuff in this final, extra long finale!
While I didn’t exactly need to see Cuba’s buttcrack, I thought everything else in the episode was pretty much spot on when it came to what I wanted to see out of it. We got to see the closing arguments, including the famous “If the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit” line, jury deliberations, and the verdict in the first half of the episode, leaving the rest of it following each of the major characters and how they adjusted to the aftermath. There was some more real life footage, stuff you can find on Youtube, of people reacting in the streets, the huge black and white divide, President Clinton talking about the case, etc.
If you didn’t already think he was guilty, you’d probably feel a little bad for OJ when it looked like his friends all deserted him. Clubs weren’t taking his reservations anymore and his celebration party was filled with strangers.
Where were you when you heard the verdict? I was in high school, our teacher brought out a TV, I think it was around 9 or 10am, and we all just watched. As the bell rung for the next period and kids were supposed to go to the next class, I looked outside the door. Nobody moved, in every classroom we had people staying inside until the verdict. Unlike a lot of other BIG moments like JFK or 9/11, people were ready and prepared for this one. I had remembered talking and seeing news reports about another possible riot if he came back guilty, luckily that was avoided.
I thought this was a terrific show, completely fascinating. I’m probably going to pick up the book its based on too. There’s a lot of resources out there for more in-depth coverage of the case, most of the major players wrote books and there are documentaries on youtube you can watch. One of the ones that caught my attention was a book and documentary from former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi who breaks down, step by step, what the prosecution did wrong, why OJ was guilty due to the evidence, and what he would have done differently. The book’s supposed to be really good and the youtube videos are supposed to give great insight, but be warned, its 7 hours long (Part 1, and part 2)
I wish they’d gone in to a little more depth about some aspects of the trial. I think other than Dennis Fung, there was another LAPD forensics guy named Henry Lee that also was torn apart on cross. Plus, we never got to see Kato on the stand, what’s up with that? They really could have done a whole episode just on reactions too. Oprah had a whole show on it that this episode touched upon. At the 1:00 min mark, you see the verdict being read and the difference in the audience reactions. It gets pretty uncomfortable when she interviews some of the audience and they tell her why they reacted that way.
Anyway, great show, loved it, and I hope to see it win multiple Emmys and Golden Globes next year.
Did anybody else notice that there are two shots (wish I could cite the episodes) which begin with the courtroom clock on the back wall then swing down to the floor and upward to the judge end of the courtroom? The clock has to be mounted upside down for that to work.
I agree. They managed to make a finale that was worthy of the high quality bar set by the first nine episodes, and that was no easy task, given (as you’ve pointed out) that there was a lot to cover.
With the exception of the miscasting of Cuba Gooding, Jr. (an effective performer in other roles, who simply never managed to capture OJ’s alpha-male hauteur), every aspect of this show was first-rate. It was well-written, well-directed, and the acting was exemplary. Sarah Paulson and Sterling K. Brown both deserve lucrative film careers, judging from this!
The American Crime Story showrunners are going to have quite a challenge if they are to top this, with their next offering.