'The People v. O.J. Simpson' Finale: He Did It, His Way

The folks at FX have asked critics not to review tonight’s final episode of American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson until after it airs, but in a stunning rebuke to spoiler culture, I’ll take a daring stand and reveal this: In “The Verdict,” the show’s 10th hour airing Tuesday night, Simpson is found not guilty.

The fact that there’s nothing to spoil, no cliffhanger to resolve, is one of the things that’s made this thing — what is it? A true-crime anthology series? A mini-series? An extended TV-movie? The best episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit ever? — so impressive, so continually engaging. I’m old enough to remember a lot about the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, and Simpson’s subsequent murder trial, but like millions of viewers, rather than feeling bored by the dramatization of what I already know, I’ve been caught up in its dramatic momentum.

A lot of the credit for this has to go to the almost crazily mixed-up acting styles of the main cast. Where Sarah Paulson has played it magnificently straight as prosecutor Marcia Clark, John Travolta has achieved a kind of Zen nuttiness as the serenely detached defense team attorney Robert Shapiro. Where Cuba Gooding, Jr., has wisely chosen not to do a full-on impression of Simpson, preferring instead to set himself the tricky task of presenting the athlete as a shut-down enigma, Sterling K. Brown seems to be channeling prosecutor Chris Darden’s complex inner workings — it’s a performance in which many conflicting ideas flicker across his face in any given scene.

To be sure, The People v. O.J. is not exactly a classic of television. Created by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski but bearing many of the hallmarks of producer-directors Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk (Glee, American Horror Story), the Simpson saga has been presented in a full-on pop-culture context, including, early on, an absurd over-emphasis on the part that David Schwimmer’s Robert Kardashian, his wife Kris, and his then-little daughters played in the life of the man they called “Uncle Juice.” And if Marcia Clark and Chris Darden didn’t really dance to the Isley Brothers’ “Who’s That Lady” in their office, there’s a dramatic truth in the romantic funkiness of this moment that transcends mere fact.

I’d also like to say that Murphy and company would be found criminally negligent if they didn’t work up a spin-off for Connie Britton’s far too little-seen embodiment of Brentwood socialite and sometime-Real Housewife Faye Resnick, a camp performance begging for more screen-time.

There’s been some talk that The People v. O.J. has opened a fresh discussion about the notion that race relations have not progressed very far since the 1990s, but you’d have to be pretty cut off from the news of the past couple of decades to find this series revelatory in that regard. Rather, I’d say that Courtney B. Vance’s version of Johnnie Cochran is a great image rescue mission. Instead of portraying him as he came to be known — a strutting egotist who rhymed his closing argument regarding the bloody glove found at the crime scene (“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit!”) — Vance and the production surrounding him give Cochran, who died in 2005, a posthumous rehabilitation. He emerges as the person who understood the complexities of race, crime, and celebrity in America as well as, if not better, than any cultural commentator.

American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.