Chin Chin

This is a very iconic corner of Brentwood, right there on San Vicente. The Kardashians are going to Chin Chin for Father's Day - and the kids are STOKED about some mediocre Chinese food followed by some legit decent chocolate-dipped fortune cookies -- but I am more interested in La Scala down there. They have a very famous chopped salad, and now I kind of want one. The last time I was there was with my friend Victoria, who has since died of breast cancer. I miss her very much, and I cannot tell you how much she would have FREAKING LOVED THIS SHOW. I hope they get F/X in heaven.

Kim Kim

I also just want to note that this girl is very good casting for Young Kim Kardashian. I wish Kim was recapping this. Not real actual current Kim, but a Kim who exists in a world where she feels free to write a thoughtful essay reflecting on what it was like when her godfather was on trial for killing his wife, in the media frenzy of the late 20th century, and how that media frenzy has impacted her own desire for fame. (I mean, that actually might BE the current Kim, but Kris would never let her pen an intellectual musing on the way murder, and her father's untimely death, perhaps lead to her own thirst for the limelight for, like, The New Yorker.)

The Kardashians

Additionally, in case you were wondering, this show HATES THE CURRENT KARDASHIAN FAMILY. They get right to a table, on a very busy day, because the servers recognize Bobby, and the kids LOVE this. They are beyond gleeful, noting that their mother is famous (for selling Thigh Masters on TV, which I'm not even going to fact-check, because it REALLY sounds right), Bruce is famous (for being an Olympian/Bruce Jenner), and NOW Bobby is famous! IT'S SO EXCITING!!! And the Schwimm gets to give a very pointed speech -- which he delivers with great kindness and CONCERN -- about how fame is meaningless if you're not a nice person, and the pursuit of fame at the exclusion of all other goals is tragic, and worthless, and sad. Those of you who were worried this show was Pro Kim, Kourtney, and Khloe can take a breath. This show HATES THEM right now. (I can see the argument that these scenes are a little TOO meta, but I can also see how they'd be hard to resist.) Additionally, it is here we learn that Kris has been poisoning the kids' against the man Bobby calls "Uncle Juice" -- who is, after all, his best friend and Kim's godfather. That IS awkward.

Downtown LA

This was just too good a use of location not to include. This shot is great. And everyone who has ever had jury duty in downtown LA has accidentally wandered through it. (This is the section of downtown that houses the courthouse/the DA/the LAPD, and the LA Times.)

The Press

I also thought this week's take on the tabloid media -- more specifically, witnesses selling their stories, or, as Marcia calls them "cash for trash" -- was fascinating. There is a bit where Marcia is worried that they're going to lose OJ's golf caddy, who was going to testify as to his mental state the day of the murder. You guys! That's part of MY OJ story! Our family friend was AT that golf game! (OJ's arthritis was bothering him.) We thought HE might be called! (He did not call up News of the World.) I was reading in the Vulture Fact-Checking piece (which I link to later) all about how Marcia basically decided that any witness who talked to media was dead to her, which I get from an ethical standpoint, but which also seems like a stance that's a bit too extreme. You cannot prevent witnesses, who might be in need of money, from talking to Inside Edition for $5000 every single time.

The Lawyers

Who knew? Nathan Lane makes a very credible F. Lee Bailey. Fug Friend Grant noted to me that he thinks this show is great at delivering exposition and telling details about people in lines that almost feel like throw-aways. This week, Marcia Clark tells us that F. Lee Bailey was famous for being in the world's longest DUI case -- which is true, and an incredibly telling detail about a person. Now we know that he's a good lawyer, he's stubborn, and he has a drinking problem. Bailey is FASCINATING, too. He defended Sam Sheppard -- whom you may know as The Fugitive. No, THE Fugitive, from The Fugitive. The Boston Strangler confessed to him. He defended Patty Hearst, and she accused him of being drunk during closing statements. He also -- from what I understand/remember -- cross-examined Mark Furhman in this case so masterfully that he basically assured a not guilty verdict, because he lured him into pleading the 5th, and hoisted him onto his own racist petard. The Fuhrman stuff is fascinating -- I just read a GREAT Domminck Dunne piece about him, which I'll share when we get more into that. We do learn this week that Fuhrman is a terrible racist, and that news basically informs the entire defense plan. And correctly, and effectively.

Marcia Marcia Marcia

MARCIA WHAT ARE YOU WEARING?

LOOK AT THIS HAIR

And we have to bear witness to the THING living on Evan Handler's head. This entire defense team is full of people who've worked on cases that were made into major motion pictures -- if you like true crime, and haven't seen (or read) Reversal of Fortune, do something about that post-haste. Also, yes, that is DNA expert Barry Scheck, whose role on the defense team is to basically discount all the DNA evidence by wondering if it's contaminated OR making it too boring and confusing for the jury. I will note that I watched a lot of his testimony and it WAS MIND-NUMBING at points. It's interesting to learn, now, that was intentional. (Barry also went on to found The Innocence Project, so good for him.)

Casa Cochran

Johnnie Cochran's house is AMAZING AND SPECTACULAR. Look at that bar! Look at it! The sunken living room! He and Mrs Cochran are living the glamorous early 90s dream and I want to shake the hand of whoever designed this set, if it's not a location. If is IS a location, I want to move in for a week.

The Newstand I

This was quite interesting. There is a scene set at Time where they're working on this cover, and they decide to put a filter on the photo to give it some depth (they claim). But they really get slammed in the press because this has the effect of making OJ's skin look darker. There is an uproar that, now that he's accused of murder, his blackness is being emphasized, and increased by the media -- quite literally. I actually don't remember said uproar, but Vulture's excellent fact-checking column confirms it, and, in retrospect, it is INSANE TO ME that anyone at Time thought that was a good idea. WTF, you guys. (My family got Newsweek instead of Time, so it's the Newsweek cover that I remember with more clarity, but now that I think about it, the Time one IS more iconic and surely it's because we all saw it so much when this very issue was being discussed. This side-by-side is very well-done, as is also pointed out in the Vulture piece.)

The Newstand II

This newsstand is right around the corner from my current abode, if I'm correct (and I think I am). My question is: How did I never run into this crew filming this? (In fairness, I barely ever leave the house.)

Shapiro's Wold of Lamps

I included this for a silly personal reason, namely that I once worked at a very fancy and upscale furniture/textile store -- at which I was not allowed to wear pants (!!) --in 1998, and we sold that very lamp behind Shapiro's head. This man would ABSOLUTELY own that lamp. It cost something like $900 -- TO THE TRADE, so that's without mark-up. I remember dusting the one on the showroom floor, in my pantyhose and heels, thinking that lamp cost more than I made in a week. This was also the store at which Maria Shriver was mean to me, and Million Dollar Decorators's Martyn Lawrence Bullard was VERY NICE to me. He's since gone on to do homes for...two of three Kardashians. Full circle, here!

The Author Appears

This is Jeffrey Toobin, writing a -- very pivotal -- article for The New Yorker, and who wrote the book on which this series is based. For one quick moment, I thought he was being played by Luke Perry, which really would have sent all of us into an LA-based spiral of post-modern self-referentialness.

Johnnie's Offices

I want to note that -- in what I think it a very funny bit from the set decorator -- every single lawyer's office or study has a chess set in it. Keep an eye on it. All of them. They're in Shapiro's offices, too.

Selma Blair

Back to the KardashiJenners for a moment. I just want to say that I think Selma Blair is doing a very good job in this part. She REALLY looks like Kris, for one thing, but I also feel like it would have been VERY easy to make this portrayal into a cartoon, and she's playing it very straight and sincerely, which I think is very much the right call.

The Car Wash

This car wash is on Pico, right below Motor, just blocks west of the FOX lot. So, convenient for filming, and also a car wash I have driven past and used many many times in my life. (I like its iconic signage.)

Shapiro's Study

THERE'S YOUR CHESS SET.

OJ

It's a mark of how good something is when I forget to take screengrabs because I was too into the show. Thank god this recap is just....free-floating musings on Los Angeles and not a plot-recounting. But I did mean to get a grab of the scene where Shapiro is trying to talk OJ into adding Johnnie to their team -- for optics, as much as anything else -- and OJ says, "I'm not black! I'm OJ." Which is one of the main themes of the show: The People vs OJ Simpson never loses sight of how much this case was about race in Los Angeles: race and the LAPD, race and the jury, the way the black community related to OJ, and everything that OJ represented, both to that community and Los Angeles as a whole (don't forget, he was a HUGE college star at USC; we felt a loyalty to him. Even we Bruins). So much of this show is about IDENTITY, both the way we identify ourselves, and the way other people identify us, and just that one line -- "I'm not black, I'm OJ" -- can be read in various ways: OJ is reminding us that he is HIMSELF, one specific person, that his race doesn't define his identity. He could also be also saying, as several other characters have said before him, that his OJ-ness, his fame, his success, transcends race, and thus that's not something his legal team needs to be concerned with. And this show both agrees with that statement and shows us, time and again, that OJ is at least half-wrong. He IS OJ, but he's also black. "There are a lot of people in the black community who think he's innocent," Chris Darden tells Marcia Clark; Gil Garcetti tells her they have to move the trial out of Santa Monica both because the Santa Monica Courthouse got slammed in the Northridge earthquake earlier that year (true), but also because it's bad optics for them to be trying him in front of a primarily white jury, especially after Rodney King. It's layered and it's fascinating and it feels incredibly topical. All in just one line.

I haven't even talked about how great both these actors were in this scene. I think Cuba here, more than ever, is walking that line where I can't figure out if we're supposed to think he's lying or not when he proclaims his innocence. And I think that's exactly what they've intended.

MOTHERFUCKER

And here, in the best moment -- arguably -- of the episode. Marcia opens her LA Times to see on the front page the news that Johnnie Cochran has joined OJ's defense team. "MOTHERFUCKER," she says, loudly, into the morning sky.

I watched this on the app, and I assumed that her line was bleeped for broadcast, but Friend of GFY Grant tells me it was NOT. I cannot believe F/X went there, and I love it. It was a judicious and very appropriate use of profanity, and whoever made the call to fight for that language and go ahead and use it was correct. Well played once again.

Fug the Show: The People vs OJ Simpson recap, "The Dream Team"

This show continues to be excellent, although I'd note that this week felt like a bit of an In Between-y episode, where new characters are introduced (Evan Handler as Alan Dershowitz, Nathan Lane [!!!] as F. Lee Bailey), and old ones are moved into place (Johnnie Cochran finally joining OJ's team in a really effective scene with Courtney B Vance and Cuba Gooding Jr; the endlessly sympathetic Chris Darden coming on board at the district attorney's office). For me, it was noteworthy on a couple of levels. First, the locations were perfect. I'm interested to hear from those of you who don't or didn't live in Los Angeles about whether or not it feels as authentic as it really is. All I know is, I've lived here my entire life and I've seen two thousand TV episodes set and filmed in Los Angeles, and none of them -- none -- feel as real as this show does. I'm including literal reality shows filmed here. I don't know if it's because this show is aiming for realism, or it's because this is a very well done version of a moment in time that I personally remember very vividly, but The People vs OJ Simpson presents Los Angeles in a way that is sunny and tree-lined, but not always particularly beautiful, and that feels very real to me. The scene at the very end, where Marcia Clark is smoking and reading the LA Times at dawn...I could practically smell the dew forming on the iron gate leading into her backyard. My grandmother had that exact gate into her own yard; so do my parents. Everyone in Southern California whose home was built before 1960 has that wrought iron gate. And that's a tiny, tiny detail, but it seems to me that the filmmakers make an effort to go to places that hadn't been spit-shined, or that feel particularly special. It's extremely naturalistic, and I think it works. (They also set a scene at my local car wash.) I'm just waiting for famous Los Angeles local news anchor Kent Shocknek to show up. (I'm sort of surprised, in fact, that none of LA's local news people have made cameos yet. Where's John Beard? Bring me my Colleen Williams!) Let's talk about this week's episode. As usual, I'm not really going to recap it, but just hit some highlights, get into some talk about the sets and the ties and the true crime gossip and anything else that floats through my brain. Please feel free to talk about anything that occurs to you in the comments, though.