Standard Of Review: The People v. O.J. Simpson Defense Attorney Power Rankings
Culture critic Harry Graff's one criterion for the power rankings: which character makes the viewer most excited when he shows up on screen?
American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson – Pictured: Courtney Vance as Johnnie Cochran. CR: FX, Fox 21 TVS, FXP
We are now five episodes into FX’s O.J. Simpson miniseries American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, and the show has gotten even better since I initially reviewed it a few weeks ago. The entire main defense team – Robert Shapiro, Johnnie Cochran, Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey, and Robert Kardashian – is now fully formed and providing immense entertainment as the attorneys politick and fight with each other. Given that Simpson initially became famous for playing football, I decided that there is no better way to discuss this motley crew of attorneys than through a popular sports writing gimmick: power rankings. My one criterion for the power rankings is: what character makes me most excited when he shows up on screen? (This column will contain spoilers through this Tuesday’s great episode entitled “The Race Card.”)
5. Robert Shapiro (John Travolta) – I remain completely baffled by Travolta’s performance as Simpson’s original lead lawyer Shapiro. After I wrote my initial review of the show, a reader from the Los Angeles area emailed me to tell me that Travolta’s big and over-the-top performance is 100% accurate. So is Travolta actually giving a nuanced performance of a buffoon? Or are Travolta and the writers taking a shortcut, portraying Shapiro as a cartoon to contrast him with Cochran? I still have not made up my mind, but I just cannot imagine that such a prominent lawyer could be so stupid and socially unaware, such as angrily arriving at a defense team meeting clad in a Hawaiian shirt or petulantly refusing to enter the conference room in which F. Lee Bailey is sitting. Moreover, I think I am going to have nightmares about Travolta’s over-pronunciation of the word “Mezzaluna.” I wish the writers would just do something – anything – to humanize Shapiro and make him seem like a real person instead of a total caricature.
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4. Alan Dershowitz (Evan Handler) – Dershowitz has not had much to do so far, but I cannot in good conscience put him lower on the power rankings than Shapiro. I just assume that Dershowitz and his colleague Barry Scheck (Rob Morrow) are busy researching and filing numerous briefs on evidentiary issues while his fellow defense attorneys are busy fighting about who gets to speak at press conferences. Given how commercially successful the series is, a webseries featuring Dershowitz and Scheck would probably be more commercially successful than The Americans.
3. Robert Kardashian (David Schwimmer) – I can’t blame Schwimmer for the writers’ awful inclusion of multiple scenes between Robert and his later-famous children Kim, Kourtney, and Khloe. For example, in one scene, Robert takes his children to Father’s Day brunch and lectures them about the dangers of fame. It’s a totally irrelevant scene, except for the fact that we know that his kids will grow up to be reality television stars, famous for being famous.
Robert is much more tolerable when he is away from his children (who have thankfully been excluded from the last two episodes), as Robert’s down-to-earth attitude is a welcome contrast from the other personalities on the defense team. He is truly saddened by Nicole’s death and Simpson’s arrest, which is a constant reminder that despite the pomp and circumstance of the trial, two people actually died. Schwimmer does a great job conveying how Robert, unlike the other attorneys, is motivated to help his friend and not driven by fame. Finally, it always cracks me up when Robert earnestly refers Simpson as “Juice” in everyday conversation (no offense to Tone Loc’s character in Blank Check).
2. F. Lee Bailey (Nathan Lane) – Millennials like me are probably unaware of Bailey’s history, but thanks to a convenient (and awkward) line of exposition, we now know that Bailey was involved in some of the most famous legal cases of the twentieth century, representing, among others, Patty Hearst, Dr. Sam Sheppard, and Ernest Molina. While some on the show underestimate Bailey as an over-the-hill drunk, Bailey is actually the Lady MacBeth of the legal team. Bailey surreptitiously encourages Cochran to usurp Shapiro as lead attorney after Bailey is put off by Shapiro’s strategy to seek a plea deal and by Shapiro’s request that Bailey work the case pro bono (which comes out of nowhere). Even though promoting Cochran is probably in Simpson’s best interest, Bailey’s idea is thus based purely on spite. Bailey continues to get his revenge on Shapiro by giving an interview to Larry King and listing the reasons why the public may think Shapiro is unqualified (while ostensibly arguing that Shapiro is qualified). In this week’s episode, Shapiro refuses to even be in the same room as Bailey, who has apparently leaked to the press that Shapiro is in over his head. Even though he is not at the top of the defense team ticket, Bailey is the puppet master.
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1. Johnnie Cochran (Courtney B. Vance) – As I wrote about in my initial review, Vance’s outstanding performance as Cochran is one of the strongest aspects of the show. Vance takes a person who has been popularized in culture as a bombastic buffoon (particularly through the character of Jackie Chiles on Seinfeld) and turns him into a three-dimensional character. For example, in last week’s episode, Cochran delivers a long monologue to a despondent Simpson in an attempt to cheer him up and to persuade him to show the flash and energy that made him an sports and popular culture icon. Cochran explains how when he was younger, he had just gone through a difficult divorce and was suffering professional failure. Unmotivated, Cochran watched Simpson (then playing with the San Francisco 49ers at the end of his career) shred Green Bay on the field while also starring in Hertz commercials. Simpson’s success motivated Cochran to get back to work, and drove him to become a successful attorney. Vance delivers the speech masterfully; despite watching the show at the end of a long day, Vance almost motivated me to fire up my computer and start writing more legal briefs. I don’t say this lightly, but Vance’s delivery of the monologue was almost Michael Cristofer-esque.
Moreover, in the first defense meeting, after Shapiro embarrasses himself by asking the other attorneys if they believe Simpson is guilty, Cochran does not even sit down, instead explaining to some of the smartest attorneys in the country – all sitting – how it would be foolish to select black women for the jury. Through his body language, Cochran establishes that he is in charge.
Cochran excels again in this week’s episode, thoroughly embarrassing prosecutor Christopher Darden (Sterling K. Brown, who is also excellent). Cochran gets in Darden’s head by telling the press that Darden is only on the prosecution team because he is black. Then, after Darden diplomatically asks Cochran that they should treat each other with mutual respect and should not resort to low blows, Cochran responds that he is “not trying to be respectful” but is instead “trying to win.” Cochran follows that ethos in the courtroom; after Darden asks the court to ban the use of the “N-word” at trial, Cochran gives an extemporaneous, eloquent, and impassioned (I still have some work to do to match Cochran’s alliteration skills) speech about the offensiveness of Darden’s request and how it degrades the intelligence of black jurors and ignores black history. Cochran punctuates the speech by turning to Darden and stating “[N-word] please,” which was startling and shocking in its bluntness (and I was even more shocked when I learned that it actually happened in real life).
The show also makes great use of an episode-opening flashback to the early 1980s in which Cochran – innocently driving in his car with his young daughters – is handcuffed and almost arrested by a white policeman in a predominantly white neighborhood. The policeman ultimately lets Cochran go after learning that he works as a prosecutor, but Vance perfectly captures Cochran’s resigned horror at his degrading, which provides the background for his later speech.
In short, Cochran is my favorite current character on television and by far the leader in the power rankings. Give Courtney Vance the Emmy right now.
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Harry Graff is a litigation associate at a firm, but he spends days wishing that he was writing about film, television, literature, and pop culture instead of writing briefs. If there is a law-related movie, television show, book, or any other form of media that you would like Harry Graff to discuss, he can be reached at [email protected]. Be sure to follow Harry Graff on Twitter at @harrygraff19.
