The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story - The Dream Team - Review

The episode begins with Robert Kardashian celebrating Fathers Day with the Kardashian children. Kardashian gets noticed for the being one of the lawyers on O.J.’s case and his children love it. They inform their father that Kris thinks O.J. did it. Kardashian tells them that there is more to life than fame. The show is nicely setting up how the Kardashian empire came to be and viewers can see from a young age that the family wanted nothing more than to be famous.

Marcia holds a press conference and outlines her charges to the public.
She is not holding back and everything is on the table for O.J. including the death plenty. It is telling from Marcia’s facial expressions that she thinks that this case is a slam-dunk for the prosecution.

Shapiro knows that he is in trouble so he calls his old lawyer friend Lee Bailey, played by Nathan Lane. It is once again emphasized that settling is Shapiro’s specialty. This irritates Shapiro so he brings on another lawyer to help guide the team, Dershowitz.

The trial is going to be moved from Santa Monica to Downtown Los Angeles, because of ‘construction’. The real reason for the movie is for the publicity. If it is moved to downtown Los Angeles there will be more black people on the jury.

Shaprio and Lee meet with Dershowitz and his DNA specialist. The come up with a plan to argue that DNA in the case was mishandled. They want the jury to question every piece of evidence shown throughout the trial.

It finally seems to be hitting Marcia that the case will not be as easy to win as she thought it would. The newspapers are calling O.J.’s defense The Dream Team. Also more people are trying to sell their stories about O.J. to the press, making these sources less credible.

Johnnie has taken a backseat these first few episodes, and now he is being brought into the forefront. He has been the senior analyst appearing on many news shows to discuss the case. His wife tells him to be apart of The Dream Team.

O.J.’s mug shot appears on the cover of The Times. The photo was enhanced in order to make O.J. appear darker. This brings forth the argument that he was made to look this way because many people believe that darker people are guiltier. Johnnie mentions how the LAPD culture has not changed and is racist.

Shapiro finds out that Mark Fuhrman sued the city, because Fuhrman believes that they made him a bigot. This gives Shapiro the idea to tell the jury that O.J. was set up by the cops, because the LAPD has a systemic racism problem. He then does a story with The New Yorker and presents the race issue case. Not only does Shapiro give away his strategy, he paints himself as the hero.

It seems that things are crumbling all around Marcia. Jill Shively the only witness that can place O.J. on his way back to Rockingham after the murder, does an exclusive interview with an entertainment show. Marcia feels that she is not credible now and decides that they will not use her as a witness.

O.J. meets with his defense team in jail. It’s pretty clear that he’s losing it, if he already hasn’t lost it. He advises his team to look into Faye Resnick since she has a cocaine problem. Shapiro tells him that they need to have litigator on the team and suggests they bring in Johnnie. O.J. knows the only reason that Shapiro wants to bring in Johnnie is so they can make the case all about racism. The scene ends with O.J. saying, “I’m not black, I’m O.J.” It’s hard to tell who has a bigger ego O.J. or Shapiro. I’m going to go with O.J. on this one.

Marcia brings Chris onto the case. 911 tapes of Nicole reporting O.J. hurting her are then released. Marcia again believes that this will only hurt their case. I really don’t get it, yes your star witness went on talk show, but I don’t see how that makes her any less credible. Not to spoil anything, but I think Marcia not putting Jill on that stand was probably the main reason O.J. was not found guilty.

Shapiro goes to Johnnie and asks him to be on the team. This is the beginning of the ongoing power struggle between the two lawyers. Shapiro tells Johnnie that he will remain the lead lawyer on the case. Jonnie needs to look into O.J.’s eyes before he can sign on. He goes to the jail to see O.J. and O.J. once again says, “I didn’t do it and there’s no way he could have killed Nicole, they were a family.” Johnnie lets him know that all they need is one black juror and the will have a hung jury.

The episode ends with Marcia smoking outside her house reading that Johnnie has joined the team. It seems like there is a war brewing between the defense and prosecution teams. There could possibly be a war brewing in the actual defense team, between Jonnie and Shapiro. If you thought the show was dramatic now, wait until the trial gets started because the episodes are going to getting juicier by the second.

Did you like this episode? Are you glad Johnnie is now apart of The Dream Team? Do you agree with Marcia’s tactics? What do you think about the Kardashians being so prominent on the show? Comment below!