The People V. O.J. Simpson’ Finale: The Endings We Didn’t See Coming

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains details of tonight’s The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story finale 
“There’s been a joke on social media,” says writer and executive producer Larry Karaszewski about tonight’s finale to FX’s The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story: “Don’t spoil it!”
Of course everyone watched the verdict 21 years ago, or has read about it since, but what made tonight’s season finale (titled, of course, “The Verdict”) and this entire series such a fun ride was all the backroom agita we never witnessed on the news. And there were some great creative liberties along the way, like Christopher Darden and Marcia Clark’s little office flirtation.
What stood out in tonight’s episode were several epilogues, most of them heart-wrenching considering the number of casualties in this historic case. Nothing said it better than Sarah Paulson’s Marcia Clark breaking down before Los Angeles D.A. Gil Garcetti and crying “I’m so ashamed!” Or David Schwimmer’s holier-than-thou Robert Kardashian vomiting in the bathroom over the verdict, finally disgusted that his best friend has been cleared for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Or the rear camera shot of the defeated Goldmans walking to their car, punctuated by Kim Goldman’s near-cry, “What are we going to do now?”
Even with the gravitas of this finale, the writers found ways for some smart, subversive humor. At Monday’s advance screening, audiences howled when Clark, in closing arguments, admitted that detective Mark Fuhrman is a despicable guy: “Is he a racist? Yes. Is he the worst that LAPD has to offer? Yes. Should LAPD ever have hired him? No. Should such a person be a police officer? No.”
But, the most effective wrap-up in “The Verdict” (which was directed by Ryan Murphy and written by Karaszewski and Scott Alexander) was Simpson realizing that he can never go home again. He’s hit by the news that the Riveria Country Club won’t take his last minute dinner reservation (“They don’t have room for you!” Simpson’s son tells him). Simpson looks around his own victory party to realize his closest friends have abandoned him, and he’s shocked by the silence following his vow to find the real killer.
Kardashian pointedly leaves a Bible behind for his client: He’s going to need it. In one of the final shots, Simpson looks up at the statue of himself in his backyard, knowing that hero was a different man altogether.
Even though it’s over, and the next season of American Crime Story will turn to Hurricane Katrina, the creators behind The People v. O.J. Simpson had us hooked for the coda to this morality tale: Simpson’s dealings with publisher Judith Regan in writing the confessional tome If I Did It, and how he landed a 33-year stint in prison for kidnapping and armed robbery. If there was ever a tease in terms of Simpson’s unwritten story, the end credits card in tonight’s episode reads that he’s up for parole next year.
At last night’s FX panel for the series finale at the Ace Hotel Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, John Travolta praised Karaszewski and Alexander for making each and every character distinguished, and pivotal to the story. The Oscar-nominated actor couldn’t be more correct: Not one characters gets blurred into the other, or even diminished, in this limited series’ retelling of a pop culture court case even down to Malcom-Jamal Warner’s portrayal of Simpson football buddy and Bronco driver Al Cowlings.
“We talked a lot about Robert Altman and how there’s no supporting characters in his movies,” Karaszewski told Travolta onstage about the writers’ inspiration. For them it only made sense to paint each character vividly, since every person connected to the trial, including some of the jurors who were kicked off, went on to write their own memoirs. “Every person involved in this trial was starring in their own show,” quipped Karaszewski.
“We’re just a bunch of frustrated bad actors and we play all the parts (when we read the script aloud) in the room. Giving Bob Shapiro a voice, is the most fun,” Alexander responded to Travolta’s insight.
“We looked at this story as a tragedy for all characters except Johnnie Cochran. He’s the only character who comes out with a victory,” said Karaszewski. But does he?  True, Cochran’s win triggered the Justice Department to launch a standards and practices of the LAPD, and also caught the attention of President Bill Clinton. Hearing this on TV, during the episode, Courtney B. Vance’s Cochran responds, “Our story is now out of the shadows.” Even though the writers have staged the O.J. Simpson trial as a reaction to the Rodney King verdict, they also showed that we as a society haven’t evolved for the better, particularly in the wake of the Ferguson, MO. events.  As Christopher Darden pointedly tells Cochran following the verdict: “This isn’t some civil rights milestone: Police in this country will keep arresting us, keep beating us, keep killing us. You haven’t changed anything for black here unless you’re a famous rich one in Brentwood.”
When it came to bringing a dramatization of the O.J. Simpson trial for TV, there were any number of source materials that FX and the creatives could have tapped. But as EP Brad Simpson pointed out last night, Jeffrey Toobin’s bestseller The Run Of His Life: The People V. O.J. Simpson was the best one to adapt from, and not just because it was a page-turner.
“When it came to the trial, the book wasn’t just about O.J. It was about the lawyers who tried this case and what happened to them and what happened to America during that year. It sees O.J. not just through the prism of the beginning of the celebrity culture, but also through race. And race was a part of the trial from the very beginning, even though for some white people, it sneaked up on them. Some of them didn’t’ realize it was about race until the verdict.”