MargotWendice

Ah, I stand corrected. Kathleen apparently owned a different house in Forest Hills before moving in with Michael. And your final line made me laugh (not that any of this is funny exactly), because I have thought that any woman who gets involved with this guy should be grateful he lives in a one story apartment now. I mean, I have been on this earth for more than 40 years and do not know of one person who died falling down stairs. This guys knows TWO women who died in such a way. What are the odds?

Knowing a fair amount about the case, I found this documentary completely infuriating. They left out so much important evidence that if I based my opinion solely on this documentary I would be completely perplexed about how they got a conviction in the first place. The prosecution had a financial motive front and center in this case. Kathleen was the major breadwinner and she owned their house. Peterson was in debt as were both of his sons. He wanted to bail them out (so he could be the "perfect dad") but told Patty that he couldn't ask Kathleen for the money. Clayton had just gotten out of prison for planting pipe bombs and Kathleen may have felt exhausted by his kid's issues. Given that she left her first husband over infidelity she may have lost it after finding porn or emails on Peterson's computer. If she threatened to leave him he would be financially ruined which is a pretty big motive. The documentary left out evidence that she had a broken hyoid bone which does not fit the scene of her 'fall'. They also did not show the evidence that his bloody footprint was on the back of her leg. How did that happen if she fell and landed face up? (This did get mentioned in the follow up episodes.) There was evidence of bloody footprints going to and from the laundry room, but they had been cleaned up. Kathleen had been dead for roughly two hours. Peterson changed his story, first saying he had come in to turn on the pool lights, but changed his story to say he had smoked a cigar for 45 minutes when he learned that she took longer to die than he thought. This also makes it less likely she was breathing when he made the first 911 call, as he claimed. The question remains: how did her blood get inside his shorts? Deaver was an idiot but his role was blood spatter. .There was no evidence that he planted any blood evidence. I could go on but I will leave it there...

I thought they mostly spoke freely in the garage. I feel like I have seen them turn of the faucet to speak before, even when the kids weren't around. But I may just be making excuses for plot holes. :-)

I thought they always did that when they were talking about private things--I assume it is in case the house is bugged.

I want to say the Martha Moxley case: a lovely young girl, a rich community, a Kennedy connection, a long road to prosecution. But that would bring us more Mark Fuhrman, so...

Yes! It has confirmed my thought that if I am ever charged with a crime I am going before a judge. No jury.

I am fascinated/baffled that people think that someone else might have killed Nicole and Ron. Nicole was clearly the target as she was killed first and most violently. Her throat was slashed so deeply it almost severed her head. That is a crime with real emotion behind it. This is not the style of a drug-related hit and as others pointed out, there would have been much easier ways to kill her. I don't think it was uncommon to recreationally use drugs in Brentwood at that time so there is no reason to believe she was hanging out with shady dealers in back alleys. I know the rumor has spread that Faye Resnick owed money, but then why wasn't Resnick killed? And if this was over debts, why not walk off with Nicole's expensive jewelry? Someone with incredibly strong feelings for Nicole went over there that night to kill her. There is one obvious person who fits that description. OJ had beaten her and was clearly stalking her. She was so worried OJ would kill her she left evidence in a safety deposit box. Then someone killed her. When you hear hoof beats, think of horses, not zebras.

I seem to be in the minority in not liking that scene. First, I do not think Selma Blair is a good actor. I felt like I could see her thinking to herself: "You are sad. Emote!". Second, I could not get past the idea that Kris is cooking for the kids while dressed in a power suit. Third, focusing on the kids playing outside--I guess to show innocence--was heavy handed. And we get it, show--Kardashian is the moral compass forever tortured by his role in this saga. I like Schwimmer, though.

I think we have a different idea of what 'taking liberties' means in this context. The entire show, with the exception of the parts in the courtroom that were filmed, is based on stories people told and things that have been reported/published. Such is the case for every biographical document.

I see what you are saying. I thought you were calling bs on the whole scene, not the outcome (if that makes sense). Of course we have only Kardashian's/ Cowling's word for the fact that nothing was there. FWIW, I cannot imagine why OJ would take the knife to Chicago and bring it all the way back to L.A., but who knows? (I probably shouldn't post while drinking wine.)

I feel like I read that this happened, though--Kardashian had OJ's garment bag and the police didn't seem interested. Later Cowlings and he looked through the bag and found nothing. Can anyone confirm?

I have not read much about season 2--is it, by any chance, based on Five Days at Memorial? That was an incredibly powerful book.

So how did they get Nicole and Ron's blood, and swirl all three people's blood together?

Yes, this is an important point to me. If I was forced to try on gloves soaked with the mother of my children--a person I said I loved--I would be reluctant, maybe even devastated. It is difficult to imagine treating the whole thing like a hammy middle school play tryout. Even if you were innocently accused of something so heinous you would hopefully still remember that two innocent people were dead and stop mugging for your 'audience'. Ugh. I was shouting at the screen like I was watching a horror movie: "Don't let him try on the gloves!". It is funny how you can know what is going to happen but STILL hope for a different outcome.

I have little doubt that he was abusive toward Marguerite. Domestic violence tends to be an escalating pattern that begins when a man is young. She had many good reasons to keep it quiet--the culture of the 1960s/1970s, OJ's success, the fear of police intervention within the Black community, etc. Their marriage definitely wasn't happy and she began filing for divorce as early as 1970 (they married in 1967). She has kept a low profile ever since and I respect her for that.

But this seems like a false comparison. Was Sasha Mitchell a very well know actor? I have no idea who he is. Of course, that shouldn't matter but people care more about a famous person perpetrating crimes than the random person who lives down the street. I think part of the outrage was that people loved OJ. They felt fooled by him and taken in by his 'nice guy' persona. I think if Jimmy Fallon (I think he has a 'nice guy' persona) was accused of beating his wife, people would be outraged. I am certainly not saying race is not a factor here, but I think there is a complex interconnected-ness of race/gender/celebrity/wealth that cannot be reduced to one element.

I disagree that the goal of the episode was to make the viewer feel sorry for Marcia or make ex #2 look bad. It is pretty much telling the story like it was--on top of the pressures of the trial, Marcia was dealing with a custody battle and all of the negativity targeted toward her appearance (something that no one else on either side was dealing with). The scene where she was outside smoking and had arrived home after her sons were asleep showed that she was spending more time with the case than with her boys, and the fact that she called her ex to take care of the kids when she had to stay late certainly humanized him as a parent--after all,she did not ask the nanny to stay late in that scene. I did not see sugarcoating of her as a perfect mother and her ex as a demon, just a portrayal of a complicated situation.

Absolutely. This is one of those situations where we don't know if he was a good dad or she was a good mom, but I cannot blame her for wanting to maintain custody. I am sure she though the trial was temporary but custody arrangements would be permanent. And of course if she didn't fight for custody she would be lambasted for being a bad mother because we have different standards when women are not custodial parents.

One thing I have never been clear on--how did the Akita get outside? Was the theory that he came out with Nicole when she answered the gate? I would think a stranger who was walking along with a big knife and thought they just felt like killing someone would have moved on in the presence of a dog. Now OJ on the other hand would not have been afraid of the dog and would have caused the dog less alarm (although I am still surprised he didn't bark more).

I was shocked to find myself in tears during this episode. I wonder if there are gender and age differences in responses to the focus on Marcia. When I was 25 I probably would have rolled my eyes at few things portrayed in the episode. I remember thinking that sexism would never affect me, and work-life balance used to be a meaningless concept. Was I naive or an ass? Or both? Fast forward more than a decade and I struggle to be a professional and a mother of toddler aged twins (an unplanned surprise all around) while getting a lot of feedback that I should probably be performing both roles a little bit better. Meanwhile my teaching evaluations often have comments about my hair and clothing after I spend hours preparing lectures and facilitating activities that will engage students. So I get where Marcia was coming from. You work hard and put so much into your professional life and people want to reduce you to a hairstyle. It's frustrating stuff.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-a-knife-can-tell-us-about-the-o-j-simpson-case I found this story by Toobin in the New Yorker interesting, even though we know now that the knife was definitely not significant. How could I not have known the murder weapon was believed to be from Nicole's own kitchen? I might need to head over to the case discussion thread...

I agree with you, Umbelina, lest it seemed as if I was being 'judgey' above. I think it is always going to be problematic when an inexperienced teenager gets involved with someone much older, who has had time to play the field a bit. And indeed we never know what is going on in someone else's marriage, although I do not think Robert was okay with her cheating. My only beef with Kris is that she went on to publicly talk about her affairs and even put this information in a book (Again, how do I know this stuff? These people really are ubiquitous). That seems incredibly disrespectful to your ex-husband and your children, especially since this opened the door to a lot of speculation that her daughter has a different biological father. I would not want my mother sharing those details with the world.

I think that, for her, the cheating was part of how she enjoyed her life.

I completely agree with you. These people led incredibly privileged lives. I noticed that Robert Kardashian was the 'Producer' so I assume he was behind putting this together for/with Kris (I also wondered if the references to the Bible/bible studies were for his sake although for all I know Kris is religious, too). I imagine it seemed like everyone Nicole knew had idyllic lives that included doting husbands. We know the Kardashian marriage didn't last but my understanding was that Kris initiated that (How do I know these things? Ugh) and Robert was devastated. Meanwhile OJ is dragging Nicole through the bushes in her bra and sweatpants and throwing her jewelry in a neighbor's trash. It's so seedy and Nicole likely felt responsible for the seediness. As difficult as it is for any domestic violence victim to tell people what is happening it would be even harder in the community she lived in. FWIW I am a clinical psychologist and I work with battered women's services. I often provide cognitive behavioral therapy because these women frequently have cognitive distortions about what happened ("It was all my fault. I should have been a better mother/cook/cleaner/sexual partner/etc"). They often do not tell anyone or minimize/downplay incidents that may have been witnessed by others. I would say the well-off women have a harder time with sharing this because they think eevryone around them is happy and stable and they will be the fly in the Chardonnay.

While it is impossible to understand the operation of another person's mind--especially someone like OJ--I think many people would be more driven to find the real killer than to just get their life back. After all, OJ has been through hell and some random person just got away with it? I mean, forget that the mother of your children, this person who was supposedly your 'best friend' was brutally slaughtered--you were falsely accused and some guy committed murder and got to walk away. A narcissist like OJ would find this especially difficult to take.