TheOtherOne

She was willing to deal with him until he sparked her PTSD by noting everything he could do to her again and gloating over everything he had done, hence the 20 million flashbacks before she snapped. Does every other "murderous thug" (and are you sure "thug" is a word you want to use to insult a black character?) have flashbacks before snapping? Somehow, I doubt it.

Nope. Nope. That's not the way the scene played out at all. When a man tells a woman he should try selling her again--a man who did it once and who still has the resources to do it, even if he is in a wheelchair--and tells her HE deserves revenge, when a woman screams "You think you get revenge? You. Don't. Get. Revenge. THAT'S MINE! MINE!" she sure as hell isn't doing it to save someone else's reputation or for politics or for anyone else. She's doing it for her damn self, because of everything that asshole did to her, was STILL doing to her and COULD still do to her. This was hers. She deserved it. She owns it. It wasn't about anyone but her and him. Liv having a gun would have indicated premeditation, and a lot of viewers would give her a hell of a lot more shit for that than what happened in the moment. One person's ridiculousness is another's awesomeness, I suppose. For me, it was the most satisfying thing I've seen on TV in weeks. I've watched the scene 10 times now, everything from Andrew sneering about how he deserves revenge through Olivia telling off moron Abby. We live in a world with too little justice, where bad people get away with things everyday, where men hurt women all the time and there are too few happy endings. For all the plot machinations required to make it happen, this moment had a woman face down a man who had done terrible things to her without remorse, who threatened to keep doing bad things to her, and she had enough. She took him out. It's the kind of thing that wouldn't be acceptable in real life, but that's what fiction's for. From where I'm sitting, it was satisfying as hell.

They may not have succeeded in killing Fitz and Olivia, but they did succeed in killing several other people as a result of their actions, as already mentioned. Fitz's press secretary and another staffer were killed during the assassination attempt. Olivia's neighbor was murdered during her kidnapping and Andrew was involved in arranging the bombing to spark the war.

Yup. This is a show where the president murdered a cancer patient in her bed because she rigged an election and was going to reveal he didn't deserve to be president. Everybody seemed to get past that just fine. But a woman beating to death the man who had her kidnapped, had her neighbor murdered, tried to use her to start a war, committed treason and terrorism, and was still actively trying to hurt her and hurling abuse is somehow Jumping The Shark? He had it coming. I didn't get to see Abby shoot her abusive ex-husband in the face, but I'll take this.

Read this a few weeks ago, and it seems even more relevant now: Dominick Dunne's article from the December 1995 Vanity Fair on OJ's post-trial life and the reaction toward him Good read. (The part about Dunne meeting some of the jurors--who were looking to sell their stories--was particularly interesting, IMO.)

Vanity Fair fact check Vulture fact check EW.com Marcia Clark's reaction

Vanity Fair fact check Vulture fact check Entertainment Weekly recap with additional details

A genius on HitFix's review just pointed this out: Susan Beaubian, the actress who played the jury foreperson, also played the real OJ's wife in The Naked Gun movie. Stunt casting!

Vanity Fair's fact check. VF story about the Fuhrman tapes EW's recap also has additional details about the jurors Vulture's fact check

***shrug*** Mellie is one of the best characters on the show and it could always use more of her, even if the writing in this episode required her to be a moron. There was a lot of that going around in this episode. Like a woman sitting at a dinner table with her lover and his fiancee, the fiancee telling the story about how they met that's THE EXACT SAME PLOY HE USED TO MEET HER and the badass with the supposedly foolproof gut somehow failing to immediately recognize that fact, only catching on days later when he does the same thing right in front of her. Talk about pathetic.

I really enjoyed this one, the best since Maya Rudolph showed up (so maybe her character was the problem...) The show seems to be getting back to being funny instead of aggravating and depressing. Glad to see it.

Vanity Fair's fact check I found this fascinating in particular:

For those who haven't read it, the original script has been online for a while. Here's one link After being familiar with that version for a while, it's probably natural I like it better than the final product, for the moment anyway. But yeah, no aliens, the third character is more untrustworthy, and they sustained the "is Goodman's character lying or telling the truth" aspect longer, while also making him more tragic and sympathetic (vs the final product making him full-on crazy perv). I guess the biggest takeaway is that the finished movie understandably feels more like a Hollywood product, for better or worse.

As MissLucas noted above, it wasn't the first time. From Season 5, Episode 2, "The Infestation Hypothesis:" Transcript

Emily's character has been so thoroughly assassinated at this point there's no use trying to make sense of her. There's no real "her" there. Remember when she was first introduced and she and Amy first bonded over their love of Chaucer and quilting? Does that sound anything like the Emily of today? And yeah, Leonard and Penny are totally the Ross and Rachel of this show (not least of which since the show ripped off at least one of R/R's plots a few years back). But then, Rachel was dumbed down in the later seasons too (there was the season finale in Barbados, where everyone came to listen to Ross's lecture, and Joey and Rachel were both laughing at some scientific term--maybe homo erectus--which made her look like an imbecile). (Then again, the show also ripped off one of Joey's plots with the whole gathers-everyone-together-to-watch-their-appearance-on-a-drama-that-airs-on-the-same-network-only-to-find-they've-been-cut-out-of-the-show episode. So Penny has always been a cross between Rachel and Joey, I suppose.)

Vanity Fair's fact check of the episode.

http://www.ew.com/recap/the-people-v-oj-simpson-american-crime-story-episode-6 Entertainment Weekly's review has some interesting additional details about Clark's life from the book that didn't make it into the show, and one anecdote that shows at least one other prosecutor being kind to her.

Vulture has been doing its own fact-checking of the show with the LA Times' lead reporter on the case, and while he says this episode took the most liberties with the facts, restaging the house was real.

Looks like he's still acting and looking good, though his hairline is about where Steve's is.

This episode wasn't as aggravating as the last couple, so that was a definite improvement. Hooray! Not the funniest episode either, though. Got a few chuckles, mostly at the Stewart/Todd interactions (Stewart busting Todd for being at school with Dean and trying to pass him off on Bemis) and Claire admitting she was bad at giving advice after it already backfired on Deb. But on the whole it was more mildly amusing than outright funny. But at least Jillian's gone! I couldn't tell if Maya Rudolph's reaction in the breakup scene was too over-the-top (presumably on purpose). It was very broad, but I admit, I did laugh. Maybe I was just relieved her terrible storyline was over. (Oh God, it is over, right? Please tell me it's over.) Not their best episode, but not their worst either.

I think the hopefulness comes from the fact that this was the last episode of the original order, and, per the producer's interview on TVLine, they hadn't been picked up yet for the rest of the season when they wrote it, so they wrote it this way in case this really was it. It's not an ending-ending, but sort of a conclusion if it had to be. Luckily, they got five more episodes to unravel everything. I have to say, I really appreciate it when showrunners do things like that. Makes me feel like they're considering the big picture and I'm in good hands and can trust them not to leave me hanging (especially since the season will be ending so early they'll have no idea about the renewal before the last episode is completed). Yay to writers not screwing over their viewers. I love this show. eta: Damn. Guess I need to type faster.

I was enjoying the show well enough before this one, but this is the episode where I officially fell in love with it. I legitimately laughed out loud several times--especially in the cow scene. The early kitchen scene with DJ, Stephanie and Kimmy had everything clicking on both a performance and writing level and made me think how much I'd just enjoy spending a half hour watching these actors and these characters, which is what I'm really looking for in a sitcom. I also think it helped that none of the older returning cast members appeared and distracted from the leads; I was relieved none of them showed up. To be honest, I don't care about the kids (and started just fast-forwarding through any of their scenes where the adults don't appear in the last episode), but I'm willing to put up with them for the adults. Loved it.

Yes, I get that they knew they would have a 200th episode based on the 3-year renewal and would have wanted to do something special for it (as they used the 100th to put Leonard and Penny back together.) But if they really planned it over a year ago, as in counted out the number of episodes well over a year in advance to determine when the 200th episode would fall to place the Sheldon birthday reveal exactly a year before the 200th would be (trusting that nothing would ever be rescheduled, etc.), I think that's pretty impressive, and doesn't sound at all like writers who are lazy or phoning it in or not bothering anymore, as is so often claimed. On the other hand, if it was a happy accident that the 200th aired exactly a year later and they realized, "Hey, we should take advantage of that," well, that is pretty smart. (Much like how Friends had Phoebe give birth in their 100th, when they wanted to do something big and just decided to take advantage of the timing to have it happen then.)

I have to give the show credit--the episode where Penny learned Sheldon's birthday was that day did air exactly a year ago (this week, if not to the day). Makes me wonder if they planted that seed to coincide with their 200th episode exactly a year later--which would be incredible planning--or if it was just a lucky coincidence they decided to take advantage of.

This show has gotten so boring. I didn't care about any of it, except to feel bad for the kid. Even Susan's plot is too boring to care about her. So, so boring.