The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story is a huge hit.
Last week’s must-see episode was the highest-rated premiere in FX history, and we haven’t even gotten to the Ford Bronco chase yet. Apparently the demand was out there for a TV show about most famous trial of the 1990s from the guy who created Glee and American Horror Story starring multiple Oscar winners and John Travolta’s eyebrows. Who knew?
American Crime Story is the first time a show has spent an entire season on the Simpson trial. (The icky 1995 TV movie The O.J. Simpson Story doesn’t count.) But it’s not the first time it’s been referenced. Here’s how seven other series, from Seinfeld to The Tonight Show, covered the man called Juice.
The Larry Sanders Show
The Larry Sanders Show, one of the best comedies of the 1990s, covered the decade’s most-famous alleged criminal with its fourth-season premiere, “Roseanne’s Return.” Larry, like every talk show host around at that time (more on this soon), is obsessed with the trial. So is the Andy Richter to his Conan, the buffoonish Hank Kingsley, albeit for a different reason. “I live on Rockingham,” he complains, “and my property values have just gone right into the toilet.” Hank’s interested in the news, but only as it relates to him. It’s an astute observation on something we all do, from a still-underappreciated series.
The Oprah Winfrey Show
O.J., who was arrested for armed robbery and kidnapping in 2007, reportedly believes Oprah Winfrey is to blame for his incarnation. That’s according to his former manager Norman Pardo, who said, “O.J. doesn’t like Oprah. He feels like she’s partially responsible for him being in jail now. She never let anyone like me come on the [The Oprah Winfrey Show] and talk about him.” Instead, Oprah, whose coverage of the murder case was handled with more grace than her sensationalist contemporaries, later booked guests who were involved with the Trial of the Century, including Johnnie Cochran. Plus, to be fair, O.J. was on Oprah: On October 3, 1995, her audience was filmed reacting to the not guilty verdict in real time. It’s the original “reacts” video.
Roseanne
The final season of Roseanne is a madcap adventure in bonkers storytelling, with a controversial conclusion that satisfied some, but pissed off most. But by then, viewers should have been used to the show breaking its reality. In season seven’s “The Birds and the Frozen Bees,” after a joke about Darlene having a “Marcia Clark haircut,” Jackie crawls out of Roseanne’s television as, you guessed it, Marcia Clark. “I just can’t believe how great you are,” Roseanne tells Marcia, before offering her a slice of cheese. And how does one cut off said slice of cheese? With a “big bloody knife,” of course.
Seinfeld
Cosmo Kramer’s animated lawyer Jackie Chiles is an obvious parody of Johnnie Cochran (who almost got his own spin-off). But the O.J. homages on Seinfeld don’t end there, or with bras. In “The Big Salad,” Kramer and an ex-baseball player who’s suspected of murder go on the run from the law in… a white Ford Bronco. Seinfeld had fun with the obvious, knowing nod, and even used actual footage from the low-speed chase.
The Simpsons
Considering the shared last name, The Simpsons oddly didn’t make a direct O.J. Simpson reference until season 14, when Juice attends a concert with the South Park boys (it was a hat tip to South Park‘s “Simpsons Already Did It” episode, which aired a year earlier). Before that point, the closest The Simpsons got was the “ignore all the Simpson DNA evidence” line from “The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular,” and much of “Homer Badman,” which mocks the trial’s media coverage by having Homer being followed around the clock after he’s accused of sexual harassment. Did O.J. sleep nude in an oxygen tent which he believes gives him sexual powers? That’s a half-truth.
SNL
On February 25, 1978, O.J. Simpson hosted SNL with musical guest Ashford & Simpson. Nearly 20 years later, he appeared on SNL again, and again, and again (writer Jim Downey once said, “We did three solid years of, like, 60 shows of O.J. jokes in a row”) under very different circumstances. Tim Meadows, the only male, black cast member at the time, was tasked with playing Juice. Which he did, at least nine times between 1994 and 1998. Some sketches were set in courtrooms; others, during a jury field trip. Along the way, Marisa Tomei reprised her character from My Cousin Vinny; Dana Carvey did his Johnny Carson impression; and in the sketch that holds up the best, a freed O.J., back with NBC Sports, accidentally illustrates a confession. O.J. is also referenced by Adam Sandler in both “The Hanukkah Song” and “The Hanukkah Song, Pt. 2.” All these years later, still not a Jew.
The Tonight Show Starring Jay Leno
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znnMDWRLaFI
When Jay Leno retired from The Tonight Show in 2014 to spend more time with his collection of vintage cars, the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University calculated his most popular joke targets over 4,600-plus episodes. Unsurprisingly, Bill Clinton was the most-referenced politician. As for celebrity? That would be O.J. Simpson, with “795 jokes told about him.” The most Leno of these: The Dancing Itos, a ridiculous musical routine in which dancers would dress up like key characters in the trial. It’s utterly toothless, satire-free comedy, and the Tonight Show audience ate it up (ratings soared around this time). To quote an inspired Onion headline: “Leno Begs Simpson To Kill Again.”
