Here’s What It’s Like Watching ‘The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story’ As A Millennial

I have a singular, fuzzy memory of the O.J. Simpson trial and it’s of my mother. She was cradling my colicky infant brother while trying to balance our tangled cord phone in the nook between her ear and shoulder. My father was pulling overtime duty at the radio station — it was all hands on deck for the verdict — and my bleary-eyed momma was stuck at home with two small children and our neighbors, who were glued to the screen of our box TV set from Montgomery Ward. Looking back, I don’t think they were there for support, but rather, for an inside scoop if my dad received early word on O.J.’s fate.

Needless to say, I was too young to remember the gravity of what was unfolding around me. I don’t remember watching the verdict, I can’t recall any talk of riots, and I draw a blank when trying to think of the shock heard ’round the country when Simpson was acquitted. Hell, until very recently, I had no idea his nickname was “The Juice.” Like most young people who came of age in the late ’90s and early ’00s, I only know O.J. as that famous football player who got away with murder. Thus, watching FX’s The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story is an entirely different experience for me than it is for say, my mother, who falls on the tail end of the Baby Boomers.

Knowing this show was going to be a massive rollout, I decided early on that I wanted to observe the retelling of the trial of the century in a way that was unique to my age group. I made notes of everything I already knew about Simpson prior to my coverage:

• Famous football player
• Was friends with Kim Kardashian’s dad
• Is rumored to be Khloé Kardashian’s dad
• Killed his wife and her boyfriend(?)
• Got off
• In jail now, but not for murder

Clearly, I had some research to do.

I had two elements working in my favor, however, upon experiencing the saga of O.J. Simpson over twenty years after the fact. Not only did I have the benefit of watching screeners while covering the show in Los Angeles (so surreal!), but I’m a freaking millennial — falling down YouTube rabbit holes is quite literally part of my job.

Twenty minutes into the pilot (which I, being of the on-demand generation, watched on my laptop), I found myself pausing to research. With multiple YouTube videos, Wikipedia pages, and Reddit threads crowding my screen, I had to fact-check the insanity that was unfolding before my eyes. Sure, it’s a reimagining (and one from Ryan Murphy, no less), so I made sure to take everything with a grain of salt. But holy hell! Simpson really didn’t ask how his wife died?! Isn’t that rule number one of not blowing your cover? Like every blossoming generation in history, I had a fleeting feeling of superiority and simply chalked it up to the fact that people were, well, dumber back in 1994. Then I remembered I’m of the generation that let this happen.

After bingeing through the screeners made available for review and spending countless hours researching what was and wasn’t shown (I swear, one night turned into the next morning before I knew it), I came to the not-so-satisfying conclusion that, while there may never be another O.J., my generation has watched our own parade of high-profile case after high-profile case play out like one endless media circus with periodic intermissions. Timothy McVeigh, Michael freaking Jackson, Casey Anthony, George Zimmerman — all televised to the nth degree, to the point where over-saturation has led to crippling desensitization.

This normalized dismay — in O.J.’s case, the brutal murder of two people paving the way to reality TV — practically encourages audiences to forget meaningful details in the mediated shuffle. While writing this, for example, I think it’s somewhat of an issue I could easily remember the last meal McVeigh received before his execution (mint chocolate chip ice cream) before I could recall the name of the Oklahoma City building he detonated. To be fair, The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building is a tough title to recall at the drop of a hat. But should it be? It can be argued, that part of the allure of the rise of true crime on TV is that we’re slowly but surely taking back the facts that matter — all Internet speculation considered.

I’m four episodes in and, to be honest, I’m still not sure how to feel about O.J. Simpson other than how I was raised to feel about O.J. Simpson. I never watched him play football. I never saw his Hertz commercials until I looked them up. I can’t remember where I was during the Bronco chase. Without sounding like a young person who couldn’t care less: the nostalgia simply isn’t mine. To me, O.J. Simpson is such a far-removed, tabloid figure, I can’t help but analyze the show how I’ve analyzed every other subject in the current true crime zeitgeist, including Adnan Syed of Serial, Robert Durst of The Jinx, and Steven Avery of Making a Murderer. In simplest terms, my experience watching The People v. O.J. Simpson is this: an episode open in one tab on my computer and Google in another.

Photos: FX Networks