Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Fix’ On ABC, Where A Fictional Version Of Marcia Clark Gets A Fictional Second Shot At A Fictional O.J.

Everyone remembers Marcia Clark, right? She was the lead prosecutor on the O.J. Simpson murder case, a case that seemed like a near-slam-dunk that she ended up losing. Since that case, Clark has made her living as a writer and a legal pundit. But now she’s venturing into TV, as a co-creator and writer for The Fix. And if there is ever a case of “write what you know,” this is it….

THE FIX: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: It’s 2010. A red BMW shoots up a coastal highway blasting “Boom Boom Pow” to show you that it is, in fact, 2010. The woman in the car gets a call and finds out that the jury in the trial she’s prosecuting is already back from deliberations.

The Gist: Maya Travis (Robin Tunney) is the city of Los Angeles’ lead prosecutor on the high-profile murder case where actor Sevvy Johnson (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is accused of brutally murdering his wife and a friend. The case, despite the evidence against Johnson, has been played out in the courtroom by his savvy defense attorney Ezra Wolf (Scott Cohen) as a matter of race. So when Maya and her colleague/boyfriend Matthew Collier (Adam Rayner) hear the verdict — not guilty — they’re stunned.

Cut to eight years later. Maya has escaped to Oregon, happily tending to the farm she lives at with her current boyfriend Riv (Marc Blucas). She then gets a call from Collier that they need her back in L.A. to help on a new murder case. Johnson’s new girlfriend was found bludgeoned to death and Johnson is, of course, the main person of interest. As reluctant as she is to get back into chasing down Johnson, considering how badly it affected her mental health after the first verdict, the more she looks into things, the more she realizes that the same red flags that led them to Johnson in the first case are popping up in the second.

However, the current lead prosecutor in the case, Loni Kampoor (Mouzam Makkar), thinks that Maya is too blinded by the first case to be objective about the second. But when Maya actually finds evidence that Johnson was beating his girlfriend, L.A. District Attorney Alan Wiest (Breckin Meyer) reinstates Maya as the lead prosecutor on the case — if Maya is interested in coming back.

Meanwhile, Johnson is proclaiming his innocence, just as he did in the first case. Wolf convinces his former client to hire him again, and just in time; Wolf owes some unsavory types a mountain of gambling debt, and the Johnson gravy train will help bail him out of that mess.

Our Take: I have this habit when I watch TV shows that are unintentionally, but mind-bendingly, silly: I close my eyes and tap my forehead with my middle finger, as if I’m saying to myself “I can’t believe this got on TV.” And I found myself doing this a lot when I was watching The Fix.

The absurdity of this show exists on different levels. First of all, the show is co-created and co-written by Marcia Clark, who has partnered with veteran showrunners Liz Craft and Sarah Fein (The 100) to create what can only be a fever dream she keeps having about getting a second shot at convicting O.J. Simpson of murder. Sure, a few details were changed, but anyone who doesn’t think the original Johnson case is a fictionalized version of the O.J. case is kidding themselves.

It’s hard to not let that context color how you watch The Fix. So, Clark envisions herself trying to choose between two hunky men who look somewhat alike? She gets to look the O.J. surrogate in the eye with that “I’m finally going to get you” look? She gets to imagine that some of the lawyers on the other side — Wolf looks and acts a lot like Barry Scheck combined with Robert Kardashian — has a crippling gambling problem? The show, with its mostly hammy acting and eye-rolling dialogue, would be hard to buy without realizing that this is Clark’s career fantasy writ large. But the Clark factor makes the show even more ridiculous.

Robin Tunney really tries to elevate the material she’s given as Maya, especially in scenes where she deciphers Johnson’s girlfriend’s physical cues in archival interview footage or has to tell Riv why she has to defend the memory of the original victims. But in other scenes, like where she’s accosted by the father of the new murder victim, who tells her to stay away in front of a ton of news cameras, even Tunney’s magnetism can’t overcome how insanely unrealistic the scene is.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in this first episode.

Parting Shot: One of Maya’s first acts as lead prosecutor is to get a search warrant of Johnson’s home. Due to a mole in the DA’s office, Wolf gets wind of it and tells Johnson to get rid of anything bad; he gives a stash of something to his Kato-like stepson Gabriel (Alex Sexton), who lives in the guest house. As Maya and the team of cops go through the house, there’s a literal stand-off: Johnson and Wolf on one side, Maya, Matthew, and CJ (Merrin Dungey), the office’s investigator, on the other.

Sleeper Star: Dungey didn’t have a lot to say in the pilot, besides being pissed that Maya left the DA’s office without telling anyone, but we are fans and we hope CJ gets more to do going forward. Oh yeah, and Robin Givens pops up as Johnson’s first ex-wife Julianne, who offers her unfailing support for Johnson… for a price.

Most Pilot-y Line: One of many: “That’s the bitch about guilt; you don’t have to do anything to feel it,” Maya says to Johnson’s daughter about the storage locker she registered for that her father’s girlfriend — her old roomie — used to film videos document her beatings.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Watch The People vs. O.J. Simpson again instead; it puts Marcia Clark in a much better light than Clark herself has done in The Fix.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch The Fix on ABC