FWIW, only 36% of people living in LA County are of Mexican descent (all hispanics/latinos combined officially come to 48%, but are probably a majority once write-in responses under 'other races' are factored in), and were probably significantly less than that in 1995. [I don't have LA county figures, but for the city…

As with Cochran, OJ, Kardashian, Clark, Darden… he can be more than one thing!
Refreshing on a TV show…

I wonder how hard it was to write - Wagner was widely accused of being Jewish by contemporaries and the subject of much antisemitic abuse. He probably believed himself to be part-Jewish (and grew up in the Jewish quarter), although he probably wasn't.

In a lot of ways, Cochran is more the devil than OJ here, at least the way the show portrays it. Yes, OJ is a brutal murderer - but he's also basically a spoilt child with little understanding of what's going on around him. Cochran's the one who manipulates everybody to get the murderer off scott-free.
Of course, he's…

…waiting for the producers to defend their choice by explaining that all black men look the same to them…

And they set that up, too, in the somewhat-queasy White People Dinner Party. While we were distracted by the optics, the content was about how the Simpson and Brown families were on weirdly good terms and how OJ may have been bribing the family. Cochran couldn't redecorate their house because its theirs - but he could…

I think part of it is Not Appreciating The Black Experience (as Darden calls her on over affirmative action). Clark knows that Fuhrman's a racist, and that the defence team will go after it if they can, and probably that the jury will get inflamed over it - that's why they try to have the n-word banned from the…

As I say above, I think what Cochran's doing there is "playing" the role of a black guy. The cop's treating him as Generic Black Guy, and he's responding by pretending to be Generic Black Guy, because he sees himself as the same as any other black guy, he wants to express solidarity, and he wants to teach his…

Goes back again to the uncle tom thing, too. Cochran didn't just put him in his place as a lawyer: he did so in a way that forcefully reminded him of his race. It punctured the position Darden had put himself in, as above or apart from the black people he was talking about in the third person…

I think the scene also framed the episode's questions around black survivor guilt, to coin a phrase. Johnny tries to play that scenario 'by the book', the way he'd advise any black client, but he ends up 'cheating', resorting to the 'don't you know who I am?' card that other black people aren't able to use. The way he…

How about about an inversion of the format: a director who avoids being 'together' again? I'm thinking of Lumet, whose leads have included Henry Fonda, Sophia Loren, Jason Robards, Katherine Hepburn, Rod Steiger, Sean Connery, Walther Matthau, Candice Bergen, James Mason, Vanessa Redgrave, Lynn Redgrave, James Coburn,…

Es brillig war, und schlichten Toven…

Thank you!
While the show isn't perfect, the reason I think it might be the best show on TV right now* is that I think it can sustain serious thought and analysis, and not just in a 'seeing what they meant' way but actually debating it and looking at different sides, like the conversation here about the show's attitude…

My favourite moment: the subtle pause when Peggy's explaining modern feminism. She says that women don't have to be just wives and mothers anymore, now they can be… [subtle pause as she fails to think of what she wants to be instead] anything they want to be.

Yeah, I wasn't expecting Mike to just go and try to kill Dodd when he's surrounded by his men just because Simone told him too. So I was expecting something a bit smarter. But all-out assault on the castle still came as a shock to me.

I prefer to think that was a reference to Buffy.

On the one hand, the idea of just going back three decades every time seems kind of silly and gimmicky.

On a more literal level, what rhinos are famous for is charging madly forward, which is terrifying but not always in their best interest. The episode is about both Dodd and Bear lowering their heads and charging (Bear twice). Each time, the rhino gets stopped: Dodd and Bear (the first time) by violence, and Bear the…

I'll have that argument! While they're the two big names at the moment, I really don't think they could be called the biggest ever. Williams probably should be in the list (for sheer longevity if nothing else!) - Morricone's iconic, but has a relatively small top-tier output.

Sure, there's a reason, but the reason only has to be "make the audience wonder whether he's abducted by aliens." It doesn't have to actually BE alien abduction.
For instance, there were no actual Eldritch Horrors in True Detective, despite all the hints. And there was no unambiguous proof of divine intervention in…