The Fix (Mondays at 10:00 on ABC)
I was drawn to The Fix when it was first announced as a pilot early last year because of Ryan Murphy's brilliant The People vs. OJ Simpson. That show was an engrossing, beautifully written, directed, and acted exploration of the case that defined the mid-90s and reshaped our collective viewing of news and media. It put Marcia Clark back in the spotlight, and with some time and distance between America and the case, it became clear that the blame the country placed on Clark for "failing" (and, alternatively, the vitriol from Simpson supporters placed on her for daring to come for their hero) was unfounded and the outcome was the result of more complicated matters.
Anyway, I was on board for The Fix because it's continuing in this renaissance of Marcia Clark, who has since American Crime Story written bestselling mysteries and hosted a true-crime docuseries; with The Fix, she combines her law expertise with her writing experience to give us a fictionalized account of the Simpson trial. Why would we not be excited by this?
Turns out my excitement and faith in the project were misguided.
The Fix is a bloodless, gutless, by-the-numbers drama. Whereas People was human, there's no avoiding the fantasy of The Fix. It rewrites the Simpson trial from the perspective of the prosecutors, with each of the "bad guys" (who knows where they'll shake out by the end of ten episodes) drawn cartoonishly and the "good guys" drawn heroically. Sevvy Johnson (Lost's Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), the OJ stand-in, is alternately a sneering villain and a desperate victim, while Marcia Clark stand-in Maya Travis (The Mentalist's Robin Tunney) is sad but determined while riding horses and repairing past burned bridges. Sevvy's lawyer, with the groan-worthy name of Ezra Wolf (Scott Cohen, The Americans), is a snarling, temperamental blowhard who loves the camera. You get the idea. There isn't any nuance here. It's salacious, sun-soaked melodrama featuring double crosses, domestic violence, multiple murders, a potential love triangle... all in the pilot.
The Fix is The People vs. OJ Simpson meets Scandal, without the humanism of the former or the fun of the latter.
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