For our wrap up of the best in TV, Margaret Lyons of the New York Times talks with us about the most overrated, underrated and heavily debated shows of 2016. Her pick for underrated? "Last Chance U" on Netflix. Most overrated? She picks "This is Us" on ABC. And for heavily debated she picked HBO's "Westworld"; Among the most lauded performances on the small screen this year was that by Sarah Paulson who played Marcia Clark in the FX mini-series "The People v. O.J. Simpson." Paulson discusses how Clark had been scrutinized by the media and much of America during the trial.
The most underrated, overrated and debatable TV shows of 2016
There were over 450 scripted shows on American television in 2016 – that’s an all-time high.
This era of “peak TV” might seem stressful for critics, but
, who writes for the New York Times’ Watching section, says that it’s actually the best time be doing what she does.
"Every time there’s more TV, I feel happy," she said. "As a TV fan I think feeling like there’s too much TV is not a bad feeling– that’s like walking into a library and being like, ‘there’s too many books!"
And she even makes an argument for the shows that aren't so great.
"There’s plenty of bad TV that goes a long with all of the good TV," Lyons said. "I don’t think you can just have great stuff, there has to be this sort of comical buffet and there’s always a dish that is not to your liking."
Lyons joins the Frame to talk about that buffet– the underrated, the overrated and the hotly debated shows of 2016.
THE BEST SHOW THAT NO ONE’S WATCHING
"Last Chance U." It's a Netflix documentary series about a Junior College Football Team, where a lot of the players go on to play Division 1 and many go on to the NFL. I thought it was fascinating– it’s in some ways like a real life "Friday Night Lights, but also very different in the hopeful-versus-hopelessness of the series. I was obsessed. It was one of my favorite shows of the year, and I still don’t think I’ve met anyone else who’s watched all of it.
I’m not a football fan in general, and it still completely held my interest. So don’t be put off if you’re not generally a sports person.
THE SHOW THAT DESERVES THE HYPE
"The Americans" is one of the most fascinating dramas I’ve seen, ever. I think it's a show that got better and better as it went on, and it started out extremely good. The most recent season, which aired early this year, blew me away. It’s patient and thoughtful and yeah, it is very dark and there’s a lot of violence and horrific acts that occur within the show. But at its beating heart, it is about who would know you the best, how would you even realize that someone knew you well. And that kind of crosses beyond the stories of Soviet espionage into the nature of the human condition.
THE SHOW THAT DOESN'T
"This is Us." I think there are strong performances but I’m not sure if any of its ideas are actually special or interesting. I think the idea that someone who is fat, and the only thing they think about or identify with or care about is fatness, is short-sighted and unfair. That’s not a characteristic – that’s not an idea and it’s not an emotion.
I think when the show tries to reveal stuff in its flashbacks, it couldn’t be more obvious. It’s like, ‘Oh how did we get this Thanksgiving Tradition’ and then the flashback is like ‘Well, it’s what you think. We did it that way. And now we still do.” That doesn’t strike me as all that resonant. I understand the appeal and look, I watch it too. I like shows where no one is a murderer and no one is a vampire and we ultimately are affirming the dignity of the human spirit. I’m interested in shows like that and I also miss Parenthood, but I’m stunned by how rapturous other critics have been about "This is Us", when I think that it is an ok show that just came along at the right time.
REVIVALS THAT DELIVERED
Re-boots and revivals are such a fraught concept. But I actually was thrilled with the "Gilmore Girls" revival. I had a lot of beefs with it as well. But ultimately, I felt like it was more episodes of a show I loved and that’s kind of the dream, right? That a show would come back and be about how you remembered it. I’m a big Gilmore Girls fan and enjoyed it even though I had some complaints, but that’s sort of the nature of being that kind of a fan of that kind of a show.
REVIVALS THAT DIDN’T
"Fuller House?" Not so much. In her review of the show for Vulture, Lyons wrote that the first four minutes of the "Full House" Revival "are four of the most excruciating TV minutes ever broadcast."
Yes, that was about season one of "Fuller House." I have not subjected myself to Season Two of "Fuller House" yet.
But the truth is I don’t have young kids, so I’m not looking for a show we can watch together– I am not its target demographic.
THE WATER COOLER SHOWS
"Stranger Things," definitely. I feel like over the summer there was just this moment where everyone was kind of hungering for this shared experience. And Stranger Things is pretty good--it’s a good show, I enjoyed it. But I think the sort of grasp it had on the collective imagination was so huge, especially compared to how good it was, that it was just a fun cultural phenomenon.
But "Game of Thrones" –you know, I think Monday morning, while "Game of Thrones" airs, we still do get some of that water cooler stuff.
And then more recently, "Westworld"– maybe not to the extent of the other two, but that was a show that, every time I was at a cocktail party, a lot of people wanted to ask me about "Westworld," so you can kind of take the temperature on stuff like that every once and awhile.
WHERE TV STILL NEEDS TO DIVERSIFY
It’s always exciting when TV takes steps to better reflect the actual make-up of a society. I think we have a long, long way to go. I’m excited for that path– I think there are more and more interesting shows coming out from lots of different voices that that have here-too-for been under or not at all represented in television.
But I’m wary of too much back-patting on how diverse TV has become when the truth is that it’s still not very diverse at all. And I think especially when we expand those ideas to queer representation and you know, I think TV is almost all people who are able-bodied, certainly. There’s a lot of voices that we’re still not hearing stories from and stories about and I hope that continues to change.
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Sarah Paulson wants us all to know 'Marcia Clark is a thinking, feeling person'
The new FX series "The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story" takes pains to dramatize some of the more overlooked aspects of the O.J. case — like the travails of Marcia Clark. Clark's story leads episode six, airing Tuesday night.
Clark, a public prosecutor with a strong record, was vilified by the media. Her hairstyle was debated ad nauseam; a tabloid published a nude photo of her. The type of scrutiny that Clark received encapsulates the sensationalism of the Simpson trial, but it also highlights the way in which, along with race, sexism came into play. It's a theme the show's creators didn't shy away from — and one that Sarah Paulson, who plays Clark, embraced.
Paulson told The Frame that she was 19 at the time of the O.J. trial, and she didn't pay much attention to the way the media discussed Clark.
"I certainly think I was prey to what was being reported. I didn't do any deeper thinking and I think it's what we do now, politically. And it's what women were doing then."
Now, Paulson describes herself as "enraged" on Clark's behalf. But she didn't go into the role intending it as a referendum — she was only concerned with portraying Clark as "authentically" as she knew how. Paulson met with The Frame's John Horn to discuss the role, the issues of the case and what it was like to meet Marcia Clark in person.
Interview highlights
Where were you in your life during the trial?
I was 19 years old, so I was decidedly self-interested, and very focused on beginning my acting career. I remember the [trial] highlights, believing what I was told by the media [about Clark]. About her appearance, her so-called "ambition," her relentlessness. The word "b----" I remember being in my mind and brain.
I certainly think I was prey to what was being reported. I didn't do any deeper thinking and I think it's what we do now, politically. And it's what women were doing then.
So did you have an epiphany about your understanding of Marcia Clark, as a woman and a lawyer?
I certainly didn't approach it about how to think of her differently. I read Toobin's book. I read Marcia's book. I read Darden's book. Everybody wrote a book. Chiefly I took my role from the scripts. I was trying to represent her authentically. The goal was not to have a re-examination of who this woman was, but to tell the truth as I saw it.
How did you decide, with the creators of the show and director Ryan Murphy, what to focus on for this character?
It wasn't a conversation at all. It was clear to me, on the page, who this woman was: an incredibly dedicated, competent, really tough, relentless — she was relentless in her pursuit of justice. And she was being stymied at every turn. She was like a dog with a bone, but for a very, very noble cause, which was to put a man she believed guilty behind bars. What was she supposed to do? Come flouncing into the courtroom with a bow in her hair? It's an interesting question for those people who wonder, 'why couldn't she just be softer?'
These are issues we still talk about. There are modern corollaries to women in show business. A woman director who is strong is a "b----," and a male director who is strong has a "vision." Do you think the show is as contemporary as it could be?
I absolutely do, and when you say it that way, I find it to be totally horrifying. But absolutely true. There's no question about it. Any words that you could use in a derogatory manner to describe a woman who is strong would be considered positives in describing a man. And that is a scary thing to contemplate.
And the other thing that was certainly true then, and is true today, is the way women are described in terms of their looks. That Marcia Clark is described as "frumpy." There were online polls about her hair. These are not conversations held about men. The woman is judged by her appearance, and not her aptitude.
Well, that's sort of the culture in which we live, isn't it? And it always has been. Women are there to be appealing and attractive. I wish that weren't the world we're living in. It's partly been furthered by movies, since the beginning of movies. It's very distressing.
In that way it's not too dissimilar to what happens in politics, and the way in which Hillary Clinton is judged based on her hair, what she's wearing.
The tone of her voice.
Whether or not she's "shrill."
Bernie can put the same spin on something he's doing in terms of how angry he is. Somehow when she's doing it, it's considered unappealing, and when he's doing it, it's considered as strong. I don't know what to say about it. It's certainly something I have witnessed. I wish I could say I have an idea of how to fix it.
When we were shooting, particularly during the "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" episode, it was plain as day. Like when Marcia has to stand up in front of the court and says she can't stay late because she has no one to help her take care of her children. Johnnie Cochran spins it to make it look like she's using it as a way to gather time. I remember shooting that scene — I stand up to Johnnie and basically hand him his ass. But it was very hard for me to do it. There is footage of Marcia doing this in court. But my voice was practically shaking. I was so enraged on her behalf.
She did not want to bring her private life into that room, but she did not have a choice. And the idea that it was being done to serve the people's case — it makes me inarticulate because I get so mad.
And yet, as a woman, when I was 19 years old, I did not think about it. And I was not alone. And I give myself a bit of a pass. I was essentially a child. It's more shocking to me that more women in their late 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond, were not rallying around her. That they were collectively abandoning her. There was so much community support for O.J. Simpson, and Marcia did not receive that.
Was this something that attracted you to the character of the show — that this would be a corrective to the way in which Marcia Clark and other strong women are seen and judged?
Upon receiving the first two scripts, I didn't know the lengths they were going to go. So I can't say that was the reason why I decided to do it. But it certainly was something as we were going, where Sterling K. Brown — who plays Darden — and I would turn to each other, going, "I cannot believe this was their experience!"
That this is what happened in a trial about two people who were brutally murdered.
And that is the main thing I think was often really forgotten about. There was such a circus surrounding the trial. It's pretty horrible.
Were you able to meet with Marcia Clark?
I did. I wanted to meet her immediately, but I was properly discouraged to not do that for a lot of reasons. I did get the green light to do it after we finished ["Marcia, Marcia, Marcia."] I reached out to her. We had dinner. When I met her, it was like meeting a childhood idol. And she did not disappoint. It wasn't anything that informed my performance going forward other than confirmation that who I thought she was, is in fact who she was. She's incredibly smart, insightful. It was still hard for her to talk about the trial, all these years later. I could tell how painful the prospect of reliving this was going to be for her, which only sort of fueled my commitment to telling her part of this story as authentically as I possibly could.
Another part of this story is about domestic violence. Marcia Clark was convinced that women would identify with her case. And yet, that didn't go anywhere.
So much of this is about perception. It's really a testament to the power of committing to one's set of ideas. That commitment had been made: that Marcia was a b---- and O.J. was innocent. And the climate of Los Angeles was so on fire — I don't think the case was winnable, no matter what they presented. They had more evidence to convict O.J. Simpson than maybe anyone has ever had. It's also a testament to the laziness of the human mind. Once the decision has been made, people don't want to investigate further.
This case changed the way in which the media saw celebrity. Personal details about Marcia Clark's life, nude photographs —
Can you imagine? Civil servant. Private citizen.
Private life didn't exist anymore. Have you thought about how what you do as a person, and not as an actor, is now fair game?
It was certainly the inception of tabloid television. It didn't exist prior to the trial. The difference for me and someone like Marcia Clark is it's part of the landscape when you're an actor. So, I don't love that part of this business, but I knew it was part of the equation. But Marcia was a civil servant. To expect her to navigate that world, is an implausible idea. The members of the Dream Team had been flying in private jets for years. Clark was way out of her comfort zone, to have that much attention and scrutiny on her.
What do you hope audience members will take away from the show?
What really matters to me is to remember that Marcia Clark is a thinking, feeling person. It was as if she was a robot. We decided collectively that that wasn't a real person, and we could just use her as a punching bag. That is something I think we should be embarrassed about.
Doing this project has changed how I receive information from people I don't know. Because often we're very quick to believe what's said. Like the 19-year-old version of myself that didn't ask myself to think about it in any other way. If watching this makes people see her differently, that would be so wonderful, because to me, it would be the justice Marcia deserves.
The sixth episode of "The People v. O.J. Simpson," "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia," airs Tuesday night at 10 p.m. on FX.