O.J. Simpson: The Lost Confession? brought Fox back to its "tacky, tawdry shock-TV past"

Entertainment Weekly

"There wasn’t much there there" in the two-hour special that mostly rehashed everything you probably knew about O.J. Simpson's marriage and murder trial, says Kristen Baldwin. She says O.J. Simpson: The Lost Confession? was a product of the "tacky, tawdry shock-TV past" that Fox evolved away from many years ago. "But then," Baldwin says, "ABC stole Idol out of their trash heap, and something in Fox snapped. Panicked, angry, and desperate for something to premiere against this unholy Idol, Fox found something taped to the inside of their toilet tank — an emergency stash so old, they may have even forgotten they ever had it in the first place. Yes, O.J. Simpson: The Lost Confession? is the programming equivalent of finding your meth-addict buddy on the floor of his apartment, face-down in a puddle of his own sick." ALSO: Fox tried to make old news relevant by putting it in the context of powerful, famous men abusing women.