'The Fix' review: An exaggerated legal drama that fictionally tries to offer Marcia Clark retribution

This review contains spoilers: 

If you are looking for a series that has a lot of backstories, and do-overs (even if they are fiction) then 'The Fix' is the series for you. And if you think that the new ABC drama is ripped from the news, then you are right.

The executive producer of the show is Marcia Clark, the prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson case in 1995 -- a case which she seemed like winning, but ended up losing. Ever since her loss in O.J. Simpson's case, Clark has been a law pundit and a writer. And now with 'The Fix', she is taking a step into the TV industry.

'The Fix' is more or less an overrated crime melodrama, in many ways retribution for Clark. After watching the first two episodes, it can clearly be noticed that the story revolves closely around a murder case just for a little bit, before taking to exaggeration. The series revolves around Maya Travis (Robin Tunney) a former prosecutor who lost her famous case against a charming actor — Severen "Sevvy" Johnson ('Lost's' Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) — who is accused of murdering his wife and her friend but later proven not guilty.

The series is basically a do-over for Clark in a sort of fictionalized way, where the lead prosecutor comes back from her retirement to prove that Johnson once again killed his young girlfriend eight years after he was accused of his first murder. 

In the first two episodes, we witness a load of red herrings, but apart from that, these two episodes also do a fair deal in revealing possible murder suspects, office politics, relationship drama, Johnson's circle which includes his kids, a stepson who trusts him blindly and a daughter who feels guilty for introducing him to her friend who later became his girlfriend and, recently, was murdered.

Overall, after watching the first two episodes, it is clear the series eventually moves away from Clark's story at times. We see Johnson go from being guilty, to not so guilty, to not guilty at all. There are quite a few scenes that would send chills down your body, especially the one where he sees Travis through a mirror, we can feel the rage he has for her. 

While the series' concept is clear, it was quite hard to follow some parts of the episodes because most of the characters lack a back story. But the one good thing that would make people watch the series is, perhaps, its star cast. And this is not just in terms of the principal cast, but the supporting cast too.

In the first episode, we witness a lot of racial discrimination being thrown around, where a white prosecutor, seeks revenge of a black man. We also see a lot of white attorneys try to stop Johnson.

And as if the series' writers knew the criticism they might draw, they address it; we witness a jealous prosecutor tell Travis, "Since you like stories, here's the one Wolf [Johnson's defense attorney] is going to tell: 'Vengeful white lady comes back to town to persecute innocent black man.' This should be my case. Not just because I'm a person of color and it's 2019 and optics matter, but because I'm a better lawyer than you."

We also see the word "optics" being used a lot. And by the time we reach the second episode, it is clean and clear that the writers do not have a lot whole of material to make it run as a 10-episode season. And that's when they bring the red herrings into place. In the second episode, we also witness a suicide, but that is not given too much heed to. The way the suicide unfolds, it seems like the show's writers didn't plan it out properly.

Overall, Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Tunney do a remarkable job when it comes to their acting, but the series would have done much better if it didn't draw so close to the original story. Hopefully, in the upcoming episodes, the story will progress and will not be like something we have already seen before. Another thing that would be better, is if they stop with cliched dialogues like “Evidence doesn’t lie. People do.”  

'The Fix' airs every Monday on ABC. Check your local listings for more information.