The verdict is delivered halfway through the finale of FX’s The People v. O.J. Simpson. There are re-creations of the now-famous reactions of the defendant and his lawyers, but the creators have also smartly included a fairly long montage of news clips from 1995 of audiences anticipating and then responding to O.J. Simpson’s acquittal, whether in celebration, anger, or shock. By this point, the whole country was tuning in, and the effect of cutting together video of people freaking out in one way or another jogs the memory and narrows in on the question the writers are getting at: Where were you the day the O.J. verdict was announced?

If you are old enough to remember, you probably do. At the time his book The Run of His Life was written, Jeffrey Toobin likens the effect of the O.J. verdict on America’s collective memory to John F. Kennedy’s assassination; if amended now, he’d be as likely to list the verdict alongside September 11.

There is a scene where the Goldmans, weeping and enraged, get in their car to leave the courthouse after the verdict. Ron turns the ignition and the radio comes on with nothing but O.J. news; the reporters are astonished that the anticipated riots in reaction to a guilty verdict were instead a celebration. Poor David Schwimmer vomits upon realizing that his former best friend/probable murderer is actually going to be released. In this episode for the first time, Kardashian is wearing glasses, as if to signal that finally he sees clearly. There will be no more pouty turmoil, but rather literally thumping a Bible at the Juice’s house, and, a year later, a Barbara Walters interview in which he confesses that he believes Simpson is a murderer.

The overall tone of this episode is somber, save for a few scenes that capture the winking fun the writers have shaping the moments we’re waiting for. We see Johnnie Cochran trying to come up with the perfect turn of phrase for his closing arguments. “If the glove’s too small . . . easy call?” he tries aloud before crossing that out on paper, so theatrically you half expect a cartoon light bulb to turn on overhead. Justice is reduced to a catchphrase—but we love it because it sounds good. And when he repeats the infamous line in his closing arguments, it resonates like an incantation.

There’s a wonderful series of scenes at the end of the episode where Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Simpson contemplates different perspectives of his image: first, as a man, naked in front of the bathroom mirror; and then in front of the statue he built of himself. In the closing arguments, Darden says of Simpson, “He’s a murderer. He was also one hell of a great football player, but he’s still a murderer.” What’s the story that Simpson is telling to himself, as he examines both men?

In a confrontation between Cochran and Darden that is more a mash-up of real conversations than a real event, Darden argues that the verdict “isn’t some civil-rights milestone. Police in this country will keep arresting us and beating us, keep killing us. You haven’t changed anything for black people here. Unless of course you’re a famous rich one in Brentwood.”

Cochran walks right from that into a champagne-fueled celebration where he and his team watch then-President Bill Clinton discuss the verdict and the role race plays in how the world is experienced. “That’s the victory. Our story is now out of the shadows,” he whispers.