American Crime is an American anthology crime drama television series that premiered on ABC on March 5, 2015. The series was created by John Ridley, and stars Felicity Huffman and Timothy Hutton. The first season centers on race, class, and gender politics as it follows the lives of the participants in a trial who are forever changed during the legal process.
The series was renewed for a second season on May 7, 2015. The second season, which premiered on-demand on December 17, 2015 and premiered on ABC on January 6, 2016, features a new storyline and characters, with some actors from the first season—including Huffman, Hutton, Regina King, Elvis Nolasco, Richard Cabral, and Lili Taylor—playing different characters. On May 12, 2016, ABC renewed the series for a third season, starring Huffman, Hutton and King.
All three seasons of American Crime received critical acclaim. In 2015, the series received ten Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including for Outstanding Limited Series, Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special (Ridley), Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie (Huffman), Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie (Hutton), Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie (Cabral), and a win for Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie (King).
The first season takes place in Modesto, California, where war veteran Matt Skokie is killed and his wife Gwen is brutally assaulted, resulting in four suspects being brought into custody as racial tensions are stirred up and the lives of all those involved are forever changed.
The second season takes place in Indianapolis, Indiana, where a working class student accuses several members of a private school's championship basketball team of sexually assaulting him and posting photos of the incident online. This season deals heavily with social class and homophobia.
The third season takes place in North Carolina and deals with labor issues, economic divides and individual rights.
The series was cancelled after three seasons.
The Series Provides Examples Of:
- Ambiguous Ending: The show's season finales tend to end without resolving the main case of the season.
- The first season ends on Hector getting out of his job interview telling his girlfriend he got the job and before this Richelle telling Mark and Barb that they need to resolve their issues and it being unclear if they will be able to and Jenny talking to her father about staying behind while they move to another city.
- The second season ends on Taylor being asked by the judge if he is still taking the plea deal and Eric trying to decide whether or not to get in a car with a stranger for a secret sexual encounter like the ones he has done before all season.
- Ambiguous Situation:
- The first season never makes it clear if Carter really killed Matt and assaulted Gwen or not. Then there is also the possibility that Aubry did it or they did it together because of her knowing details about the crime.
- The second season with the sexual assault of Taylor and whether or not it was rape or consensual sex that went wrong.
- Anthology: Each season deals with a different subject manner and has the same actors play different characters.
- Asshole Victim: Matt Skokie was apparently a drug dealer, and his murder may have been the result of a drug deal gone bad or an attempt by drug addicts to steal his product. Further, Gwen's rape may not have been rape but consensual sex, and she was allegedly cheating on Matt with other men. Throughout the first season, Matt's mother Barb struggles to keep people from viewing Matt in the light of this trope.
- Bittersweet Ending: The first season ends on Alonzo getting his son out of jail and making plans with his daughter to move, and Hector getting out of prison and telling his girlfriend that he got the job after a job interview. On the other hand, Russ killed Carter and then killed himself, leaving Barb to have to identify his body and break down in the morgue parking lot. Aubry has also committed suicide after confessing to the murder, and it's not clear if she really did it, if Carter did it and Aubry confessed to cover for him, or if the murderer is someone else entirely - which means that Russ may have killed the wrong man and killed himself for nothing while the real killer goes free. Even if Carter was the killer, there are implications that the crime didn't go down the way the police and the media think it did.
- Boomerang Bigot: Alonzo Gutierrez in the first season gets scrutinized by his neighborhood because of his view on Mexicans who entered America illegally.
- Convicted by Public Opinion: Barb and Russ are convinced that Carter is guilty of killing their son along with the authorities and several other people when Barb starts making the case public but Carter's sister Aliyah and the Islamic group she is apart of are convinced that he is innocent and that he is only being accused because of his skin color and this causes several other members of the black community and other people sympathetic to their struggle to protest for his release.
- Double Standard:
- In the first season, the mother of the victim tries to get the suspected murderer convicted of hate crimes, given what was done to Matt and Gwen and the implication that it was racially-motivated. Throughout the season she expresses the belief that if it was a white man suspected of assaulting and murdering a black couple instead of the other way around, it would clearly be considered a hate crime.
- Alonzo's opinion on Mexican illegals believing them all to be criminals and puts the blame of his son's actions on them.
- In season 2, Chris Dixon a black public school principal is accused of showing favoritism to the black students over the Hispanic students when he supports a school lunch program that will benefit the black students but hurt the Hispanics. This belief gets worse when he breaks up a fight where three Hispanic students are beating up on a black student and one of the participants calls the student the N-word in front of him. Because of this and the fight, Dixon suspends them. However, he didn't know the motive behind attacking that particular student, which was because he was sexually harassing Evy, a fellow Hispanic female student. The other Hispanic students felt he should have suspended the black kid instead, and that the ones who beat him up shouldn't have been. This resulting in all of them protesting to get him fired.
- Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male: The second season case revolves around Taylor Blaine and his claims that he was drugged and sexually assaulted at a party by a basketball player, as well as his mother trying to get justice for him. This trope was both played straight and subverted as some of the other characters don't take his case seriously because they either A.) don't believe that a boy would rape another boy or B.) the fact he is accusing someone on a successful basketball team and the school not wanting their reputation tarnished with the possibility he is lying. This gets worse when it is revealed that Taylor was originally planning to have consensual sex with Eric Tanner, the basketball player he is accusing. Due to this, people start to believe that Taylor is lying about being raped to cover up his sexuality. Some leaked emails that revealed this fact also revealed that he was interested in rough sex, which makes Taylor look like he enjoyed what happened to him. Even then, the season mainly shows why male on male rape is just as bad as male on female.
- Murder-Suicide: Russ kills Carter before ending his own life.
- Parents as People: Throughout the series, the parents of a child or an adult are shown to have flaws and hang ups and to have made mistakes in their parenting.
- In the first season, there is Barb, who comes off as a racist and is in denial about her dead son being a criminal and that she wasn't a very good mother; Russ, who is a gambling addict who's addiction lead to him stealing and eventually moving out the house when the kids were younger and becoming a Disappeared Dad; Tom, who doesn't take the news that his daughter was sleeping around with other men well and that his wife Eve knew about it; And Alonzo with his belief about illegals and despite being a loving father can be overprotective and strict with them.
- The second season has Anne, who has a past with mental illness which caused her to give up her son temporarily until she got better and also goes to great lengths to try and get her son's rapist brought to justice; Terri, who puts a lot of pressure on her son Kevin to succeed because of them being black and often criticizes him for the women he dates, the decisions he makes at school, and on the court of a basketball game. She is also shown to have some racist views. Dan Sullivan has issues with the way his daughter does things but he also spends more time on the basketball team than with her and his wife Steph likes to use marijuana.
- Smash to Black: The episodes of the show tend to do this when going into another scene and also does this to censor the curse words when aired on TV.
- The final episode of the first season ends when Hector gets out of his job interview and tells his girlfriend that he got the job. Hector says, "I feel—," and the episode smashes to black before he can finish the statement.
- Truth in Television: The show tackles real life issues such as racism and homophobia, and it also deals with how law enforcement deals with different cases and shows that not all cases get solved.
- Where da White Women At?: Carter Nix has a relationship with Aubry Taylor. His sister, a black Muslim, gives him grief over the relationship both because of the race difference and because she blames Aubry for getting Carter on drugs. She only helps him out of jail on the condition that he end the relationship. It's also stated that his sister tried to get him to date black women in the past and he left one to be with Aubry.
