“What terrifies you more?” Andrew Cunanan asks a ‘friend’ of his midway through this week’s American Crime Story. “Death or being disgraced?” Disgrace? Disgrace isn’t so bad. You get used to it…”
And Cunahan should know. Everything he does is disgraceful. In fact, just moments after asking Chicago property tycoon Lee Miglin that question, he drops a block of concrete on his head and stabs the bound and gagged man repeatedly with a screwdriver.
This whole second series of ACS is all about disgrace and shame. The first run of the crime anthology – The People Vs. O J Simpson – was all about echoing current concerns over race using a famous murder from modern history. And this follow-up also reflects topical issues, this time the societal and psychological difficulties faced by many LGBT people – an issue close to the heart of the show’s creator, Ryan Murphy.
In episode 3 we see two very different gay men, both dipped in disgrace and shame, but for very different reasons. Lee Miglin is a successful Chicago businessman and closeted homosexual who’s spent his entire adult life suppressing his sexuality, wracked by shame and in fear of having his secret exposed and being publicly ‘disgraced’. His secret was to emerge, but only after the 72-year-old became Andrew Cunanan’s third victim.
Cunanan himself is less concerned with covering up his homosexuality. And even less concerned with covering up his murders. The real shame and disgrace here are reserved for him. And rightly so. He is, after all, a pathological liar who tortures and kills people he knows, has been in relationships with and even greatly admires.
But is it admiration…? Miglin was planning on building the world’s tallest structure. Gianni Versace was the world’s most famous fashion designer. Cunanan was drawn to – and killed – both. Perhaps his motivation was more unbridled and untamed jealousy more than adulation.
We saw both his third and fourth victim this week. Miglin’s murder, with its elements of sexual sadism, was hideous and dangerously close to being gratuitous. But there was something somehow even more shocking in the dead-eyed way Cunanan later rather unnecessarily puts a bullet through the head of a man begging for his life, just so he could steal his truck. Darren Criss has a chillingly bored look on his face as he coldy dispatches the man. It’s so cold in fact that the brief scene leaves you with chills.
This instalment of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, ‘A Random Killing’, is the first not to feature the eponymous Italian. And while that may seem a little odd for a show about him, it’s really not an issue. There are 9 episodes in total, so there’s still plenty of time to dive back into Versace’s pool and swim around. And no doubt we’ll all be back in some nice tight Speedos again next week.
In fact, it’s almost quite nice to get away from the searing heat of Miami Beach and spend the fifty minutes up in chilly Chicago. While, of course, this episode still heavily features the crazed spree killer that dominates the series, it’s really about the marriage of Lee Miglin and his loving but ultimately rejected wife, Marilyn. While their union may technically be a sham, the fact is never acknowledged formally and the thin veneer of deniability is played with such poised delicacy by Mike Farrell and Judith Light here that it’s genuinely touching and often quite heartbreaking. Their love isn’t a romantic one, but it’s strong enough and respectful enough to almost have made it all worthwhile. Almost.
When Lee’s body is discovered bound, gagged and surrounded by gay porno magazines, an unfazed Marilyn demands the police treat and report the case as a break-in gone wrong. A ‘random killing’. She doesn’t want Lee’s shame revealed. And she doesn’t want her sham revealed, either. Light’s performance here is fantastically subtle. But Farrell steals the show as the sweet and tragic figure of Miglin.
It’s just a bit of a shame we won’t be seeing either of them again.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace episode 3 review – Dead Good
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