Tag: 2.03

Judith Light Was the Best Part of Last Night’s ‘American Crime Story’ [RECAP] – Towleroad

Last night’s episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story tackled one of the most mysterious elements of the Andrew Cunanan killing spree: the gruesome murder of Lee Miglin.

As part of the saga tracing Cunanan’s exploits leading up to Versace’s killing, it makes sense to chronicle Miglin’s murder. However, so little has been confirmed about the nature of Andrew and Lee’s relationship prior to the tragedy, the show leans heavily on artistic license. That’s fine, in terms of dramatic storytelling.

Where this episode suffers is in the writing. Ho boy, were Ryan Murphy and co’s most ham-fisted impulses fully indulged. (At one point, someone actually ate a fistful of ham, and it was the most apt metaphor in all of tonight’s episode.) It was all tell and no show. So much telling. And telling in ways no one would ever actually speak.

“You’re so dominant out there, but so submissive in here,” Andrew tells one of his victims before dropping the only thing more heavy than the hand behind that metaphor — a bag of cement. This is the same team that in American Horror Story: Asylum had one character put lipstick on a Virgin Mary statue while screaming “Whore!”

Subtlety isn’t always their strong suit.

Luckily, the hour of television was significantly buoyed by another knockout performance from Darren Criss and a special guest appearance from the incomparable Judith Light. Thank goodness Ryan Murphy attracts such top-tier talent, because in lesser hands things could get schlocky real quick.

Knowing that we’re taking the details of this story with an extremely large grain of salt, let’s dive into what went down in our recap below.

Spring 1997

Lee Miglin and his wife Marilyn are attending a fancy fundraising function. Marilyn introduces Lee to the stage by describing him as emblematic of the American Dream. He got his start selling pancake batter out of a beat-up car, and now he’s responsible for building some of the most famous buildings in Chicago. He was also instrumental in launching Marilyn’s perfume and cosmetics Home Shopping empire.

Back home, Marilyn dramatically removes her makeup — she’s taking off her brave face, get it, GET IT?

Meanwhile, Lee gets a call from Andrew telling him that he’s going to be in town for a few days. As luck would have it, Marilyn has to travel for business. That’s convenient! Lee joins Marilyn in bed and rests his hand atop Marilyn’s. She squeezes his. There’s clearly love here, but distance too.

With Marilyn out of the house, Lee preps for Andrew’s visit (including a stop at his in-home altar because HE IS CONFLICTED, IF THAT WASN’T CLEAR ALREADY). Andrew parks nearby. He comes into the house, and it seems as if this is a rendezvous they’ve played out many times before.

Lee’s excited to show Andrew plans for a new building he’s working on that’ll be the tallest in the world. He wants to call it the Sky Needle, but Andrew, suddenly very cranky, points out that he might as well call it the Miglin Tower, because it’s clearly all about him.

It’s a tense moment between them, until Andrew plants a hard, passionate kiss on Lee. He asks about that old Pretty Woman rule: Do the other escorts kiss him on th mouth like that? Of course, they don’t. “I’m not like most escorts. I’m not like most anybody,” Cunanan says out loud to Lee like people do.

The quick turn from cutting Lee’s aspirations down to the passionate kiss is to help gain back Lee’s trust. Andrew leads him to the garage, stuffs a glove in his mouth and then proceeds to do that weird tape mask thing that is extremely creepy and for sure going to keep a generation of gay men from hooking up with anybody that keeps a roll of tape in plain sight.

With Lee’s eyes and mouth covered and legs tied, Andrew tells Lee his entire evil plot, Bond-villain style. He already killed two people close to him. Now, he’s going to kill Lee, dress him in women’s underwear and leave gay porn all around him so everyone knows he was gay. “What terrifies you more, death or being disgraced?” (How about option C: Recapping overwrought dialogue?)

Andrew tortures Lee, including dropping huge, heavy bags of cement on his septuagenarian chest. (“Concrete can build, but concrete can kill” — oof!) He stabs him and slits his throat. Then he burns the plans for the Sky Needle at Lee’s altar.

Marilyn arrives home from her business trip and can immediately tell something is amiss. She stands on the front stoop until two neighbors stop by to help her investigate. They notice some things off (including ice cream melting on the counter and a knife stuck inside a ham on Lee’s desk) and call the police.

The cops find the grisly scene in the garage. Andrew is long gone in Lee’s Lexus, but Marilyn refuses to entertain the idea that Lee and Andrew had any kind of pre-existing relationship (a fact the Miglin family maintains to this day). Instead, she tells the police this was an opportunity killing. Lee was old, alone and hard of hearing. It wouldn’t take much to surprise and overcome him. She’s a powerful woman with a lot of political influence. The implication is that she pushed this narrative on the authorities (and it may have hampered the investigation that could have prevented Versace’s murder).

She also rattles off a list of items Andrew took: suits, cash, those gold coins we saw Andrew pawning in previous episodes. Through it all she maintains a calm, collected demeanor. It’s not until she’s alone with someone she trusts later that she allows the grief to fully wash over her.

Light is a powerhouse, carrying the majority of the hour on her shoulders, but here she too suffers from some incredibly heavy-handed writing: “How can someone who cares so much about appearance appear not to care?” She’s holding it together for her family, including her son, an aspiring actor set to appear in the upcoming film, Air Force One. (There’s another theory that Andrew actually had a relationship with Lee’s son, not Lee. The Miglins also deny this.)

Despite all the pressure to keep the story contained, news leaks that the cops have been tracing Lee’s car phone in the stolen Lexus. Andrew hears this on the radio and immediately looks for a way to ditch his ride. He follows a solo trucker, eventually robbing him. He forces the man at gunpoint into a basement. The man pleads to see his wife and child again, but Andrew kills him anyway.

We may never know what really transpired between Andrew and Lee. Maybe Lee’s killing, like the pickup truck owner, was random. However, the narrative American Crime Story is painting is how the closet not only led to getting Lee killed, but the shame around being outed as a gay man at the time was enough to impede an investigation that could have stopped a serial killer. Whether or not this particular element of the story they’re telling is factual, there is certainly some truth to that.

What did you think of last night’s episode?

Judith Light Was the Best Part of Last Night’s ‘American Crime Story’ [RECAP] – Towleroad

American Crime Story: Versace Recap: “A Random Killing” Leads To Heartbreaking Devastation

After last week’s chilling episode where more of Andrew Cunanan’s state of mind was revealed, including his affinity to duct tape and Phil Collins, one would think that would be it for the creep factor. As it turns out, Cunanan’s depravity is limitless.

This week’s episode took us back to May 1997 and introduced us to one of the men that Cunanan had murdered prior to Gianni Versace, Lee Miglin. For many, Miglin’s murder seemed like a random choice but as we learned during this episode, there was so such more to it.

The setting moves the series to Chicago, with top notch guest performances by Judith Light and Mike Farrell as Marilyn and Lee Miglin. She’s a cosmetics maven with a home-shopping TV high profile and a “perfect husband” in Lee, a well-connected real-estate tycoon who’s also a closeted gay of a certain age, making him vulnerable to the narcissistic and murderous predations of Cunanan.

Though this episode may be a Versace-less one, it packs quite the punch and fills us with dread as it makes the fate that befalls Versace even more harrowing.

Gather ’round and let’s discuss “A Random Killing”.

A Wife Always Knows: The episode begins with Marilyn coming home from a trip, expecting Lee to be there to pick her up, but he isn’t. So instead she takes a cab, and returns home to eerie silence and the unmistakable sense that something isn’t right. Marilyn gets the neighbors and calls the police, who tell her what she already knew: Lee is dead.

The Perfect Sham: We are then taken back to a week earlier when Lee and Marilyn were at a fundraiser for Illinois governor Jim Edgar. Marilyn introduces her husband as the guest of honor, and we are given a glimpse of their married life and relationship. He and Marilyn were a partnership, working together to grow their individual careers. They appeared to be the perfect couple until they got home, and the truth comes to light as this isn’t a marriage of convenience, but it’s not one of passion either. Marilyn then leaves for work, which gives Lee the opportunity to invite Andrew over, who just arrived unexpectedly in Chicago.

A Moment of Joy Becomes A Moment of Horror: The second Andrew arrives, it is immediately revealed that the two men had a semi-regular thing going on, though Andrew’s latest visit came as a welcome surprise to Lee. Lee starts their visit off by making Andrew a sandwich and showing off architectural plans for a magnum opus, a skyscraper that would be the Tallest Building in the World. “You’re trying to impress me,” says Andrew as he points out how Lee is pretending “that there’s a genuine attraction between us.” “You can pretend too,” says Lee before Andrew kisses him deeply. “You’ve never been kissed like that, have you?” he teases. “How did it feel?” Lee, exultant: “Feels like I’m alive.”

That moment of exultation doesn’t last long though as Andrew takes Lee into the garage. The beginning of the end for Lee begins with a consensual BDSM encounter until it becomes terrifyingly obvious that Andrew has something god awful in mind. Once Lee is fully bound, with duct tape around his face and cords around his ankles, Andrew punches him hard enough in the face to break his nose (!!!) and reveals to a devastated Lee that he’s killed two men already, and that not only does he plan on killing him but also leaving his body in women’s underwear, surrounded by gay porn. “What terrifies you more, death or being disgraced?”, Andrew taunts the dying man.

Lee doesn’t get the chance to respond unfortunately as Andrew proceeds to crush him with a bag of concrete before stabbing him with a gardening tool.

A Wife’s Heartbreak: The police arrive when Marilyn calls, and when they find the body, they understand that the situation surrounding the murder makes the case more sensitive than most. The death leaves Marilyn in a state of besieged grief: Devastated by her loss, devastated by how society itself is assaulting her marriage. She and her son are staunch in their approach that this was just a random killing, and that Andrew Cunanan had no relationship with her husband aside from being the stranger who took his life.

The Chase Begins: We follow Andrew across state lines into his most random killing as he becomes aware that the police are onto him thanks to the radio leaking the news of their trace; all he wanted was a truck. He stalks some would-be victims at a rest stop, waiting until he sees a man driving a red pickup truck. When the man starts driving away, Andrew follows him, shadowing him through a graveyard where he is the caretaker. Finally, the man arrives at his office, and Andrew follows with a gun drawn. “Stay calm,” Andrew says. “No one’s going to get hurt. I’m here to steal your truck.”

Unfortunately, that isn’t all that happens, as the man gives Andrew his keys and goes down to the basement so Andrew can lock him down there. The man starts to tell Andrew about his wife and their son. “I’m a married man,” he says. “We have a son, Troy. I’d very much like to see them again.” Andrew then shoots him, point blank, in the head.

The final moments of the episode are given back to Marilyn Miglin, back on the air, talking about how much her husband meant to her.

Instant Reactions/Questions:

Mike Farrell is heartbreaking in the scenes with Darren Criss, and it made me hate Criss in those moments, which is a testament to how well Criss is doing in this role.

If you still had any sympathy or affection left for Andrew, this episode should have stripped that away entirely.

As much as I missed Versace in this episode, this spotlight was greatly needed to further reinforce how merciless and cruel Andrew is.

Quote of the Night:

“That’s all I’ll allow that man to steal from me. I won’t let him steal my good name. Our good name.” – Marilyn

American Crime Story: Versace Recap: “A Random Killing” Leads To Heartbreaking Devastation

Does ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Work Without Versace?

The third episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story moved away from Miami and away from the Versaces. Series regulars Edgar Ramirez, Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin were completely absent from the episode as Gianni Versace, his sister and his partner.

Instead, the episode moved to Chicago to tell the story of Lee and Marilyn Miglin and how Andrew Cunanan killed Lee. But does a season with Versace in the title work without the fashion designer?

Oddly, I think the answer is “Yes.” First, “A Random Killing” featured the single best piece of acting in the show’s three episodes courtesy of Judith Light as Marilyn Miglin. Her bold, show-stopping performance was brilliant from start to finish, worthy of the tremendous acting in the show’s first season. For her alone, the third episode was a success.

Despite the show’s title, it’s clear that the second season of American Crime Story isn’t about Gianni Versace. He might be the most recognizable name, but this is Andrew Cunanan’s story. The series is a deep look at the psychology and journey of a demented spree killer. Gianni Versace’s role in Andrew’s story is minimal, so putting him and his family aside for an episode or two makes sense.

The only real problem is that it feels like a bait-and-switch. The first two episodes established the world of the series, but the third episode changed everything and seemed to exist in a completely different series. I would argue that the third episode is far more indicative of the series as a whole than either of the first two, which were very misleading when it comes to what the story is really about.

“A Random Killing,” in many ways, was the real start of The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Future episodes will continue to be told in that style (for example, the fourth episode will once again not include any Versaces). This is what the show is, a series of vaguely connected vignettes from the life of Andrew Cunanan.

Did you miss the Versace storyline or did you prefer the show without it?

Does ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Work Without Versace?

Dailybreak.com

This week’s episode rewound once again, this time to May 1997 to the killing of Lee Miglin. As Andrew Cunanan crosses the country on a murder spree, Miglin was victim three of five and the second murder we see.

As far back as episode one, a subtle theme of the series is the masks we all wear. Beyond the fashion, there is our persona and how we present ourselves to the world.

Lee Miglin’s wife Marilyn (the impeccable Judith Light) wore a literal mask of makeup. During a Home Shopping Network broadcast for her perfume brand and while introducing her husband at a political fundraiser, Marilyn exuded confidence and power. You could tell by looking at her she was all about getting shit done. She brags about her epic romance with her husband, but behind closed doors, you could feel a strain between them.

As Marilyn takes off her mask by slathering on the cold cream, she lets her guard down and she is vulnerable and yearning for something her husband isn’t giving her. After her husband’s murder, she lets her façade crack so very briefly to show her grief, but then it’s back to literal business at HSN. It’s all about keeping up appearances for her and sticking by her statement “It was a random killing.” No one must know the truth, especially Marilyn. Is is sadder that she lies to herself or to society?

Miglin’s (Mike Farrell) mask was more metaphorical than his wife’s. On the surface, he seemed like a typical Chicago millionaire, a doting husband who helped his wife with her business, a religious man who kept a prayer altar in his basement. The show portrayed him to be racked with guilt at his infidelity and at odds between his Catholicism and gayness. “I tried,” he pleads in prayer.

It seems like a punishment worse than death when Cunanan sets out to not only murder Miglin, but expose him to the world as he wraps him in one of his signature tape helmets, changes him into women’s underwear and scatters the crime scene with gay porn magazines. Miglin can no longer hide and he knows this will expose him to Marilyn and to the world. What is the worse fate for him – to be dead or disgraced?

Finally, there’s Cunanan. He seems to wear a different mask all the time and his motives still are not clear. The writers and producers of the show told Vanity Fair that Cunanan loathed successful people like Miglin who only magnified his supposed failures, but that didn’t come through clearly except with Cunanan getting annoyed with Miglin’s plans for a Chicago skyscraper.

Otherwise, three episodes in and we still don’t know who the real Cunanan is. Clearly, he’s a monster, but what broke and how? Did anyone get a chance to see behind his mask? Or is it uglier than we can even imagine?

Next week, we’ll see Cunanan’s first and second victims and get an insight into his homelife, which will hopefully answer some of these questions!

Dailybreak.com

Analyzing Judith Light’s Amazing Performance in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

So, are you hooked on this show yet? Honestly, the first two episodes worried me. I loved last week’s American Psycho tribute, but the early scripts still jumped around too much, introducing a huge cast of characters and cramming years’ worth of vignettes about Andrew Cunanan and Gianni Versace into less than two hours. All that exposition made it hard to get emotionally invested in any one story. As soon as you started to care about Gianni and Antonio, there was Andrew bellowing “Gloria” in a stolen truck, or some FBI dope confusing Versace with Liberace.

Last night’s “A Random Killing” was something entirely different—a spare, focused episode and easily my favorite so far. I’ll get to the fact-vs-fiction part soon (promise) but first we need to talk about Judith Light. Who else could’ve played Marilyn Miglin, the wife of Cunanan’s third victim and allegedly closeted Chicago real estate magnate Lee Miglin? She’s a complicated woman. The queen of HSN is sharp enough to realize something’s wrong in her marriage, yet she loves Lee for his belief in her. And yet, her reaction to his murder is so practical! She goes into crisis-PR mode, feeding the police narratives to obscure the reality that a halo of gay bondage magazines surrounded Lee’s body. But there’s pain under the surface. When she finally lets down her guard, the monologue Light delivers about being a “real wife” is heartbreaking.

Darren Criss gives the episode’s other great performance. It’s chilling to watch Andrew slowly turn on Lee, puncturing the romantic veneer of what is actually a business transaction before mocking his powerful prey as he wraps Lee’s face in tape. Does writer Tom Rob Smith sometimes overload his dialogue with symbolism? Absolutely—“Concrete can build, but concrete can kill” is just awful—but the most revealing exchange in a mostly excellent script takes place in Lee’s study, when Andrew psychoanalyzes his host’s plan to build a tower so tall that its observation deck will look down on the Sears Tower.

Andrew sees that the project is really an egotistical power move; Lee protests, unconvincingly, that he’s only thinking of how delighted kids would be by the view. Andrew has a knack for perceiving people’s hidden dark sides, which makes his relationships with the victims he knows personally fascinating. Look for more of that next week. On to the annotations…

Lee and Marilyn Miglin

They weren’t international celebrities like Versace, but Lee and Marilyn Miglin were well known and loved in Chicago society circles. As Marilyn helpfully points out in the episode, the couple’s story was a classic “American Dream” narrative: Lee was the son of an immigrant coal miner who talked his way into his first real estate job at age 31, rising quickly from there. As Maureen Orth reports in Vulgar Favors, the firm he founded with business partner Paul Beitler built many of downtown Chicago’s most prestigious edifices, including Madison Plaza and the Chicago Bar Association Building.

The Miglins also independently owned over two dozen properties in the city. But Lee’s and Beitler’s grandest ambition, to build a 2,000-foot tower called the Skyneedle that would have been the world’s tallest building, remained unrealized. (The Chicago Tribune published a fascinating article on the project shortly after Lee’s murder.)

Marilyn was a model-turned-makeup mogul whose eponymous cosmetics line—particularly, a perfume called Pheromone—became a Home Shopping Network sensation. Orth notes her complicated personality, citing an associate who observed, “She’s not a cream puff… Marilyn hides it till she needs to bring it out.” When she returned from her business trip to Canada to find her Gold Coast townhouse in disarray, she cryptically told her neighbors, “I know he’s dead and they’ll never catch him. They’ll never find who did this.”

The lack of emotion she displayed in the wake of Lee’s murder really was a topic of local gossip. Marilyn remarried in 1999, but her second husband, the businessman Naguib Mankarious, died soon after, while getting a facelift. A lawsuit caused her to file for bankruptcy in 2007. Nevertheless, she persisted. Over a decade later, Marilyn is still alive and hawking her wares on HSN. (Here’s a video from 2017.)

Lee’s Murder

The show’s account of Lee Miglin’s murder and its aftermath sticks pretty close to the facts. Yes, Marilyn returned to find a Coke can and an open carton of ice cream in her normally spotless kitchen, while neighbors spotted a ham with a knife stuck in it in the library and signs that a dark-haired man had taken a bath in one of the bathrooms. Lee’s body was found in the garage next to an assortment of gay porn magazines, fully dressed but wearing lacy Calvin Klein bikini underwear, his ankles tied with an extension cord and his face wrapped in masking tape.

What happened before the murder isn’t nearly as clear. Was Lee Miglin a closeted gay man? How did Andrew end up in his home? Did they already have some kind of relationship? An expert told Orth that there was likely a sexual element to the killing. Signs that Cunanan had hung around at the Miglins’ for a while after the crime suggested he knew Marilyn was out of town. And a neighbor named Betsy Brazis spotted Lee talking with a younger man in his kitchen shortly before his death.

An AIDS educator, Brazis also mentioned to Orth that “Lee’s name would come up occasionally as a gay ‘straight’ man” in the support groups she led. A local queer newspaper published an anonymous report that Miglin had been spotted in gay bars, although other Chicago journalists swore to Orth that they tried and failed to find evidence that he slept with men. Meanwhile, Orth plays up Lee’s stereotypically gay characteristics, from his neatness to his effeminacy. These descriptions are kind of uncomfortable.

But the investigation into Andrew’s motive never got far, in part because Chicago law enforcement and other local officials were personally invested in protecting the family’s good name. The murder was declared random. An anonymous city official told Orth, “The case is closed. There’s nothing in the file. His employees loved him. The church loved him. His wife loved him. Case closed.” Twenty years later, the suggestion that Lee was anything less than a heterosexual family man remains controversial. A recent Chicago Sun-Times headline reads, “Revisiting Chicago murder, FX series depicts Lee Miglin as gay, close to killer.”

The piece quotes American Crime Story executive producer Brad Simspon, who explains, ““Our writer, Tom Rob Smith, had to dramatize what we believe happened that weekend starting from the established facts of the crime scene. Based on the evidence, we believe that Lee and Andrew did know each other, and Andrew’s attack, as with all his victims except for William Reese [the man Andrew kills for his truck later in last night’s episode], was targeted and specific.” The implication is that homophobia not only prevented the truth behind Miglin’s death from coming out, but—along with that exasperating car-phone leak, which did happen—also contributed to the FBI’s failure to catch Cunanan before he killed again.

Duke Miglin

Wait, there’s more. Remember Duke Miglin, Lee and Marilyn’s 25-year-old “Hollywood actor” son? Evidence exists that he and Cunanan knew each other before the murder. Although Duke and Marilyn always denied having ever met him, acquaintances of the family told Orth that there was something off about their evasions. Shortly after Lee’s death, Andrew’s friends confirmed to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that he and Duke “spoke frequently.”

And, in an interview with Orth, two of Lee’s professional acquaintances related a memorable encounter with the Miglins at United Airlines’ Red Carpet Lounge at LAX, a few years before Lee’s death. “The Miglins were on their way to Hawaii for family Christmas, and were waiting for Duke to join them,” Orth writes. “He finally arrived with a friend, who made a great impression.” When they saw Cunanan’s photo, both confirmed that he was the man they’d met at the airport.

So, what happened to Duke? Well, despite his big break in Air Force One, he didn’t pursue his Hollywood dreams for long. Instead, he got married, had kids and got into the family real-estate business. Last year, Duke insisted to a Chicago ABC affiliate, “There was no relationship whatsoever. A lot of false things were brought up and they were very hurtful, very painful, for me personally and there were attacks on me as well that I really didn’t appreciate. And I still don’t.”

Analyzing Judith Light’s Amazing Performance in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: ‘A Random Killing’ – An Underwhelming Course is Corrected – The Pop Break

Coming off the heels of two solid, yet slightly underwhelming episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is the next chapter in the saga titled “A Random Killing” directed by Gwyneth Horder-Payton.

Despite having his name in the title of the show, Gianni Versace only makes a cameo of sorts in this episode. In fact, it has very little to do with the Versace family as a whole. One thing mentioned in the review of the season premiere was the discovery that instead of the show focusing on Gianni Versace, as the first season did with its premiere character, O.J. Simpson, the show focuses on Andrew Cunanen (Darren Criss), the murderer of Versace and the lead-up to the murder, which occurred in the season premiere.

This particular episode is the show’s version of a flashback to May 1997 – before the assassination of Gianni Versace – and is about a “random” murder that takes place in Chicago, Illinois.

The opening scene is brilliantly done. It begins in Chicago with a lady, Marilyn Migland (Judith Light), returning home to discover something wrong in the house – and the disappearance of her husband, Lee (Mike Farrell). The suspense during the entire sequence is crafted magnificently. The police and one of her neighbors eventually find Lee’s body in the garage. The episode then shifts back in time to when Marilyn was leaving out of town and to Lee meeting Cunanen for his “services.”

As the show has done thus far, it highlights Lee’s struggle with his sexuality in private and this is explored in a scene that takes place in a room in his basement that appears to look like his small version of a church. During this scene, he tells the painting of Christ on the wall that he is “trying so hard,” which, in hindsight, is to be about him trying to be a straight man for his wife, but cannot contain himself and invites Cunanen over, which eventually leads to Lee’s death in which he is found wearing women’s panties and surrounded by homosexual pornographic magazines.

The episode then takes a turn that makes this one easily the best in the season so far. It focuses on Marilyn trying to process and deal with her husband’s death and how she tries to hide from it, but cannot do so. The episode also spends a great deal of time with the police and their efforts to track down Cunanen after Lee Migland’s death and the trouble they continue to have in that department. Cunanen is also a central point in the episode (since he is the show’s main character) as he is on the move.

Even though Cunanen is viewed as the “bad guy,” we see through his eyes how he is escaping and the tension-filled choices he makes, which might not necessarily make us care more for him, but rather keep us on the edge of our seats to see what he does to get out of a bad or dangerous situation for him. Cunanen also takes another life in an attempt to steal a man’s truck to lose the police, in which he is obviously successful.

With this episode embracing and highlighting the troubled efforts of the police and FBI tracking down Cunanen, spending time with the loss’s loved ones and their attempts to grieve, and Cunanen himself on the move, the intensity has picked up and the so has the quality. This episode felt much more like the suspenseful, murderous, manhunt version I was expecting to see when I started, which is clearly a big positive for me.

To make a comparison, this episode was much more in the vain of acclaimed films such as Zodiac and Se7en. In this particular episode, the performances were all fantastic and the cinematography was top-notch as always. It will be interesting to see where the next installment in this season ventures into and if it will continue to increase the tension and have enough of a backstory to fulfill the season’s mandate – although so far, the show is on track to do so.

A Random Killing Rating: 8.5 / 10

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: ‘A Random Killing’ – An Underwhelming Course is Corrected – The Pop Break

American Crime Story Review: A Random Killing

This week’s review takes a look at the latest episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, “A Random Killing.” Spoilers follow.

The Victims

It’s May 1997, and the murder of Gianni Versace is is still three months away. Versace may still be alive in the timeframe of this episode, but he’s absent here – off somewhere living his life, still blissfully unaware that Andrew Cunanan is weeks away from destroying it all.

It’s fitting that since episode 3, “A Random Killing,” is the first Versace-less episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, it’s also the first episode of the season that feels drastically different. As this show continues to tick backwards, like Christopher Nolan’s Memento, the timeline shifts, altering itself, ever-changing. Gone are the brightly-lit beaches and pastel colored buildings of Miami Beach. In its place are the affluent suburbs of Chicago, where Cunanan has brought his own brand of destruction.

“A Random Killing” opens with a chilling, horror-movie-tinged opening sequence in which Home Shopping Network saleswoman Marilyn Miglin returns home from a business trip and quickly discovers something is very wrong. Her husband Lee was supposed to pick her up at the airport – but he never arrived. Marilyn takes a cab home, and the tension builds, and builds, and builds, to a point where it feels as if the episode will burst. Marilyn’s affluent row home seems haunted, or cursed, when she steps through the door. It’s too quiet, too barren. Things that might be perfectly mundane under normal circumstances, like a pint of ice cream left out on a kitchen counter, suddenly take on an ominous feel. Soon, neighbors and police have arrived, and what they discover is enough to make a neighbor let out a blood-curdling scream: Lee Miglin has been brutally murdered.

He’s not the only victim who loses his life at the hands of Andrew Cunanan. Later, we see Cunanan gun down William Reese, a caretaker at a Civil War cemetery. While this act is carried out on the spur of the moment – Andrew shoots Reese almost as an afterthought – the title of the episode indicates only one of these killings is random, and yet when that distinction comes up, it’s applied to the murder of Lee Miglin, not William Reese. The devil is in the details.

“I Could Almost Be”

The Andrew Cunanan at the center of “A Random Killing” is a completely different Cunanan than we’ve seen in previous episodes. At the end of last week’s episode, “Manhunt,” Cunanan’s mask of sanity began to slip as he rattled off a laundry list of all the different phony personalities he’s used throughout his life. Here, the smooth, fast-talking con artist is lying dormant while the cold, calculated predator is on full display. Andrew is on the run here – he later mentions he’s already killed two people very close to him, and later still police mention that a stolen vehicle Andrew was driving was “linked to the homicide of Jeff Trail.” Remember that name.

While we have yet to witness these two previous murders Andrew mentions, it’s clear that he’s unhinged. He’s fleeing for his life, and not really sure where to go. He ends up at the home of the wealthy Lee Miglin, a man who has seemingly be happily married for years, with a grown son – yet he’s also a man who is also hiding a secret.

Secret lives are a big theme of this season of American Crime Story, and just as Andrew has spent his entire life trying to pretend he was someone else, so, too, has Lee Miglin. The episode flashes back a week before his murder, and we see that Lee and his wife Marilyn are, indeed, happily married…yet Lee is struggling. He kneels in the homemade chapel he has tucked away in his large house, and swears to God that he tries, he really tries, to fight his urges. But it’s no use.

When Lee receives a late-night phone call from Andrew Cunanan, just as Marilyn is about to go out of town, Lee gives in to his urges, and gives Andrew permission to come over. When Andrew arrives, he skips the pleasantrees. He’s not trying to impress Lee, or lure him. Lee, seemingly oblivious to this, embraces Andrew. He wants to be loved by this young man, whom we later learn had worked as a male escort for Lee. “I’m not a fool,” Lee says, “I know it’s not real.” But he wants it to be real. He wants it to be real just as Andrew wants his constant lies about his own success to be real. Andrew senses the weakness in Lee, and like any sociopath, decides to exploit it. There’s a quick moment where Andrew has a gun raised at Lee’s back, ready to cut the elderly man down. Yet he hesitates – not out of sympathy, but rather because he realizes he can draw Lee Miglin’s death out; change it from a quick, cold slaying into a calculated act of torture. He passionately kisses Lee, then says, “You’ve never been kissed like that before, have you?”

Befuddled and under Andrew’s romantic spell, Lee whimpers that Andrew isn’t like the other escorts. “I could almost be a husband,” Andrew says, “or a partner. I could almost be. I really could…almost.”

Almost.

What follows is a horrifying sequence in which Andrew wraps Lee’s head in tape – a call-back to last week’s episode, where Andrew did the same thing with a John. From here, Andrew brutally murders lee, taunting him as he does so, telling the dying man that he’s going to dress his corpse in women’s panties and leave gay porn strewn around his corpse. “I want the world to see the great Lee Miglin is a sissy,” Andrew snarls, then adds: “What terrifies you more: death, or being disgraced?”

It’s a chilling sequence, and if the previous two episodes haven’t already destroyed any sort of empathy you might have for Andrew Cunanan as a character, surely this moment will do the trick (note: Andrew’s actions get even worse in the next two episodes, so be warned).

A Random Killing

I’m still having trouble accepting the backwards narrative of The Assassination of Gianni Versace. As the show unfolds, it becomes increasingly unclear as to why Ryan Murphy and company chose to approach this story this way. Perhaps it’s meant to emulate the way a detective investigating the murder of Versace might uncover the story: starting at the end, and working their way back. Perhaps. Yet this approach remains more distracting than innovative.

What continues to make Versace work, however, are the performances, and the direction. Darren Criss’ work as Cunanan remains stunning, even if Cunanan as a character grows more and more repulsive. Criss’ ability to slip from charming to terrifying is no easy feat, yet the actor handles this, and the other intricacies of the part, masterfully.

This week’s guest stars turn in stellar work as well. Mike Farrell, as the doomed Lee Miglin, is inherently sympathetic, making his murder all the more heart wrenching. Scenes showing Lee struggling to fight his sexual urges are handled deftly by Farrell, and the way the actor reacts to his wife telling him she always enjoys his company, seeming both touched and surprised, is one of the episode’s best moments.

The always-amazing Judith Light, as Lee’s wife Marilyn, gets the bulk of the heavy emotional lifting here, and Light doesn’t fail to disappoint. Moments after Lee’s murder is uncovered, Light’s Marilyn springs into action, taking stock of all the items Andrew stole from the house. She fights to remain strong, yet breaks down ever-so-briefly near the episode’s conclusion. This momentary sign of weakness is quickly replaced by fury. Marilyn makes it abundantly clear that everyone, including the police, whom she has influence over thanks to her wealth, are to treat Lee’s murder as a random killing. She refuses to let anyone claim that Lee knew his murderer, because she doesn’t want her husband’s name dragged through the mud. The personal items, and Lee’s life, are the only things Marilyn says she’ll allow Andrew to steal from her. “He won’t steal my good name,” she says.

There is a question of propriety here. The Assassination of Gianni Versace is not a documentary, and as a result, it’s free to play fast and loose with the facts. Yet the real Miglin family still maintains to this day that the murder was random, and that Lee had no connection to his killer. Whether or not it is in good taste for Versace to ignore this is a question the viewer has to ask themselves, and about which they should draw their own conclusions.

Like the previous two episodes, the direction in “A Random Killing” is the real show-stopper. Director Gwyneth Horder-Payton fills the episode with ominous, low-angles, the camera pointing up, warping the image above. This is an overall horrifying episode, and the first few minutes, with Marilyn wandering around her silent home, give most modern horror movies a run for their money. A real-life friend of the Miglins who went to the Miglin residence after Marilyn came home, later said, “There was a horrible feeling in the house,” and Horder-Payton is able to portray that horrible feeling through the silent, unsettling way the cameras move about the home. That “terrible feeling” starts the episode, and it doesn’t let up until the credits roll. By then, Andrew has murdered one more person, and is on the run. His next stop, as we know from last week’s episode, will be Miami. That’s not our next stop, however. We’ve already been there. We’re going backwards. Next week, we’ll learn the events that lead Andrew to Lee’s doorstep. It won’t be pleasant.

American Crime Story Review: A Random Killing

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 3 Spotlights Andrew Cunanan’s Less Famous Victims

One of the most surprising things about The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is how much time the show is spending not just with Andrew Cunanan, but with his less famous victims. Prior to murdering Versace, Cunanan had already killed four men in a killing spree spanning several states, and this week’s episode (in-keeping with the show’s reverse Cunanan chronology) centers on his third victim, Lee Miglin, and briefly on his fourth, William Reese.

“A Random Killing” commits so thoroughly to fleshing out the character of Miglin (Mike Farrell)—a Chicago real estate tycoon whose ties to Cunanan remain ambiguous to this day—that Gianni Versace and his family don’t appear in the episode at all. Let’s get into five talking points from tonight’s hour.

1. Cunanan’s breath-play antics last week were a callback to his third murder.

Remember the nameless elderly man Cunanan seduced and then very nearly smothered with masking tape in last week’s episode? Of course you do. That startling sequence makes a lot more sense in light of this episode, which takes place several weeks prior and sees Cunanan murdering Miglin in a very similar fashion. In real life, it was never proven whether Miglin and Cunanan knew each other prior to the murder (the FBI considers it likely they did, which the Miglin family staunchly denies), but in the show, Miglin’s depicted as a deeply closeted regular client of Cunanan’s—and a pretty heartbreaking character in his own right.

2. Cunanan’s self-loathing emerges in his cruelty to Miglin.

Though the murder itself was brutal—a police officer notes that every one of Miglin’s ribs was broken—it’s the viciousness of Cunanan’s words that really stand out in this episode. Despite knowing theirs is purely a business relationship, Miglin seems quietly besotted with Cunanan, who in turns seems repulsed. Miglin is touchingly eager to tell Cunanan about his plans to build a 125-story tower (the tallest in the world) in Chicago and name it The Sky Needle. “I’ve wanted to share this with you for a long time,” he tells Cunanan, who all but sneers in his face, mocking both Miglin’s ambitions and his clear emotional investment in their relationship.

Later, when Cunanan brutally kills Miglin and leaves his body to be found in a deliberately humiliating fashion—wearing women’s underwear and surrounded by gay porn—I was reminded of the scene early in Episode 1, when Cunanan claims to be straight and casually throws out the F-word (“I mean, what are we supposed to call them? Homosexuals sounds so scientific.”) He doesn’t just want Miglin dead—he wants him outed and humiliated, remembered as “a pansy.” There’s so much internalized homophobia in Cunanan, and it almost feels like Miglin seals his fate when he admits to having real feelings for him—moments before Cunanan calmly confesses that he’s already “killed two people who were very close to me.”

3. The tower conversation tells you everything you need to know about Cunanan’s worldview.

Miglin is excited about the Sky Needle because he imagines families visiting together and children thrilled to ascend the tallest tower in the world. Cunanan, though, hones in on the fact that the hypothetical tower would loom over the Sears Tower, “so you can look down on the Sears Tower Observation Deck.” To Cunanan, there’s nothing more powerful than the idea of looking down on people.

The contrast between these two worldviews really comes into focus, though, when Miglin describes his fantasy of being able to visit his tower and “just roam among people, unannounced. They wouldn’t know who I was!” But the notion of being anonymous is so galling to Cunanan that he flies into a sudden rage, affronted by Miglin’s insistence that the tower is not about him. “Of course it’s about you—it’s the Lee Miglin Tower!” To Cunanan, there is no value in building anything for any reason other than putting your name on it.

4. Did a local radio station really scupper the Illinois police’s investigation of Cunanan?

Miglin is an immensely powerful figure in the community, and as such the police are all over this case, managing to track Cunanan for some time using the car phone in the Lexus he stole from Miglin. But when a local radio station runs a news item giving that information away, Cunanan is able to ditch the car—claiming his fourth victim in the process—and evade justice for another two months.

Apparently, this happened in real life, too. Here’s how it went down, according to Maureen Orth’s Vanity Fair article “The Killer’s Trail” (her book Vulgar Favors is the source material for this season of American Crime Story):

An activated car phone in [Miglin’s] Lexus was used three times the following week in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia police confirmed a news report of the attempted phone calls, angering Chisago County sheriff Randall Schwegman, who told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “Everyone who was working on [the case] was outraged. Once he heard that, he’d have been a fool to use a phone after that.”

5. William Reese is the only victim not to have an episode to himself.

But he does get a death scene that’s surprisingly affective for its brevity. Unlike Cunanan’s other victims, there was no apparent personal connection between Cunanan and Reese, and investigators concluded he was killed solely for his truck. After giving Cunanan his keys, Reese calmly and politely begs for his life before being shot execution-style in the back of the head.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 3 Spotlights Andrew Cunanan’s Less Famous Victims

Recapping ‘Versace’: Episode 3 ‘A Random Killing’

Episode Three, “A Random Killing,” written by Tom Rob Smith and directed by Gwyneth Horder-Payton, is when “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” kicks into high gear.

It’s a bottle episode of sorts that spotlights the death of real estate developer and business tycoon Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell) and completely leaves out the Versace storyline – neither Edgar Ramirez, Penelope Cruz, nor Ricky Martin appear in this episode.

The episode highlights Lee’s wife Marilyn Miglin, to whom he was married for 38 years, and played by the magnificent Judith Light.

Set in May 1997, the episode opens with Marilyn, who sells beauty products on home shopping networks. “A Random Killing” is a platform for Light, who is on screen a good portion of the hour-long episode, which follows Marilyn discovering her murdered husband’s body in their Chicago home. Like the rest of the episodes this season, “A Random Killing” jumps back and forth in time as the rest of the episode shows the days that lead up to Andrew murdering Lee.

The episode is the first in this season to flesh out Andrew’s victims other than Gianni Versace. Lee and Marilyn, are fully realized people here, instead of ghosts who linger on the sidelines of Andrew’s story. (In the first season of “American Crime Story,” Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were not portrayed by actors.) It’s a powerful and risky move, as most scripted TV shows based on true crime neglect to highlight victims. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is bold for putting the victims of Andrew’s murders front and center, while never making their portrayal feel exploitative.

At age 72, the episode shows Lee’s struggles with his homosexuality as an older man who is also bumping up against his religion. In one moving scene, Lee is praying to a painting of Jesus and says, “I try. I try,” on the brink of tears.

Having accomplished much in his life, and despite a strong bond with his wife, Lee is not living his truth; the episode is a remarkable portrayal of the dangers of the closet. Having met Andrew some time ago as an escort, Lee invites him to his home while Marilyn is away on business. When Andrew arrives he’s already killed two close friends of his, and Darren Criss is as chilling and charismatic as ever.

In a tense scene, Lee shows Andrew his plans to build the tallest tower in the world, which sets Andrew off. Lee explains he wants to call the building “The Sky Needle” and not “The Miglin Tower.”

“I want to inspire people… it’s not about me,” he says.

“Of course it’s about you. It’s the tallest building in the world. It’s The Lee Miglin Tower,” Andrew says.

“It’s not about that,” Lee says.

“Then what are you showing me this for? Do you really think I want to spend all evening listening to how great you are? A great man with a great tower,” Andrew says sarcastically. He later claims Lee is trying to impress him and that their interaction is more than just a business exchange and a hookup.

Andrew then seduces Lee and brings him into the garage, where Lee’s body was discovered earlier in the episode.

“I’m in control now,” Andrew tells Lee before stuffing cloth in his mouth and duct taping his face – a tactic we saw Andrew perform in the previous episode.

Lee goes along with it, assuming it’s part of the kinky hookup. But Andrew suddenly turns violent and binds Lee’s arms and legs.

“So dominant out there. So submissive in here. So powerful out there! So pathetic in here. But you like being pathetic, don’t you?” Andrew says as he ties Lee, making him completely helpless and trapped.

Andrew then punches Lee in the face, breaking his nose, and says, “I’ve killed two people, Lee. Two people that were very close to me. I know it’s hard to believe: ‘Intellectual Andrew. Well-read, well-spoken Andrew. Well-dressed.’ But here I am. This is me.”

Andrew then whispers to Lee that after he kills him, he plans on humiliating him by putting women’s underwear on his body and surround him with gay pornography.

“I want the world to see that the great Lee Miglin is a sissy. Soon the whole world will know that the great Lee Miglin who built Chicago, built it with a limp wrist,” Andrew says. “The cops will know, the press will know, your wife will know, your children will know, the neighbors will know! Tell me something Lee, what terrifies you more: Death or being disgraced?

"Disgrace isn’t that bad once you settle into it,” he adds before slamming a bag of concrete on Lee’s body and stabbing him.

Indeed, Andrew makes good on his words to the businessman, and Lee’s body is found in the way in which Andrew told him it would be.

When the authorities tell Marilyn, she refuses to believe it and refuses to accept any possibility that Lee was gay. She also makes it clear that she does not want the press to learn how Lee’s body was found. After local police connect Andrew with Lee’s murder, police ask Marilyn if she knows him, explaining that he’s an escort and that the F.B.I. is taking over the investigation.

Light gives a powerful performance as Marilyn, and in one moving scene, has an emotional breakdown. “Am I real wife now?” she asks.

Though the episode is about Lee’s life and death, the title, “A Random Killing,” also refers to the murder of 45-year-old caretaker William Reese. After killing Lee, Andrew steals his car and goes on the run, ending up in New Jersey. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” does a stellar job of making Andrew a figure of destruction and death, showing how being at the wrong place at the wrong time and interacting with Andrew – just by chance – played a part in who he killed.

For William, it was nothing more than unsuspectingly crossing Andrew’s path. As the episode shows, Andrew spotted William at a rest stop, followed him home and murdered him in cold blood to steal his red pickup truck.

“A Random Killing” comes to a close with Marilyn on TV, ready to sell her beauty products again. A co-host explains to the audience that her husband was murdered “in a tragic act of random violence.”

“They killed my husband for a car,” Marilyn says. “…He was my legal counsel, my account, my best friend. He believed in me. How many husbands believe in their wives’ dreams? How many treat us as partners, as equals? We were a team for 38 years and I miss him very much.

"When I first started selling my perfume on television, my friend who hosted her own show gave me a piece of advice. Just think of the little red light as the man you love,” she says as the episode closes.

Recapping ‘Versace’: Episode 3 ‘A Random Killing’