Tag: 2.09

This Is The “American Crime Story” Finale’s Explanation For The Versace Murder

There’s a moment in the The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story premiere that has stuck in my brain like a stray popcorn kernel since the very beginning of the season. In the “The Man Who Would Be Vogue” scene in question, future murderer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) and future murder victim Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) flirt on the stage of the San Francisco opera house in October 1990, seven years before the killing that would inspire the limited series’ name. Considering how lovely the dreamlike date is, it was always impossible to understand how thatmeeting could lead to the bloody tragedy awaiting both characters.

The Crime Story season 2 finale essentially puts Cunanan through hell as he hides out from police in a Miami houseboat following his titular assassination. When police finally enter the house to apprehend Andrew, he commits suicide by gunshot wound to the head. As the spree killer pulls the trigger, we hear him say in voiceover, “I’m so happy right now,” a direct call-back to his “Would Be Vogue” conversation with Gianni. Then, we’re transported back to that warmly lit date nearly a decade prior to see the rest of Cunanan and Versace’s on-stage encounter.

Although this meeting seems to close happily in “Would Be Vogue,” the same can’t be said about the true ending. After hearing Versace’s kind words about Cunanan — “You’re handsome. Clever. I’m sure you’re going to be someone very special one day,” he tells him in the series premiere — the younger man decides to ask for something in “Alone.” After all, Cunanan is nothing if not an opportunist in the American Crime Story world. Emboldened by Versace’s support, Cunanan explains no one ever really recognized he was as special as he found himself to be… until the designer finally “truly believed him.”

After listening to Cunanan talk about writing a book, Versace seems to legitimately think his new friend could be a successful author. “It’s not about persuading people that you’re going to do something great. It’s about doing it. You have to finish your novel,” he tells Cunanan. But, Cunanan has other plans with the designer in front of him. “Maybe I could assist you, or be your protege?” he asks. Versace isn’t looking for an assistant, no matter how much Cunanan talks about “destiny.”

All of a sudden, Versace seems to realize he just might be getting used by this young, handsome stranger. So, he rejects him on all fronts. No, he’s not going to hire Cunanan, and he dodges the 20-something-year-old when he tries to kiss him. Versace kindly says he won’t kiss Cunanan because he doesn’t want him to “question” the evening, but he’s simply not interested after the job request. That’s why he turns down Cunanan’s invitation for another date the next night. In fact, he doesn’t want to see him for the rest of his time in San Francisco. “Another night, another stage,” Versace tells Cunanan before walking off into the darkness of the opera house, leaving the younger man dejected and alone behind him. Immediately, all the lights go off around Cunanan.

In one moment, Cunanan could see all the fame, money, and love from a celebrated man he ever desired laid out in front of him. In the next second, those dreams were dashed; simply because Versace didn’t see “destiny” was calling.

These many layers of turmoil are sandwiched between Cunanan’s suicide and our first and only look at his body before cops take the bloody corpse away. Crime Story suggests the opera scene is both Cunanan’s last thought and the moment that started the entire tragedy of The Assassination Of Gianni Versace. Narratively, it explains why Cunanan repeatedly said he easily could have been Versace or that Versace took his rightful future away from him. Because, in Cunanan’s mind, Versace did ruin his life that fateful October night.

While the emotional car wreck that was the opera date explains Versace’s murder in the context of American Crime Story, it’s less clear if that already dreamlike scene happened in real life. The Versace family has long claimed the late designer never met the real-life Cunanan, but those in the San Francisco LGBTQ+ scene of the ‘90s do not agree. As Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth wrote in Vulgar Favors, her investigative book about the Versace murder, which ACS season 2 to is based on, multiple witnesses claim Cunanan and Versace did meet at Bay Area nightclub Colossus in October 1990. Versace reportedly approached Cuanan, who was with a friend, at the club, they spoke for a few minutes, and then Cunanan left to return to the dance floor.

A friend of the spree killer, Steven Gomer, also told Orth he once saw Cunanan in a tuxedo and he claimed he had just come from seeing Capriccio “with Gianni Versace,” Vanity Fair reports. It’s worth pointing out that the ACS opera date follows a Capriccio performance in San Francisco where Andrew is dressed in quite a dapper manner. Although there are no details of what supposedly happened that evening between Versace and the man who would one day kill him, it seems that lynchpin of a Crime Story scene was built around this small detail.

This Is The “American Crime Story” Finale’s Explanation For The Versace Murder

‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ writer on interpreting the real Andrew Cunanan for the finale

Serial killer Andrew Cunanan met his grizzly end in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story finale Wednesday night, but it was more of a fizzle than a bang for star Darren Criss’s final scene.

Eight days after Cunanan murdered famed fashion designer Gianni Versace—and two months after Cunanan murdered his fourth victim— police finally cornered the killer on a Miami houseboat. Rather than face capture, Cunanan puts the gun that killed Versace in his mouth and pulls the trigger.

The episode imagines Cunanan’s final days hiding out on that houseboat, while also bringing back many of the series’ guest stars: Judith Light as widow Marilyn Miglin, Annaleigh Ashford as Cunanan’s childhood friend Elizabeth, Max Greenfield as Cunanan’s HIV-positive friend Ronnie, and Jon Jon Briones and Joanna P. Adler as Cunanan’s father and mother.

Series writer Tom Rob Smith (who also created the British drama London Spy) adapted this real-life event, and the rest of the series, from journalist Maureen Orth’s 1999 book, Vulgar Favors. He spoke to Newsweek about working on the series and what liberties he took in interpreting Cunanan.

What do hope fans take away from the finale of The Assassination of Gianni Versace?

It works as a retrospective on loss. That’s one of the things I’m most proud of about this series. Marilyn Miglin, brilliantly played by Judith Light, says in the finale, “I’m so proud of Lee.” There’s that sense that all of these victims—not just Versace—were great. A crime story is about a sense of loss, about people being ripped from the world, about that hole they leave behind. That line, and this finale, crystalized that sense of sadness and loss beautifully.

It was almost moving to have Andrew reface so many of these people he hurt before his suicide. But it was hard to tell if he was feeling regret or just fear for his own life.

It’s been presented that Andrew is relishing in his notoriety thus far. But for someone who had all his potential, intelligence and impressive education, isn’t it also possible that he felt a deep sense of disgust at what he had done? This is not someone who spent his life being horrible to people, he was always trying to charm and impress them—he paid for dinners and tried to win people over. In those final days on that houseboat, there was a sense of great shame, I think. That’s our interpretation.

When you say that, is that what you imagine the actual, real Cunanan felt at that moment? Or do you see the show’s Cunanan as just a character, inspired but separate from the real killler?

In the end, I think you have to accept that it’s an interpretation. But you’re drawing on what there is. People have said, “Oh no, he committed suicide because he was trying to outwit the police.” I’m like, “He shot himself in his boxer shorts on a bed.” I don’t know how anyone would think that was a grand ending. The houseboat was in a state of horrendous decay—that space was a manifestation of what his life had become. He did die the day after Versace’s funeral, so he almost certainly watched Versace’s funeral on TV. I think he would have looked at that and seen a man who is adored, who has the most extraordinary funerals in Milan, while Andrew is in this hellish, sweaty physical decay, despised by the world.

Lots of killers go to trial—they quite enjoy it, in their own way, they enjoy putting the victim’s families through the trial, as part of their sickness. Very few of them commit suicide. So I think, whatever Andrew might have told himself, there must have been some deep sense of shame that he didn’t want to face in a courtroom. He didn’t want to have his crimes read out to him.

What details did you add to his final hours for the show, to help support that interpretation of Andrew?

Obviously, we don’t know what he watched. We just know what was on and we know that there was a TV [in the houseboat]. We do know that the Versace magazines were there, and we know that there was nothing left to eat in that houseboat. We know that he had absolutely no money. He had no way of getting any food and he was trapped. There’s that sense of the world bearing down on him. His dad claimed that he called him.

Really?

Yes, his dad claimed to Maureen Orth in Vulgar Favors that he called him—the exact claim is that Andrew called him to talk about the film rights. Of course, his dad could be lying. We certainly don’t know that Andrew asked his dad to come get him. But I didn’t make up the name of the movie title, A Name to Remembered By. The dad really did say that. But [Andrew] shooting the TV set isn’t true. We put that in because we wanted to get across that the sixth person that Andrew would have gone for next [to kill] would have been his dad.

Modesto Cunanan is a fascinating character, both in the show and real life. Did you guys ever find out what happened to the real person?

We don’t know, and actually we really tried to find that out. We don’t think he’s in America; we think he might not be alive anymore. It’s very hard to find someone. But I know that Fox did do research on that and didn’t come back with anything.

What we know about the real man is that that he gave Andrew the master bedroom, and that he then came in to use the closet. So he set up an excuse to go into there. To my mind, that was immediately a red flag. We also know from Maureen’s research that Andrew’s lie in Episode 1—“Oh my dad used to drive around with a chauffeur, and he was having an affair with the chauffeur”—that’s a real lie from Andrew. I always think that lies are very revealing. I remember first reading that and thinking, “That’s a strange lie.” That’s one of those interesting things about going backwards— you get that lie in Episode 1, and you think it’s just Andrew being crazy. When you get to Episode 8, you’re like, “Wait a minute. What was behind that lie?”

The show makes very explicit—especially in the finale—that one of the reasons the FBI took so long to catch Cunanan was a lack of connections in the gay community and a disregard for gay lives. That felt like a statement on the homophobia of the authorities in the ‘90s.

There’s a couple of things I’d say. This is not a story where it’s about the homophobic cop that doesn’t catch anyone. I think the most homophobic person in this story is Andrew Cunanan himself. He is just this horrific homophobic bully to Lee Miglin. He’s using everything he understands about shame and disgrace against his victims. And with David, he’s trying to trap him into to staying with him by saying, “The police will never believe you, they hate you.”

Many things he says have truth in them, and in Miami it was a fiasco. I don’t know why they didn’t put the flyers up, I don’t what was going on there. Other cities they were better—I think they were better in New York and San Francisco, and I think the various gay communities there were better connected to the police. But catching people is tricky, and people make mistakes without have a racist, sexist or homophobic agenda behind it. People just screw up.

But when an officer refuses to go into a gay club to put a flyer up, that is a real issue. And when Andrew was just walking around Miami—the diner where he ate was just directly opposite the police station. I do think you can say that Versace should not have died.

Given the title of the series, I think some fans were surprised that the show ended up being more Andrew Cunanan’s story than Versace’s.

I was sent Maureen’s book two years ago, and I was always adapting this book. The Versace story is not a crime story—his life story is a success story. And in Maureen’s book, [Versace’s] only really in the story at the end. One of the things we talked about is that we really want to bring him to the fore, because he’s such an interesting counterpoint to Andrew. I don’t think you can just say Andrew was a product of society. Andrew was his own creation. He was beaten by things other people overcame. Andrew was lazy, vain and entitled. Yes, he did encounter enormous prejudice, but so did Versace, and Versace overcame those things. So when you look at it that way, it became a very interesting counterpoint. That was the genesis of the story. But I can understand why people thought it was going to be a biopic.

The real Versace family publicly condemned the show and the book as “a work of fiction.” Have you heard anything else from them since it’s been airing?

No, only the initial statement, which is the same statement they brought out at the publication of the book. One of the advantages of not doing a Versace-intensive biopic is that you can concentrate on what was amazing about that family. You don’t really need to get into the other gossipy stuff about relationships or drugs. None of that is relevant to this story. It’s just about saying what was amazing about Donatella and her relationship with Gianni because that’s what we’re counterpointing against Andrew.

In the end, it’s just a story about two families. You’re comparing them. That’s what I really love about Episode 8. I don’t know anything about how [the real Versace family] feels, but the show is really a celebration of Gianni Versace as an artist.

‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ writer on interpreting the real Andrew Cunanan for the finale

‘American Crime Story’ Review: ‘Alone’ Brings the Story to an End

This week’s American Crime Story review takes a look at the latest (and final) episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, “Alone.” Spoilers follow.

No Way Out

Time has run out for Andrew Cunanan. After committing one murder after another with ease and seemingly no danger of being caught, Andrew’s luck has finally run out due to his murder of Versace.

The final episode of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is all about the end. Here is the culmination of it all. The final weary days in the short, destructive life of Andrew Cunanan. There’s no catharsis here. No sense of release. Instead, there’s a sense that if Andrew was given the chance to do it all over again, he’d probably do everything exactly the same.

After weeks of episodes moving backwards, we finally arrive where we started: with Andrew gunning down Versace on the steps of Versace’s Miami mansion. But unlike Andrew’s other murders – which, aside from the murder of Lee Miglin, attracted very little attention – this one is markedly different. Cop cars are everywhere, speeding through the Miami streets at night. News coverage splashes tabloid-like headlines left and right.

Andrew retreats to a seemingly abandoned houseboat and watches the result of his work on multiple TVs. He seems elated at first – even when the news anchors report him as a suspect. He’s famous now; he’s changed the world. He celebrates by popping open a bottle of champagne. Later, he’ll watch Versace’s televised funeral with reverence and even a little pride. Versace’s funeral is filled with celebrities – Princess Diana, Elton John, Naomi Campbell – and they’re all there because of something Andrew did.

The celebration is short lived. When Andrew tries to get out of Miami, he finds roadblocks at every turn. The police are leaving no stone unturned. He’s trapped. With no one left to turn to, Andrew frantically places a call to his father, Modesto.

Modesto, never one to miss an opportunity, has been selling interviews to the press ever since it was revealed Andrew was the killer. When Andrew calls, he assures his son that he’ll come to America and whisk him off to safety. Andrew, who has apparently learned nothing, believes him. He packs up some things and waits, hopeful that his father will be there in 24 hours.

But his father never shows. Instead, Andrew catches Modesto on the news, mugging for the camera, insisting this is all some mix-up because his son isn’t a homosexual, and revealing that he’s talked to Andrew on the phone.

For Andrew, this is the final nail in the coffin. He knows it’s hopeless now. No one is going to come save him. Soon, police have discovered his location and have him surrounded. With nowhere left to turn, Andrew places his gun in his mouth, sparing one last look at his reflection in a mirror before pulling the trigger.

Special

While anyone who happened to read the Wikipedia entry for Andrew Cunanan knew where this was all going, there are still a few surprises in the final episode, “Alone.” For one thing, Judith Light returns as Marilyn Miglin, widow of Andrew’s victim Lee Miglin. Marilyn just happens to be in Miami during these events, filming a new commercial for her latest perfume. She seems to sum up the feelings of everyone involved here when she says that all she wants is for this to be over. She’s sick of having her good name attached to Andrew Cunanan, and she wants nothing more than for people to stop associating her, and her husband, with Andrew and his actions.

Meanwhile, in Milan, Donatella Versace is trying to put things in order following the murder of her brother. She’s still wrought with grief – in an emotional scene, delivered with a real sense of sorrow by Penélope Cruz – Donatella reveals that on the day Versace was murdered, he tried to call her, and she deliberately ignored the call.

Donatella also has to contend with Antonio, who is also grieving. But Antonio’s grief is treated as something secondary, and Donatella isn’t interested in helping him out. Versace’s will left Antonio with a pension of 50 million lira a month for life, and the right to live in any of Versace’s homes. But the properties Versace left actually belonged to the company, not Versace himself. As a result, he’s cut out. He has no home now. In one of the most cringe-worthy scenes in the episode, the priest at Versace’s funeral goes down a line, offering comfort to everyone in Versace’s family, but deliberately skips Antonio. By the time the episode has ended, Antonio has tried to kill himself – but failed.

All of these surviving individuals – Marilyn Miglin, Donatella, Antonio – are searching for some sort of closure. They want to subscribe to the French proverb “What you lose in the fire, you will find amongst the ashes.” But there’s no real closure here. No sense of completion.

Yes, Antonio survives his suicide attempt. But he’s still cut-out of all things Versace. Yes, Donatella inherits her brother’s empire, but her grief is overwhelming. Yes, Marilyn takes comfort in the fact that the man who murdered her husband is now dead, but she’ll still forever be tied to Andrew and his actions. After the dust has settled, we see Marilyn pouring over letters sent in offering condolences. Letters from young men Lee clearly had affairs with. She can take comfort in these condolences, but she also has to contend with the fact that Lee lied to her throughout his entire life.

And what of Andrew Cunanan? Did he have a moment of clarity in those moments before he pulled the trigger and blew his brains all over the wall of a houseboat bedroom? A realization of where he went wrong? A sense of remorse for his actions? According to American Crime Story, the answer is no.

At the moment Andrew kills himself, we flashback to the (possibly fictional) evening Andrew spent with Versace. There, standing on the stage at the opera with Versace, Andrew says he’s been waiting his whole life for someone to tell him he’s special, and that all he’s ever wanted to do is persuade other people that he’s capable of doing something great.

“But it’s not about persuading people that you’re going to do something great,” Versace says. “It’s about doing it.”

Andrew is puzzled by this response – he doesn’t get it. All he wants is for someone to just tell him he’s special without having actually done anything to merit it. He begs to be made Versace’s assistant, but Versace politely turns him down. Versace tells Andrew that one day, he’ll understand. But Andrew never will. He’ll spend the rest of his short, violent life continually trying to prove to everyone that he’s special. And while he will certainly make headlines, he’ll also leave nothing behind worth celebrating.

In the end, “Alone” juxtaposes the locations of the earthly remains of Gianni Versace and Andrew Cunanan. Versace’s ashes are housed in a veritable temple; a shrine to his greatness, located in a picturesque location. Andrew body, meanwhile, is tucked away in some mausoleum somewhere, among rows and rows of other people, forgotten. Just one nearly anonymous body in a sea of thousands.

Alone

After a few wishy-washy episodes, “Alone” ends The Assassination of Gianni Versace on a high note (although high note perhaps isn’t the right term for such a depressing episode). Director Gwyneth Horder-Payton captures the sinking feeling washing over Andrew perfectly. In one haunting scene, Andrew is visited by the younger version of himself. The young Andrew watches the TV coverage of the adult Andrew’s deeds, a slight, eerie smile on his face. In another scene, Andrew watches Marilyn Miglin’s infomercial as Horder-Payton has the camera push-in on his blank face, effectively pushing the audience into his headspace.

This season of American Crime Story wasn’t entirely successful. The backwards-moving narrative never quite worked, and resulted in a somewhat uneven season, where the bulk of the action happened very early and left a few episodes spinning their wheels. Yet for all its flaws, The Assassination of Gianni Versace still made for some intriguing, captivating television.

While the backwards narrative didn’t quite gel, it did enable Versace to pull a clever bait-and-switch on the audience. At first, we go in thinking this will be just another true crime saga. But what it really turns into is a compelling character study and also a story of how society treats queer people.

Darren Criss’ portrayal of Andrew Cunanan is exemplary. The actor brought the character to life, and while some of the writing could’ve easily turned Andrew into something close to parody, Criss’ performance walked a tightrope and balanced it all.

Other MVPs of the season: Ricky Martin turned in a surprisingly soulful performance as Versace’s lover Antonio D’Amico, particularly in this final episode. The moments where Antonio realizes he’s being cut loose from all things Versace are handled with appropriate panic and confusion by Martin. Penélope Cruz also shines this season, and in this final episode in particular. While there were times when the writing felt as if it was bending over backwards to find ways to insert Donatella into the story, Cruz always managed to play the part with grace and just the appropriate amount of over-dramatic flourishes.

Next up for American Crime Story: a season that tackles the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina, featuring Dennis Quaid as George W. Bush. While that may not stand out as your typical “true crime” narrative, it’s going to be fascinating to see how the series tells this story. Just as the first season of American Crime Story used its true crime angle to tell a story about racism in America, and this second season was primarily about the way society treats queer individuals, I’m sure the Katrina season will have its own social message buried within the narrative. We’ll have to wait to see how that plays out.

‘American Crime Story’ Review: ‘Alone’ Brings the Story to an End

It All Comes To An End On ‘Versace: American Crime Story’ Finale: RECAP – Towleroad

From the finish line of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, this season feels even more muddled in hindsight.

After weeks of unraveling Andrew Cunanan’s motivations backward through time, tracing his pathologies all the way back to childhood, last night’s finale episode brought the story to its only fitting conclusion with Cunanan’s suicide.

The series touched on a variety of potentially interesting topics — from prejudices against the LGBT community to resentment between the haves and have-notes — but none felt nearly as well-developed and clearly articulated as it could. A lot of it has come down to the lack of known details surrounding Cunanan’s killing spree and upbringing. The combination of his penchant for spinning elaborate tales and his desperate death left so many unanswered questions. It gave writers far too much leeway to embellish and rely on some of the usual Ryan Murphy, ham-handed theatrics.

Despite the series’ strong start, much of the luxurious aesthetic fell away instead to shift focus off Versace. The upshot was getting more of Darren Criss’ powerhouse performance, and it was important to shine a light on Cunanan’s other, less well-known victims. The downside was too much time spent making assumptions about Cunanan’s mental state and motivations.

The finale unfollowed with a bit more urgency as authorities drew closer to Cunanan in a tense chase and standoff. Plus, we got another appearance from the incomparable Judith Light as Marilyn Miglin, and any time she’s on screen is a good one.

Let’s recount the events that led to Cunanan’s end in our recap, below.

We begin the conclusion of this story the same way it started: the titular assassination of Gianni Versace.

From those fateful steps, Andrew makes a beeline to a houseboat where he holds up to watch the news coverage.

Lee Miglin’s widow, Marilyn, is in Florida filming for the Home Shopping Network. FBI agents think it’s best for her to leave the area, given their suspicion that Cunanan is still local. She’s frustrated they still haven’t been able to catch him, but, more importantly, she’s never missed a broadcast, and she’s not starting now.

Not that Andrew has plans to stay in town. He steals a car to make a break for it, but police have set up checkpoints at all the major thoroughfares. Frustrated to the point of shouting into the horizon, Andrew gives up escaping by car.

Police turn to Andrew’s mother, but she’s too heartbroken to be of much use to the police. They also track down Ronnie, Andrew’s buddy (played by Max Greenfield in earlier episodes), but he’s not eager to throw his friend under the bus, either. Instead, he opts to deliver a powerful (if not overly dramatic) speech to the authorities about how Andrew disgusted them “before he was disgusting.” It’s an impassioned monologue about their prejudices against gay men; an indictment to society’s blind eye to problems plaguing the LGBT community (including a literal plague) that, despite feeling a little heavy-handed, still resonates today.

Now stuck in the houseboat, Andrew starts running low on supplies. Desperate for food, he turns to the cans of dog food, but he’s hardly able to keep it down. He could not be farther from those free-wheeling nights at the Mandarin Oriental.

As he binges TV coverage, he manages to catch Marilyn shilling her perfume. Marilyn is relaying a story about growing up, and it clearly hits Andrew somewhere deep down. He runs to a pay phone and calls, of all people, his father in Manila. Presumably, the show wants us to believe he was moved by Marilyn’s TV pitch.

His father tells him he’s coming for him and to be ready in 24 hours. Modesto promises to be on the next plane to get him out of there.

Of course, that’s a lie. Andrew catches Modesto on TV bragging about how he’s been in close contact with Andrew and how Andrew has entrusted him to negotiate the film rights to his story. (According to Modesto, the title was to be “A Name to Be Remembered By.”) Modesto also denies that Andrew is nor has he ever been a homosexual. Realizing his father’s not coming, Andrew shoots the TV.

He wheels in a massive projector to watch Versace’s funeral. Now fully resigned to his fate, he eats dog food easily and catches a cockroach under a glass. (“It’s a metaphor, stupid,” the show seems to be telling us.) He watches the grand mass and sings along to the hymn, which is a bit of stretch, even for Ryan Murphy.

The grandiose services are difficult for Versace’s partner, Antonio. First, Donatella tells him that, although Gianni willed him one of the Versace homes on Lake Como, the residences all belong to the company now. Therefore, they weren’t for Gianni to give. Sorry, Antonio! At the services themselves, the priest, unsurprisingly, doesn’t acknowledge Antonio, refusing to even touch his hands as he comforts Gianni’s siblings.

Back in Miami, someone comes to check in on the houseboat Andrew has been crashing in. Andrew is able to scare him off with a warning shot, but it’s too late. The jig is up. He watches as reports come in about his exact location and authorities surrounding the houseboat.

He heads up to the bedroom, seeing an apparition of his childhood self. It all ends like this. Smoke bombs come crashing in the windows and police knock down doors. As they wind their way upstairs, Cunanan puts a pistol in his mouth and kills himself.

We see a flashback to the (likely completely fabricated) meeting between Andrew and Versace. Andrew is trying all his tricks to seduce his way into Versace’s orbit — intellectually and romantically — but it doesn’t work. Versace instead encourages him to finish his novel, become a designer, do something. He wants to inspire Andrew, to nourish his genius.

Even in this (probably completely made up scenario) both men are blind to the other. On the one hand, Andrew can’t see how he can’t just keep faking it until he makes it. To earn the respect of the people he admires, he’s needs some substance behind all style. Versace can’t understand how not everyone has the opportunity to develop their genius with the support he enjoyed. In another world (a third world, outside reality and this alternate telling), maybe the two of them could have actually learned from one another.

Marilyn Miglin receives word that Andrew is dead and finally seems to be at peace that this is “done.” In her dressing room, she reveals she’s been receiving letters about Lee and all the people whose lives he touched. She doesn’t understand why he never spoke to her about these people — probably out of a mix of humility and maybe hiding some of his alleged homosexual affairs — but she answers each letter thanking them for keeping his legacy alive.

In Italy, Donatella confesses she ignored a call from her brother the day he was killed. She’s heartbroken over the decision, but what she should be worried about is how she treated Antonio. Versace’s lover takes a handful of pills and booze, but is found by the maid. (He survived.)

Gianni’s remains end up on an elaborate altar, surrounded by gilded gold. Andrew’s final resting place is a much less glamorous nestled in a community mausoleum. It’s the ultimate disappointment for Cunanan: Spending the rest of eternity blending in, being ordinary.

It All Comes To An End On ‘Versace: American Crime Story’ Finale: RECAP – Towleroad

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace” | Showbuzz Daily

If Ryan Murphy’s goal with the second season of AMERICAN CRIME STORY was to demonstrate the breadth of the show’s anthology branding, not just in subject matter but in style and structure–unlike the relative consistency of his American Horror Story, with its repertory company of writers and stars–well, mission accomplished.  Murphy handed the keys of THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE to Tom Rob Smith, previously best known for London Spy, a purported thriller that was much more interested in the sexuality of its characters than in its own plot.  Smith, who personally wrote all 9 episodes of Assassination(co-writing one of them) delivered an idiosyncratic rumination on the subject of Versace’s killer Andrew Cunanan that couldn’t have been farther from the provocative but straightforward history of the wildly successful The People Vs. OJ Simpson.

Smith adopted the kind of backwards structure mostly familiar from Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along and Pinter’s Betrayal (and a famous episode of Seinfeld).  After beginning with the events surrounding Cunanan’s murder of Versace, each episode went farther back into Cunanan’s past (and occasionally–seemingly randomly–into Versace’s), until the next-to-last episode reached Cunanan’s childhood.  Although Smith didn’t shy away from the grisliness of Cunanan’s murders, as the killer became younger and less dangerous with each hour, the effect was to make Cunanan something of a sympathetic figure, the victim of a terrible childhood dominated by a deceitful, demanding father (with whatever hints of molestation the FX legal department would allow), and then of the life of a gay man in the 1990s.

Or at least that seemed to be the intended effect.  The shortcoming of Smith’s approach was that Cunanan, as played by a dogged Darren Criss, wasn’t nearly interesting enough to sustain what must have been well over 10 hours of television once FX’s lax approach to running times was factored in.  In each episode, Cunanan told fantasy-driven lies about himself, and lashed out violently, and that pathology wasn’t nearly as fascinating as Smith needed it to be.  The colorful supporting cast, which included Edgar Martinez as Versace, Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin as his sister and lover, and Judith Light as the widow of one of Cunanan’s closeted victims, were doled out in bits and pieces, with Criss at the center throughout, unable to provide shadings to Cunanan that weren’t in Smith’s scripts.

With nowhere further back to go in Cunanan’s story but to the womb, tonight’s finale, directed by Daniel Minahan, finally returned to Assassination‘s present tense, but it was mostly yet another showcase for Criss.  The episode was titled “Alone,” and much of the time we watched Cunanan watch his own manhunt on television, from actual news footage to a very on-the-nose scripted segment in which Light’s character, in an appearance on a telemarketing channel, seemed to speak directly to Cunanan’s longing to be “special” and to have the approval of his father.  By the time Cunanan stuck a gun in his mouth and blew his own head off, the season’s themes were hammered in, with guest star Max Greenfield returning to give a set-piece speech to the police about the difference between rich gay men like Versace and the suffering proletariat, and Martin’s character attempting suicide when his status as Versace’s putative husband was ignored by all at and after the funeral.

Where People vs OJ raised questions not just about race, but gender bias, popular culture, class and the criminal justice system, and did so with consistent wit and a vivid set of characters, Assassination was long-winded and monotonous.  (USA’s current Unsolved is a more worthy successor to the People vs OJcrown.)  The ratings, while not awful, reflected the difference, heavily down from the series’ first installment.

Next up (maybe):  Murphy’s already long-postponed story of Hurricane Katrina, which seems like an even less likely fit for the American Crime Story package.  After Assassination, it’s impossible to tell what that one may look like.

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace” | Showbuzz Daily

Dascha Polanco Shines as a Miami Detective in Finale of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

The season began with a murder and ends with a funeral. After diving deep into the troubled life of one Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), the final episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story returns us to Miami and the aftermath of the designer’s death. As the FBI organize one of the biggest manhunts to date to try and find the young serial killer, we get to see how the frayed relationship between Donatella and Antonio (Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin) won’t be mended after all, how Lee Miglin’s widow (Judith Light) has coped with the death of her husband, and how even Andrew’s father has turned his son’s murder spree into an entrepreneurial endeavor.

More importantly, it gave Dascha Polanco’s Detective Lori Wieder even more screen time. A non-nonsense Miami cop who understood just how dangerous Cunanan was (even before he had killed Versace), Detective Wieder emerged over her brief appearances as the kind of law enforcement agent who wasn’t about to let cultural prejudices about gay men get in the way of serving justice. In this episode, when she and her partner go back to interrogate Ronnie (Max Greenfield), she gets to hear Cunanan’s former friend talk at length about why he believes the police and the FBI took so long to even care about his serial killings: “Oh, you were looking for him, weren’t you?” he asks her. “The only lass on the force. But other cops weren’t searching so hard, were they? Why is that? Because he killed a bunch of nobody gays.” It wasn’t Versace’s death made headlines that Wieder’s co-workers began papering the streets with the very signs she’d urged the FBI to print and distribute all around South Beach weeks earlier.

One of the joys of watching American Crime Story this season has been witnessing Latino actors the likes of Edgar Ramirez (as Gianni Versace) and Ricky Martin (as his lover, Antonio) getting plum roles in one of cable TV’s hottest show. But right alongside them we should add Polanco. Whether playing Jennifer Lawrence’s best friend in Joy (alongside Ramirez) or showing up in a bit part in the Adam Sandler comedy The Cobbler, Polanco is proving there’s more to her than the once-mousy-turned-hardened inmate Daya in Netflix’s hit series Orange is the New Black. Moreover, it’s always nice to see a stellar Latina actress get a chance to shine in roles that play to their strengths and refuse to merely box them into playing what they’ve played before.

Sadly, even as Wieder and her colleagues try to find a peaceful resolution to the Cunanan ordeal, the explosive final moments of the season finale show how we all know the story ended: with the serial killer shooting himself in the head after being cornered in a house boat by police and FBI alike. “Andrew is not hiding,” Ronnie tells Wieder, when he explains the flashy murders of the young man he still doesn’t feel comfortable calling a friend, “He’s trying to be seen.” His death, which like Versace’s, could’ve been prevented if the homophobic bias of Wieder’s fellow cops wasn’t so pervasive, becomes a final ode to the kind of infamous fame Cunanan sought. It’s a fitting end (which whisks us off to Italy where Gianni’s star-studded funeral took place) to this sun-kissed drenched exposé on 90s homophobia, which brimmed with explorations on the closet, self-hatred, self-delusions, and plenty of Darren Criss’ rocking bod. But before we bid the show goodbye, we wanted to tally up some of our favorite recurring motifs we kept looking forward to week after week. Enjoy!

The Final Counts:

– Times We Saw Ricky Martin in a Speedo (and out of one): 👙🍑

– Times Dascha Polanco Side-Eyed Her Co-Workers: 👀 👀 👀 👀

– Times Penelope Cruz Exhaled in Exasperation: 😤 😤 😤 😤 😤 😤

– Times Edgar Ramirez Stares at a Design On A Mirror: 👗 👗 👗

– Times Cruz and Martin Had a Melodramatic Quarrel: 😡 😡 😡 😡

Dascha Polanco Shines as a Miami Detective in Finale of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’