For the first time in a month’s worth of episodes about his victims, American Crime Story returns to an Andrew-centric episode. We’re going further back into the narrative, to the events and actions that led to his string of murders. And as it has been teased all throughout the series, all it takes for a delusional man whose entire identity is built on a bubble of lies to break down, is to pop that bubble…
Episode 6: “Descent” The sixth episode of the series takes place in 1996, one year before the murders. Andrew is living in San Diego in the mansion of gay millionaire Norman Blachford, under the pretenses of being his personal interior designer. Pretenses is all Andrew lives off of; he’s mooching off everything he can from the poor man, who only wants company.
Andrew throws a birthday party for himself, in house that he doesn’t own, with money that is not his, surrounded by people that don’t know him. And yet somehow this is the life that he always envisioned for himself. It’s a game of perception that he needs to keep playing in order to keep the fantasy alive.
Annaleigh Ashford, bubbly and buoyant as ever, returns as Andrew’s best friend Elizabeth, who does not believe that Andrew is living a genuine life with Norman. But he tells her that he won’t stay there for long. He’s now chasing after David (Cody Fern – it still hurts every time to seem him alive and well), a boy he met in San Francisco that now owns his heart. He will be attending the party, and Andrew wants to show him that he is a loved person. As we see through the episode, this is something Andrew desperately wants to believe in, too.
Jeff Trail seems to be his only genuine friend. They are still close after the initial bar encounter we saw last episode. Jeff comes to Andrew’s party, with real feelings of friendship and gratitude that Andrew brushes away in lieu of putting on a charade for David. He implores Jeff to pretend to have a life that goes more with what Andrew has created for his. Everyone around him needs to be part of his games in order for them to work.
Jeff and David meet in this party. Lee Miglin is also there. They all take a picture together. It has to be a creative decision to have all (or at least sixty percent) of Andrew’s victims gathered in the same place, appearing in the same picture. But it translates the theme of Andrew destroying those around him into visual terms.
But, as it has always been with Andrew, he doesn’t have enough. He needs more from Norman; a bigger allowance, first class flights, being named his sole heir. You know, reasonable petitions. And then Norman bursts the first of Andrew’s bubble, and reveals him he has had him investigated. All the stories he has told about himself are false. He’s still willing to keep Andrew around, as long as he makes himself useful. But Andrew doesn’t want to be useful. He doesn’t want to be ordinary. So he decides to leave Norman. Wanting more is slowly destroying him.
Living off the last credit he has left, Andrew invites David to LA under work pretenses. He woos him with fancy hotels, and expensive dinners, and lush gifts. But David cannot take this any longer, and makes him clear that he is not Andrew’s guy; never will be. In his last attempt to connect with him, he tries to ask about his past and his family, but Andrew won’t let go of the invented narratives he tells himself. So David leaves him.
And, as an incredibly aggressive way of asserting his territory with Jeff, Andrew sends a postcard to Jeff’s father, outing him to his family. Jeff confronts him and tells him he is leaving for a job in Minneapolis; the city where David lives. He assures him the two have nothing to do with each other, but Andrew doesn’t buy him. And just like that, Andrew has lost all the people he cared about, or that cared about him. So, as one does, he seeks refuge in a crystal meth from a pyromaniac at a local dive bar.
In one of his highs, we get the only Versace appearance of the episode in the form of a hallucination, a way for Andrew to confront this other person who embodies all of his ideals: the man who has everything he wished and fought for. They are the same person, only Versace got lucky. There is bitterness and deep resentment in Andrew, and the psychotic gears start to turn again.
Andrew hits rock bottom (in this episode, at least, not in his life), when he tries to break into Norman’s home so he can get money to pay for his drugs. Norman calls the cops on him. And then we get a final sequence where, having been stripped of everything, Andrew goes to visit his mother.
This is his real mother, not the thousand different women he has invented to strangers at parties. And we confirm what has been always strongly suggested but never confirmed until now. Andrew came from nothing. He had very humble beginnings, and wishing for more is something practically ingrained in the family emblem. “I am unhappy” he mutters to his mother, a cry for help that does deeply unheard. No one is going to help him anymore.
“Descent” was good in illuminating some aspects of Andrew’s character that has been hinted at before, but never expressly addressed; mainly the fabrications that he tells others (and, as it turns out, himself) in order to keep going. The further we go back into the narrative, the more human the characterization of Andrew is becoming, which is a weirdly amoral line to walk when depicting someone that killed five people.
I don’t know how farther back we will go in future episodes, or when we will pick up the murder narrative. The Versace part of the story is as behind from us as it can be, and the show has now made it explicitly clear that it is not about them, or that particular story, at all. I just hope in the last leg of the season we can start moving forward instead of keep looking back. Just like Andrew, if you look too far back, it’s hard to come back from that.
Some assassinations make household names of their gunmen. Kill a president, say, and your name will likely go down in history. Putting bullets in Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy gave John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald eternal infamy, of course. But murder one of the world’s most famous people that doesn’t happen to be in high office and the killer’s not guaranteed the personal interest one might expect.
Who shot Martin Luther King, for instance? Do you know? We had to look it up – it was a man called James Earl Ray. And Ghandi? Nathuram Godse, whoever he is. But just because shooting big names dead doesn’t ensure the world knows your name, that doesn’t mean your story isn’t one worth knowing.
And that’s the premise behind The Assassination of Gianni Versace, the follow up to the critically and publicly-lauded crime drama series of 2016, The People Vs O J Simpson.
Both TV shows hit our screens under the wider banner of American Crime Story, the true crime sister to the increasingly bizarre (and increasingly bad) anthology series, American Horror Story. The creative force behind both Horror and Crime is Ryan Murphy, the showrunner responsible for other wildly successful televisual offerings such as Nip/Tuck and Glee. And, for this maiden episode of Versace, Murphy is behind the camera as well.
We begin on Miami Beach, Florida. It’s the summer of 1997 and an exceptionally rich and flamboyant man wakes up in an opulent beachside mansion, eats breakfast, gets dressed, pops out for a quick walk, returns home and has his brains blown out all over his front step. That man is Gianni Versace, the best-known and most successful fashion designer on Earth.
The man left holding the smoking gun? Andrew Cunahan. See? We told you assassinating famous people doesn’t guarantee fame. That said, by the end of this nine-part FX series, currently running on Wednesday nights on BBC 2, most of us will be pretty well versed in exactly who Andrew Cunahan was.
In fact, we’re going to be very well versed indeed. Only The Assassination of Gianni Versace may feature the Italian designer’s name rather prominently in its title, but this is firmly a series about his murderer and what drove him to gun down Versace in cold blood.
Our assassin, we learn in flashbacks, is less a professional hitman type than an obsessive Tom Ripley-esque character. A pathological liar with compulsive tendencies and a penchant for manipulation and social ascension, Cunahan was, in reality, just a low-level meth dealer and con artist. Until something switched in him and he decided to go on a killing spree that included killing the fashion world’s favourite designer.
Cunahan is played here by Darren Criss, a mostly theatre actor who you may or may not remember as Blaine Anderson in Glee. And, just one episode in, it’s fair to say already that Criss is outstanding in the role. Equally as impressive is the man behind Cunahan’s victim, Zero Dark Thirty and Che actor, Édgar Ramírez. The likeness between Ramírez and Versace is nothing short of incredible. Seriously. It’s actually quite unnerving at times.
The principal cast is filled out by two slightly more famous names. Penélope Cruz nails the accent as Versace’s sister Donatella and Ricky Martin nails the tight white tennis shorts as Versace’s live-in boyfriend, Antonio D’Amico.
The ‘La Vida Loca’ star’s tighty whities and the gaudy golden house the murder takes place outside of are not the only camp things in this opening fifty minutes. There are affected and theatrical elements to almost every scene, as you might expect and even demand from the subject matter and from the man behind Glee. But don’t let the highly camp atmosphere distract you – this is a twisted tale and, as the series evolves, we’re certain to see even more of the crazed psyche and violent mindset of Cunahan.
The series is based on Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in US History, and points out in the closing credits of episode 1 that while what we’re seeing is very much a true story, some elements are – and will be – dramatised for effect. This is no documentary, but – we’re led to believe – the narrative doesn’t veer greatly from the truth.
There’s a fair amount of exposition in this first outing, as is somewhat required to flesh out some of the background to the story. It’s not always the most subtle, but nor is it hugely clunky or jarring. Subtlety isn’t really the point here, anyway. This was – and remains – a truly sensational story about an assassination that, if the show proves a hit, might just be about to make a certain Andrew Cunahan closer to a household name than ever before.
FROM Capote’s In Cold Blood to David Simon’s Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, no one does stranger than fiction true crime as well as America. One of the TV highlights of recent years was the series American Crime Story: The People v OJ Simpson, an account of the “trial of the century” from bonkers white Bronco chase to controversial verdict. Now from the same stable comes The Assassination of Gianni Versace (BBC2, Wednesday, 9pm), and one episode in it is just as gripping.
As with OJ, Assassination starts with what we know, that the Italian fashion designer was murdered on the stops of his Miami mansion by Andrew Cunanan, and spools onwards and backwards from there. The opening section contrasted Versace’s gilded life, all servants, calm, and freshly squeezed juice, with his killer running around in a sweat, preparing to do the deed. As writer Tom Robb Smith (London Spy) showed, the grisly circus began immediately, with someone trying to flog a photo of the body to the media and a souvenir-hunting couple tearing a Versace ad out of a magazine and dipping it in the victim’s blood. American Crime Story, far from turning away from such details, cannot get enough of them. If the OJ ratings are any guide, viewers feel the same.
Andrew descends into madness and isolation in a lonely episode
The Assassination of Gianni Versace is starting to feel more like a criminal profile than a character study. Much like the many branches of law enforcement that would make up the hunt for Andrew, and Maureen Orth’s research and subsequent book on Andrew’s killing spree, the second season of American Crime Story is structured in a way that make us the detectives. By going backwards, witnessing Andrew’s evil deeds and getting certain contexts for them in later episodes has helped writer Tom Rob-Smith put together a fascinating portrait of a killer.
Descent provides this further context, setting up much of the behaviour and reasoning that would lead Andrew to kill five men and kill himself days later. It’s an episode that paints Andrew as a sad, desperately lonely narcissist who wants the love that he feels he deserves. It’s an episode that relies heavily on our pre-existing knowledge of how this story ends, sprinkling seeds that could explain, but not condone Andrew’s future actions. I’ve stated many times that I love the structure of this series, the way it puts Andrew front and centre (which is ghoulish of me, I know) chronicling his actions in a way that the first season couldn’t achieve due to the argument over OJ Simpson’s innocence.
There is one part of this episode that has stuck with me, a moment that completely explains the character of Andrew Cunanan to me in a way that only fiction can. In one of his first conversations with David in their expensive Los Angeles weekend, David asks Andrew (for what probably isn’t the first time) what he does for a living, the subtext of this is how can Andrew afford this luxury. Being in the home of Hollywood, Andrew tells David that he is a money man for Hollywood studios. Of all the lies about his “career”, which include making sets for Titanic, this struck me as the most Andrew-like. Andrew has drawn a connection between himself and Hollywood, that magical place where the good guy always wins and gets true love as his reward, but not as a creator. Despite the fact that he creates multiple lives for himself out of thin air, he tells David that his role is financial, denoting his other obsession, money.
What’s interesting about this scene, and much of Andrew and David’s time together, in this episode and all of the others, is that it’s all an educated guess. Other reviewers of this show have commented that the job of this season of American Crime Story isn’t just to adapt the book on the crime that inspired it, but also to fill in the blanks that Orth’s book missed out. Ryan Murphy may be bold enough to call this season a dramatic documentary but then it goes into Truman Capote territory. Like Capote’s best-known work, The Assassination of Gianni Versace must rely on Tom Rob-Smith’s imagination to bring much of it to life. Even Orth’s book is full of situations in which different friends or acquaintances of Andrew can’t agree on how specific situations played out.
This is where the tricky part comes in. The Andrew we see in Descent, one who becomes increasingly isolated from the people he wants to love him, is the show’s best guess. It’s here that the artifice of this story being a fictional TV show could send it off the rails, but Smith, Darren Criss, and director Gwyneth Horder-Payton are far to confident for that. Descent is a perfect culmination of writing, directing, and performance. This is really Andrew’s one man show.
After the first five episodes put Andrew’s victims front and centre it is finally Andrew’s turn, and his “descent” isn’t subtle. Gwyneth Horder-Payton’s framing here is so crucial to the mood of the episode. Andrew is frequently framed by columns and doorways as well as the camera to signify his confidence and hold on people is shrinking. As Andrew goes deeper into psychosis, brought on by the consequences of his behaviour and a hefty amount of crystal meth, the camera moves, and the editing get more frantic alongside him, culminating in a fantasy sequence in which Versace is fitting Andrew for a suit. Even in his high state of mind he unconsciously knows what separates himself from men like Versace: Versace is literally calmly doing his job as Andrew berates him. Andrew feels that he deserves love, that his generosity has been taken for weakness and that his friends will steal David who he thinks is his soulmate. Andrew, despite what he believes is a very real love for David, can’t be fully honest with him. David tries to get Andrew to tell him the truth about himself, not in a harsh way, but trying to get him comfortable enough to open up. Andrew does tell David the truth: his dad was a stockbroker, his mother did bring him fancy lunches at school, and he was given the master bedroom because he was the favourite. Yet there is lies imbedded in this truth: his dad was let go from many financial agencies due to suspicions of e3mbezzilment, and his mother never ran a publishing company in New York, she actually an unemployed woman suffering from severe mental illness who is the only person that still believes all of Andrew’s lies.
Descent shows Andrew at his lowest point, literally locked out of the life that he thought he deserved, threatening to out his friends because of some imagined slight, and retreating back to his mother’s arms to gather the courage to punish those that left him.
9/10 – Gwyneth Horder-Payton needs to direct every episode of this series as she creates the truly frightening world of Andrew’s fiction that will soon kill those he wants to love him.
I’ve been trying to figure out the best word to describe American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, but I just can’t get a handle on it. At first I thought it might be “gay”, but that’s not right at all. “Gay” just means gay. It’s no more a vibe than “straight” is. Then I thought it could be “camp”, but that’s even more wrong. Most of the gay characters in this startling show aren’t remotely camp. They’re muscular, toned and dangerous, but also quite often dressed as Louis XIV’s lamé curtains. Best understood, I suppose, it’s a deep dive into the aesthetic of 1990s American homosexuality, in much the same way that American Psycho was a dive into that of 1980s Manhattan finance. Which is not, I’d imagine, quite what anybody expected.
Technically, it is also a sequel. The first series of American Crime Story was better known as The People v OJ Simpson, a show that won big plaudits and numerous awards, yet which was also, at least in my experience, oddly easy to stop watching. This, obviously, focuses on the killing of Versace in Miami in 1997 and could easily be very similar, with gawkers and a media circus and cops and lawyers on the make. It isn’t, though, and not only because its title character clearly has to spend quite a lot of time dead.
The focus is instead on Darren Criss, as his creepy killer, Andrew Cunanan. You may remember Criss from Glee, a show in which he was more inadvertently creepy as an exhaustingly kind and gentle enthusiast of musical theatre. If you ever thought to yourself, “Man, that Blaine guy could be a serial killer,” then it turns out you weren’t the only one.
Last time around, Cuba Gooding Jr and John Travolta led the cast. This time we have Penélope Cruz as a frankly odd choice to play Donatella Versace. I’m loath to be unchivalrous, but it’s like getting Brad Pitt to play John McCririck. Up against her, as brilliant as the whites of his own teeth, is Ricky Martin as Versace’s bereaved partner, Antonio. Versace is played by Édgar Ramírez. It’s a little odd to hear these three Spanish-speakers pretending to be Italian by chatting in heavily accented English, but a greater distraction is the way they’re all blown off screen by their backdrops.
Every shot that features any one of them is like one of those insane Versace advertisements with Madonna in them as a businesswoman. Remember them? She was always on the phone, halfway between buying half the FTSE and having an orgasm. I think it’s actually more of a mid-2000s Donatella aesthetic, that, than a 1990s Gianni one, but crikey, ask somebody else. It’s all bright lights, patterned satin, patent leather belts and expensive sexiness you’ll never afford. Pre-death, Ramírez wakes in bed and strides down corridors more glitzy than a Swiss chocolate box, across a patio decked out with so many houseboys standing to attention in shorts that it could be a Wimbledon tennis court. When the plot gets going, you’re almost sorry. You don’t want to think. You just want to watch.
Before long, though, and at least by the second episode (I’ve sneaked ahead; they let us do anything) it turns out to not be that sort of show at all. More interesting than Versace’s gaudy closet is the role he plays being so uncompromisingly out of it. Out in the wider world the Aids epidemic had only just passed its height and even George Michael wasn’t out yet. Mass acceptance — let alone equality in law — was still far away.
From his palace in Miami Beach Versace existed as a sort of approachable living saint of the local gay community, which itself seems to have been a collection of nomads, lost souls, addicts and pioneers, all of whom had made the conscious and probably painful choice to build their identities anew. The heroin addict Ronnie (an unrecognisable Max Greenfield, better known as New Girl’s Schmidt) is indicative of the more desperate flotsam this world attracts; Cunanan, although very definitely a fantasist and a psychopath, is its extreme form.
The easiest way to write a story is to take the first chapter of somebody else’s and see where your imagination wants to go. The Assassination of Gianni Versace may not go to all the places it feels it should, but that would be a shame. In the US, which is a few weeks ahead of us, it hasn’t quite been the hit of The People v OJ Simpson, but for my money it’s a whole lot more interesting. Apologies for the spoiler (look away now), but history tells us that Cunanan took his own life eight days after the murder. What did he do before? Who made him what he was? Callous as it may seem, we already know what happened to Versace. At its best, this isn’t about his assassination at all, but his assassin.
It’s 1996 – one year before the murders of Jeffrey Trail (Finn Wittrock), David Madson (Cody Fern), Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell), and Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramírez). We’re in the lavish La Jolla, California home of Norman Blachford (Michael Nouri), a silver fox businessman who – after losing a partner to AIDS – became Andrew Cunanan’s (Darren Criss) sugar daddy. Today is Andrew’s birthday, and he’s throwing a party for himself, much to the chagrin of Norman’s friends, especially bitchy queen supreme David Gallo (Terry Sweeney). Only instead of a happy occasion, it’s another utterly awkward session of fumbling about and trying to impress everyone around him, going as far as to provide fake presents for Jeffrey to give him, in order for David to think he’s truly “loved”.
“Loved.” If there were ever a universal ingredient peppered into the great murderers of our time, it was the inability to feel as if they were adequately adored by parents, friends, neighbors, or the population in general. In “Descent” – the sixth hour of American Crime Story’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace – the entire motivation for Andrew’s deadly existence is boiled down to simplistic (yet no less painful) instances of perceived heartbreak. Despite Norman legitimately admiring the professional liar – his private investigation debunking Cunanan’s claims of possessing a PhD and background in interior design – the wealthy lover’s still willing to let Andrew share his life with him, given the pretty boy’s down to work for it. Yet Andrew simply wants everything handed to him; these bursts of instant gratification allowing him to float on air, like a bump of uncut cocaine (but none of that “gutter drug” crystal meth). He’s an addict, desperately in need of detox.
A forced withdrawal comes when Cunanan walks out on Norman liked a spoiled brat after the millionaire refuses him a list of lavish luxuries – a Mercedes, first class tickets to wherever, all the clothes he could want – that come with the small price tag of Andrew’s affections. Instead, the future killer opts to jet off to Los Angeles (on a near maxed credit card, of course), and fly David out for a holiday together that he literally forbids the aspiring Minneapolis architect from saying “no” to. When David ends up rejecting him, he does so with a speech that translates into one of the most poignant, insightful moments that The Assassination of Gianni Versace has presented thus far (which is saying something, because this show can pack a wallop when it wants to).
“We had a great time in San Francisco,” David says about their initial meeting. “One great night. And maybe there was a chance, but…I get the feeling you don’t have many great nights with people — am I right? So, when you do, it feels huge, it feels life-changing.” If Andrew is a junkie, then this is the closest anyone has come to staging an intervention with him. But Cunanan’s hunger is insatiable, and he retreats to an unfurnished apartment, telling tall tales at the local queer club about the honeymoon he just spent with David in Europe, before buying speed from the spot’s skeevy dealer. The unfillable void inside Andrew’s soul becomes a physical pit, in which he shoves nasty bathtub crank via a needle in his arm. In a weird way, this feels like Andrew actually being truthful with himself for once, all while confessing to Gianni in a hallucination (where the Italian garment maestro is fitting him for a custom suit) about how nobody’s ever truly loved him.
“This world has wasted me,“ he tells his fantasized idol, "it has wasted me while it has turned you into a star. We’re the same. The only difference is you got lucky.” But again, it’s all bullshit; even when Andrew’s being the most honest version of himself. Because almost immediately after, we meet his mother Mary Anne Schillaci (Joanna Adler), who lives alone in a shitty apartment. Almost instantly, we understand where Andrew got his penchant for self-delusion, as she seems to seriously believe her baby’s been traveling with Versace to Tokyo, Sydney, Moscow and Milan. Despite the kid smelling foul and unlike himself (his mom’s own words) and looking like he’s been on a week-long meth bender – because he has, ending in Norman threatening to call the cops after Andrew comes begging to be let back into the mansion – Mary Anne still gives him a bath, before he heads off to Minneapolis. Now, it’s time for our hearts to be broken, as we know this simple-minded, fragile woman will never see her son again, and three men who were gathered together at a birthday party not so long ago are about to be gunned down in cold blood, along with the famous fashion designer. Andrew Cunanan’s mother’s home was his first stop on this road to nowhere.
On The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, we’ve learned slowly that the show is more a vehicle for Darren Criss and his performance as Andrew Cunanan than anything else. Based on his 26th birthday, last night’s episode showed us the beginning of Cunanan’s bloodthirst.
From what we’ve seen in the show, Andrew targeted gay men who remained in the closet. The thing is, most of the recounting of these stories is either speculative or part of stories that Andrew told. So we can’t really trust a lot of what we’re seeing.
Unlike with The People Vs OJ Simpson, Andrew Cunanan’s killing spree was not as documented for the public eye until he murdered Gianni Versace in cold blood. But seeing the final straw and taking it back to the beginning is an interesting way to spin this show.
This is a story that not that many people knew going in. So do I wish that we could have seen Cunanan’s descent in chronological order? Yes, I do. I get it, this is a dramatic take on the story, but it isn’t what we originally thought we were getting. And if we just saw the rise and fall of Andrew Cunanan, knowing he would be the reason for Versace’s death, it might make for more thrilling television.
Instead, most weeks I’m struggling to not play games on my phone while watching Cunanan, who I’ve already seen murder countless men, figure out that he’s psychotic. But then again, it is a Ryan Murphy show so something crazy could still be up his sleeve.
After giving us a week to recuperate from the devastating episode that was “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is back, and it gives us the episode that many of us have been waiting for: the one that slightly explains Andrew Cunanan’s motives. While there are still a lot of missing pieces of the puzzle that explain why Cunanan killed Versace, we do get some insight as to why Jeffrey, Lee, and David ended up on his kill list.
For this week’s episode, we are traveling back in time once again, which brings us even more spectacular performances from Finn Wittrock, and David Fern.
Gather ’round and let’s discuss “Descent”.
The Dream Life: We are first taken to Andrew Cunanan living the life in a beautiful beach home, arms laden with shopping bags, wearing sunglasses, and diving naked into a pool. It looks like Cunanan found a way to live that rich and famous life. Later on, it appears that Cunanan is having a birthday party, and Lizzie, his pre-serial killer days’ friend, has a lot of questions about his new gay lifestyle and questionable relationship with a much older man, Norman, whose house it happens to be. Lizzie wants to know what Andrew is doing with him but he is very vague in his answers, though we know he’s with Norman not out of love. That “love” is apparently reserved for David.
Let’s Play Charades: For the birthday party, Jeffrey arrives first, and Cunanan tries to manipulate the scene a little better for David’s benefit, so Cunanan looks more “loved.” He also asks Jeffrey to lie about still being the Navy because being an officer is much more impressive than what he currentl does. All these things, Andrew does to impress David, whofinally arrives, all the way from Minneapolis, and who Cunanan kisses him on the lips immediately. It’s obvious that David is impressed, and also impressed when Jeffrey presents Cunanan with his self-bought gift, one that is in a Tiffany’s box to boot. Unfortunately for Cunanan, the chemistry between Jeffrey and David is quite evident, and that sends Cunanan into a tizzy and straight into the bathroom for another line of coke.
The Library Is Open: One of Norman’s friends finally snaps at Cunanan, putting the would-be killer in his place as an attempt to protect his friend: “Too lazy to work, too proud to be kept,” he tells Cunanan. “That room is full of people who love me,” Cunanan said, gesturing to the party. “That room is full of people who don’t know you,” the man replies. Cunanan is then thwarted by a familiar face on his way to stop Jeffrey and David from getting too chummy: Lee Miglin, who came all the way from Chicago, clearly crazy about Cunanan even though Cunanan is embarrassed by him. Cunanan is surrounded by all of his future victims in a group photo—the next scene shows he’s scratched out all of their faces but David’s.
An Ultimatum: Cunanan later on gives Norman a list of demands in order to stay together: an increased living allowance, a car, and his entire inheritance. But unfortunately for Cunanan, Norman is a businessman, and he reminds the future killer about the one thing Cunanan hates the most: the truth about who he is. Norman knows Cunanan’s real name. He knows that he had been working minimum wage and living with his mother. After presenting the facts, Cunanan walks away, silenced. Sadly, Norman is too generous with Cunanan, much like David, and he offers to increase his living allowance and pay for his college. He sees through the lies and still wants to help him. Norman offers to help if only Cunanan stays with him. Cunanan throws a temper tantrum and ends up leaving and going home, which is a miserable oatmeal apartment with a bare mattress.
The Ball Starts Rolling: It is in this apartment where the chain of events kicked off as Cunanan delivers his first vindictive act: the postcard attempting to out Jeffrey to his father, for the sin of Jeffrey hitting it off with David at the party. Jeffrey confronts Cunanan and holds Cunanan against the wall. He tells Cunanan he got a new job — in Minneapolis. Where David lives. “I’m leaving,” he says. “I thought you should know.” Later, Cunanan offers David a full funded trip to LA, which he accepts out of pity. Cunanan drowns him in expensive gifts and fancy food, which makes David feel guilty. “Andrew, I’m not the one,” he says, after offering to pay for half of everything. “I’m sorry.” The truth of their “relationship” then comes out: they had one great night together in San Fransisco. David just wants to get to know the real Cunanan but loses interest once Cunanan starts up with his lies again.
Completely Undone: Cunanan ends up returning to his home, out of money and drugs, which leads him back to Norman, who doesn’t let him back in and threatens to call the cops. Cunanan has nowhere to go but his mother’s house. She believed his lies and preps him for his next adventure. What city is next, she asks. “Minneapolis,” he responds.
Instant Reaction:
Criss, Fern, and Wittrock all deliver amazing performances once again in this episode.
Cunanan is crazier than I thought.
I’m still confused about whether Cunanan ever really met Versace….
In this week’s episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, appropriately entitled “Descent,” we get a glimpse of just how low Andrew Cunanan could get before he went on his infamous killing spree, which we’ve seen play out in reverse order over the course of the previous five episodes.
But there are no big shocking moments in this installment. No bloody murders, not even any taping up old men and coming extremely close to suffocating them to death. No, here we meet an Andrew Cunanan who has not yet become a killer, though his lies are as numerous and see-through as ever. He is living in La Jolla, California, a suburb of San Diego, in a mansion with an older gentleman named Norma. They haven’t had sex in a while, and Andrew is basically accepted as an “employee” of the man, but there are other arrangements there. We open on Andrew’s birthday party Norman is throwing him. But the only thing Andrew wants this year is David.
He makes a huge deal out of pretending that the mansion is his own and not some older rich guy’s. He even convinces Jeff to bring him a gift, and provides the gift Jeff is to give him (it’s faux brand shoes he rolls his eyes at). He does this because, as he explains to Jeff, he wants to SEEM loved. The point being, he is not concerned with whether he actually is or not.
However, when David, the man who we know Andrew will eventually murder, shows up he immediately treats Andrew like any old friend–NOT a potential love interest. This is troubling for Andrew. Even worse is David and Jeff, the other man we will see Andrew kill, seem to be actually hitting it off. David makes a comment about where he is going to sleep while he’s there, implying he is not going to be sleeping with Andrew. This is not good. SIDENOTE: A third of Andrew’s future victims are here as Lee Miglin, the Chicago architect makes an appearance.
On top of all this, Andrew took advantage of his sweet old man benefactor Norman a bit too much and apparently he had had enough. When Andrew demands more of everything to stay with him–more money, clothes, to be written into the will–Norman reveals he hired a private investigator to look into Andrew’s past, and he found that Andrew has been lying about having billionaire parents in New York and just about everything else. He worked at a drug store, dropped out of school, and comes from a poor background. Andrew storms out thinking Norman will cave and stop him. But he doesn’t.
Andrew invites David out again for a special trip to Los Angeles, where he will get to pretend that he lives this lavish lifestyle. They stay in a five star hotel. He tosses his keys to the valet like they do in the movies. But David tells him that he agreed to come on this trip to feel out once and for all whether there was anything there between he and Andrew, and he has determined there is not. Why? Because he doesn’t know who Andrew really is. He gives him an opportunity to be real with him and Andrew just continues to lie. David leaves.
This is where Andrew kind of spirals off the deep end. By now he has lost Norman, David, he’s mailed Jeff’s dad a post card in order to either scare him or illicit his coming out to his parents. He lives in a seedy place and starts using crystal meth. In a drugged out haze he envisions an encounter with Gianni Versace himself. Andrew asks him what the difference is between him and Gianni, and Gianni replies “I am loved.”
Finally he retreats home to his mother and we get a small glimpse of why he is the way he is. In an extremely creepy scene involving his mother giving him a sponge bath, she rambles on, not even listening to her son speak. She is not well. Having nothing and no one, and feeling compelled to keep lying and give himself the life he always wanted without working for it, we now see how he set down this path to the eventual murder outside Gianni’s home we saw in the very first episode.
The problem is, it’s hard to have any sympathy for Andrew Cunanan after seeing him so brutally kill and tell vile lie after vile lie. There are still four episodes left in the season and if we are done going backwards, I am left wondering where do we go from here? Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin are hurting for some screen time! But if we suddenly shift to focus on those characters, at this point it may feel like a completely different series. We shall see.
1996, La Jolla CA. The opening licks of Laura Branigan’s “Self Control” accompany Andrew Cunanan’s sun-kissed drive into a luxurious compound, where he parks an Infiniti, drops a couple Saks bags in a bedroom, and gets naked to enjoy first the ocean view and then a solitary swim. Later, he carefully wraps a shoebox; then, as Branigan announces that she lives among the creatures of the night, Cunanan goes into a mouth-watering walk-in with myriad neatly ROYGBIV’d button-downs, selects a pair of shoes, rubs some cocaine on his gums, and eyes himself contentedly in the full-length mirror.
In a suit with the sleeves pushed Sonny Crockettishly up to his elbows, Cunanan swans down a hallway to find Michael Nouri hanging a “Happy Birthday Andrew” sign above the doorway to the great room. This is Norman Blachford, Cunanan’s sugar daddy for about a year, and it seems like Cunanan gives the ladder Norman’s up on a speculative jiggle, then croons, “Careful!” Norman is apparently inclined to let that go, but a friend of Norman’s with a regrettable old-man-red dye job has just arrived, and he’s not inclined to let any of Cunanan’s shit go, especially not when Cunanan notes through a fake smile that “it must be at least ten minutes” since Red had a drink. “What a relief,” Red burbles, “I was worried we were gonna have to get along.” Red 2020, y’all. Norman hopes Cunanan doesn’t mind that he invited a few of his own friends, and Cunanan says he knows Cunanan loves his friends. “Yes, it’s been noticed,” Red brays. Cunanan observes that he might have preferred two parties, one for his set and one for Norman’s, and Red is lying in the high weeds for that one, saying the Queen of England has two parties, but Cunanan’s “not that sort of queen.” Cunanan smirks that Red’s “a jukebox of bitchy hits,” but before he can get owned again, Lizzie Coté swoops in to greet him.
On the terrace, Cunanan confides that the “whole party” has one object: to land David Madson, “the man of [his] dreams.” Lizzie’s like, so you’re “officially gay now?” Cunanan sniffs sophomorically that he doesn’t like labels. Lizzie’s like, whatever, me neith, but they’re useful – and also, what does Cunanan plan to tell David about “this place”? David doesn’t “know about Norman”; Cunanan has to keep them separated, he says, and he needs Lizzie to help him explain to David what he’s “doing here, with Norman.” What is he doing there, with Norman, Lizzie wants to know. Cunanan tries to make it out like he’s just Norman’s decorating advisor and “there’s nothing sexual” between them, but when Lizzie suggests just telling David the truth, the fact that Cunanan is non-sexually living with his “wealthy older client” sounds off when she lays it out that way. Cunanan can’t lose David; he’s a house, a home, a family, “picking kids up…from school.” He’s a future, and before this, Cunanan’s “only dated the past.” Lizzie notes that Cunanan has it bad for David, and asks gently, “Who are you trying to be?” Someone David can love.
Jeff Trail is at the front door, gift in hand. Cunanan answers, takes in Jeff’s attire, holds up a “girl, no” hand and shakes his head, and hustles Jeff into the bedroom. Rude. He hastily unwraps the gift, an outdoorsy guide of some sort that Cunanan barely registers as Jeff says he thought they could take some hikes, give the bars a rest for once. Cunanan’s completely focused on putting Jeff in an expensive pair of shoes, and asking him to give Cunanan the present we saw Cunanan wrapping earlier.
Jeff’s like, weirdo says what? Cunanan explains while compulsively patting the box that David’s coming, and he needs David to see that he has really good friends. Jeff’s like, we are friends, and Cunanan makes a series of fluttery you-don’t-get-it hand gestures and says, right, sure, but “I need you to look the part.” “What does a good friend look like?” Jeff asks, about to laugh in Cunanan’s face, and Cunanan gets salty and says he just needs Jeff’s help, the way he’s helped Jeff “with countless guys.” Jeff still doesn’t see how different shoes constitute “help,” but Cunanan’s done explaining: “I just need him to see that I’m loved.” Not the last evidence we’ll see of Cunanan’s fundamental misapprehension of how love works, or how non-monstrous humans understand it, this episode, and it seems like Jeff is beginning to see the outlines of this hole where non-transactional displays of genuine feeling would go as he reassures Cunanan again that he does love him. Cunanan doesn’t have time for Jeff’s non-pathological earth logic: “I need him to know that.” Jeff finally shrugs and goes along: “It’s your birthday.”
But that’s not all: Cunanan also told David that Jeff’s an active-duty lieutenant on the USS Independence. This is a bridge too far, as it were, and Jeff snaps that he’s not impersonating an officer. Cunanan wheedles that it sounds so impressive, though! Jeff peers at him and says he knows it does, the subtext being that only one of them can successfully distinguish between sounding impressive and actually being impressive, and Cunanan chirps, “So be in the Navy! Wear those shoes…” Jeff will wear the shoes, but not “the uniform.”
Walking through the party, “his” gift held awkwardly in front of him, Jeff asks, “Who are all these people?” “Friends of free food and free champagne,” Cunanan mutters, own-goaling his own striving ass. Lizzie hisses that David has arrived, and we go to slo-mo so Cunanan can gaze at David in a manner he probably thinks is loving, but looks a lot like a spider contemplating a juicy fly. He rushes to overhug David and coos that nobody else has ever traveled so far to see him. David looks uncomfortable and says he wanted to see where Cunanan lives; he’d been “so mysterious” about it. He hands Cunanan a small gold gift box, and Cunanan smooches him on the lips, a territorial kiss David isn’t expecting. Lizzie comes up to say that the two of them are adorable, and Cunanan introduces her as his bestie from San Francisco. Right, David says, from when you were designing costumes “with Versace.” Annaleigh Ashford pulls a delightfully delicate “oh, is that the story I’ll be expected to keep straight this time” face, but backs Cunanan’s play, adding that he’s the “kindest” and “sweetest” person she knows and she’s never heard him talk about anyone the way he talks about David. David’s like, gulp, and follows Cunanan into the party, asking if this is where he lives. Cunanan is cagey about that, despite passing within earshot of Norman, saying it should be, given all the work he’s done on the place. David enthuses about the view, and Cunanan assures him they’ll have a house like this one someday: “Maybe this very one!”
Jeff hits his mark then, wishing Cunanan a happy birthday. Cunanan takes the wrapped box and blares his thanks while checking to see who’s looking at them, and once again I wonder about the acting and directorial choices that make this version of Cunanan such an obvious arriviste. I have no quibble with the performance, which is compelling (if off-putting), and I acknowledge that a “realistic” portrayal of a sociopath is not necessarily good television, because most sociopaths most of the time seem charming and/or normal. It’s how they get by. Unfortunately, the ACS iteration of Cunanan is frequently enough bratty and tone-deaf as well as a flagrant bullshitter that it can take me out of the story a little bit, as it’s about to here. Cunanan near-shouts, “And on a military salary!” but Jeff tries to be a good wingman, muttering dutifully that they’re by “that designer you always talk about…Versace.” “FERRAGAMO,” Cunanan blares, like, if you care that much that he get it right, maybe tell him what’s under the wrapping paper before you run this con. Cunanan’s more concerned with getting a burn in on Versace, though, snarking that Versace doesn’t make shoes: “That would require at least some degree of craftsmanship.” He follows this up with a peacocking “amirite” gesture that nobody at the party responds to. Well, unless you count Jeff looking up at David at the top of the staircase and frowning all, “H…i, I don’t know.” Finally Jeff throws himself a lifeline and introduces himself. As Jeff and David make friendly chitchat, Cunanan looks for a spot to turn their attention back to him, growing increasingly concerned at their immediate easy vibe with each other.
Lizzie invites the gents out onto the terrace, but Cunanan tells the others to go ahead; he has to fortify himself with a line first. Red is lurking nearby, so Cunanan gets defensive about the “birthday pick-me-up,” and then about Red’s implication that he would do a “gutter drug” like crystal. Red basically ignores this to say he’s got a birthday present for Cunanan himself, and it’s a piece of advice. Cunanan bitchily wonders if he has to open it right then, but Red’s like, so here’s what: Norman’s not the lucky one here. You are. Norman is “a conservative old queer” who likes that Cunanan can talk to grown-ups and read a wine list, so he graciously doesn’t “make it clear” that Cunanan is an employee. Cunanan bluffs that he’s Norman’s equal, actually, but Red’s like, yeahhhhh no: Norman built a company from scratch. Cunanan likes few things less than reminders that he’s allergic to working his way up, and excuses himself, but Red grabs his arm to hiss that Cunanan took advantage of Norman at a time when Norman’s lover had just died after suffering “terribly.” Cunanan’s all, I volunteer at an AIDS charity, I don’t need a lecture, but Red’s all, what you “need” is to know that I won’t let Norman get hurt again. Cunanan recovers himself, saying Red must be unpopular at parties if all his gifts “are this dreary,” but Red eyes Cunanan down and says hedoesn’t mind being disliked. Excellent bespoke burn, friendo. Cunanan’s had it, but Red isn’t done, calling Cunanan’s retreating back “a volatile mix,” “too lazy to work and too proud to be kept.” Cunanan whines that he has to get back to the party: “That room is full of people that love me!” He doesn’t convince either of them, as Red calls after him, “Then that room is full of people that don’t know you!” Can’t spell “read” without “Red”; won’t try.
Cunanan stalks to the top of the staircase, sees Jeff and David laughing together by the pool, and fairly runs down to join/get between them, almost shouting about whether Jeff’s BOYFRIEND is joining them. No, he isn’t. “He’s so funny!” Cunanan fake-chuckles. “Is he still working at that mall?” Jeff sees you, Blanche: “He works for a living, yes.” David tries to smooth things over with, of all things, a question about where Cunanan sleeps; he saw the master bedroom with two mattresses. Cunanan non-answers this with a lie about Norman spending time in Phoenix and his own stays at his “New York apartment.” “Your New York apartment,” Jeff repeats, dry as a bone, and Cunanan begins a series of Starman head movements, which don’t abate when David hesitantly says he thought he’d be staying there that night, but… “Oh, you must!” Cunanan says. Jeff offers his couch, but Cunanan immediately says it’s “hard and filthy.” David and Jeff both crack up. Cunanan looks between them with the pasted-on and unsure smile of a child who doesn’t understand why what he just said is funny to drunk adults. David’s like, let’s talk about it later, and Cunanan’s about to try to forget that sneaking sense that he’s on the outside of something again, some more by pouring more champagne when Lee Miglin approaches to wish him a happy birthday.
And here’s the difference between real class and Cunanan’s store-window version: Cunanan pretends not to remember him. Lee is too excited to see him to mind much, even when Cunanan herds the younger men away, then snips at Lee, “I asked you not to approach me.” Lee babbles about how “exceptionally handsome” Cunanan looks and how he couldn’t wait any longer to come say hello: “Does that make me pathetic?” What’s pathetic is the societal bigotry that would convince an accomplished citizen like Lee Miglin that his by-necessity hidden desire for a younger man puts him at this steep a power disadvantage in their relationship, especially when said younger man is acting like a haphazardly stacked garbage heap in this social interaction, but once again, Cunanan gets by with it, brushing Lee and his birthday gift off with a “we can arrange a time.” Looking panicky, he jumps on David – who’s chatting with Jeff and Norman – like a sugared-up eight-year-old and drags him and his other paramours into an awkward photo op. “All the people I love!”, he says, striking a pose, while everyone else in the frame makes mental air quotes around that last word.
As everyone’s arranging their faces into facsimiles of happy, the camera rushes in on Cunanan’s face, just in time for it to fall.
Cunanan makes a list with a fountain pen. Next to the list on the desk is the photo from the party, with everyone’s faces but Cunanan’s and David’s scratched out.
Little on the nose. The list, which Cunanan is now presenting to Norman, is of “requirements” for Cunanan and Norman to stay together, and includes a Mercedes convertible, first-class berths on international AND domestic flights, and getting jumped into Norman’s will – as his sole heir. As Norman dryly reads the list aloud, Cunanan – attired in what he thinks is the height of unironic beachfront posh: a sweater draped around his shoulders, crisp Bermudas, and driving mocs – snots that he’s been with Norman for over a year, devoting his life to making Norman happy and making “enormous sacrifices.” Hard to say if Norman deliberately sets a trap for Cunanan here or just can’t bother pretending he buys his shit anymore, but he asks mildly what sacrifices, exactly. “Love,” the overstepper says with a defiant lift of his chin. Whose love? “My parents.” Right, Norman mutters, “the New York billionaires.” They disinherited me, Cunanan crazy-eyeses, when they found out he “was living with an older gay man.” Norman, who seems more resigned to having to bust this asswipe than anything else, asks if Cunanan knows how Norman got so successful. It’s hard work – and “due diligence.” Cunanan unwisely sticks with the snitty tone and asks what Norman’s saying. He’s saying Cunanan’s name isn’t DeSilva, as he’s evidently been claiming; it’s Cunanan. Push in on Cunanan looking very young and legit frightened; he denies it, and that as of a year and a half ago, he was working in a Thrifty drugstore for six bucks an hour and living with his mom. “Mary Ann?” Norman prompts, and finally Cunanan is silenced. He gets a million-mile stare, then flounces from the room.
Norman watches him with a “bye bitch” expression, then follows him out to the balcony, where Cunanan is staring miffily out to sea. He rounds on Norman with an accusing “You investigated me?” Norman evenly notes that Cunanan investigated him; no way they met “by chance.” Cunanan knew what books he liked, what kind of music…he’d researched Norman, to target him (Norman uses the word “pursued,” but: yeah). Norman then points out Cunanan isn’t a prisoner there. In fact, he’s not even Norman’s partner, really, since they haven’t had sex in months. Cunanan quickly brats that “if you give me everything on that list, sex can become more regular.” Norman snorts, clumsily exposits that Cunanan never saves any money because he’s always splashing out on other people, and says he’ll up Cunanan’s allowance, but the first-class flights: no. He’d also pay for Cunanan to finish his college degree. Cunanan sulks that he already has a PhD, but Norman is getting irritated, and says no, he really doesn’t; he has two semesters of a history degree at UCSD. Cunanan is decompensating back in time, verbally stomping his foot at the idea of going back to school, or anything else that’s work: “It’s ordinary!” Norman’s like, being smart is pointless unless it’s “in the service of” something, by which he presumably doesn’t mean grifting, but Cunanan announces that he “want[s] that list” or he’s leaving. Norman sighs that Cunanan’s made a beautiful home there, and he wants Cunanan to be happy, truly; he doesn’t even mind the constant lies, except for one, and that’s that Norman is a fool. Cunanan whines that he probably lost “the love of his life” because he lives with Norman. Confirming that Cunanan means David, Norman groans, “Oh, boy,” and basically asks if, once he’s made Norman’s heir, Cunanan is already dreaming of the day Norman’s out of the way. Cunanan is literally pouting with his arms folded
as Norman informs him with a half-smile that, if he wants “this life,” he could have it by working hard…but if he won’t work, he’ll have to share it with Norman. Those are the choices. Cunanan probably thinks he can treat every older man the way he treats Lee, and responds by gritting that if he can’t have love, he wants the list. Yes or no? Norman calls that bluff with a gentle no. “Fine,” Cunanan whispers, and is headed inside to pack, but on his way, he scampers over to a deck chair and smashes a glass table with it. Going inside for real now, he turns dramatically in the doorway and acts as though he’s the aggrieved party, and on camera: “I’m leaving. I expect you to call.” Call…the cops? A locksmith?
Cunanan unloads the Infiniti in front of a mealy cinderblock foyer with newspapers blowing around outside. In a grimy efficiency apartment, he drops his bags and looks around. A phone rings, and we pan cut to…
…Jeff, watching TV. It’s his dad on the other end, calling to report on the outing postcard Cunanan sent, now received by Trail Sr. There’s a brisk knock on the door, and we pan cut again to…
Cunanan, sitting up performatively straight on a bare mattress, stagily turning his head towards the sound. He gets up, looking apprehensive, and zhuzhes his shirt; the only decoration, a magazine clipping of Gianni Versace, flutters on the wall as he moves past. It’s Jeff, of course, and Cunanan croons, “Hi,” and lets him in. Jeff, all business, says he heard about Norman. He’ll come around, Cunanan smiles, but Jeff isn’t buying: “You had a good thing there.” Cunanan’s a little irritated: “He. Had a good thing.” Jeff gets down to it, asking if Cunanan sent Trail Sr. a postcard. Cunanan dissembles, but Jeff is getting agitated; his dad wants to know who Cunanan is, why he signed the card “love,” and why Jeff’s “buying [him] expensive shoes.” “How funny,” Cunanan smugs, enjoying Jeff’s discomfort. “What’d you tell him?” Jeff asks if he did it deliberately, advancing on him; it felt like a threat. It was, but Cunanan eye-rolls that it was a mistake. “You’re lying!”, Jeff snaps, asking if Cunanan is trying to tell Jeff’s parents Jeff is gay. Cunanan wonders sarcastically why he’d want to do that: “They probably just assumed that you gave up your great naval career to be a f*****!” Jeff grabs Cunanan by the arms and swings him into the wall, bellowing at him to stay away from his family. As with any scene in which that crazy shitbox Cunanan is ignored, intimidated, or otherwise busted down to size, it’s deeply satisfying when he grunts, “You’re hurting me!"…
…but it’s disheartening at the same time, given how attempts to set boundaries for Cunanan tended to end. Jeff releases him and apologizes, but instead of leaving, he stays to hear Cunanan soap-opera that he never thought Jeff was capable of violence, especially not towards Cunanan. Jeff is not exactly eager to do the emotional violence he’s about to do, but grimly confesses that he’s leaving San Diego to work at a propane gas company – in Minneapolis. The camera semi-swoops towards Cunanan as he puts it together, or so he thinks, and Jeff is quick to say that it’s not because of David. Cunanan snarks that it’s just chance, then, that Jeff pulled an M Scrabble tile and picked an M city, that M city, and Jeff tries to say that David only told him about the job, no more, but Cunanan is sliding into a tantrum about Jeff screwing him over – after all the guys he found for Jeff – by "stealing” the only guy “that really likes” Cunanan. Jeff doesn’t touch that, but his actual reason for leaving, that he’s unhappy in San Diego and needs a change of scene, that it breaks his heart to pass the harbor and see the ships he can’t be on, aren’t about Cunanan, so Cunanan doesn’t hear them. Jeff seems to see this, and ends with a weary, “I’m leaving. I thought you should know.” As he’s heading for the door, Cunanan growls, “You stay away from him. I’m warning you.” Jeff cuts him a “sha right” side-eye and closes the door as Cunanan yells again for Jeff to stay away from David.
David himself picks up the phone to find Cunanan on the other end, talking quickly so that David can’t interrupt: he misses David so much! He’s going to Los Angeles and he wants David to come! He’ll FedEx David’s first-class ticket over! David’s like, well but I wish you’d have, you know, asked first? Or at all? But Cunanan literally says he won’t take no for an answer, he’ll drag David “kicking and screaming” if he has to, which he says through one of his patented desperate fake “laughs.” Then he says, very quietly, “Please.”
Cunanan arrives at a hotel by cab, and is shown to a duplex suite whose balcony is the sort of domain-surveyor perch Cunanan loves. He orders flowers for the suite, and a Mercedes convertible. David is announced, and Cunanan tells the desk to send David to the balcony, where Cunanan artfully arranges himself. David, somewhat abashed, appears in a long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans; he’s never flown first class before. “Then this must be something special,” Cunanan prompts him. David doesn’t give him quite the awestruck response he’s looking for, asking how work went. Cunanan chirps that he’s all done, and he can just relax; asked what it is he does, exactly, again, Cunanan is typically grand but vague about the “behind the scenes” “money” stuff he’s “doing,” and condescends that it’s boring and “technical” – so how about they go shopping! The whole situation is already failing David’s smell test, but he heaves a sigh and follows Cunanan.
The next scene finds them at a tailor, drinking champagne while David is fitted for a suit, compliments of Cunanan, who wants him to “dress like the man you’re going to be.” Who’s that, David wonders. “An American dream,” Cunanan says. “The country’s most successful architect!” David chuckles that he likes this, “go on,” so Cunanan keeps spinning a future of a thriving practice, a glossy spread in an architectural mag with a picture of David’s “handsome face” – then lifts his champagne flute: “With me by your side.” Cody Fern’s tiny awkward eye-flick here is perfectly done. Darren Criss’s corresponding tiny jaw clench of realization that they don’t share the same vision, and childish fury at his perceived rejection, is just as perfectly done.
A bit later, as Cunanan is mulling his next move, David emerges from the dressing room, sharply attired in the new suit. He’s rigid with discomfort as he mutters that Cunanan doesn’t have to buy it for him; Cunanan croons that David can throw it away if he doesn’t like it, but Cunanan is buying it. As Cunanan pays, David stares out onto the street, appearing to contemplate the position he’s in and very much wants to extricate himself from.
Later, a room-service waiter lifts the last cloche on a spread of expensive cuts of beef, lobster-tail sculptures, and whatever other try-hard culinary gaucheries you’d expect a Cunanan to order. As David looks on with a nauseated mien, Cunanan overtips the waiter and officiously pours champagne. At last David gets it out that he owes Cunanan an apology: “I shouldn’t have come.” All of this, “it’s too much,” and he’ll pay for half. Cunanan tells him to put his wallet away, but David needs him to see the real issue: “Andrew, I’m not the one.” Cunanan’s face is a bland mask of loathing, much like Jason Priestley’s when he’s trying to make Brandon Walsh look nobly forebearing on Beverly Hills, 90210.
He drops his head, then raises it, trying to sell David: “You are the one. Yes, you are.” He’s both legitimately pleading and probably to some extent copying shit he’s seen in movies as he says he knows he “overexaggerate[s]” sometimes, but not about this; David is the only one he’s ever “really, truly” loved. David fidgets, saying they had a great time in San Francisco – “one great night, and maybe there was a chance, but…” “But it was one night, and you scotched that chance by overinvesting it with meaning to this stalker-ish degree,” he does not add, sitting heavily. Cunanan also sits, alert, looking for something he can seize on to return this conversation to his control. David says he gets the feeling Cunanan doesn’t have “many great nights with people – am I right?” Cunanan makes a clueless “…and?” face; David goes on that, when Cunanan does have those nights, it feels “huge…life-changing.” David’s gentle compassion for what he thinks is a first-love/losing-one’s-virginity spasm of intense weirdness falls on deaf-ish ears, since Cunanan is only capable of the intense and weird bits, not actual love; Cunanan asserts that David did change his life. David tries again: the hotel, all the food, the whole weekend is Cunanan “trying to recreate” when they met. “It’s like we’re stuck on a first date.” Cunanan does hear the word “stuck,” and asks sulkily why David came, then. David hasn’t traveled much; Cunanan called, he “was excited.” So David didn’t come for Cunanan. David lies (I think) that he did; he wanted to see if they could take “the next step.” Cunanan asks if he doesn’t think they can. David isn’t sure. Cunanan sees an opening, a la Lloyd in Dumb & Dumber hearing that his chances with Mary are a million to one and celebrating because he only hears the “one.”
Great, Cunanan says, get to know him! What does David want to do, he’ll do anything! David says, “We get rid of all this,” and starts clearing a spot on the table; he takes off his suit coat. Cunanan mimics him exactly, from plates to taking off his jacket. They sit back down, and David exhales, “The truth.” “The truth,” Cunanan echoes cheerily, so David asks about Cunanan’s parents: “Who are they.” A flicker of terror crosses Cunanan’s face, but he flips through his mental card catalog of bullshitty stories and settles on the one about his dad being a stockbroker who made a huge fortune, listed in California’s top 500 broker…listing (which is probably not a thing), and went back to the Philippines to run “vast” pineapple plantations. Some of this is true, sort of; none of this is how most people respond to a question about their childhoods, which is really about who your parents are to you, what they’re like, not what they do and/or how well. David perceives not far into this horseshlitany that Cunanan simply isn’t and will not be capable of felt responses,
but sees it through: “And your mom?” Cunanan claims she ran a literary publishing house in New York, and is now estranged from his father. “Did you get along with them?” David asks, not expecting anything in the way of a real answer anymore, and he doesn’t get one, as Cunanan says that they love him “more than anything in the worrrrld.” Not what you were asked. He muses that they gave him anything he wanted growing up, and doesn’t have any idea that it’s weird to say your parents gave up the master bedroom for you, even if that actually occurred. But Cunanan is dimly aware that it’s time to change the subject, and asks about David’s parents. David says they run a small hardware store just outside Minneapolis, but is not even done speaking when Cunanan “remembers” to say that sometimes, when the food at school “wasn’t quite up to scratch,” he’d call his mom and she’d bring him a lobster dinner “just like this one.” He’s sure to add that he shared it with all his friends. David stares at him sadly; he’s decided that calling Cunanan on any of this is a waste, and Fern’s micro-adjustments in this entire sequence are so impressive and dimensioned. Emmys, give the kid a little something for his mantel, will you? “Your parents must have loved you very much,” David says, exhausted. “Next question,” Cunanan beams, leaning his chin on his hand flirtily. David’s done, saying he’s tired and he’s going to crash. “David,” Cunanan says, stopping him. “I’m a good person. Who wants to be good to you.” David non-answers that one day Cunanan will make “someone” very happy, he knows it. He leaves Cunanan alone with a tableful of food, and during the commercial, I hope that David locks the door of his bedroom in the suite, and that Cunanan comforts himself with that entire Caprese salad, because it looked delicious. …Look, you take the tiny bright spots with this show.
Back in San Diego, Cunanan returns to his grubby apartment to find no new messages on his answering machine. He contemplates the giant, fruitless bill from Chateau Parvenu, which is in excess of $2700. (Charges include a $40 Croque Monsieur, and champagne bottle service both in-room and “poolside.”)
Later, at Flicks, Cunanan lies to the bartender that David “said yes!” Spotting a dealer at the back of the room, he drops a show-offy tip on his drink order and heads to the dealer’s table while George Michael sings, “All we have to do now / Is take these lies, and make them true somehow.” He tells the dealer he needs something stronger, and after a tiresome visual explanation of pure crystal involving a bunch of matches, Andrew is back in his hole, injecting himself with the meth and then falling into a red-gels hole of a different sort, in which he’s getting a fitting from Gianni Versace. It’s a hallucination, but the reality of Cunanan’s corrosive self-pity persists even in an aggrandized fantasy that sees Gianni on his knees, tweaking the break in Cunanan’s pantlegs while Cunanan announces that he believes he’s the most generous person in the world. “What could be more generous than spending everything on other people and being left with nothing?” “I couldn’t say,” the politely servile Gianni of the meth-tasia murmurs, since a figment of Cunanan’s unconscious isn’t going to know emotions are not transacted but felt, much less point it out to the customer. Cunanan continues to bray about setting people up and ending up alone himself, about how people have taken and taken from him and now he’s “spent.” “A man with nothing to give is a nothing man.”
Gianni measures the suit coat and says that’s “very poetic, sir.” Cunanan goes on that the world is wasted on, and wasting, him; he adds bitterly that the world has turned Gianni into a star. “Was it the world, sir?” Gianni asks affectlessly, which sends Halluci-nanan into a rant about Gianni thinking he’s “better than” Cunanan. “We’re the same! The only difference is, you got lucky.” “Not the only difference, sir,” Gianni shrugs, moving his measuring tape from Cunanan’s shoulder to around Cunanan’s neck. “Oh yeah?” Cunanan brats. “What else you got?” “I’m loved.”
Cunanan comes to in the dark. The already sad apartment has devolved into more of a messy pit, but he’s added more pictures of Gianni and Antonio to the wall. He writhes on the bed…
…then returns to Flicks, clearly strung out, to brag to the bartender that he’s just back from Paris with David. The bartender is like, k cool, and asks what they saw; Cunanan immediately gets himself caught in a lie when he mentions the Vatican and the bartender’s like, that’s in France now? Cunanan snots that of course he was in Rome: “We’re saving Paris for our honeymoon.” “Understood,” the bartender shrugs. Hee. The tip is modest and crumply this time as Cunanan makes a beeline for the dealer again. He says he needs more time. All he’s got is time, the dealer grunts. What Cunanan needs is money.
And he’s thrashing through the underbrush outside Norman’s house later that night in pursuit of it, coated in sweat, his pink polo ringed with grime. Norman is opening a bottle of red as, outside, Andrew tries various glass outer doors, hoping to find one left open. He’s sort of half-knocking on them; not sure if he’s hoping to get caught or just trying to “hear” if the bolts are thrown, though given the meltdown he had earlier I’m a little surprised he doesn’t try a smash-and-grab. Eventually he comes upon the great room where Norman is at the bar cart, and stares wide-eyed at him, working his jaw in a nice bit of methy business from Criss. Norman senses him and half-turns. Cunanan flails away into the darkness, but only temporarily, as he’s rushed around to another set of doors and is trying to unlock the locks at the bottom. Norman comes upon him. He paws at the glass, pasting on an “oh hey so nbd buuuut” rictus and babbling that his keys don’t work, baby, can he let him in? Norman says nothing, so Cunanan switches to angry bellows of “LET ME IN!” and “I MADE THIS HOUSE!”
Norman is unmoved by this raging and pointedly lifts the cordless to his ear, not breaking eye contact with Cunanan.
We next see Cunanan at the door of his mother’s rundown apartment, where he gets a sobbing hero’s welcome despite the fact that you can almost smell him through the screen. He barely moves to hug his mother back as she repeats “my Andrew, my Andrew” over and over. Finally she breaks the clinch: “I thought you were in Milan!” Lady, look at him. Unless “Milan” is what y’all call Skid Row where you live: no. Cunanan’s face falls as she tows him inside…
…and gives him a creepy bath as he cries. She sings an Italian lullaby, telling him her mother used to sing it to her when she cried and one day he’ll sing it to his own children. Cunanan mumbles that he’s not going to have any children, and Mary Ann quavers that that’s nonsense, “life means nothing without children.” I would say that “fortunately” she’s distracted from this “a life without kids is no life at all” lecture, but I can’t, because what she’s distracted by is that his smell has changed: “You don’t smell like you.” She plunges her face into the back of his neck, crying that she knows his smell and this isn’t it. She starts scrubbing under his pits, sniffling that she’s going to make him smell like himself again. Cunanan limply allows it as she goes back to panting out the lullaby. Eeeeeesh.
Later, Mary Ann bustles around doing breakfast-y things and talking about a wealthy schoolmate of Cunanan’s, Charles Walker, whose mother always looked down on Mary Ann because they had a bigger house, or so Mary Ann remembers it, and here we arrive at the crux of Cunanan’s pathology, the idea that the rich or powerful or otherwise rarefied are sitting around thinking ill of their social or financial lessers. The truth, dimly apprehended by Cunanan on some level, I think, and ergo the cause of his chaotic rage, is that the one percent don’t think about the rest of us at all, good or bad. They don’t care. We don’t register. Anyway, Mary Ann is pleased to report that Charles Walker couldn’t get a job after college despite all his connections, and she couldn’t wait to tell Mrs. Walker about Cunanan’s schmancy gig as a costume designer for Italian operas.
Cunanan tries to interrupt her, saying he’s unhappy, but the rotten apple didn’t roll far from the tree, as Mary Ann completely ignores this to keep bragging about, um, bragging about him and his many international travels…"all the places that I have never been. And her face.“ She was "so jealous.” Her son has done so little; Mary Ann’s son has done so much.
Now Cunanan is staring dully at the family pictures on the piano. She hugs him tightly and says she “gave him everything. But it was worth it. For moments like this.” Like…inappropriately bathing your adult son, who might as well be a Resusci-Andy doll for all the attention you pay to his actual self, when he’s teetering on the lip of Catatonia Canyon? Cool. Kids are everything. Got it. She wishes he could stay with her, but she has to share him “with the world.” Please don’t. We’re alllll set.
He heads out to his car, the too-large and unflattering sweat-polo she’s kitted him out in sagging around him. She tags behind him, suspiciously eyeing the Infiniti where it’s parked amid knocked-over bulk trash waiting for pickup. After another too-tight hug, she asks where he’s headed next. Minneapolis. There’s an opera house there? There is, and was in 1996, but Cunanan just shakes his head and says he doesn’t think there is, likely knowing he could say any fucking thing and she’ll just believe what she likes. Sure enough, she beams and smooches him a dozen times. He gets in the car and starts it, and peers over his shoulder at her, saying with an air of significance, “Bye, Mom.”
ACS news 
