The violence of capitalism in The Assassination Of Gianni Versace

There’s a moment early on in The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story that, perhaps more than any other, sticks with you long after the image fades. Andrew Cunanan (a remarkable, terrifying Darren Criss), who we’ve already seen kill Gianni Versace, stands in the bathroom of a rundown motel room that he occasionally shares with his friend and potential partner Ronnie Holston (Max Greenfield). He stares at his reflection in the mirror. His face doesn’t move. He betrays no sign of any emotion. Then, he picks up a roll of duct tape, peels the tape back, and begins wrapping it around his head. The motion continues, the signature sound of the strong adhesive an eerie soundtrack to the nonsensical actions. Before long he’s covered his face and head, with just enough room to breathe.

It’s a quietly chilling scene made all the more tense when Andrew plays it off like nothing to Ronnie, but it’s also an insight into one of the show’s more intriguing thematic explorations: the violence of capitalism and its effect on our identity. In the early episodes especially, the show seems to revel in the lavishness of its setting while contrasting that sense of fullness with Andrew’s persistent change in identity. The very first scene of the premiere sees the camera moving from the expanse of the ocean to the expanse of Gianni Versace’s mansion, both settings turbulent, overwhelming, and unpredictable in their own ways. Ryan Murphy directs the opening sequence in a way that immediately situates us in this world of opulence. We take in the clouds painted on the bedroom ceiling, a verisimilitude of the outdoors, and the first of many images that look to replicate an authentic experience.

Through the halls of the mansion we go, our eyes unable to keep up with everything in our path: chandeliers, priceless art, silk pajamas, and balconies with an ocean view. This is the life we are meant to envy, the American Dream come true. Murphy, for the most part, films the scene with a bird’s-eye view, as if we’re outsiders that long to be given access to these gilded halls. Immediately the show is drawing a visual connection between violence and materialism. The episode cuts from Andrew angrily screaming in the tempestuous ocean to Gianni, surrounded by servants, enjoying a lavish breakfast inside the sunlit concourse of his home. More viscerally, there’s the image of Andrew pulling The Man Who Was Vogue, a book about the rise of Condé Nast and his influence on cultural gatekeeping and style, out of his backpack, followed immediately by a gun. Violence follows materialism is the suggestion, one that pops up again and again throughout the season.

It’d be slightly preposterous to argue that The Assassination Of Gianni Versace is some sort of remarkable Marxist critique of capitalism and material wealth, but as the episodes unfold it’s hard to ignore that the show is teasing out an intriguing connection between Andrew Cunanan’s ability to shift his personality at will and our own willingness to adopt certain roles in a very public way, spurred on by a culture obsessed with social media and its consumerist tendencies. Coursing through the show is a critique of our consumerist culture; despite being set the in the late ’90s out of necessity to the true crime, this is a show that’s very much aware of the plague of tastemaking and performative consumption and sharing that defines so much of our lives today. But what’s more scathing is how the show uses Andrew Cunanan as a stand-in for the anxiety and personal oppression that comes with such a culture. His need to be anything and everything to the people around him is not just a sign of his psychopathic tendencies, but a result of the pressures of a capitalist system that continually tells us we’re not doing good enough, that who we are is a failure, and that buying more things is the only way to establish a true, stable, respected identity.

Cunanan—it’s important to note that throughout this piece any mention or analysis of Andrew Cunanan is referring to the character within this show, and not the real man he’s based on—is an enigma similar to Patrick Bateman, a character from a more problematic work that, nonetheless, still draws a connection between Bateman’s bloody outbursts and his need to conform to an ever-shifting set of ideals about what it means to be respected, glorified, and envied. There’s a reason the business-card scene in Mary Harron’s 2000 adaptation of American Psycho stands out so vividly within the film; because it provides terrifying insight into Patrick’s mind-set that the violent acts simply don’t. We need that context of Patrick’s insecurity to understand the violence.

Assassination wants us to understand Andrew in a similar way. He’s a man with no single identity—Andrew’s sexuality is a major component of his complex identity within the show, and Paste’s Matt Brennan wrote a stirring piece about it—but rather a collection of signifiers meant to convey worldliness, taste, and stature. When he first meets Gianni in a club, he regales him with stories about his lavish lifestyle and impeccable taste. Only later do we, and Gianni, realize that it’s all a fabrication, an attempt to convey a certain social standing that he’s been unable to achieve.

This is the anxiety and alienation that capitalism thrives on. It’s a system that creates and then benefits from identity crisis. Alienation is a term in Marxist theory with many different meanings that, when taken together, give us a broader understanding of a feeling that’s often difficult to define. As David Harvey lays out in Seventeen Contradictions And The End Of Capitalism, one such definition is alienation as a “passive psychological term” that means to “become isolated and estranged from some valued connectivity.” The result of that alienation is “to be angry and hostile at feeling oppressed, deprived or dispossessed and to act out that anger and hostility, lashing out sometimes without any clear definitive reason or rational target.” Andrew cannot fill that void inside of him, the one created by a system that tells you that you alone aren’t good enough. When a man in a dance club asks Andrew what he does, he responds thusly: “I’m a serial killer, I’m a banker, I’m a stockbroker, a paperback writer, I’m a cop, I’m a naval officer,” and more, listing off one profession after another. He’s everything and nothing all at once, driving home the idea that under capitalism there is no true identity, only a series of labels that oppress us.

The question is, then, are we all as psychopathic as Andrew Cunanan? Certainly most of us aren’t murderers, but Assassination does seem to suggest that Andrew’s troubling need to be everything all at once is not too far removed from our own need to belong, a feeling amplified in our current culture of constant sharing and liking. We curate our lives, and more importantly our social media timelines, in much the same way Andrew curates his behavior and personality. Andrew literally puts on a costume, another man’s suit and his expensive watch, to attend the opera. He can’t imagine doing anything else. He tells outlandish stories about fictional past boyfriends; one in particular would drive him around in his Rolls-Royce and also snagged Andrew a job building sets for Titanic. These are small violences, little bits of untruth that erode the social fabric and Andrew’s own understanding of himself. Are we doing the same? Are we allowing Instagram influencers, native advertising, and increasingly “hip and socially aware” brands to make us feel like shit just so we’ll buy the thing they’re shilling that supposedly won’t make us feel that way?

Assassination, in at least some way, wants us to ask those questions. It’s not the larger thematic thrust of the season, but it is an intriguing and unavoidable presence. The series asks us to question our own search for identity through material means by showing not only how Andrew is affected by alienation, but also how those around him struggle within a capitalist system. The Miglins are the best example. They are the epitome of the American Dream under capitalism. At a fundraiser gala, Lee gives a speech that evokes the classic “bootstraps” story of his success, and his wife has no trouble building a line of perfume to sell on TV. Everything is picture perfect.

That is, until you dig deeper. At home, Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light in a devastating performance) takes off her makeup, a maudlin look on her face. The mask necessitated by the public gala has been removed, and her sorrow is now visible. Similarly, Lee Miglin can’t be his true self, a gay man in a world that would financially and socially punish him for his sexuality. He wishes he could just “roam among them,” a beautiful statement about wanting to live free of restriction and punishment for who he is. But capitalism has a set of rules and an oppressive structure that must be abided by, and anything outside of that is pushed aside. So, this isn’t just about Andrew, but rather all of us, and the way we’re forced to imitate ways of life rather than living the way we truly want to.

I wish there were a hopeful message to end on, something in the show that points the way forward to a place where we can know one another’s intentions and understand our own, free from the forces of capitalism. But if anything, the world portrayed in The Assassination Of Gianni Versace, in all its gold-plated, vacuum-sealed glory, has only gotten worse. We’ve become more convinced that we can buy something in order to be something. We’ve become chameleons of emotion, projecting our grief, joy, and anxiety to our followers without any check on our authenticity. Like Andrew, we can wear any mask we want.

As chilling as the duct-tape scene is, the most telling moment when it comes to the performative nature of Andrew Cunanan, and thus ourselves, is when Andrew sees the news’ first piece about the killing of Gianni Versace. His face is blank for a moment before he’s overcome with grief. He looks on the verge of weeping, all before the hint of a smile creeps in and the episode cuts to commercial. An imitation of emotion, literally mimicking the public grief of the woman in front of him, as convincing as the real thing. It’s a moment with implications that the show explores throughout the season, which is that Andrew, and everyone else, is a product of a system that grinds us down, asks us to perform emotions and wants, and then shames us for failure. “It was all a lie, an act,” says David, one of Andrew’s victims, moments before he gets a bullet in the back. The violence of capitalism breeds an identity crisis, and a subsequent emptiness and isolation, that can lead to physical violence. We’re all at risk, refusing to challenge the rules and upend the system. We have more in common with Andrew Cunanan than any of us would like to admit.

A focused episode of ‘American Crime Story’ plays to its strengths

“A Random Killing” – B

In “A Random Killing,” it’s the silence that stands out. There’s silence on the other end of the telephone as Marilyn Miglin leaves a message for her husband, not knowing that he’s already been murdered. There’s silence when she swings open the door to find her house just slightly off—ice cream left melting on the counter, a used but uncleaned bathtub. The noises we do hear—exploratory footsteps, Marilyn clacking her nails on the countertop—reinforce the eeriness of the situation. Marilyn barely flinches when a scream breaks the silence to confirm what she suspected. She stares straight ahead before saying, barely above a whisper, “I knew it.”

It’s a masterful cold open, anchored by Judith Light’s performance, and it sets up an episode that’s more focused than last week’s “Manhunt.” Where “Manhunt” was sprawling and scattered, “A Random Killing” has a clear game plan and a narrower focus, zeroing in on the murder of Lee Miglin and the immediate aftermath. Lee, a real estate tycoon, was Andrew’s third victim—second in the backwards chronology of the series—and the details of the circumstances are perhaps the most muddled of all his victims.

As I mentioned while covering the pilot episode, part of American Crime Story’s task is to full in the blanks left out of Maureen Orth’s book. Lee’s family—primarily his wife Marilyn (something of a Home Shopping Network celebrity) and his son Duke (an actor who had a bit part in Air Force One, released a few months after his father’s death)—have always denied that Andrew knew Lee (or anyone; Duke’s actor-status had some rumors swirling). It’s always been emphasized as a random killing, a robbery because Andrew needed cash and a car, and Lee had both. “A Random Killing,” despite the title, says otherwise.

In this narrative, Andrew is Lee’s escort and shows up unannounced. Lee feeds Andrew. They briefly catch up. The two flirt in a way that older, impressive men sometimes flirt with younger nobodies: Lee pulls out his plans for the Miglin-Beitler Skyneedle, posed to become the tallest building in the world, which we know was never built. “Do you think I really want to spend all evening listening to how great you are?” Andrew questions Lee. But a part of Andrew probably does want to hear it: He’s obsessed with power and money, because he doesn’t have it. There is so much packed into this little scene, such as the frustration in Andrew’s voice as he challenges Lee’s claims that Lee wants to be an anonymous man eavesdropping on happy people in the Skyneedle, rather than forcing his name and bravado onto the building. This anonymity is baffling to Andrew, the man least likely to be forgotten. The two have an interesting dynamic, both pretending and not-pretending that this is not about money, but instead a “genuine attraction” though whatever it is—either in real life or in the series—isn’t enough to spare Lee from a brutal murder.

In the garage, Andrew puts a glove in Lee’s mouth and tapes up Lee’s face the way he taped up the businessman’s last week (though a bit more careful in this instance). Lee puts his trust in Andrew the way he would with a dominant partner, submitting to Andrew’s assumed-foreplay because he can’t have expected it would go as far as it did. Whether or not this scene works for you, I think, may depend more on the words than the actual violence. No doubt that both are horrifying, but it’s Andrew’s agenda that’s bone-chilling. He wants to effectively throw Lee out of the closet, making sure that when someone finds Lee, his body is surrounded by gay porn magazines. “I want the world to see that the great Lee Miglin is a sissy,” Andrew says, leaning in close enough so Lee can hear him clearly without his hearing aid, “The great Lee Miglin who built Chicago, built it with a limp wrist.”

It goes back to this season’s recurring thematic element of the weight of being closeted, and maybe the somehow still-existing belief that people—people with fame and power, especially—owe it to the world to be honest and open about their sexuality, regardless of whether or not they want to. For Andrew, the episode seems to be suggesting, it’s almost unfair that Lee is celebrated for being something that he’s not: a straight family man. Andrew doesn’t have that luxury, and he wants to make sure Lee doesn’t, either. Like last week’s incident with the businessman, it’s a scene that I can’t fully parse just yet, or not until I have the finished nine-episode picture. It’s unsettling and queasy, which is certainly the intentions of writer Tom Rob Smith, but maybe in a different way than it’s intended.

Everything else in “A Random Killing” is easier to swallow, and it all works pretty well. Andrew visits a Versace store in New York City, as if test-driving Versace’s life. The police catch a break when they figure out they can track Andrew in Lee’s stolen car due to the car phone … until media botches it by revealing that detail to the public and, in turn, to Andrew who swiftly pulls over to destroy the signal. Another frustrating note regarding the investigation: When Marilyn lists the items that were stolen, she includes Lee’s gold coins which are “unusual and easy to trace” if Andrew brings them to a pawn shop, as he did in Miami. Later, Andrew commits another murder—one that better fits the episode’s title—in order to switch vehicles, this time shooting a stranger in the back.

Light, as Marilyn, gives an impressive performance throughout “A Random Killing,” teetering between stoicism and breaking down. Marilyn has only just started to mourn her husband’s death before police all but say it’s time to start mourning her sham marriage. It’s a hard task, playing a woman who reactions are all internal rather than external: “How can a woman who cares so much about appearances appear not the care?” she asks, aware of how her lack of emotion must be coming off to the public. When Marilyn does begin crying, only for a second before regaining her composure, it’s heartbreaking. But “A Random Killing” leaves some things open-ended. When Marilyn sternly says, “We have no family connection to this Cunanan. We’ve never heard of him. It was a robbery, and a random killing,” there are so many layers to the statement: Are we supposed to take this as fact or is she practicing what to repeat to the press?

Stray observations

Major props to Gwyneth Horder-Payton who did a stellar job directing in this episode, truly capturing the suspense. The wide shot of Andrew dropping concrete on Lee made me actually jump and shut my eyes.

Marilyn telling the detectives that she’ll allow Andrew to steal items but “he won’t steal my good name, our good name. We’ve worked too hard making that name and we made it together” is a powerful sentiment, especially put next to Donatella’s similar statement in the pilot episode.

I’m glad the show is putting in effort to showcase victims’ backstories instead of just depicting the murder and moving on.

That ending! Such a great, devastating ending!

A focused episode of ‘American Crime Story’ plays to its strengths

American Crime Story begins to paint a portrait of a killer

“Manhunt” B-“

“Manhunt,” like the pilot episode, jumps back and forth in time and between characters, an approach that I’m still not sure totally works. Versace is still alive (save for a brief moment in the cold open that takes place after his death) and Andrew is on the run for a different murder: Lee Miglin. Yet “Manhunt” doesn’t, as I expected it to, then jump back to introduce us to Lee and everything that happened there. (That, presumably, will be in a later episode.) It just takes us to Andrew’s arrival in Miami.

What “Manhunt” does do quite successfully is plunge further into Andrew’s world, a blend of fact and fiction. It’s fascinating and disturbing (the best blend of Ryan Murphy’s strengths) the more we see how skilled Andrew is atlying, whether he’s breezing through a story about being a “fashion student” who wants to meet Versace or when he’s confidently telling new friend Ronnie all about how Versace proposed to Andrew. It didn’t work out, Andrew says with the casualness of a less-important conversation, but they’re still friends. His fictional relationship with Versace is so strong that Andrew becomes defensive, insisting that the more someone knows Versace, the more they’ll love his clothes. To Andrew, Versace is “a great creator—a man I could have been.” He doesn’t want to elaborate. (And that’s to say nothing of the mini-monologue Andrew gives a dancing partner at the end of the episode, able to confidently say he’s a banker, a spy, a propane salesman, etc. all in one breath.)

“Manhunt” also introduces one of the major real-life controversies surrounding The Assassination of Gianni Versace: the fashion designer’s health. In Vulgar Favors, author and Vanity Fair reporter Maureen Orth alleges that Gianni Versace was HIV-positive and that she was told this, on the record (some people also believe this is why Versace’s body was cremated and rushed out of the country so quickly). Versace’s family denies it but Orth still stands by it. Assassination includes this in the cold open which flashes back to a sick Versace, accompanied by Antonio, getting blood tests and treatment in a hospital. Perhaps to give themselves some leeway, the episode doesn’t say it’s specifically HIV (Donatella did say Versace beat cancer six months before his death) but it’s more than implied.

HIV was heavily looming over the culture at the time so it’s necessary here—Ronnie is HIV-positive, and explains how he once thought he had only one month to live—but whether or not Assassination needed to include it specifically with regard to Versace’s unconfirmed status is certainly another question, especially as it feels a bit shoehorned into the cold open. But it does work in the conversation between Ronnie and Andrew: Ronnie is immediately open and talks with an underlying sadness; Andrew lies about how he lost both the “love of my life” and his best friend to the disease, both in one year. There is nothing Andrew won’t lie about in order to fit in, or in order to capitalize on people’s emotions and sympathy to make sure they remain on his side. (The earlier scene where he’s practicing “I don’t want to be a pain” for something as simple as switching his hotel room is telling, too. He wants to make sure he remains in the hotel clerk’s good graces—just in case.)

As for other series-long thematic elements at play, “Manhunt” brings up two in one scene: being closeted (which popped up last week, too) and BDSM. Andrew, in dire need of cash, picks up a businessman he meets on a beach—a man who readily admits “I can be submissive”—and goes back to his hotel. It’s vaguely reminiscent of both junior-league American Psycho and Murphy’s campier American Horror Story elements as Andrew wraps the man’s entire head in tape and listens to him struggle while dancing around in a speedo, all scored to “Easy Lover.” Jump to afterward and the man is visibly shaken from the encounter, quietly urging room service to come back in thirty minutes, and keeping his distance while Andrew enjoys some surf and turf.

As soon as Andrew leaves, the man bolts the door and calls 911 … but he ends up not reporting anything. From the ring he slips back on his finger, the assumption is that he’s closeted and married to a woman—and if he reports anything, he’ll likely be outed. It’s an uncomfortable scene for a number of reasons, and one surface-level reading—that the limitations of being closeted helped Andrew continue for so long—doesn’t feel right. (As for the BDSM factor, well, truthfully I can’t speak to how it will play out in the long run with this season, but Orth’s emphasis on linking Andrew’s interest in BDSM pornography/activities to his murder spree was often frustrating to read in a way that made me deeply uneasy, but hopefully it’s done better here.)

Distilling “Manhunt” into one short recap is annoyingly hard, because it was telling so many stories at once, and some better than others. There’s the investigation and how agents claimed Andrew was a “predatory escort” who targets “closeted, older, wealthy” gay men, and assumed he’d be in Ft. Lauderdale rather than Miami, thus not allowing Detective Lori Weider to warn bar owners/community leaders in Miami (or to put up flyers, which the pawn shop employee would have definitely had hanging on her wall). There is Versace and Donatella’s backstage conversation which didn’t hit as well as it could, maybe because it was trying too hard to link back to his alleged illness or to hammer home what Andrew took away from the world (though that is necessary to reiterate!). However, Versace and Antonio’s conversations in which Antonio says that he wants just Versace, not the other men, were all lovely to watch and felt more natural. Ronnie and Andrew’s drug moments were just disquieting enough—Andrew’s abrupt taped-up shower was chilling—and Max Greenfield portrays Ronnie with incredible depth.

Mostly, I keep thinking about timeline. It doesn’t yet feel effective, but it is interesting that it mirrors how we often learn about serial killers: We hear their names, we learn about their murders, and then—if we choose to keep digging—we read their personal details (any relationships, mental illnesses, drug or alcohol abuse, etc.). Finally, if we stick around, we might learn a bit about the victims themselves. And that, too, is something that I keep thinking about while watching: How much time will Assassination dedicate to the victims? Hopefully, more than most true crime series, especially as it keeps unfolding backwards.

Seriously, there are about fifty other things I’d like to yell about if I had the space. Dascha Polanco—an obvious standout on Orange Is The New Black—is putting out an effortlessly lowkey performance, and I hope she becomes an ACS mainstay.

The restaurant employee calling 911 on Andrew, but being unable to remember his name, and the police getting there just a bit too late reads so much like fiction but it’s not! One thing about the Versace/Cunanan case that I am utterly fascinated by is how many super-close calls there were, and how often Andrew escaped unscathed.

OK, one final thing: the soundtrack is superb.

American Crime Story begins to paint a portrait of a killer

American Crime Story premieres with a new murder, and a new approach

“The Man Who Would Be Vogue” B+

For the first 10 minutes of the pilot episode, it feels like The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is going to be a different show. Based on the series’ first installment, it’s likely that after opening with a murder, the season would then continue on to the ongoing FBI investigation, the issues with the press, and the ensuing manhunt—one that was, as dubbed in the subtitle of the Maureen Orth book, “the largest failed manhunt in U.S. history.” Instead, it appears that this season is going to work backwards: Here’s the murder, and here’s what got us to that point.

What’s also clear, within those first 10 minutes, is that this season is going to be gorgeous to look at. The set of Versace’s mansion—which critics toured a bit of at last summer’s TCA press tour, and which left me breathless—is immediately memorable, painstakingly recreated to the last detail. The direction by Ryan Murphy (who should perhaps continue to focus on throwing around big ideas and directing episodes while leaving the actual screenwriting to others) is fluid and impressive, gliding as it follows Versace through his mansion, and featuring languid tilts above marble staircases.

Through both the direction and the writing, Assassination aims to set up parallels between famed designer Gianni Versace and his murderer Andrew Cunanan—reflecting what Andrew hoped were similarities, but actually depicting the reality of their differences—and for the most part, it’s successful. Versace gets his morning orange juice delivered on a platter while Andrew drinks from a cheap soda can; Versace is cool and casual as he buys magazines and exchanges pleasantries while Andrew is panicked and sweaty after vomiting in a bathroom with homophobic graffiti. Even their walks are contrasted: Versace strides on the sidewalk, looking straight ahead; Andrew trudges through the leaves, his head down.

The titular assassination comes quickly. Versace’s dead before the title card.

So, where does the episode go from here? Way back to 1990, Andrew jumping on the bed between his coupled friends, waking them up to reveal that he met Versace at a fancy gay nightclub—in the private members only section, of course. As Erik Adams put it in his pre-air review, writer Tom Rob Smith has to “fill in a lot of the blanks involving the relationships between predator and prey,” blanks that not even Maureen Orth could fill in Vulgar Favors. Did Andrew and Versace ever meet? (Versace’s family categorically denies this; Orth’s book asserts they did meet at a club before the opera’s premiere.) But the scene is mesmerizing despite the truth because it’s the first time we see Andrew’s brain at work: the persistence, the narcissism, the neverending lying, the slimy—but almost impressive—way he can sense an opening and jump in, confidently faking his way through any conversation. And Andrew is already telling his friends it happened differently.

“The Man Who Would Be Vogue” isn’t terribly subtle in setting up Andrew’s character when it comes to dialogue. The non-verbal cues, the props (the episode’s title paraphrases the title of Caroline Seebohm’s book about Condé Nast, which Andrew keeps in his backpack along with his gun), and the lingering moments (such as the camera’s slow zoom during the opera) all work better. Sometimes the dialogue is too expository (yes, sure, it’s a pilot): “You tell gay people you’re gay, and straight people you’re straight,” Andrew’s friend says to him. “Every time I feel like I’m getting close to you, you say you’re someone else.” No one really knows who Andrew is—least of all Andrew—and that’s part of what made his murders so bizarre and confusing. What we do know is what Andrew wants to be: He wants to be one of the elite, he wants to be someone everyone loves. He wants to be, in his own words, “impressive.” Through his “date” with Versace—which was surely a fantasy, no?—we gather more of what Andrew wants to hear. “You’re a creative, right?” Versace asks Andrew while pouring them champagne on the abandoned stage. “You’re handsome, clever. I’m sure you’re going to be someone really special one day.”

There’s not much time to linger on that past because the episode jumps back to 1997’s murder: Antonio hearing the shot, Andrew examining his work that includes a dead bird. While Andrew takes off running, Antonio tends to Versace’s rapidly dying body. A crowd starts to form as the police arrive; a man grabs his Polaroid to snap a photo of Versace being loaded into the ambulance. That one flash is a harbinger of what’s to come from money-hungry friends and strangers trying, often successfully, to profit off tragedy to the ways in which the media will interfere, undermine, and screw with the police’s investigation. Another forewarning is about the FBI’s ineptitude: piles of “Wanted By FBI” flyers featuring Andrew’s photos are untouched and undistributed, sitting in the trunk of Agent Evans’s car. Later, a pawn shop employee recognizes Andrew; she turned over his transaction forms (a requirement) to the police a week ago but nothing came from it. Would he have been caught earlier if people saw the flyers around and called the cops? Or if the police had read the pawn shop form—complete with a current address—a week prior and recognized his name? What Assassination might focus on, it seems, is if Versace’s murder could have been prevented.

It’s strange that in the first episode of a show titled The Assassination Of Gianni Versace, there isn’t too much to say about Versace himself, or his world. Donatella’s entrance is thrilling, and each move she makes is so deliberate, from putting on her sunglasses to fixing the marblehead that the detective turned askew. Antonio is similarly transfixing, and Ricky Martin displays impressive acting in this episode. It’s heartbreaking to watch him questioned by police who conflates “partner” with “pimp,” and who basically discounts Versace and Antonio’s relationship—partly, I assume, because it’s a homosexual relationship and partly because Antonio admits they brought other men into it. When he asks “the difference” between Antonio and the other men, Antonio replies—tearfully, exasperated, almost helplessly—“15 years!” It’s thankfully broken up by Donatella, who dismisses the detective and instructs Antonio to never speak to anyone about Versace without consulting her first. Donatella’s grieving but still knows the score: the police and the press will go through Versace’s life, “every discretion,” with a fine-tooth comb. She also knows that she has to keep Versace, the company, alive. “I will not allow that man, that nobody, to kill my brother twice.”

Welcome to weekly coverage of The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, a title only a long-winded recapper could love! The O.J. installment was not only among my top shows of that year but probably the most fun I’ve had covering a show, so I jumped at the chance to dive into this one.

Did anyone else read the Maureen Orth book? Though it was certainly extensive and detailed, I was… lukewarm on it, to be honest, though mostly for spoilery (?) reasons relating to Andrew’s sexuality and sexual interests that I shouldn’t touch upon here but I’d love to know your thoughts!

It was nice to know a bit more about Versace through that “date” scene: his emphasis on family, how “maybe every dress” he makes is actually for Donatella, what he wants people to understand just by wearing his clothes.

Gianni Versace is a great follow-up to O.J. Simpson—and especially over a Hurricane Katrina season—for a number of reasons, but a big one is that the Simpson case (including the involvement of the press, how closely it was followed by normal people who were just watching television, and the failure to prosecute) were all still lingering in the minds of the FBI and local police departments when investigating these murders.

Two things I keep going back to: How long it took Antonio to wash Versace’s bloods off his hands, and Andrew explaining that his lies only matter if other people “know it isn’t true.”

American Crime Story premieres with a new murder, and a new approach

The new American Crime Story is a worthy successor to O.J. anchored by a star-making performance

At the end of the second episode of The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, “Manhunt,” the culprit of the show’s titular homicide details an unbelievable curriculum vitae.

“I’m a banker. I’m a stock broker, I’m a shareholder. I’m a paperback writer. I’m a cop. I’m a naval officer—sometimes I’m a spy. I build movie sets in Mexico and skyscrapers in Chicago. I sell propane in Minneapolis. I import pineapples from the Philippines. You know, I’m the person least likely to be forgotten.”

The biography is partially true, partially borrowed, partially made up of poses that actor Darren Criss strikes throughout The Assassination Of Gianni Versace so his character can accumulate ill-gotten wealth and status. Criss has his own impressive résumé (albeit one he can actually back up), a charmed career that includes stints as a boy wizard, a show-choir heartthrob, a genderqueer glam rocker, and a song-and-dance supervillain. But he’s never been as impressive as he is in the role whose name he calls out after “Manhunt” cuts to black, one in which the actor reveals previously unseen layers of poise, magnetism, vulnerability, and menace: “I’m Andrew Cunanan.”

In the annals of American serial killers, Cunanan’s name isn’t quite as infamous as your Jeffrey Dahmers, John Wayne Gacys, or Aileen Wuornoses. That’s bound to change following the nine episodes of American Crime Story’s second season, a worthy successor to The People V. O.J. Simpson anchored by Criss’ career-making portrayal of the murderer whose multi-state, three-month spree culminated in the 1997 shooting death of fashion designer Gianni Versace. With a chilling intensity owing its hair-trigger tics (and taste for Phil Collins) to Christian Bale’s turn in American Psycho, Criss does a shocking, winning about-face from his image as the apple-cheeked dream boyfriend of his Glee days.

It’s also a towering lead performance that threatens to upend The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’s nobler aims. This is Cunanan’s story, to be sure, a tragedy of wasted potential and unrealistic expectations complicated by internal and external homophobia. But The Assassination Of Gianni Versace also seeks to give life back to his victims, and despite the valiant efforts of Edgar Ramírez, Mike Farrell, Finn Wittrock, and newcomer Cody Fern, those men never quite feel like more than satellites orbiting the show’s central figure. What we learn about them is typically stated by other characters praising the genius of Versace (Ramírez) and budding architect David Madson (Fern) or the generosity of Chicago developer Lee Miglin (Farrell).

And as deeply reported as the source material—Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, And The Largest Failed Manhunt In U.S. History—is, the nature of the crimes depicted in The Assassination Of Gianni Versace means that Tom Rob Smith (who wrote or co-wrote all nine scripts) must fill in a lot of the blanks involving the relationships between predator and prey. Unlike those of his People V. O.J. Simpson predecessors, Smith’s characters weren’t on TV, making on-the-record statements, round-the-clock for the better part of a year. Cunanan is shown relishing the coverage of his crimes, but the quest to bring him to justice is far from an all-consuming media phenomenon. This feeds into Smith’s most pointed barbs about law enforcement’s mishandling of the Cunanan killings; along with The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’s reminders of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and the prohibition of same-sex marriage and adoption, it’s an indication that 1997 is both ancient history and not as far in the past as we might like to think in 2018.

Told in a reverse order that begins with Versace’s death and works backward toward Cunanan’s childhood, the limited series disposes of the murders before delving into the murdered; we know the names, the locations, the evidence before it actually factors into the larger story. And that’s what The Assassination Of Gianni Versace is: A story, one that constantly keeps the viewer on their toes as to when Andrew is and isn’t fibbing. While that sometimes leads to events being described in one episode, then dryly reenacted somewhere down the line, it also produces genuine surprise the few times the show confirms one of Andrew’s whoppers. Show and character alike know that the most compelling lies are built on a foundation of truth.

As such, The Assassination Of Gianni Versace plays better as parable than reportage. While it never quite becomes the twin narrative of Versace’s and Cunanan’s lives that’s hinted at in the early episodes, it continues using them as mirror images of one another: creator and destroyer, mother’s apprentice and father’s favored child, doting brother and prodigal son. When Versace is seen surrounded by family and collaborators in his gilded villa or sun-dappled studio, then Andrew is alone in unfurnished rooms, the camera pulling back to diminish him within the empty void. In scenes of startling horror and grueling humiliation, he’s a chimera of sins that are part biblical, part American: Wrath, greed, envy, lust, sloth, entitlement, exceptionalism. On paper, it seems so academic; with Criss’ energy and command, this version of Cunanan is as seductive and terrifying as the statue of Medusa that inspired the Versace logo. He could be a stock broker, a spy, a pineapple-exporter—he’s just that good a liar.

The new American Crime Story is a worthy successor to O.J. anchored by a star-making performance

The A.V. Club tells you what to watch in 2018

The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (FX, January 17)

How did Ryan Murphy and the American Crime Story team ever think they could follow up The People V. O.J. Simpson with anything other than The Assassination Of Gianni Versace? So much of what made O.J. 2016’s show of the year is on display here: a headline-grabbing tragedy, true-crime-lit source material, an indictment of prejudiced law enforcement, an award-winning actor whose performance lifts a public figure out of her eternal state of media caricature. And The Assassination Of Gianni Versace aims to do all of this on a more sustainable scale than Katrina—once planned as American Crime Story’s second installment, now slated to be its third. If anything, Tom Rob Smith’s adaptation of Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors is even more human-sized than The People V. O.J. Simpson, telling the tales of two men—fashion designer Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramírez) and serial killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss)—on parallel tracks of fame and notoriety, their individual struggles with personal ambitions and demons ultimately meeting in catastrophe on the steps of Versace’s South Beach villa. Criss’ chilly, chameleonic work as Cunanan is the best of his career; in her poignant portrayal of Donatella Versace, Penélope Cruz gives Ramírez’s character both a foil and a confidant, and gives Emmy voters reason to pay attention. [Erik Adams]

The A.V. Club tells you what to watch in 2018