These past two weeks, American Crime Story has put forth two incredibly beautiful and heartbreaking episodes about the deaths that kicked off Andrew Cunanan’s murder spree, those of Jeff Trail and David Madson.

Madson was front and center last week, showing what ACS producers think most likely happened to him after Trail’s murder in his loft, interspersed with scenes of Madson and his father. This week, it’s Trail’s turn in the spotlight, as the show reveals his struggle as a gay naval officer and the way he met Cunanan.

Flashing back two years before his murder, we see Trail serving active duty in the Navy, stationed in San Diego. This is around the time when “don’t ask, don’t tell” was a new policy, but by all appearances, Trail loves his life in the military, even if it means hiding who he really is. That changes when he stops some fellow servicemen from beating another serviceman to death for being gay. This puts a huge target on Trail’s back and basically torpedoes his career.

The show makes it seem as though Trail meets Cunanan at a local gay bar and confides in him that he’s going to do an interview with CBS News program 48 Hours about gay people serving in the military. Cunanan makes a big show of talking about how servicemen who are against LGBTQ+ people in the military get to speak about it openly, while Trail has to hide his identity in order to even talk about the issue.

It’s a great point, though, weirdly, the timeline is a bit off. The 48 Hours special was filmed in 1993, which is around the time Cunanan and Trail met — not in 1995, as the show depicts, which may just be an error. There is also no evidence that Cunanan had anything to do with Trail’s decision to do the interview, but it does make for good storytelling and gets Cunanan more involved in Trail’s life in San Diego.

The show then jumps ahead to 1997, when Trail is already living in Minneapolis and Cunanan has come to visit him. It’s unclear if Cunanan’s jealousy over Trail and Madson’s alleged involvement started before he came to Minneapolis or after, but the show definitely uses that as the fuel that drives Cunanan to kill them both, though, in real life, the two were not involved. According to multiple accounts, the two were acquainted but not really even friends.

But Cunanan suspects the two are together romantically behind his back, so he invites Trail to Madson’s loft, and that’s where the episode ends for this story line, with Cunanan slamming the apartment door as he starts beating Trail to death with a hammer.

Outside of Trail’s story, we also get a few scenes with Gianni Versace after two weeks without any Versace material. This week, his experiences as a gay man dovetail nicely with Trail’s experience — they both give interviews about being gay, but while Trail has to conduct his in a seedy motel room with his face obscured by shadow, Versace, a celebrity, does his in a posh hotel suite with a glamorous photo shoot for The Advocate.

American Crime Story may be about Cunanan’s murder spree at its heart, but there is a thread running through it of the struggles gay men faced in the 1990s, as the movement itself was coming out of the closet and met with both support and violent hatred.

The juxtaposition of Trail and Versace is such an interesting framing device that it’s almost a shame we have to spend any time with Cunanan in this episode. Yes, he is the tie that binds all these men together, and Criss is doing an incredible job with the role, but his self-hatred and jealousy and the psychopathic way they manifest themselves is so ugly and manipulative and even jarring. It would have been nice to avoid him altogether for a week.

‘American Crime Story’ Takes a Deeper Dive Into Jeff Trail’s Life Before His Murder

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story has again put forth an episode that doesn’t feature the titular fashion designer at all, instead focusing on recreating Andrew Cunanan’s string of murders that culminated in Versace’s death. Episode four moves backward in time another week, to the end of April 1997, when Cunanan started his killing spree in Minneapolis.

The two victims are Jeff Trail and David Madson, whose relationships with Cunanan and each other in real life are a bit unclear. No one knows for sure that Trail and Madson were secretly involved with each other and no one knows for sure if Trail and Cunanan were ever more than friends. What is known is that Cunanan was romantically involved with Madson, but according to the police, Madson ended the relationship months before the murders.

On the show, Trail is invited to Madson’s apartment by Cunanan for the express purpose of killing him (which in Cunanan’s mind will free Madson up to be with him). Trail is barely inside the loft before Cunanan bludgeons him to death with a hammer as Madson looks on, horrified. Cunanan tries to explain that he just snapped, and it seems Madson “believes him,” though Madson is obviously terrified for his own life and going along with whatever Cunanan tells him.

Cunanan rolls Trail’s body up in a rug and the two eventually leave in Madson’s Jeep. Cunanan thinks they’re running away together, while Madson is portrayed as a kidnapping victim. When the police find Trail’s body, they initially think Madson is the killer — and in fact, investigators couldn’t definitively prove whether Madson was an accomplice or simply a victim, though nothing ever gave them a reason to think he was anything other than a victim. But once they identified Trail’s body and then later found Madson’s body, investigators decided Cunanan was acting alone.

Before that, though, Cunanan and Madson flee for several days together, with Madson growing increasingly fearful for his life. He muses about being branded a murderer when Trail’s body is found (he doesn’t know that police have already found it) and what that will do to his poor parents. Cunanan, meanwhile, is acting like everything is fine and the two of them are going to live happily ever after. It’s interesting to think about what would have happened if Madson never tried to flee. Cunanan probably would have killed Madson eventually either way, but maybe not before he was caught and charged with Trail’s murder.

We’ll never know, of course, but it’s interesting to think about. However, after three days on the run with Cunanan, Madson tries to escape during one of their stops and is gunned down near a lake north of Minneapolis. Intercut with the kidnapping are flashes of Madson’s childhood and his relationship with his father, who wasn’t thrilled with his son being gay but accepted and loved him nonetheless. It’s a very effective choice on the part of the show because it humanizes Madson in a way that none of the other victims has been humanized so far. The depiction of Lee Miglin last week was strong, but not nearly as poignant as that of Madson’s portrayal.

Trail and Madson’s murders really seem like the product of psychosis and jealousy. The American Crime Story executive producers told me at the 2018 TCA winter press tour that they wanted to examine how Cunanan came to be a spree killer, but so far it mostly seems like he’s just a psychotic, angry, unstable man. Perhaps as the season works its way further and further backward in the timeline, some of that will become clear.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 4 Recap: Andrew Cunanan Claims His First Two Victims

It’s in episode three that American Crime Story season 2 really starts to become “The Andrew Cunanan Story” rather than “The Assassination of Gianni Versace.” It makes sense that Versace’s murder is where the show started, but the season is actually about Cunanan’s murder spree, and Versace is only the tail end of that. There’s a lot more story to tell about Cunanan’s other crimes and his life prior to becoming a murderer, and this is honestly where the season starts to get really good, in my opinion.

Because of the non-linear storytelling, we back up a bit in time to May 1997. This is where Judith Light (who is amazing and should be in all the shows) makes her first appearance as Marilyn Miglin. She’s the wife of Lee Miglin, a Chicago real estate magnate and Cunanan’s third victim. Since the show works backward, showing us the crimes first and the set-up second, this episode begins with Marilyn arriving home after a business trip and sensing something is wrong in her townhouse.

She asks some neighbors who are passing by to help her look around, and they find Lee’s mangled body in the garage (though we don’t know at this point that he had been tortured before his death). The tension and dread were so palpable as Marilyn and her friends walked through the house.

Backing up to a week earlier, we learn that the Miglins clearly have great affection for one another. However, it feels as though Marilyn is in love with Lee and Lee simply cares very much for Marilyn. Those are not the same thing.

But it’s working for them — except for the fact that Lee sees male escorts on the side. That’s who Cunanan poses as, and the show indicates the two have seen each other several times previously, though we aren’t given any details in that regard. But in this particular instance, Cunanan isn’t actually there as an escort — he’s mid-murder spree. He acts like he’s going to sleep with Miglin, but instead he brutally beats and kills him.

When we flash back to after the murder, Marilyn (who must have at least had an inkling about her husband’s real sexual identity) is refusing to believe what the police are telling her, instead citing all the stolen items — clothes, gold coins, money — as proof that this was obviously an intruder whom Lee surprised mid-robbery. She’s holding herself together as well as can be expected, but in private, she breaks down about the death of her husband and how wonderful their marriage was. It’s a heartbreaking monologue, and Judith Light performs the hell out of it. Look for her to earn at least an Emmy nom (if not a win) for guest star later this year.

Meanwhile, Andrew is moving on down the road in Lee’s car, which has a car phone in it. Every time the phone turns on, the police are able to track Andrew’s location. But that bit of information makes it into a news broadcast, and Andrew realizes he has to ditch the car. So he kills his fourth victim, William Reese (Gregg Lawrence), and steals his red pickup truck, heading for Florida to confront Versace.

It’s a bit weird that after two episodes that focused so heavily on Versace, we now have an episode that doesn’t mention him at all. The only Versace blip in episode three is that Cunanan visits the Versace store in New York. I understand the writers wanting to focus on the Miglins — the EPs told me that it’s important to the show to do justice to the other victims who were not famous fashion designers — but it’s still a little jarring.

What do you think of American Crime Story season 2 so far? Tell us @BritandCo.

‘American Crime Story’ Shifts Gears to Andrew Cunanan’s Murder Spree