Episode 6: ‘Descent’

In a poignant moment of this week’s episode, perhaps the most poignant of the series so far, David Madson, the down-to-earth Minneapolis architect who has become the unfortunate object of Andrew Cunanan’s obsessive affection, looks across a lavish room-service dinner into the eyes of the man who one day will kill him.

“We had a great time in San Francisco,” David tells him. “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.”

It is intended to be a gentle letdown — one that Andrew, of course, can’t or won’t accept. It is also a reminder that this series is about failures of recognition: not only failures to recognize gay lives, worth and dignity, but also failures of self-recognition.

After my last recap, in which I lamented this show’s failure to offer a compelling explanation for Andrew Cunanan’s homicidal rampage, some readers faulted me for seeking a motivation, much less redemption, where none can be found. One reader, Toni from Maine, argues:

Obviously, Cunanan hated the wealthy old men he serviced as a gigolo and hated the younger men he desired who didn’t want him and, feeling time slip away, started retaliating against life by murdering those he resented, which he found to be a drug more powerful than anything he’d ever experienced. Eventually, he murders Versace, the genius artist, who he’s more jealous of than anyone.

Obviously, Cunanan hated the wealthy old men he serviced as a gigolo and hated the younger men he desired who didn’t want him and, feeling time slip away, started retaliating against life by murdering those he resented, which he found to be a drug more powerful than anything he’d ever experienced. Eventually, he murders Versace, the genius artist, who he’s more jealous of than anyone.

That succinct hypothesis is very much supported by this episode (brava, Toni!), in which Cunanan’s dismal career as a rent boy, his failure to attract men his own age and his jealous rage are examined in considerable detail. I’ve come to accept that origin-of-evil questions are outside the scope of “American Crime Story.” But that acceptance doesn’t make this unrelenting portrait of pathology any easier to absorb.

The episode begins in 1996 — a year before the murders — at the spacious San Diego villa of Norman Blachford, a sixtysomething businessman who, after losing a partner to AIDS, became Andrew’s sugar daddy. In exchange for free housing, a luxury car and a monthly housing allowance, Andrew gives Norman advice on acquiring art and antiquities, and occasional sex.

Norman also throws Andrew a birthday party, to which Andrew invites the object of his infatuation, David. To impress him, Andrew asks his friend Jeff to impersonate the naval officer he used to be and to present Andrew with a gift of Ferragamo shoes — as a sign, Andrew says, that he is loved. (Jeff agrees, grudgingly, to present the gift but not to dress up.) The stunt backfires: Jeff and David take an immediate interest in each other, but not so much in Andrew. And we know from a previous episode that they will end up getting together, which Andrew discovers before killing them both.

Andrew’s pathologies are apparent to anyone who bothers to look. Norman’s protective friend Gallo spots Andrew snorting drugs and confronts him. “You think Norman’s the lucky one, don’t you?” he says. “But you’re wrong: You’re the lucky one.” Andrew is only able to parade himself around like an equal because Norman, who has built an immensely successful company from scratch, is generous enough to want Andrew to feel that way.

When Andrew insists that he is Norman’s equal and then tries to storm off, Gallo delivers the bons mots that will prove to be an unfortunate understatement: “What a volatile mix you are: too lazy to work and too proud to be kept.”

That mismatch between Andrew’s laziness and ambition comes to the forefront when he presents Norman with an ultimatum: He demands a higher living allowance; first-class flights; a Mercedes-Benz XL600; and a place in Norman’s will, as his sole heir. Norman refuses. He has performed some “due diligence,” he says, and has learned that Andrew is not Andrew DeSilva, Ph.D., the estranged son of New York millionaires, but Andrew Cunanan, college dropout, who was recently working at a Thrifty drugstore for $6.16 an hour and living in a cramped condo with his mother, MaryAnn.

It is an extraordinary scene. Confronted with the truth, Andrew remains in denial. When it becomes clear Norman won’t relent, Andrew grabs a patio chair and smashes a glass tabletop with it — a mere hint at the serious violence to come.

Andrew’s aggression also extends toward Jeff, whom he suspects of trying to steal away David, particularly after Jeff says that he is leaving San Diego to move to Minneapolis, where David lives. Ever in denial, Andrew persuades David to fly to Los Angeles, where Andrew has reserved a room at a five-star hotel and buys David an expensive suit. Andrew can’t stop lying — asked what he does for a living, he suggests that he is financing a major movie — and the dinner culminates in excruciating fashion with Andrew declaring, “David Madson, you are the only one I have ever really truly loved.”

David, the industrious son of a Wisconsin hardware-store owner, gives Andrew what amounts to a final chance, asking simply for the truth. Andrew still can’t stop his prevarications. He says his father was a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch who later returned to the Philippines “to run vast pineapple plantations”; that his mother oversaw a literary publishing house until she retired; and that his parents adored him so much that they lavished little Andrew with the master bedroom, a credit card and an occasional lobster when the school lunch wasn’t good enough.

Andrew seems unaware that high-achieving people from modest backgrounds tend not to be impressed by tales of pampered childhoods.

In the remainder of the episode, we learn more about Andrew’s drugs and dreams. (Maureen Orth’s book “Vulgar Favors,” upon which the series is based, says that Andrew was a drug dealer, not just a drug user.)

In one bizarre scene, Andrew dreams that he has walked into a Versace boutique and is being measured for a suit by the designer himself. His self-indulgent lament:

What could be more generous than spending everything on other people and being left with nothing? What could be more generous than finding soul mates for other people and then ending up alone? People have taken from me, and taken from me, and taken and taken from me. Now I’m spent. And they say this man has nothing left to give. And a man with nothing to give is a nothing man.

The fantasy Versace replies, more than a tad sardonically, “That is very poetic, sir.” Andrew tells him: “This world has wasted me. It has wasted me while it has turned you, Mr. Versace, into a star.”

Andrew adds: “We’re the same. The only difference is you got lucky.”

Consumed by self-pity, delusion and addiction, Andrew hits bottom. He returns to Norman’s mansion, desperate for money; Norman threatens to call the police. Finally Andrew goes home — to his mother’s dingy apartment.

MaryAnn seems, if such a thing is possible, even more deluded than her son. She believes he has been traveling with Versace to Tokyo, Sydney, Moscow and Milan. She gives him a bath.

Although we don’t know much of her story yet, she appears simple-minded and emotionally fragile, and her hold on Andrew nonexistent. Telling her that the next stop in his glamorous life is Minneapolis, Andrew drives off to begin his murderous spree. She will never see him again.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 6: A Nothing Man