Tag: february 2018

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

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

Give Judith Light an Emmy for Her Guest Spot on ‘American Crime Story’

“They killed my husband for a car.”

That is what Home Shopping Network star Marilyn Miglin, played by Judith Light, tells her viewing audience at the end of the third episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. It’s what the rest of the world was told as well: Her husband, Chicago real estate magnate Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell), was the unfortunate victim of a random act of violence. Tragic, but most important, random.

The real story behind Miglin’s murder is much more complicated and multifaceted—there’s compelling evidence that Miglin knew his murderer, spree killer Andrew Cunanan (as portrayed in Versace by a terrifying Darren Criss). Not only that, Miglin was quite likely a client of Cunanan, who was a high-end escort for gay men. Following her husband’s murder, the most important thing to Marilyn is perception, and the lengths necessary to preserve a certain outward facade that’s falling apart.

As a dramatized account of Cunanan’s killing spree, Versace has the liberty to put the implied pieces together as follows. Miglin’s corpse was gruesomely left for show, spread out alongside gay porn magazines; Cunanan put women’s underwear on Miglin postmortem. The Miglins were a powerful couple well connected with the cops, and therefore, Marilyn is able to keep the details of her husband’s death—and the heavy implication that he was a closeted gay man—private.

The weight of this juxtaposition that the Versace viewer is privy to—public versus private—and the excruciating burden of keeping those two things separate, falls almost entirely on Judith Light’s performance. Her face is how Versace communicates its central theme, the way a systemic, internalized homophobia and suppression of truth allowed a killer like Cunanan to break free, and the devastating way that affected the lives of people such as Marilyn. It’s not every day that a show gives a guest actor this level of responsibility, but Versace does, and Light is up to the task. “A Random Killing” aired on the last day of January; we’re barely into the second month of 2018. But with her portrayal of Marilyn Miglin, Judith Light has already wrapped up the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.

Since this episode, like most of the Versace season, is chronologically all over the place, we see Marilyn at different points, before and after the death of her husband. Even while Lee is alive, Marilyn’s expression is consistently poignant. The Miglins have built a successful life, but there’s a distance between them, an unspoken secret; something that feels like it’s been festering for decades.

Versace implies—again, because it can—that Marilyn probably knew, at the very least, that her husband was gay; it also implies that Miglin knew that she knew. Perhaps the most telling moment in the episode comes as the Miglins prepare for bed. Lee places his hand directly over his wife’s, somewhat platonically, and Marilyn then locks their fingers together—a more intimate embrace.

Light nails her character’s physical tics, which present Marilyn as a mess of contradictions—she seems less concerned that her husband was keeping secrets from her than with keeping the public facade of their marriage intact. When she finds out that her husband is dead—after arriving home and finding the house in a somewhat suspicious state—she whispers to herself, “I knew it.” She’s disconcertingly calm around the cops, until she breaks into tears, her makeup smearing in the process—doubling as some unsubtle but effective subtext. “How dare they say our marriage was a sham?” she chides, as Light cathartically falls apart, releasing some of her character’s suppressed emotions. “Lee and I shared our whole lives. We shared all kinds of adventures. We rode in hot air balloons. When I was lost in the desert, he rescued me. How many couples can say they have that kind of romance? I loved him. I loved him very much.”

The episode closes with Marilyn addressing Lee’s death on air. “When I first started selling my perfume on television,” she says, “my friend Dorsey Connors, who hosted her own television show, gave me a piece of advice. And she said, ‘Just think of the little red light as the man you love.’” Light’s face staring at the camera is the final image we see before the credits, unspooling the same wounded emotions she shared with the cops in private, now public.

I apologize to all other actresses set to make splashy guest appearances on television in the coming months. The Emmy belongs to Judith Light.

Give Judith Light an Emmy for Her Guest Spot on ‘American Crime Story’

‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ posts solid gains in cable Live +7 ratings for Jan. 15-21

The premiere of the second “American Crime Story” on FX put up pretty good delayed-viewing numbers for the week of Jan. 15.

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” added 0.6 points to its adults 18-49 rating (0.7 to 1.3) with seven days of catchup viewing. That ties for the second-largest gain of the week in the demographic, behind “Teen Mom’s” 0.8-point boost.

“ACS: Versace” added the most viewers of any show, growing by 1.76 million people for a seven-day total of just under 4 million.

image
image
image

*Mod edit for clarification:

Live+Same Day: 2.22 mil viewers with 0.7 in the key demo

Live+3: 3.6 mil viewers

Live+7: 3.99 mil viewers with 1.3 in the key demo

Live+3 + Three encores + digital platforms (3 days? unclear in the press release): 5.5 mil viewers

‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ posts solid gains in cable Live +7 ratings for Jan. 15-21

AMERICAN CRIME STORY Review: “A Random Killing”

There are a lot more crimes in FX’s American Crime Story than there were last season. The series previously explored the killing of his Nicole Brown Simpson, and largely centered on the moving pieces surrounding the murder investigation and the trial. The season largely played with the fact that to this day, people are not 100% certain if O.J. Simpson was in fact guilty of that murder (I mean, c’mon, he did it). This season in contrast shows us exactly who did it right off the bat in the first few minutes of the premiere. We know who did it, where, when, and how… But we don’t know why.

And that’s what Ryan Murphy and the show’s other creators seem to be hanging this season, about the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace, on entirely. We never got flashbacks in season one (except for one Kardashian one, an odd choice) but here we are with each new episode thus far jumping around in time, showing us exactly what Andrew Cunanan did leading up to his infamous shooting outside the Versace home in Miami Beach.

The episode is quite effectively it’s own contained story, without any of the Versace’s making an appearance, or any of the Miami investigators. It begins with a character we haven’t met you, Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light) pushing her perfume on a QVC-type network. After the appearance, she flies back to her home in Chicago and we immediately know something is up when her husband Lee is not there to pick her up. She phones the house from a payphone saying she’s grabbing a gab. When she gets home she noticed that there is an ice cream container open on the counter. She tells some neighbors she knows that something is wrong. Soon the police are there and find Lee’s (Mike Farrell) body in the garage. And all Marilyn can utter is “I knew it.”

We’re flashing back next to not long before Marilyn left to do her TV stint. Marilyn and Lee are at a Jim Edgar for Illinois Governor fundraiser, and Marilyn gives quite an introduction to her husband, calling him not just an example of, but THE American Dream. It’s really quite nice, but at home when it’s the two of them, we get the feeling there is a wedge between them. There is no animosity, but there is no warmth between husband and wife either. When Andrew calls to tell Lee he’s in town, we know where this is heading.

When Marilyn leaves for another TV appearance, Lee is left to his own devices. He has a sort of prayer room in his basement, where he lights candles, gets on his knees, and prays to Jesus. “I try,” he says, tearfully. Maybe he does, but soon there’s a knock on the door and he’s fixing his collar in a mirror. “Andrew,” he greets the young man, and brings him in for a warm embrace. Lee feeds him and asks if he can stay the night, closing the curtains. Whatever qualms he had before Andrew arrived seem to have gone out the window. Lee flaunts his blueprints for the Sky Needle, soon to be the tallest building in Chicago. As he’s doting over them, Andrew raises a gun behind his back. He puts it down before Lee turns around again, though.

Soon they’re arguing over what Lee should call this building of his; Andrew wants Lee to name it after himself, but Lee insists it’s not about him. Andrew gets cross and asks, why did you ask me here to talk about this? “We don’t have to talk,” Lee replies. Not long after that, Andrew has him in the garage (where we know his body ends up), binding and gagging his face like we’ve seen him do to other older wealthy gentlemen in past episode, only this time leaving Lee’s nostrils free to breathe. But before we know it Andrew has Lee on the ground, comes close to chocking him, then smashes Lee’s nose and admits that he has already killed two people. And that when they find his body, he will be wearing ladies panties and surrounded by gay porn. He wants the world to see that the “great Lee Miglin is a sissy.”

So perhaps THIS is a key to the “why” behind Cunanan’s atrocities. He wanted to shine a light on high-profile closeted homosexuals? But then how does that square with what he did to Versace, who was openly homosexual?

“You know, disgrace isn’t that bad… once you settle into it,” Andrew tells Lee just before killing him with a bag of concrete mix, in one of the most chilling moments of either seasons.

From here the investigation gets underway. Superintendent Rodriguez takes the case, assuring Marilyn they will catch whoever did this. The Chicago PD and the Feds are able to ping the car phone of Lee Miglin’s Lexus and track Cunanan’s path. But, despite Rodriguez demanding this stay hush hush, Andrew hears a news broadcast on the radio as he’s driving about the authorities being able to track him through the car phone. He immediately pulls off the road and yanks the car phone out of the vehicle. In a panic to switch vehicles, he ends up following a man with a truck and murdering him senselessly to steal it. How did that fit into Andrew’s plan to out closeted gay men? At the end of the episode, as we know because he needs to be free to murder Gianni, Andrew is still at large and we have no real questions answered. Perhaps we’re not going to get a clear “why” by the end of the season, just like we still don’t know 100% if O.J. killed his wife. Perhaps the question in and of itself is the point.

AMERICAN CRIME STORY Review: “A Random Killing”

Judith Light Was the Best Part of Last Night’s ‘American Crime Story’ [RECAP] – Towleroad

Last night’s episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story tackled one of the most mysterious elements of the Andrew Cunanan killing spree: the gruesome murder of Lee Miglin.

As part of the saga tracing Cunanan’s exploits leading up to Versace’s killing, it makes sense to chronicle Miglin’s murder. However, so little has been confirmed about the nature of Andrew and Lee’s relationship prior to the tragedy, the show leans heavily on artistic license. That’s fine, in terms of dramatic storytelling.

Where this episode suffers is in the writing. Ho boy, were Ryan Murphy and co’s most ham-fisted impulses fully indulged. (At one point, someone actually ate a fistful of ham, and it was the most apt metaphor in all of tonight’s episode.) It was all tell and no show. So much telling. And telling in ways no one would ever actually speak.

“You’re so dominant out there, but so submissive in here,” Andrew tells one of his victims before dropping the only thing more heavy than the hand behind that metaphor — a bag of cement. This is the same team that in American Horror Story: Asylum had one character put lipstick on a Virgin Mary statue while screaming “Whore!”

Subtlety isn’t always their strong suit.

Luckily, the hour of television was significantly buoyed by another knockout performance from Darren Criss and a special guest appearance from the incomparable Judith Light. Thank goodness Ryan Murphy attracts such top-tier talent, because in lesser hands things could get schlocky real quick.

Knowing that we’re taking the details of this story with an extremely large grain of salt, let’s dive into what went down in our recap below.

Spring 1997

Lee Miglin and his wife Marilyn are attending a fancy fundraising function. Marilyn introduces Lee to the stage by describing him as emblematic of the American Dream. He got his start selling pancake batter out of a beat-up car, and now he’s responsible for building some of the most famous buildings in Chicago. He was also instrumental in launching Marilyn’s perfume and cosmetics Home Shopping empire.

Back home, Marilyn dramatically removes her makeup — she’s taking off her brave face, get it, GET IT?

Meanwhile, Lee gets a call from Andrew telling him that he’s going to be in town for a few days. As luck would have it, Marilyn has to travel for business. That’s convenient! Lee joins Marilyn in bed and rests his hand atop Marilyn’s. She squeezes his. There’s clearly love here, but distance too.

With Marilyn out of the house, Lee preps for Andrew’s visit (including a stop at his in-home altar because HE IS CONFLICTED, IF THAT WASN’T CLEAR ALREADY). Andrew parks nearby. He comes into the house, and it seems as if this is a rendezvous they’ve played out many times before.

Lee’s excited to show Andrew plans for a new building he’s working on that’ll be the tallest in the world. He wants to call it the Sky Needle, but Andrew, suddenly very cranky, points out that he might as well call it the Miglin Tower, because it’s clearly all about him.

It’s a tense moment between them, until Andrew plants a hard, passionate kiss on Lee. He asks about that old Pretty Woman rule: Do the other escorts kiss him on th mouth like that? Of course, they don’t. “I’m not like most escorts. I’m not like most anybody,” Cunanan says out loud to Lee like people do.

The quick turn from cutting Lee’s aspirations down to the passionate kiss is to help gain back Lee’s trust. Andrew leads him to the garage, stuffs a glove in his mouth and then proceeds to do that weird tape mask thing that is extremely creepy and for sure going to keep a generation of gay men from hooking up with anybody that keeps a roll of tape in plain sight.

With Lee’s eyes and mouth covered and legs tied, Andrew tells Lee his entire evil plot, Bond-villain style. He already killed two people close to him. Now, he’s going to kill Lee, dress him in women’s underwear and leave gay porn all around him so everyone knows he was gay. “What terrifies you more, death or being disgraced?” (How about option C: Recapping overwrought dialogue?)

Andrew tortures Lee, including dropping huge, heavy bags of cement on his septuagenarian chest. (“Concrete can build, but concrete can kill” — oof!) He stabs him and slits his throat. Then he burns the plans for the Sky Needle at Lee’s altar.

Marilyn arrives home from her business trip and can immediately tell something is amiss. She stands on the front stoop until two neighbors stop by to help her investigate. They notice some things off (including ice cream melting on the counter and a knife stuck inside a ham on Lee’s desk) and call the police.

The cops find the grisly scene in the garage. Andrew is long gone in Lee’s Lexus, but Marilyn refuses to entertain the idea that Lee and Andrew had any kind of pre-existing relationship (a fact the Miglin family maintains to this day). Instead, she tells the police this was an opportunity killing. Lee was old, alone and hard of hearing. It wouldn’t take much to surprise and overcome him. She’s a powerful woman with a lot of political influence. The implication is that she pushed this narrative on the authorities (and it may have hampered the investigation that could have prevented Versace’s murder).

She also rattles off a list of items Andrew took: suits, cash, those gold coins we saw Andrew pawning in previous episodes. Through it all she maintains a calm, collected demeanor. It’s not until she’s alone with someone she trusts later that she allows the grief to fully wash over her.

Light is a powerhouse, carrying the majority of the hour on her shoulders, but here she too suffers from some incredibly heavy-handed writing: “How can someone who cares so much about appearance appear not to care?” She’s holding it together for her family, including her son, an aspiring actor set to appear in the upcoming film, Air Force One. (There’s another theory that Andrew actually had a relationship with Lee’s son, not Lee. The Miglins also deny this.)

Despite all the pressure to keep the story contained, news leaks that the cops have been tracing Lee’s car phone in the stolen Lexus. Andrew hears this on the radio and immediately looks for a way to ditch his ride. He follows a solo trucker, eventually robbing him. He forces the man at gunpoint into a basement. The man pleads to see his wife and child again, but Andrew kills him anyway.

We may never know what really transpired between Andrew and Lee. Maybe Lee’s killing, like the pickup truck owner, was random. However, the narrative American Crime Story is painting is how the closet not only led to getting Lee killed, but the shame around being outed as a gay man at the time was enough to impede an investigation that could have stopped a serial killer. Whether or not this particular element of the story they’re telling is factual, there is certainly some truth to that.

What did you think of last night’s episode?

Judith Light Was the Best Part of Last Night’s ‘American Crime Story’ [RECAP] – Towleroad

American Crime Story: Versace Recap: “A Random Killing” Leads To Heartbreaking Devastation

After last week’s chilling episode where more of Andrew Cunanan’s state of mind was revealed, including his affinity to duct tape and Phil Collins, one would think that would be it for the creep factor. As it turns out, Cunanan’s depravity is limitless.

This week’s episode took us back to May 1997 and introduced us to one of the men that Cunanan had murdered prior to Gianni Versace, Lee Miglin. For many, Miglin’s murder seemed like a random choice but as we learned during this episode, there was so such more to it.

The setting moves the series to Chicago, with top notch guest performances by Judith Light and Mike Farrell as Marilyn and Lee Miglin. She’s a cosmetics maven with a home-shopping TV high profile and a “perfect husband” in Lee, a well-connected real-estate tycoon who’s also a closeted gay of a certain age, making him vulnerable to the narcissistic and murderous predations of Cunanan.

Though this episode may be a Versace-less one, it packs quite the punch and fills us with dread as it makes the fate that befalls Versace even more harrowing.

Gather ’round and let’s discuss “A Random Killing”.

A Wife Always Knows: The episode begins with Marilyn coming home from a trip, expecting Lee to be there to pick her up, but he isn’t. So instead she takes a cab, and returns home to eerie silence and the unmistakable sense that something isn’t right. Marilyn gets the neighbors and calls the police, who tell her what she already knew: Lee is dead.

The Perfect Sham: We are then taken back to a week earlier when Lee and Marilyn were at a fundraiser for Illinois governor Jim Edgar. Marilyn introduces her husband as the guest of honor, and we are given a glimpse of their married life and relationship. He and Marilyn were a partnership, working together to grow their individual careers. They appeared to be the perfect couple until they got home, and the truth comes to light as this isn’t a marriage of convenience, but it’s not one of passion either. Marilyn then leaves for work, which gives Lee the opportunity to invite Andrew over, who just arrived unexpectedly in Chicago.

A Moment of Joy Becomes A Moment of Horror: The second Andrew arrives, it is immediately revealed that the two men had a semi-regular thing going on, though Andrew’s latest visit came as a welcome surprise to Lee. Lee starts their visit off by making Andrew a sandwich and showing off architectural plans for a magnum opus, a skyscraper that would be the Tallest Building in the World. “You’re trying to impress me,” says Andrew as he points out how Lee is pretending “that there’s a genuine attraction between us.” “You can pretend too,” says Lee before Andrew kisses him deeply. “You’ve never been kissed like that, have you?” he teases. “How did it feel?” Lee, exultant: “Feels like I’m alive.”

That moment of exultation doesn’t last long though as Andrew takes Lee into the garage. The beginning of the end for Lee begins with a consensual BDSM encounter until it becomes terrifyingly obvious that Andrew has something god awful in mind. Once Lee is fully bound, with duct tape around his face and cords around his ankles, Andrew punches him hard enough in the face to break his nose (!!!) and reveals to a devastated Lee that he’s killed two men already, and that not only does he plan on killing him but also leaving his body in women’s underwear, surrounded by gay porn. “What terrifies you more, death or being disgraced?”, Andrew taunts the dying man.

Lee doesn’t get the chance to respond unfortunately as Andrew proceeds to crush him with a bag of concrete before stabbing him with a gardening tool.

A Wife’s Heartbreak: The police arrive when Marilyn calls, and when they find the body, they understand that the situation surrounding the murder makes the case more sensitive than most. The death leaves Marilyn in a state of besieged grief: Devastated by her loss, devastated by how society itself is assaulting her marriage. She and her son are staunch in their approach that this was just a random killing, and that Andrew Cunanan had no relationship with her husband aside from being the stranger who took his life.

The Chase Begins: We follow Andrew across state lines into his most random killing as he becomes aware that the police are onto him thanks to the radio leaking the news of their trace; all he wanted was a truck. He stalks some would-be victims at a rest stop, waiting until he sees a man driving a red pickup truck. When the man starts driving away, Andrew follows him, shadowing him through a graveyard where he is the caretaker. Finally, the man arrives at his office, and Andrew follows with a gun drawn. “Stay calm,” Andrew says. “No one’s going to get hurt. I’m here to steal your truck.”

Unfortunately, that isn’t all that happens, as the man gives Andrew his keys and goes down to the basement so Andrew can lock him down there. The man starts to tell Andrew about his wife and their son. “I’m a married man,” he says. “We have a son, Troy. I’d very much like to see them again.” Andrew then shoots him, point blank, in the head.

The final moments of the episode are given back to Marilyn Miglin, back on the air, talking about how much her husband meant to her.

Instant Reactions/Questions:

Mike Farrell is heartbreaking in the scenes with Darren Criss, and it made me hate Criss in those moments, which is a testament to how well Criss is doing in this role.

If you still had any sympathy or affection left for Andrew, this episode should have stripped that away entirely.

As much as I missed Versace in this episode, this spotlight was greatly needed to further reinforce how merciless and cruel Andrew is.

Quote of the Night:

“That’s all I’ll allow that man to steal from me. I won’t let him steal my good name. Our good name.” – Marilyn

American Crime Story: Versace Recap: “A Random Killing” Leads To Heartbreaking Devastation

Does ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Work Without Versace?

The third episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story moved away from Miami and away from the Versaces. Series regulars Edgar Ramirez, Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin were completely absent from the episode as Gianni Versace, his sister and his partner.

Instead, the episode moved to Chicago to tell the story of Lee and Marilyn Miglin and how Andrew Cunanan killed Lee. But does a season with Versace in the title work without the fashion designer?

Oddly, I think the answer is “Yes.” First, “A Random Killing” featured the single best piece of acting in the show’s three episodes courtesy of Judith Light as Marilyn Miglin. Her bold, show-stopping performance was brilliant from start to finish, worthy of the tremendous acting in the show’s first season. For her alone, the third episode was a success.

Despite the show’s title, it’s clear that the second season of American Crime Story isn’t about Gianni Versace. He might be the most recognizable name, but this is Andrew Cunanan’s story. The series is a deep look at the psychology and journey of a demented spree killer. Gianni Versace’s role in Andrew’s story is minimal, so putting him and his family aside for an episode or two makes sense.

The only real problem is that it feels like a bait-and-switch. The first two episodes established the world of the series, but the third episode changed everything and seemed to exist in a completely different series. I would argue that the third episode is far more indicative of the series as a whole than either of the first two, which were very misleading when it comes to what the story is really about.

“A Random Killing,” in many ways, was the real start of The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Future episodes will continue to be told in that style (for example, the fourth episode will once again not include any Versaces). This is what the show is, a series of vaguely connected vignettes from the life of Andrew Cunanan.

Did you miss the Versace storyline or did you prefer the show without it?

Does ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Work Without Versace?

Why Viewers Aren’t Ready to Make “Versace” a Cultural Phenomenon Like “O.J.”

When American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson debuted on FX in February 2016, it was the most-watched premiere of an original scripted series in the cable channel’s 22-year history. And no wonder: Like the steadfast hits of the Eighties and Nineties that TV execs are now joyfully rebooting, FX’s subject was the inescapable pop-culture phenomenon of the “trial of the century,” which has held Americans tight in its grip in the 20-plus years since the conspicuous case collided with a burgeoning 24-hour news cycle.

It’s hardly a surprise that the ratings for the second installment in the Ryan Murphy true-crime anthology series, subtitled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, have so far been much lower: While the O.J. premiere drew a rare-these-days 8.3 million total viewers — that number rose to 12 million after accounting for FX’s “encore” airings — Versace’s first episode, which aired two weeks ago, pulled in a still-impressive 3.6 million viewers live, and 5.5 million factoring in repeat broadcasts. (For context, Game of Thrones may regularly attract a per-episode audience of 8 to 10 million viewers , but even critical darlings like Big Little Lies don’t necessarily bring in those numbers; none of the HBO miniseries’ seven episodes drew even 2 million live viewers.)

If you were old enough to remember the O.J. trial blaring out of countless TV screens and newspaper headlines for a solid year, The People v. O.J. Simpson was not just great TV but a chance to relive that indelible moment through a fresh lens, like a revival of a beloved sitcom. Versace’s smaller audience is somewhat inevitable, and it reflects a central revelation of the series: that law enforcement only began to seriously pursue a string of murders of gay men at the hands of a cagey 27-year-old named Andrew Cunanan when he killed a fifth gay man who happened to be famous.

The crime described in the show’s subtitle occurs within the first few minutes of the premiere, when Cunanan (Darren Criss) guns down Versace (Edgar Ramírez) in front of his Miami Beach mansion. The subsequent episodes move backward, tracking Cunanan’s killing spree from Minneapolis to Chicago to rural New Jersey. (The show is based on Maureen Orth’s 1999 book, Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History.) Along the way, we meet his victims: Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock) and David Madson (Cody Fern), both friends and former lovers of Cunanan; Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell), a Chicago real estate developer who’d hired Cunanan as an escort; and William Reese (Gregg Lawrence), a caretaker at a cemetery who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As I wrote in my review, Versace is a bit of a bait and switch: It’s not really about the famous Italian designer and his soon-to-be-famous sister Donatella (Penélope Cruz). The Versace family merely frames the story of Cunanan, an accomplished bullshit artist who worked at a local pharmacy while living with his mother in San Diego — before he got a taste of the high life when he landed a gig as a live-in escort for a wealthy, elderly gay man. The more we learn about Cunanan’s past, the more the show — aided by a compelling, three-dimensional performance from Criss — emphasizes the man’s internalized shame. (For more on the show’s interrogation of this suppressed self-loathing, read Matt Brennan’s review at Paste.) Along the way, we also learn about his victims; the fourth and fifth episodes, which delve into David Madson’s and Jeff Trail’s backstories, are particularly affecting, and the fact that the show devotes so much run time to tell their stories is a refreshingly uncynical approach in an age of arrant celebrity worship.

In the two decades that have passed between Versace’s murder and this series, mainstream culture has reached the point where the most heavily promoted series in a major cable channel’s current lineup tells the kind of story that would’ve been labeled “niche” just a few years ago, simply because of its lack of a straight, male perspective. “One of the things that excites me about this era of television is that you can come at it from any character’s point of view, or any showrunner or creator’s point of view,” FX CEO John Landgraf told me over the phone. “You don’t have to make reference to the majoritarian point of view, whether that’s male or white or heterosexual.”

(Landgraf has been vocal about the need for TV executives to reform their hiring practices. In 2015, Maureen Ryan wrote a Variety article lambasting networks for hiring so few women and people of color to direct their shows, and FX in particular had a bad track record: Just 12 percent of its series in the 2014–15 season were directed by people who were not white men. In the wake of that study, Landgraf vowed his network would work to close that gap, and at the 2016 TCA Press Tour, he announced that 51 percent of the directors booked at that time were women or people of color.)

Landgraf acknowledged that Versace so far hadn’t been as “widely accepted” as O.J.“It’s pretty dark material,” he said. He suspects the cooler response has more to do with the lingering perception that stories told from the perspectives of gay people are still coded as “alternative.”

For the record, I really like The Assassination of Gianni Versace; yes, it’s a lot darker than The People v. O.J. Simpson, and its narrative structure — on top of the fact that it tells a less-familiar story — demands more from the viewer. Still, I suspect the fact that its early ratings are such a comedown from the previous installment, and that it hasn’t been welcomed into the new TV season with quite as much fanfare, says less about the show than it does about us.

“My gut feeling is that it’s still hard to put that point of view out there,” Landgraf told me. “I think there’s a process, a pathway, from rejection and bigotry to a willingness to be in somebody’s skin, and a willingness to consider their skin as valid as your skin. And I think that for a hetero-dominant culture, we’re not there yet with gay people.”

Still, Versace is a big step toward that brave new world. And while viewers in the States may not be quite as rapt with this story as they were with O.J., in Italy, the show has earned record ratings, with 700,000 tuning in to watch the premiere — compared to 572,000 who watched the seventh-season premiere of Game of Thrones. Who’s gonna tell them this is a show about the constraints of gay identity in 1990s America?

Why Viewers Aren’t Ready to Make “Versace” a Cultural Phenomenon Like “O.J.”

Dailybreak.com

This week’s episode rewound once again, this time to May 1997 to the killing of Lee Miglin. As Andrew Cunanan crosses the country on a murder spree, Miglin was victim three of five and the second murder we see.

As far back as episode one, a subtle theme of the series is the masks we all wear. Beyond the fashion, there is our persona and how we present ourselves to the world.

Lee Miglin’s wife Marilyn (the impeccable Judith Light) wore a literal mask of makeup. During a Home Shopping Network broadcast for her perfume brand and while introducing her husband at a political fundraiser, Marilyn exuded confidence and power. You could tell by looking at her she was all about getting shit done. She brags about her epic romance with her husband, but behind closed doors, you could feel a strain between them.

As Marilyn takes off her mask by slathering on the cold cream, she lets her guard down and she is vulnerable and yearning for something her husband isn’t giving her. After her husband’s murder, she lets her façade crack so very briefly to show her grief, but then it’s back to literal business at HSN. It’s all about keeping up appearances for her and sticking by her statement “It was a random killing.” No one must know the truth, especially Marilyn. Is is sadder that she lies to herself or to society?

Miglin’s (Mike Farrell) mask was more metaphorical than his wife’s. On the surface, he seemed like a typical Chicago millionaire, a doting husband who helped his wife with her business, a religious man who kept a prayer altar in his basement. The show portrayed him to be racked with guilt at his infidelity and at odds between his Catholicism and gayness. “I tried,” he pleads in prayer.

It seems like a punishment worse than death when Cunanan sets out to not only murder Miglin, but expose him to the world as he wraps him in one of his signature tape helmets, changes him into women’s underwear and scatters the crime scene with gay porn magazines. Miglin can no longer hide and he knows this will expose him to Marilyn and to the world. What is the worse fate for him – to be dead or disgraced?

Finally, there’s Cunanan. He seems to wear a different mask all the time and his motives still are not clear. The writers and producers of the show told Vanity Fair that Cunanan loathed successful people like Miglin who only magnified his supposed failures, but that didn’t come through clearly except with Cunanan getting annoyed with Miglin’s plans for a Chicago skyscraper.

Otherwise, three episodes in and we still don’t know who the real Cunanan is. Clearly, he’s a monster, but what broke and how? Did anyone get a chance to see behind his mask? Or is it uglier than we can even imagine?

Next week, we’ll see Cunanan’s first and second victims and get an insight into his homelife, which will hopefully answer some of these questions!

Dailybreak.com