American Crime Story Recap: Building a Serial Killer Backward

The last four episodes of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace continued telling in reverse the story of Andrew Cunanan’s rampage, weaving it with occasional tidbits about Versace himself. And as such, it wrestled with the same problem: Cunanan’s story is rich, fascinating, compelling, and creepy, hard to look away from but also hard to watch. The Versace stuff feels perfunctory, like the show is trying not to bounce the checks that its title and premiere already cashed.

But, now that the season is over, I have to say I think laying out the story this way was smart for a couple reasons. One, it maintains tension in a situation where we already know the outcome. A lot of people might not be aware of exactly who Andrew Cunanan killed before he shot Versace, and once you see him so casually bludgeon and shoot those people, everyone the younger Cunanan comes across feels like someone whose life might be in imminent danger. But two, and this one is the most important: It prevents the viewer from feeling any sympathy for a serial killer. If we’d started this show with Young Andrew, the sweet, innocent kid whose family life may have kick-started his mental undoing, we might have felt pity. And as we watched him lose his grip, we might have carried that pity into his downward spiral, into his murders, and past his victims. Which isn’t fair to them; Cunanan is not the hero of the piece. He is its horror. Telling it backward, then, means we saw the stark brutality of his crimes — of what he was capable of doing, and how glibly he could move on from it — before we saw the buildup to them, and while we could see the pieces the show was trying to put together about the hows and whys of his sins, we had those images in the forefront of our minds. So I felt sadness, but no sympathy.

It was supremely well-acted. All the Cunanan pieces were layered and interesting; the Versace stuff, less so. And in the end I think it achieved what it should: It painted a picture of a twisted, broken individual who went on a killing spree we’ll never truly understand, without in any way making us like him, or feel for him in place of his victims.

Here’s how they laid it out:

Ep. 6, “Descent”: Right after the hour devoted to poor Jeff Trail, and how achingly wonderful and tragic Finn Wittrock made his struggle — to me, that episode was a prime example of why backward storytelling worked; it was so much more affecting, knowing that Jeff was doomed, knowing this friendship that he thought was bringing him into the light was actually going to be his demise — we are introduced to Andrew’s past in San Diego. He’s living with a rich older man named Norman Blatchford in his sprawling oceanside manse; while he pretends to the world that he’s just Norman’s decorator, and they have separate mattresses, it’s implied he’s on Norman’s payroll as a companion, and Norman’s friends all sassily side-eye him — or in one friend’s case, actively call him out on his bogus airs and graces. For Andrew is throwing himself a lavish birthday party at Norman’s pad, inviting Lizzie, Jeff Trail, and his new crush David Madson, whom he has decided is his One and Only. Cunanan — per the show — asks Jeff Trail to give him expensive shoes and tell some white lies that will make Madson jealous. What ensues is Andrew seeing Jeff and David smiling and making small talk as Andrew gadflies about the party, which we’re meant to think informed some of the darkness that descended — and some of his cruel decisions with Jeff, like “accidentally” outing him via postcard. (This means the Trail episode is a SLIGHT timeline blip because we see Andrew and Jeff meeting in that hour, but here they’re already friends. Finn Wittrock is a Ryan Murphy guy, and I’m thinking they gave Trail his own episode as Emmy bait for Wittrock.) It ends with Norman (Michael Nouri from Flashdance, hotter as a silver fox) kicking out Andrew, and Andrew pulling a mini-STELLAAAAAAA by sneaking back to the house and contemplating breaking back into it.

We also see Andrew convince David to come to L.A. with him and spend time in a lavish hotel penthouse, echoing a lost weekend we’ll later see from when they met in San Francisco. It’s here that Andrew lays out his feelings for David and his belief that they should get married, and David spurns him, gently suggesting that perhaps Andrew thinks that David is The One because there haven’t been enough special someones in Andrew’s life. It’s also implied that David is starting to see through some of Andrew’s elaborate stories about his work, his life, his family, because he then kindly suggests they sit down and really get to know each other. With truths. So they start going back and forth, and David’s expression is so hopeful when he asks about Andrew’s family. Andrew opens his mouth… and starts talking about his stockbrocker father, and literary publisher mother, and how they adored him and gave him the master bedroom and she’d bring him lobster lunches at his fancy prep school. The air goes out of David — it’s like he sees in that moment that Andrew simply can’t be himself — and he visibly retreats. It’s the moment Andrew really loses him, the show implies, which is ironic because parts of that turn out to be truer than anything he’s ever told anyone else.

Ep. 7, “Ascent”: Here, we jump back to Andrew’s rise in San Diego’s social scene. He begins as a humble pharmacy employee with aspirations, living with a scattered, dreamy mother who seems only vaguely connected with reality. To make ends meet after he’s fired, Andrew tries to sign up with an escort agency that cruelly rejects him for being too smart, too square, too hard to sell. Almost out of spite, he goes out and attacks the job on his own, eventually turning up at the opera as polished as a gem and targeting Norman’s group with his charms. At a dinner party later, he’s almost tussled over by Norman, David — the snide, skeptical friend from Episode 6 — and a rich older man named Lincoln, who ultimately wins. Andrew asks for an expense account and cash and promises to turn their home into the heart of gay San Diego society, and Lincoln hungrily agrees. But then, high on his cash flow, Andrew — and some other suits his own age that he’s befriended — sees David Madson alone in a bar, and buys him a drink. A tryst in a hotel penthouse ensues, and Lincoln finds out and cuts off Andrew. Then he goes out and picks up a ragamuffin at the local gay hangout and brings him home; Lincoln reads him as a haunted loner, but instead, the man jumps at Lincoln’s touch and then bludgeons him to death with an obelisk. Andrew has returned home by now and is watching from the shadows, first in horror and then in fascination, as his benefactor is murdered and then he urges the killer to run. Supposedly, the murder is true, but no one knows whether Andrew witnessed it; the show uses it to imply that it awakens Andrew’s latent dark side. And intriguingly, it’s very similar to the way he later murders Jeff Trail, and partly evocative of Lee Miglin’s death.

Meanwhile, the show has paid Penelope Cruz a lot of money, presumably, so there’s a light storyline about Gianni grooming Donatella to come into her own. They do this by designing a dress together that she wears to the 1992 Met Gala, one they famously replicated later, and which has a bodice of belts. It was polarizing in the press but caused a stir in fashion circles; this happens in the show concurrently with Versace’s diagnosis with ear cancer and Donatella needing to step into a more commanding role at the company while he recovers. The parallels here are, I think, that tragedy brought both these people into who they became: Gianni’s illness gave Donatella the exprience she would later draw on to run the company, and Lincoln’s murder may have flipped a switch within Andrew that turned him from a pathological liar into a psychopathic serial killer. But as usual, the connections are loosely drawn, and the show slows down to a halt when the Versaces appear. Edgar Ramirez is good, and an uncanny likeness, and Penelope is… fine. It just feels so much like she’s acting around a mouthpiece.

Ep. 8, “Creator/Destroyer”: Here, we have a story of parents. Gianni’s mother, a dressmaker, encouraged her son’s latent artistry. When he was bullied at school for sketching dresses in class, his mother’s response is to piece together the ripped-up sketch and make it with him for real. She, the show suggests, built her son up; Cunanan’s father put Andrew on a pedestal and then may ultimately have helped destroy him.

We meet Modesto “Pete” Cunanan when he is moving his family from a small house to a two-story palace. Andrew’s other three (I think) siblings look on sullenly as they load and unload the U-Haul, and ride in the back with their mother, while Andrew rides shotgun and is led upstairs by his father to a master suite all his own. So that detail he told David was true. Andrew is very quiet, and sweet; clearly bright, but timid. No one quite knows why Modesto favored Andrew so heavily, but he did make everyone else sleep in cramped quarters, and he would serve himself and Andrew at dinner and leave the rest to fend for themselves. Even Andrew seems aware of the power imbalance and that Modesto is making something of a false god out of him, but is too cowed to complain. It’s telling when the ladies interviewing him for his fancy school ask him what his one wish would be, and when his scripted answer falls apart somewhat, Andrew offers up instead, “To be special.” This drives him straight to his doom, but in the near term, it turns him into the kind of attention-grabbing student at school who wears an unbuttoned shirt and necktie in his senior photo, or a red leather jumpsuit to a nearby party (in real life, he apparently donned it for Prom). He also trades sex with older men for money and convinces himself these are special relationships, which his clients quickly reject. It’s as if he spends his life trying to earn the platform and the adulation his father randomly gave him because he knows that was founded on dark things. Here he does become friends with Lizzie, who is awesome, and sees only Andrew’s buoyant side. Poor Lizzie. And poor Mrs. Cunanan, who becomes a shell of herself as events unfold.

Indeed, there is also a scene in which the show posits that Modesto sexually abused his young son, coming to his bed and telling him to tap into the side of himself that made no sound when he burned his foot as a baby. “Not a sound,” he repeats, switching off the light. No one seems to know if that’s true, although the favoritism absolutely was. Interestingly, Andrew’s siblings disappear entirely from the episode after the beginning, and are never mentioned again. The show almost throws it in there as if to be like, “Maaaaybe this is why Modesto favored him so much?” but then never has a take on the effect this had on Andrew. It might’ve colored his reliance on older men, specifically older providers who could give him the comfort his father later would not.

Modesto was also a gross shyster. He wields his wife’s post-partum depression as a threat. He turns on a dime when he decides people don’t have faith in him. He ignores his other children. He talks his way into a job with Merrill Lynch, but his gift of the gab is no match for his inability to play the markets. He quickly realizes he’s in over his head, and out of desperation, he starts swindling clients and tumbling to less and less prestigious firms until he’s busted by the FBI and flees to the Philippines. The family is left with nothing, and worse, he knew it was coming and did nothing to protect them. Andrew flies to Manila, convinced his father has money socked away and a plan for the family, and is galled to learn that Modesto does not and doesn’t care and never would have reached out to them. Andrew shatters. It could be because he coped with his father’s abuse by putting faith in him — like, needing desperately to believe that his person who has always told you that you’re amazing really is right, and really is good, and really is a straight-shooter. And that the self-worth he inflated you with is genuine and not based on lies. Whatever it was, Andrew finally sees his father for the hollow man he is, and starts to cry as Modesto taunts him. Andrew pulls a knife on him, but Modesto sneers that he doesn’t have it in him to kill. (This feels on-the-nose.) Andrew doesn’t, instead returning to San Diego to apply for a job at the drugstore. When the friendly Filipino clerk presses him on his ancestry, a bitter Andrew unspools his first lie about his background and the one he would tell the most: that Modesto owns countless successful pineapple plantations.

Ep. 9, “Alone”: We now pick up the manhunt after Versace’s death. Andrew originally reacts as nonchalantly as he did after Lee Miglin’s death, breaking into a nearby houseboat — more house than boat, but bobbing on the water — and celebrating with Champagne and snacks as he watches the coverage. But then he can’t get out of town, because checkpoints have been set up everywhere. He becomes increasingly dirty, desperate, and hungry, holed up in the houseboat with nowhere to go. A weepy call to Modesto extracts promises that Modesto will come get him, which I thought were going to lead to Modesto turning him in for the reward — but in the end he just goes on TV and gives a smug interview about how he and Andrew are working together to sell his life rights to Hollywood. Aghast, Andrew watches this and realizes that his father will never, ever be there for him, not ever, and that he is well and truly stuck. So he fires a gun at the TV in anger. I think this is pitched as his undoing, although apparently he didn’t actually do that. The caretaker or landlord, or whatever, comes into the place and sees it’s in disarray and Andrew shoots a gun at the ceiling to make him flee. So the cops come, and as they slowly climb up the stairs, Andrew sits on the bed and puts a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger.

Word of his death is the only thing that makes Marilyn Miglin feel like the nightmare is over. For David Madson’s parents, it meant not being able to prove that David had nothing to do with Jeff Trail’s murder, and getting no answers about why he went on the lam with Andrew. What for her was closure was, for them, a door left ajar forever. The show takes liberties with Versace’s lover Ricky Martin, claiming he tried to kill himself after Donatella coldly told him that the house he was promised is controlled by the company now. In reality, he did live in Lake Como for a while and credits Elton John and their pals with helping him get over it. And Donatella, obviously, rises to the occasion, takes control of the company, and turns it into an empire, although all we see is her lighting a bunch of candles in the mausoleum.

I have to be honest and note that I felt this episode was a little bit of a structural mess — with the caveat that it’s still remarkably well-acted, and “a little bit of a structural mess” for this program is the equivalent of giving a kid on the honor roll a B+. It’s still something to be proud of, but that kid might be a little irritated that you didn’t just hand over the A-. Yet again, I think the problem in part stems from something we’ve talked about at length — namely, that this show is about Andrew Cunanan, and not Gianni Versace, but the title means there’s a narrative requirement to check in on Versace every now and then, even when it feels a little ham-handed. This week, there is a parallel drawn between Versace coming out to The Advocate, and Andrew’s victim Jeff (who is so well portrayed by Finn Wittrock) speaking to 48 Hours about the question of gays in the military, and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. While the scenes between Versace and Donatella are very well-acted (if weirdly blocked; half the time, Gianni walks into a room, sits at a table, does nothing, then gets up and walks to another table, and I honestly think it’s to show off the sets), they felt like unnecessary, if interesting, bookends to the REAL story in this episode, which is how Andrew knew Jeff Trail and David Madson, and why he eventually killed Jeff. You could have cut both Versace scenes out of this episode without it impacting the narrative thrust of the story, and to me the parallels felt a little clonky, even though I found them independently compelling.

I also highly recommend Vulture’s fact-checking of each episode, especially for episodes like this one, where I often wondered how much was fact and how much was supposition. It seems that everyone in real life is still in the dark about why Andrew hated Jeff Trail as much as he did, or what happened between them — because everyone who knew the answer died, I suppose. And the scenes that are supposed to elucidate this do seem a little flabby. Jeff and Andrew’s confrontations felt like they were written without The Powers That Be having actually made a creative decision about why Jeff is really so mad at Andrew in the first place, and why Andrew actually chose to kill him. Last week, I assumed Andrew killed Jeff because he knew Jeff and David were hooking up and he was jealous, but that doesn’t seem to be the case; this episode sort of implies that he just kills him because they have a big fight and Jeff hates him for vague reasons. I mean: Andrew is hate-able and also tried to “accidentally” out him, and is also a creepy person who wears other people’s dress whites; there are MANY legitimate reasons for Jeff to hate him. But the actual scene of their confrontation felt like strangely unspecific to me. Certainly, Jeff is miserable not being in the military anymore but his blaming Andrew for that seemed like a narrative stretch for that character, who comes across as a hugely kind, decent, and conflicted person. I think that’s the main stumbling block of this show — there is so much we don’t, and can’t know, that the story-telling by nature turns a little vague.

Alson: This was the episode were I really realized that they actually are telling the story backward and it felt a little confusing; my theory is that, in retrospect, this will prove to be the one episode where that conceit is a little bumpy (it worked well in previous episodes, I thought). It was hard for me, on occasion, to hold in my head where, exactly, we were in time and how much we were jumping around; there are flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks, and it was somewhat dizzying.

Other thoughts, before we look at some visuals: Finn Wittrock, as I mentioned, was amazingly good in this episode, and Jeff Trail’s story broke my heart. I found the scenes of his suicide attempt, and his attempt to remove his own tattoo, as painful to watch as anything I’ve seen on TV in a long time; he is heartrending in this. Cody Fern, who plays David, is also excellent in this episode (although last week was more of an acting tour de force for him, naturally). And Darren Criss is just great. He is so chilling in that scene wherein he’s going through Jeff’s stuff and puts on his dress whites; it says something that it’s just terrifying to watch him put on a hat and watch a video tape. I don’t know that this show is getting as much buzz as The People Vs. OJ Simpson — what has? — but I hope the acting is recognized, because it’s really superb.

These scenes with Gianni, Antonio, and Donatella are VERY compelling to me, although at this point in the series, they also kind of feel as if they’ve been ported in from a show that’s more about Versace’s life. I obviously wanted to include this so you can see Versace’s amazing wall of books.

And this was a nifty shot – and that’s a glam jacket on Donatella, who is arguing against Gianni’s coming out publicly because she thinks it might hurt the business; 1993 was a very different time.

I did have to kind of laugh in this scene; Gianni is explaining to Donatella why the Advocate interview is important to him, and all Edgar Ramirez does is walk to various work stations, briefly stand next to them, and then walk to the next one. It seems like…an unrealistic look at his atelier. That being said, I actually thought this scene was really interesting and illuminating. I didn’t know, for example, that Perry Ellis had died of AIDS, and nearly collapsed on his own runway, which is incredibly sad. I’m currently reading Tina Brown’s Vanity Fair Diaries – which are dishy and great, and you’d like them, I think; a lot of the Amazon reviews are like, “there’s so much name-dropping!” but when you’re EiC of Vanity Fair, you have a lot of names to drop – and much of it is about the AIDS crisis in New York in the early 90s, and it’s so sad and poignant. There is also a whole bit here where Gianni is talking about how he should have died, but it’s a miracle that he didn’t, and again the show is kind of vague about whatever medical issue he’s talking about: IS he talking about AIDS? (I also wonder how much of this vagueness is due to the show’s unwillingness to get sued by the Versace family.

This is a very naive question, but what do we think Andrew is injecting into his toe? He seems too peppy for it to be heroin? I am assuming it’s speed, but this is not my area of expertise.

It made me laugh in the Vulture piece where they noted, essentially, “we do not know if Andrew had a creepy stalker wall of anyone in San Diego.” (He did NOT have a creepy stalker wall of Versace in Miami.) Nevertheless: there’s no better way in TV to explain that you’re dealing w. a real crackpot. FWIW, this vaguely reminds me of my own shrine to Ralph Fiennes when I was in college.

I’d like to commend the costumer for absolutely nailing Man Denim of the Early 90s.

Darren Criss is SO GOOD at being…very alarming even when he’s ostensibly being nice.

This actress, Sophie von Haselberg, is Bette Midler’s daughter, which I figured out because I thought, “WOW, she looks like Bette Midler.”

I thought the Jeff Trail storyline tracing his time in the military – he’s terrified that people will find out he is gay – was really, really moving. I also think this INSANE COMIC the Navy gave to officers to explain Don’t Ask Don’t Tell seems BONKERS. Can you imagine being the artist who had to make this thing?

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap, Episode 5

Turns Out Versace Is Tangential To ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

Well, as we suspected last week, this mini-series is really becoming The Andrew Cunanan Story dressed up as a high-fashion murder. And the thing is, that’s okay: As true crime goes, it’s fascinating stuff. Cunanan’s spree is a solved crime that’s also forever an unsolved mystery. We know who did it, but we can only ever grasp at why. There are so many blanks to fill in with reporting and analysis and extrapolation, but in the end, the only way to finish the puzzle is to guess. And while Versace was Cunanan’s flashiest victim, the story didn’t begin or even end there, and American Crime Story is doing an admirable job trying to make sense of the insensible. Here, it outlines all we know and the best anyone can guess about his first and second victims, who were connected and in quick succession.

Sometimes, of course, that means trying to find something sympathetic in the guilty. It’s almost like we can’t possibly believe that anyone is just simply a psychopath, so we reach and dig and scrape for something to latch onto that makes the person relatably human. Maybe in Cunanan’s case, he was. Or maybe he was just insane.

This episode almost toes both lines. I had just read Maureen Orth’s Vanity Fair piece — dated 2008, but it reads like she wrote it much closer to 1997 — about Cunanan’s spree, which draws in particular detail the deaths of Jeffrey Trail and David Madson. It begins with Cunanan’s flashy days in San Diego as a gigolo and a kept man of sorts with a rich sugar daddy, which is where he met Trail and Madson, both ultimately Minneapolis-based. The show does not clarify Cunanan’s relationships with them, but the article does: Trail was a man Cunanan considered a best friend, and Madson was the love of his life, and both of them — Trail first, then Madson — slowly began to see through Cunanan’s lies and eventually stopped even feeling sorry for all the reasons he might’ve been telling them.

The facts, as Pushing Daisies would say, are these: Trail died in Madson’s apartment by Cunanan’s hand, but remained there for days before he was discovered. Eyewitnesses saw Cunanan walking Madson’s dog with him on what would be the day after the murder, before they dropped out of sight and out of touch. A panicked Madson coworker finally convinced the landlord to let her into David’s apartment to check on him, which is how they discovered both the body rolled up in a rug, and energetic blood spatter. Cunanan had created enough confusion that the cops mistakenly believed he was David Madson’s victim; by the time the coroner identified Jeff Trail’s body, Cunanan and Madson were long gone.

History does not seem to connect Trail and Madson romantically, but the show gives them a scene together in an elevator that hints to a crime of passion or at least of betrayal on Cunanan’s part. It’s not disputed that he loved Madson, and the show alleges he proposed, and that Madson had only stayed in Cunanan’s life because he was still in the stage where he thought hurting Andrew was like kicking a puppy. Trail had hardened to Andrew. Given that Cunanan eventually used Trail’s gun to kill Madson, the theory presented here is that he stole Trail’s weapon as a way of luring Trail to Madson’s apartment, so he could kill him in full view of Madson and thus create a situation in which Madson had no choice but to leave with him. A forced happy ending by homicide.

Considering we know the outcome, the show is really adept at replacing “what will happen” with a palpable sense of dread about when and how. For example, the second Trail enters the apartment, Andrew flies at him so fast with a hammer and bashes his brains in so repeatedly and violently that the viewer wants to scramble away almost as fast as poor Madson does. That one is fast; Madson’s march to death is much slower and more agonizing, even though we know where it’s going. No one really knows how Cunanan worked over Madson. The show posits that he expertly manipulated him, first by claiming he simply lost control of himself, then by nursing him through shock gently enough that he had time to plan his next step. Which was, calmly, coolly elucidating all the reasons why not to call the cops, including telling Madson the cops hate gay people and pretending flight was an act of love: “I’ll get 30 years, but you’ll get 10 years. I can’t let you ruin your life,” this Cunanan tells Madson. He also dissuades Madson from calling his father, claiming it would ruin his life as well. Their final joint escape, the show suggests, was prompted by being afraid the landlord would enter and discover the body with Madson still there looking guilty as sin.

The road trip is all Andrew being completely deluded — cranking “Pump Up The Jam” and eating burritos from the back of Madson’s car — and David looking bummed and scared. Cunanan is shown telling one puffy lie about how they can stop in Chicago and get some money from a business associate, the unknowingly doomed Lee Miglin, and how his business in Mexico will boom and they can live a rich life there together. He goes on and on about how it’s okay if David wants to leave him down there, of course, “and I respect that,” but they wouldn’t have anyone else but each other. “You should really start thinking about your new life. What you want to do with it,” he says. A metastatement about Andrew Cunanan if ever there was one, as this is a man who created tens of new lives for himself, often at the same time.

David is portrayed as being in utter disbelief the entire time, visibly afraid Andrew will kill him despite Andrew’s assurances that he loves him too much to cause him harm. At one point, he rambles about being scared of what the cops will dig up about him, and how it will affect his parents’ lives in his small hometown: “Who’s going to buy anything from my dad’s shop?” he murmurs.

Eventually David appears to realize he can’t win, so he starts challenging Cunanan about his lies — both in Minnesota and in his flashy life in San Diego. “You never worked for anything. It was an act… You loved [Jeff]. It was so obvious. But he figured you out in the end. It took him a few years, but he finally saw the real you, and you killed him for it.” Andrew blinks a few times and the brightly insists they can have that life again in Mexico, but ten times better, thanks to all his fancy business deals. “You can’t do it, can you?” David marvels. “[You can’t] stop.”

And when David finally realizes Andrew planned killing Jeff in front of him all along, he signs his own death warrant. Andrew, the very picture of agony and disillusionment, shoots his former lover in the back as he tries to run for his life.

Is that how it went down? Who knows. They had the bodies, they had the weapons, but they never got to ask the killer any questions. And so he moved on to richer pastures, and bigger murders.

The loft set they made for David Madson’s loft already looks like a place where a serial murderer might be. I can’t recall them addressing why there is plastic sheeting hanging up or whether he had recently moved in, or what.

This shot started with David working, and we saw Cunanan enter and walk toward him. Simple blocking, except that the way Darren Criss holds his body while walking as Cunanan is amazing. He glides, but so precisely, as if he’s a tightly coiled snake.

Finn Wittrock plays Jeff Trail, and gets only one scene and like a minute of face time, max. Of course, that’s partly because in the NEXT minute he will no longer HAVE a face.

Afterward, while David cowers in horror on the couch, Cunanan walks to him while still holding the bloody hammer and puts it on David’s cheek, while acting like he’s sharing in David’s grief. It’s well-constructed manipulation.

As is the whole ensuing bit, where Cunanan takes a shocked David and gently leads him to the shower, and almost tenderly helps him rinse himself clean of the blood spatter. By acting so caring, he got a dazed and confused David to go along with him immediately, which is the beginning of explaining why David never did call the cops.

Another subtle power play: leaving Jeff’s body lying uncovered in the hallway. David would’ve had to flee OVER it, and when they do decide to go walk the dog – Andrew, obviously, does not let David go anywhere alone – they have to cover the body up together, which then makes David more of an accomplice while also continuing to drive home the horror of what happened and keep the vaguest notion that it might be David’s fate no matter how much Andrew placates him.

Seriously, the set designers were either DELIGHTED to have very little to do, or bored out of their skulls.

Andrew leaves a bunch of S&M porn and supplies on David’s bed, as a way of helping create suspicion that this might have been a sex game gone wrong.

And here, we have David’s family’s very sedate living room. My favorite little touch are the greeting cards lined up on the mantel.

We pause for Aimee Mann – traveling through space and time to play as her current self but in 1997 – to show up and perform a plaintive cover of “Drive” by The Cars, pregnant with meaning for Andrew.

The camera is on Criss as Andrew lets the words sink in and starts to cry. It’s open to interpretation what he’s crying about; it could be that he’s coping with the fact that he’s just committed murder, that he’s made a prison for himself, or that he is realizing that this delusion of a life – much less a life with David – is not going to hold. Probably all three. It’s very well done, and also TENSE AS HELL, because during this David is in the bathroom punching out a window and hoping to escape so we keep expecting Andrew to get up and find him in there and kill him. (He doesn’t.)(Yet.)

This diner scene is where the shine starts t come off: Here is the first exposition that clarifies how these two even know each other, and it’s David drawing Andrew into a conversation about the glory days of when they met in San Francisco… before turning sour and hissing that it was all A LIE because Andrew is a big fake faker.

Naturally, this doesn’t end well, although the show posits that Andrew was still trying to play along with his fantasy of a life together in Mexico before David finally snapped and tried to commandeer the car.

David pleads for his life. Then he just gives up and cuts Andrew verbally before turning to run while Andrew is facing the other way. Andrew turns and fires the gun.

There are some flashbacks throughout demonstrating David’s relationship with his father..

… to a point. David came out to him after he had won an award (“good news, bad news”), and his father took a moment to compose his words and then finally said he can’t change what he believes or pretend that he supports that lifestyle, but “I love you more than my own life.” So after Andrew fires the gun, David seems to make it to a nearby trailer… but then he turns and sees his father, pouring soup from a Thermos and offering him some, and poor David sits down and shares an imaginary happy reconciliation with his father…

… as it’s revealed that he did indeed get felled by a bullet and tried to plead silently one more time before Andrew shot him in the face. We end with Andrew curled up next to David’s dead body, head on David’s chest, efore getting up and taking the Jeep straight to Lee and Marilyn Miglin’s personal hell. It’s a really stirringly shot piece.

Turns Out Versace Is Tangential To ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Episode 3 Recap

This is the first episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace in which the titular Mr. Versace does not appear — in human form, at least; Andrew Cunanan does waft through one of his stores, caressing the bomber jackets and reading the coffee table books with either prurient or murderous interest (or, more likely, both). Instead, we travel farther back in time to two of Andrew’s earlier murders: that of a man the New York Times called a “wealthy Chicago developer” in this honestly slightly chilling article about his murder, written before any hint of Cunanan’s involvement had leaked to the press (the kicker, in particular, possibly haunts the woman whose quote it is), and that of a man whose truck Andrew needed to steal once he realized that the FBI was using early cell-phone technology to track his movements via the car phone installed in the Lexus he stole from Ed Miglin.

As ever, I have thoughts:

– Obviously, I didn’t go into this program thinking, “that Andrew Cunanan, so misunderstood!” But because I did start watching this not particularly knowledgeable about him beyond knowing that he shot Versace, I’d say that I was…open to feeling some kind of sympathy for him, and whatever circumstances of his life brought him to that place. The show has done a great job of unfurling Cunanan’s truly monstrous behavior; the pathological liar, bad houseguest, and thief who seemingly stalked and killed Versace in what you could have perhaps argued (if you didn’t know better) was a crime of passion in the first episode has become the absolute sociopath that he presumably was.

– In addition to being a sociopath, Cunanan was not a very savvy murderer and it truly does seem like he should have been apprehended before he got to Versace — he certainly could have been caught before he killed William Reese for his truck, had the local radio not gone on air and said, “oooh, we heard the police are tracking Andrew Cunanan using his car phone! Andrew, if you’re out there, JUST FYI!!!!” Obviously, the story of EVERY serial killer involves a few close calls before they’re finally caught — if they are ever caught; from what I hear, the Zodiac killer is currently representing the great state of Texas in the US senate — but for someone who believes himself to be a genius, Andrew is not very good at the murder game. All I know about getting away with murder comes from watching TV, but it doesn’t seem very savvy to drive around in your victim’s flashy car. If you’re gonna steal someone else’s vehicle, obviously you do it in the dead of night so you don’t add to your body count (I found Cunanan’s murder of Reese particularly chilling; all of these are obviously very very very bad murders, and Cunanan is a very VERY very bad person, but he was truly just in the wrong place at the wrong time). When you’re swapping license plates, dude, steal the plate AT NIGHT in a parking lot and then place it onto your own vehicle somewhere more secluded, because switching around license plates in the middle of the day at, like, Target is very obvious!

– I continue to be impressed by Darren Criss in this part. This season of American Crime Story isn’t get the buzz that the OJ Simpson season did, but (a) the first season of an accomplished program always gets the most buzz, (b) the OJ trial itself was more firmly affixed to more people’s memories, and more a part of pop culture in general, © that season was truly, truly exceptional on basically all fronts, and impossible to top. But this season is also very well done, and he is EXCELLENT.

– I look forward to Judith Light’s Emmy speech. Vanity Fair’s coverage of this continues to be excellent, and their most recent piece about this episode indicates that Marilyn Miglin (whose products are still sold on HSN) has never admitted that her husband was gay, and that Cunanan’s relationship with him is a matter of supposition on the parts of, well, many many many people. It does seem unlikely that they were not known to each other. There seems to be some speculation that perhaps Andrew knew the Miglin’s son, Duke. Either way, I can understand that a family traumatized by a terrible murder would not want to indulge public speculation about their private lives.

What did you think?

Literally five people I know texted me, “OMG JUDITH LIGHT” as soon as they started watching this episode, and she is indeed great in it; Judith Light as a HSN powerhouse business lady is a brilliant stroke of genius on all levels.

“Remember payphones?” was a thing I sincerely thought while watching this episode. I also thought, “Judith Light’s luggage is gorgeous, but how does she keep it clean?”

However, it’s clear from the Miglin home that Judith Light knows all about keeping things sparkling white. (This home set is AMAZING.)

Don’t worry. That’s just some ham and not a part of someone’s body. (I did think, “OH NO WAS HE ALSO A CANNIBAL?!”)

This show, like Downton before it, cannot resist an overhead shot.

This is a stunning room, and almost certainly a location. TELL ME THE LOCATION.

It’s a bit hard to see here – why is this show so literally dark in the interiors sometimes? – but Judith Light’s Taffeta Skirt and Brocade Top formal combo just SCREAMED Elegant Lady of a Certain Age Attends a Gala in 1997.

As Heather pointed out on Twitter last week, TV truly does believe that women do a lot of Thoughtful Thinking while we moisturize.

No, seriously, remember payphones? (Is it also terrible that this episode prompted me to think, “wow, backpacks really ARE useful”?)

Poor Lee Miglin. He had a beautiful office. I felt great, GREAT sympathy for him this entire scene. Per the assumptions set forth by this show, he was living a double life that was very difficult for him and it ended so brutally and at the hands of someone who truly was a sociopath. I cannot imagine how terrible this must have been for everyone in his life (I believe one of you noted that you were co-workers with his daughter? Did I imagine that?)

Again with the overhead shots!

In case we forgot where this is all going.

Listen, those are some good jackets. They just are.

YES, YES, WE GET IT. Removing your makeup at the end of the day equals taking off the mask you show to the world, WE GET IT. (Having said that, this episode was directed by a woman, Gywneth Horder-Payton.)

Per Vanity Fair, the real Marilyn Miglin did go back to HSN three weeks after the murder, and honestly, good for her. I’m sure work was a balm to her; there’s a stronger parallel you could draw, potentally, between her and Donatella, but the show doesn’t go there directly. Perhaps it’s trusting us to draw that line ourselves.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Episode 3 Recap

The Assassination of Gianni Versace’s Second Ep Tackles HIV Rumors

The trick with this season of American Crime Story is that we know the who, and the how, and the when, but we will never be able to do anything but speculate on the why. Cunanan left very few breadcrumbs. So the show turned to Maureen Orth’s book on the subject, which she by all accounts reported as well and throughly as anyone could, to fill in some of the empty spaces on the canvas. That meant making some leaps, which in the premiere led to the scene in which Versace and Cunanan chill in a club and at the opera in San Francisco, which never felt real even as we watched, in a funky way where you almost questioned whether it was a dream sequence. (Orth believes they had met at least once before, but — and this is partly because Cunanan was a skilled pathological liar — it’s impossible to know if it happened, much less if the version he did tell friends is true, or the one the show imagines of him pushing his way in with a cool falsehood about Italy, etc.) And here, it’s the HIV subplot.

The Versace family has always denied that Gianni Versace had HIV; to this day, per Vanity Fair, Donatella says he had ear cancer that forced him out of the public eye, only to have it declared cured six months before his death. That same story lays out that he became ill in 1994 and ceded some control of the company to Donatella, then rebounded and reclaimed his position six months before he died. That gels with the timeline of HIV/AIDS patients beginning to see results from a new drug cocktail. Both the producers and Orth had various sources off-the-record saying he had HIV, and that it was the reason the family rushed to have him cremated, but the dots can’t really connect beyond that.

Ergo, the show goes all-in on it, but the quotes about why in the VF article are much more impactful-sounding than the way it actually plays out in the episode. I thought the show seemed very disconnected from the idea the writers discuss about how Versace was a creator of life and of art, who’d confronted his mortality and then thought he’d risen again. To me, the sense of his sickness and health were very passively presented, and mostly just provided building blocks for tension between Donatella and Versace’s lover Antonio. The more poignant scene came from the parallel tale of Max Greenfield’s Ronnie, a wan junkie who meets Andrew Cunanan and he details the weird loneliness of being an unexpected survivor of the drug cocktail — and of believing you were going to die, then finding out you have a second chance and having nothing to use it for — while Cunanan alters his backstory once again to try and paint himself into that picture.

Darren Criss makes a good Cunanan, slipping coolly from one lie to the next, at times not wholly believable but in ways that suggest that’s deliberate (as he did, in fact, not entirely get away with it). In defending his admiration of Versace to Ronnie, he says, “When they told him what he wanted wasn’t possible, he just made it himself…. The great creator. The man I could’ve been.” By the end, he’s stalking Versace to a club, then repelling a man’s advances with a gaggle of intentionally obvious fake backstories that includes one truth (“I’m a serial killer”) before announcing, “I’m the one least likely to be forgotten,” and then, as we cut to black, whispering, “I’m ANDREW CUNANAN.” Given that there was an FBI manhunt going on for him already by this time, it seems silly at first that they’d write him so cavalierly trumpeting his real name, but it drives home Cunanan’s total insanity — both the sense that he might’ve believed himself bulletproof, and that maybe didn’t want to be, hungry as he was for a notoriety that he felt the world denied him any other way.

Oh, and also, this show LOVES close calls. There’s one with the dude Cunanan robs who balks at calling the cops, one at a sub shop where an employee recognizes him from a poster, and kind of one with the cop played by Dascha Polanco. The FBI, already searching for Cunanan for his other crimes (which I didn’t even know!), wants to focus on Fort Lauderdale and its supposedly wealthier group of marks; she eye-rolls that and then runs off a bunch of WANTED flyers on the sly because she thinks he’ll be in Miami Beach. I have no idea, obviously, how much ANY of that is accurate, but: Score one for the lady, even if they didn’t get him in time.

This is actually Versace and Antonio sneaking into the hospital to discuss HIV treatments, but it LOOKS like a still from his music video, “(I Want Your) Measurements.”

It’s a continual delight to see that Versace embraced such subtlety in his interior design. I bet that wasn’t even his bed; just a fainting place.

I really need to work in having a more attractive sick bed. (Having said that, he comes home and flops down and everyone sniffles about his illness, and then he’s TOTALLY FINE later and we don’t really hear about his miraculous recovery, so… I guess this was a good nap.)

Ricky Martin spends a lot of time looking perplexed in front of elaborate tile work.

And Penelope Cruz makes a good, but also distracting, Donatella. What I mean is: She nails the voice, from what I can tell, but it also sounds like she is acting around some kind of false teeth that is giving her a slight lisp. Which she MIGHT be. Or she’s just really hitting that hard on her own.

This is one of the few times we see Donatella NOT in black, and I wish it was a better shot of it. Gianni, here, is also a Fug National in training.

Everyone Grieves Hotter in Sunglasses.

Th Donatellas in this are not that far apart in the timeline – just days, months, etc – so I guess maybe we’re meant to think here she just hadn’t penciled in her eyebrows, rather than that she was entering into her bleached phase? I don’t know. I honestly think it’s mostly a visual cue that you’re looking at post-killing vs pre-killing Doantella. Then again, it’s hard to mix that up, given that she’s in all her other scenes WITH Versace.

In death as in life, Versace loved a pattern.

This is the point on Passions when someone rescued Theresa’s coffin. They waited a good long time. Also, she was still alive, so it was a bit more important. But I look at this and think how EXPENSIVE all that makeup and the coffin was, for them to just immediately send him into the flames. I guess one’s final wishes are one’s final wishes.

And here is his final resting place. This scene of the ashes being wrapped upa and packed for customs and then tucked into an ornate box reminded me vaguely of Rowan Atkinson wrapping the gift in Love, Actually. It needed more pot pourri.

Darren Criss managed to be a pretty good facial likeness for Cunanan, and this shot also underscores that he ALSO may have slipped past people’s notice for so long because he looked like SUCH an everydude – here, a secondary character with no actual plot in an early 90s teen movie.

I cannot think of anything I want to drink LESS on a road trip.

The sets are so good. I don’t know how much was created on soundstages and how much was from actual locations, but everything here feels SO Miami Beach – the font on the address over the door, the pink walls, the floor. I lived in Miami from 1990-92, so I missed this, plus I was pretty far removed from South Beach. So I can’t offer any real insight. This does just feel really correct, though.

And the flamingo pen on the desk! My dad’s office balcony had standing water on it that no one would fix, so he got an inflatable flamingo and put it out there to register his discontent. He named it Placido Flamingo. One day, he came to work and someone had murdered it with a screwdriver. IT WENT UNSOLVED. That could be season three?

Max Greenfield did a very good job shedding the Schmidt. His Ronnie character felt fairly well-realized and sad, like a person whose past meant he’d forgotten how to see a future for himself – versus Cunanan, who simply reinvented his pasts in the hope that one of them would give him what he sought.

Naturally, in the midst of their serious conversation about HIV and life and Versace, Darren Criss rinses off in a Speedo.

He also picks up a cruiser on South Beach so that he and Ronnie can get cash for crack (and I guess other things). “I can be submissive,” the man offers. “You have NO IDEA,” Andrew replies, and then wraps his ENTIRE FACE with duct tape.

As the dude begins to panic and tear fruitlessly at his face tape, Andrew dances to “Easy Lover,” which is REALLY on-the-nose but also rather amusing (his Hedwig background comes in handy here a bit). And, it’s more Speedo time. Cunanan does of course eventually give him a breathing hole, having asserted his control long enough and also scoured the hotel room for stuff he can swipe.

And then he eats a room service steak. (The poor old dude seems super traumatized, and chickens out on calling the cops, which is a bit of a lame “SEE LOOK HE COULD’VE BEEN CAUGHT SOONER” thing that is unnecessary given the later one at the Miami Subs shop where the kid calls the cops but Cunanan leaves.)

I didn’t know about this final couture show, which was apparently a battle between Donatella’s girls – the waifs – and Versace’s, which per the show were women he thinks looked fuller and like they loved life. (That being, Naomi Campbell, so… obviously only fuller by certain standards.)

And indeed, apparently Donatella cast Karen Elson to close the show, but Versace thought she was too skinny and replaced her WITH Naomi.

And it was in this outfit, roughly. They were not able to get a super great facial approximation for Naomi Campbell, although… IS there even one? And so they shot her from a great distance.

Victory for Versace…

… and sadness for Donatella, who at least flashes him a half-hearted thumbs-up after none of her clothes or models got the same warm reaction as his. Of course, this show conveys that by having the crowd applaud during the entire show, which is WHOLLY unaccurate and annoying to me. Also annoying: We never get to see this outfit.

Speaking of things in silver, while Ronnie os monologuing about opening a vending cart on South Beach with his new pal Andy, Cunanan is in the bathroom wrapping his face in duct tape, or maybe putting ON the tape helmet he’d earlier taken off the dude? I don’t know.

Ronnie thinks this is as weird as I do, but he has no other friends really and might want more crack, so.

Ricky Martin remains artfully burnished, and has a matching robe and swim trunks. His whole storyline is: Donatella hates him because he and G had an open relationship, and she thinks that introduced G to HIV/AIDS without giving him any of the things he wanted from life – like kids. Antonio then does some soul-searching and realizes he wants to stop swinging and marry Gianni somehow, because the oldest tragic plot device ever is to have your central couple realize it’s True Love right before one of them dies. (This might be accurate, though; I don’t know.)

I just thought you needed to see the tiling at the BOTTOM of the Versace pool.

Cathy Moriarty owns the pawn shop where Cunanan sells a stolen coin, and she is appropriately skeptical. I assume she’ll pop up as a witness as we go. This facial expression is my inner monologue almost all of the time.

There’s also a bit where Versace is on his front-facing balcony jawing jokingly with a drag queen dressed as Donatella (“I can’t let you in! One Donatella is enough!”). It really is amazing to think how accessible he was, and how safe he must have felt in this city that loved him. You just never see that anymore.

Although it is crazy to me that he didn’t have more security, even wandering around in plain clothes. Because Cunanan is here pictured skulking around outside, after having spent a day taking close-up photos of the gate and the house, and then he sets up camp and reads his Vogue book. A good guard or three might have noticed that.

And, here is the lace blouse Versace wears when Ricky Martin realizes he wants to stop banging random men and be monogomous and get married. Love is lace-blind, I guess.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace’s Second Ep Tackles HIV Rumors

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace

Welcome back to another season of American Crime Story. Last time we met, I was regaling you with tales of being a youthful college student in my native Los Angeles as OJ Simpson was tried and acquitted for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, and we all fell profoundly and deeply in love with Sterling K. Brown. Today, we reconvene to discuss the murder of Gianni Versace — the 20th anniversary of which was just this last July — at the hands of serial killer and pathological liar Andrew Cunanan, in Miami. I was a youthful Los Angeleno just out of college when this happened, and I do not, therefore, have great personal insight to this specific milieu, beyond being alive and alert in 1997.

I can say, though, that as someone who remembers the summer of 1997 well: It was a weird summer. Versace was gunned down on the steps of his house, and six weeks later, Princess Diana died in a car accident. Mother Theresa died less than a week after that. The Heaven’s Gate mass suicide had happened in March and was still getting a lot of news play (related, we had a giant comet hanging over us that year, which I personally think scrambled people’s brains a little, even though if you asked me the direct question, I would tell you that I don’t believe in that). And I was newly out of college and had no idea what I was doing with my life, which certainly wasn’t globally noteworthy, but made me personally feel strange.

It is so interesting to be watching this story play out and remember the way it unfolded in a time without real internet. The internet existed, but not in the way it does today. If a major fashion designer were murdered on the steps of his house today, I assume we’d all be on Twitter for 72 hours straight. As it was, I mostly found out what was happening by opening the Los Angeles Times (which makes a cameo in this episode, which amused me; surely what most people in Miami were reading was the Miami Herald). Things change so quickly in our lifetimes.

But let’s discuss the episode! I’m not going to recap it blow-by-blow, but instead, thought we could talk about it in general here, before zipping through its amazing sets and wardrobe in the slideshow.

1. My god, EVERYONE is in this: Dascha Polanco! Will Chase! Stan from Mad Men! Schmidt from New Girl! Ricky Martin! Darren Criss, obviously. Penelope Cruz! Annaleigh Ashford, looking so plain-faced that it took me forever to place her! CATHY MORIARTY, popping up for me at basically the same time she popped up for Heather on This Is Us, leading to us wondering what is going on in the universe to lead Cathy Moriarty to appear simultaneously on both of our TVs. (It seems like a good omen.) Judith Light is going to appear later. It’s exciting!

2. Overall, I thought the pilot was very good. I didn’t read any reviews prior to watching it, but I saw a lot of tweets indicating that several TV critics thought it was very different than The People vs. OJ, and people who want what they got from OJ might be taken aback. Personally, I didn’t expect them to be particularly similar, but that is perhaps because I knew I wouldn’t have the same personal connection regardless. I think it was very well-acted — Darren Criss is great; it’s too soon to tell how Penelope Cruz is, as Donatella, but (a) even mediocre Penelope Cruz is probably gonna be pretty good, and (b) Donatella is a tough role to shoulder thanks to SNL.

2b. I did think there was one false note — and I am interested to hear from those of you who lived in Miami and/or followed this more closely than I did about others. When Detective Will Chase is questioning Ricky Martin, Det. Will Chase seems perplexed by the idea that Ricky Martin and Versace are romantic partners whose relationship is sexually non-monogamous. It’s 1997 Miami: There is no way he hasn’t come across that scenario before. I would not have been particularly phased by that at the time if I stumbled across it in the lives of some extremely rich adults, and I was a 22 year old with very little life experience. (I did read a lot of books, though.)

3. The tile in this thing is EXCEPTIONAL.

What did you think? As ever, I also recommend reading the coverage at Vanity Fair, which obviously covered this AT LENGTH when it happened, as Terrible Things Happening To Rich People is right in their wheelhouse.

(PS: There is one slide within that is potentially NSFW.)

And very familiar underpants for anyone who ever read a fashion magazine in the mid-90s. (Also: the ceiling in this bathroom! Amazing! This entire pilot was like, LOOK AT THIS ROOOOM!!)

Something I didn’t know, which I found really interesting, was how close Versace’s house was to the main drag there in Miami. He literally walked out the front gate and was on the street, free to be molested by looky-loos, or, tragically, shot. Obviously, this is the case for famous people in MANY cities in the world – New York, London – but I always think of Miami as being like Los Angeles, in that many if not all of the more overwhelmingly grand homes are set further back from the street. I say this with the expertise of someone who has only flown through the Miami airport and knows it from The Golden Girls, so. You know. Expertise!!

Andrew Cunanun had this in his bag along with his gun and I swear to god I checked this book out of the library once myself. (It is out of print now.)

This mansion has so many frescos. SO MANY. (I enjoy a good mural/fresco, as you know. Basically, I hate a bare wall.)

The floors are ALSO dramatic. Mr Versace was a maximalist and I am here for it.

This is basically like a tiny, Miami Hearst castle.

A little sad foreshadowing here. (Diana wore a lot of Versace; including, if I recall correctly, in the editorial in this issue of VF.)

Raise your hand if you knew a dude who owned this shirt. (I certainly did.) The late 90s were replete with Versace knock-offs for dudes.

I thought it was interesting how much this episode focused on the way Andrew changed his clothing to suit wherever he was going – from borrowing his brother-in-law’s conservative Armani-ish suits for the opera, to literally wearing an ascot and cordoroy blazer to Cal, where he is (preending to be) a student. (He lies a lot, about everything, and people can tell.)

This poor child, on the other hand, is NOT true to my memory of being part of the UC system in the mid-90s. Sweet summer lover, wander over to a group of kindly girls and let them fix you a bit. You’re in the English department! WE LOVED TO MAKE PEOPLE OVER. Anyhoods, I hope this sad noodle with the terrible sweater who loves Andrew does not die.

It’s possible I have done this myself and I’m concerned about what that means for me.

I was not going to deny you Darren Criss’s butt, even though he is playing a sociopath.

This gown is quite stunning.

Is it a successful date if there is no harp? Asking for a friend.

I just wanted to note that, so far, Ricky Martin is very good in this part and that, in general, I am ready for Ricky Martin to be very famous again. You young people don’t even know how EXCITING it was when those of us who didn’t know about rocky Martin were introduced to him at the Grammys in 1999, when he sang Cup of Life in leather pants.

Will Chase, however, looks vaguely absurd in these glasses and that stache. He looks like he’s an actor playing an actor playing a cop.

I am here for this, however.

THESE WALLS ARE AMAZING. I CAN’T STOP SCREAMING ABOUT THEM.

I will note that I felt as if some of the blah blah about the Versace business felt a bit tonally out of place in this episode; in a sense, I think it worked well to establish that Donatella is a smart woman in her own right, but I’m not sure if the audience totally cares about stock options at this moment?

Ryan Murphy directed this episode and I forgot how much he loves an overhead shot. (It was well – and very dramatically – directed, because Ryan Murphy is a much better director than he is a writer. I don’t believe he wrote any of these episodes, which bodes well for the show.)

I TOLD YOU Cathy Moriarty would show up!

I know shit is bad right now, Donatella, but you look very glamorous whilst in mourning.

Schmidt, on the other hand, has looked MUCH BETTER.

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace