The Assassination of Giani Versace is back after a two-week hiatus, and Episode 6 delves into the not-quite-yet-murderous—but still utterly horrifying—Andrew Cunanan of 1995. Though he’s still repressing his violent urges at this point, Cunanan’s relentless thirst is on full display during his 26th birthday party in California, a lavish and deeply fraught affair that ends up marking the start of Andrew’s descent into violent madness.

Here are five talking points from tonight’s appropriately titled episode, “Descent.”

1) The opening moments emphasize the biggest fact vs. fiction divide in this show.

In brief: Andrew Cunanan’s physique. In Vulgar Favors, the book upon which this series is based, author Maureen Orth notes on several occasions that Cunanan gained a large amount of weight towards the end of his life. Unusual for a crystal meth user, he had a big appetite, and was apparently self-conscious about his body in contrast to the chiseled physique that was de rigueur in the gay community. Let’s just say that this is not the case with Darren Criss’s Cunanan, whose slammin’ bod has been on display in earlier episodes this season, and is highlighted in this week’s opening sequence.

Andrew arrives at a palatial house in California, strips naked and takes a swim in the pool. It’s the kind of ostentatiously luxurious setting in which he’s most at home—but of course, the house is not his. It belongs to Norman Blachford, the wealthy older man who allegedly “kept” and bankrolled Cunanan for several years before the murders. Though the real-life nature of Cunanan and Blachford’s relationship is still unknown to this day, American Crime Story posits them as a couple. On the show, Andrew tries to pretend he’s just Norman’s interior designer, and that he has his own apartment back in New York, but the truth behind their “arrangement” is clear to everyone who attends the party.

2) Despite being entirely murder-free, Andrew’s birthday party is the show’s most excruciating sequence yet.

Despite his involvement with Norman, Andrew still thinks he can have it both ways—he’ll keep the wealthy older companion to pay for his lifestyle, while also pursuing what he sees as true love with David. “He’s a future,” Andrew tells Lizzie of David, “and so far I’ve only dated the past.” He’s determined to win David, and in order to do that, he wants to transform himself into “someone David can love.” This sounds like a touching sentiment, until you remember that it’s coming from Andrew Cunanan.

Andrew’s version of being “someone David can love” turns out to mean peacocking— and he ropes poor Jeff Trail, who at this point is still a real friend, into playing along. He gives Jeff a lavish gift to give back to him at the party, which is one of the most obnoxiously extra moves I have ever seen on screen—not to mention rude as hell, since Jeff brought an actual gift—and also gives him a nicer pair of shoes to wear. Jeff draws the line at pretending to still be a naval officer, and later in the episode, he and Andrew come to blows over that postcard we heard about in Episode 4, with Jeff openly accusing Andrew of trying to out him.

Andrew’s lies are beginning to catch up with him and clash with each other, and the party sequence culminates with a photograph that really sums up this messy collision of Andrew’s two worlds. On one side of Andrew, Norman and Lee Miglin; on the other, David and Jeff, who have only just met but have already struck up a warm, easy rapport that’s infuriating Andrew. “It’s everyone I love in one photo!” Andrew coos, but there’s a manic glint in his eyes from this point on, and it never really goes away.

3) Norman’s friend David is having none of Andrew’s nonsense.

And it’s deeply enjoyable to watch. This David sees through Andrew from minute one of the party, and it’s clear from their interaction that their mutual dislike goes back some way. David sees Andrew as the opportunist he is, taking advantage of Norman in a vulnerable moment following the death of Norman’s longtime partner from AIDS.

“What a volatile mix you are,” David tells Andrew, in one of several catty, telling, exchanges. “Too lazy to work, and too proud to be kept.” That line lays the groundwork for Norman and Andrew’s eventual separation, which comes after Andrew presents a list of absurd demands to Norman in exchange for continuing their relationship. By now, Norman has looked into Andrew enough to figure out that “Andrew De Silva” is an alias, and just about everything he’s ever said about his past is a lie.

What’s amazing, though, is that all this lying isn’t a deal-breaker for Norman—he’s willing to overlook it. What he’s not willing to overlook is Andrew’s laziness, and when he offers to pay for Andrew to go back to college and finish his degree, it prompts a rare moment of honesty. “What is it about education and work that you find so insulting?” asks Norman, to which Andrew spits, “It’s ordinary!” They’re at a stalemate, and so Andrew smashes a glass table and storms out with the admittedly fabulous closing line “I expect you to call.” Spoiler: Norman will not call.

4) There was, at one point, the possibility of something real between Andrew and David.

Thanks to the show’s reverse chronology, the history of these relationships is deliberately ambiguous, and so it hasn’t been clear up until now whether Andrew’s obsession with David is fully delusional, or whether it sprung from something real. But “Descent” suggests that it’s the latter. Andrew makes yet another desperate grand gesture, flying David first-class to California for a spontaneous getaway at a luxury hotel, and though David is clearly on his guard, he still seems somewhat genuinely charmed.

“I wanted to see if we could take the next step,” he admits to Andrew, but tells him that their first night together in San Francisco—a meeting we’re yet to see onscreen—meant more to Andrew than it did to David. “I get the feeling you don’t have that many great nights with people,” David says, with real empathy. “So when you do, it feels huge.”

Andrew insists he’s willing to do anything if David will give their relationship a chance, so David calls his bluff and asks him to tell the truth. “Get rid of all this,” he says, moving them away from the lavish three-course room service dinner and earnestly asking Andrew to give him a genuine response for once.

And for a few seconds, it feels like Andrew might actually do it. He begins to tell what seems to be truth about his father, a stockbroker for Merrill Lynch who has now returned to the Philippines. But then the truth gives way to a lie, and David gets visibly sadder and angrier as the lies keep coming. As it turns out, telling the truth about himself is the one thing Andrew won’t do, even for David.

5) Andrew Cunanan and Gianni Versace meet again.

In a crystal meth-fueled dream sequence after his getaway with David falls apart, Andrew visits Versace’s store, where Gianni himself is waiting to serve him. Bathed in hellish red lighting, Andrew complains about how many people have taken and taken from him, and how “this world has wasted me, while it has turned you, Mr. Versace, into a star.”

Dream Gianni is calmly taking Andrew’s measurements through this rant, but when Andrew tries to draw a parallel between their lives, he has to object. “You think you’re better than me, but we’re the same,“ Andrew says. "The only difference is you got lucky.” Gianni’s reply cuts right to the heart of everything that drives Andrew’s rage: “Not the only difference, sir. I’m loved.”

What’s interesting about this is it’s an overt dream sequence, but Gianni and Andrew’s opera date in the first episode can also be interpreted as a dream—even Darren Criss himself is not convinced it wasn’t. “As we were shooting it, I was like, Is this just in Andrew’s head?” he told Esquire. “We don’t know! The grandeur of the show in general is almost like a machination of Andrew’s brain. There’s a beauty and a color and a sweeping, operatic feel to the show that feels like we’re seeing it through the eyes of an unreliable narrator.”

6) Andrew’s visit to his mother is a sad, scary interlude that hints at the upbringing that shaped him.

On the one hand, Andrew’s mother is clearly devoted to him—she’s ecstatic to see him, and bathes him while singing an Italian lullaby, a sequence that’s simultaneously moving and creepy. On the other, though, her love seems extremely conditional on Andrew’s success. Everything she says to him, almost without exception, is about his “accomplishments,“ which are, of course, pure fiction. She’s particularly thrilled that Andrew is traveling the world with Gianni Versace designing costumes for operas. She’s so preoccupied with his success that she’s not actually listening to him at all, and chooses not to notice that he’s clearly in crisis; when he says outright that he’s unhappy, she acts as though he hasn’t spoken. As it turns out, this visit to his mother’s house came right before Andrew’s visit to Minneapolis, where his murder spree began. “They have an opera house in Minneapolis?” his mom asks, sunnily, and in a truly great line delivery from Criss, Andrew replies: “No, mom. I don’t think they do.”

Tonight’s ‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Sees Andrew Cunanan Slowly Unravel

Last week’s episode of American Crime Story introduced Finn Wittrock as Jeffrey Trail—a sometime-close friend of Andrew Cunnan’s—just moments before a jealous Cunanan brutally murdered him. This week, as the show’s reverse chronology continues, Episode 5, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” delves into Trail’s backstory, his troubled time in the Navy, and how he first came to befriend Cunanan. We also return to Minneapolis to chronicle the last few days before Cunanan’s murder spree began. Spoiler alert: they are excruciating, and not for murder reasons.

And after two full weeks away from the Versaces, this episode reintroduces their storyline, paralleling Trail’s experience with the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy with Gianni’s groundbreaking decision to come out as gay in The Advocate—much to the consternation of Donatella, who’s concerned this will negatively impact the business.

Here are five talking points from The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Episode 5, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”

1) Andrew Cunanan pre-murder spree is somehow more unsettling than actual murderer Andrew Cunanan.

Look, I know this might seem like a weird stance, but at least once Cunanan flipped into murder mode, there was no ambiguity about what we were dealing with. In the four episodes we’ve seen so far, he’s a murderer, but in “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” he is merely the most extreme Stage Five Clinger ever witnessed onscreen. His ability to completely ignore social cues and boundaries is breathtaking and deeply stressful. The portions of this episode that I spent hiding behind my hands were not the ones you’d expect; Trail trying to cut off his own tattoo is grisly, sure, but I’ll take that any day over Cunanan’s proposal of marriage to a horrified Madson, or his desperate attempts to insert himself into Madson’s life. When he yelled “Friend? I’m more than a friend!” I actually tried to crawl inside my chair. It became hard to tell the difference between Prints the dog’s whimpering and my own.

In any case, we learn that Cunanan winds up in Minneapolis because he’s run out of money in California and is living in a very creepy hovel injecting heroin between his toes. He goes to Trail because he knows Trail feels indebted to him, for reasons that become clear later in the episode. He’s also determined to lock down Madson, who he calls “the man I want to spend the rest of my life with,“ but Madson wants no part of him, for reasons that also become clear later in the episode.

Ultimately, Trail lets Cunanan stay at his apartment for one night of Cunanan’s Minneapolis trip, while Trail is out of town on "business"—i.e., avoiding Cunanan while staying with his sister. In a deeply disquieting scene that also leads us into a flashback to Trail’s days in the Navy, Cunanan sneaks into Trail’s bedroom, goes through his closet, finds his old uniform, and just puts it on. He also steals Trail’s gun, which he will ultimately use to kill Madson, Reese, Versace, and himself. Wearing Trail’s full regalia, Cunanan watches a videotape of an old CBS News documentary about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, in which a soldier—his face in shadow—describes a harrowing experience. He saved a “closeted gay sailor” from being beaten to death, but now regrets it, because it made his colleagues suspicious that he is gay.

2) The scenes depicting Trail’s time in the Navy are some of the show’s saddest and most brutal.

Cut to two years earlier, with the revelation that that soldier speaking in the video isTrail. The opening moments of this episode have already made it clear that Trail harbors a lot of anger about leaving the Navy; in a scene from 1997, he flips out at an unsuspecting co-worker when asked why he left the Navy. Later in the episode, we see Trail save the closeted soldier from being killed, then comfort him with a hug—a moment witnessed by a mustachioed, homophobic fellow soldier. From that moment on, it’s clear to Trail that he is a target.

After hearing that another gay officer was offered an honorable discharge on the condition that he give the Navy a list of identifying tattoos on the men he’d been involved with, Trail tries to cut his tattoo off his own leg. It’s a truly harrowing scene, matched by one shortly after, in which Trail tries to hang himself, but changes his mind at the last moment. It’s seemingly right after this awful moment that Trail takes a walk into town, and ends up at a gay bar—where he meets Andrew Cunanan.

3) This episode shows us, for the first time, a genuinely charming Andrew Cunanan.

Seeing Cunanan in the past also illustrates how far he’s fallen in the present. The only thing he ever had to offer was being entertaining and charismatic, and it got him a long way. Now that he’s making everyone around him deeply uncomfortable, there’s really no way back for him.

But in this bar, it’s completely clear why Trail would be drawn to Cunanan. He’s intriguing and fun and worldly without being intimidating, and he gently makes fun of Trail’s admission that this is his first time at a gay bar. Before they start talking, Trail is so overwhelmed that he almost walks right back out of the bar, but Cunanan makes this muscular, aggressively neon-lit world seem welcoming. When Trail thanks him for “stopping this night from being a humiliation,” Cunanan responds, “I feel like I’m part of your history. You’re going to remember this moment.” Not inaccurate.

4) Gianni Versace returns… but only as a framing device for the Trail/Cunanan storyline.

We’ve all pretty much accepted at this point that despite its title, this is not a show about Gianni Versace. And after two full weeks without a single Versace on screen, Gianni’s storyline is woven back into this episode, but only peripherally. After years of never having officially confirmed his sexuality, Gianni wants to come out as gay publicly in an interview with The Advocate. But Donatella is hostile to the idea, and initially blames Gianni’s partner, Antonio D’Amico, accusing him of being publicity-hungry. He claps back: “I know my place. Unlike you.”

Donatella tries to convince Gianni that coming out will impact their business both abroad—in countries where homosexuality is still illegal—and at home, where rock stars and royalty may no longer want to be associated with him. “At least we keep Elton, no?” Gianni responds, because everyone is really on their clapback game in this scene. “You live in isolation, surrounded by beauty and kindness,” Donatella tells him. “You have forgotten how ugly the world can be.”

But Gianni is determined, and so we see The Advocate interview intercut with Trail’s CBS interview; one as triumphant and moving as the other is unceremonious and bleak. Strange though it feels to agree with Cunanan on anything, he’s not wrong in what he says to Trail about his CBS interview. While the homophobic soldiers who don’t want gay people to serve in the military are in their uniforms, facing the camera proudly, Cunanan notes, the gay soldiers like Trail have to be interviewed “in the shadows, with your face distorted, like a criminal.” This is crushing because it’s clear Trail didn’t get the catharsis he hoped for from the interview. In fact, it likely made things worse for him.

5) Between this episode and Get Out, Froot Loops may now officially be the chosen cereal of villains.

Cunanan is just chilling with a bowl of Froot Loops while waiting for Trail to come home. He’s not eating the cereal separately from the milk, like Allison Williams’ truly deranged Get Out character, but nevertheless, this has been a rough year for Froot Loops onscreen. Do only sociopaths enjoy this beloved cereal?

6) Trail and Madson both have specific reasons for turning on Cunanan.

The fact that Cunanan is creepy and demanding and has no boundaries played a role, probably, but we also learn two new pieces of information this week, which shed light on why these relationships soured.

Madson is getting increasingly uncomfortable with Cunanan, who ultimately proposes to him in this episode—much to Madson’s discomfort.

Trail, meanwhile, is angry at Cunanan for sending a postcard to his father which effectively outed him—it was signed “Drew xx,” and while Cunanan claims it was an honest mistake, Trail’s not buying it. Given his lack of boundaries and desire to control Madson’s life, neither am I.

Additionally, Trail seems to blame Cunanan for the way his life has turned out, specifically the dissolution of his military career. The details of exactly why are vague—probably because there are a lot of gaps in the known facts about this relationship—but Trail tells Cunanan that he wants his life back and wants nothing to do with Cunanan. “When I found you that night at the bar, I was there for you. I saved you,” Cunanan yells, to which Trail responds: “You destroyed me. I wish I’d never met you.” But the real kicker is when Cunanan tries to declare his (past tense) love for Trail, and Trail spits: “No one wants your love!” This, more than anything, seems to be the line that tips Cunanan over the edge into violence. A few hours after this exchange, he shows up at Madson’s loft, coerces Trail into come over by revealing that he has the gun, and then waits behind the door, claw hammer in hand.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Explores Andrew Cunanan & Jeff Trail’s Complicated Friendship

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is not generally interested in making us feel sorry for Andrew Cunanan. The reverse chronological structure of his storyline actually ensures the opposite; we begin with Cunanan at his most monstrous, at the tail end of his killing spree, and throughout the season gradually move backwards, to explore his descent and his origin story. But while tonight’s episode is bookended by Cunanan’s first and second murders—the first physically gruesome, the second psychologically so—it features Darren Criss’s most vulnerable performance yet.

The episode introduces Cunanan’s first two victims, Jeffrey Trail (Finn Wittrock) and David Madson (Cody Fern), whose murders were rooted in a long and complicated personal history with the killer. As with Miglin last week, much of what we see in this episode is speculation rather than confirmed fact, but it’s true that Cunanan considered Trail a very close friend, and Madson and Cunanan were exes—Cunanan called him “the love of my life,” and that intense unrequited love becomes the focus of tonight’s episode.

Here, six talking points from The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Episode 4, “House By The Lake.”

1) Cunanan, Trail and Madson share a very complicated history.

Though we won’t see the full backstory of this trio’s past until later in the season, the dialogue early in this episode gives us enough clues to piece the following together: Cunanan proposed to Madson recently, telling him he was “the man of his dreams, his last chance at happiness.” Madson said no, and Cunanan thinks Trail is the reason why. “Did you tell him that he’s the reason you said no?” Trail asks Madson of Cunanan, shadily but understandably—it’s clear this is a friendship of obligation at this point, and neither Trail nor Madson would be that sorry if they never saw Cunanan again. But Trail and Madson’s dialogue suggests that Cunanan is not wrong to be jealous of their relationship (“He knows about us.”)

There’s also been some kind of bitter recent argument between Cunanan and Madson, and while Madson tries to apologize, Cunanan seems disinterested and just emotionally off, and that’s before it turns out that he’s invited Trail over unannounced. Madson is irritated—but not for long, because within a few minutes he’s watching in numb terror as Cunanan beats Trail to death with a claw hammer.

2) What happened in the six days between Trail’s murder and the discovery of Madson’s body is a huge question mark.

As this episode shows, investigators had good reason to assume that Madson and Cunanan had conspired together to kill Trail, and that Madson went on the run willingly with Cunanan. This is one of the big gaps in the known facts, and so ACS writer Tom Rob Smith has to decide on a narrative: that Cunanan coerced Madson into joining him on the run by convincing him the police would never believe he’s innocent—basically, his life will be ruined if he stays behind. “I can’t allow that to happen, David,” Cunanan says, his voice breaking with faux-emotion. “I can’t allow this to destroy your life.”

It works. Even though people are now seeing through the elaborate lies that used to work for him, and he’s getting sloppy in his manic, violent state, Cunanan is still a masterful emotional manipulator. He also uses the homophobia of the period as a tool to persuade Madson that he can’t trust the police: “They hate us, David. They’ve always hated us. You’re a fag.” And there’s a lick of truth here; the local police are indeed shown jumping to a lot of conclusions about Madson’s “lifestyle,” and by extension, his culpability, when they discover he’s gay.

3) Cunanan is disturbingly emotionless throughout most of this episode—with two striking exceptions.

Even though these are his first murders, Cunanan is completely impassive after killing both Trail and Madson, despite considering the first to be “his brother” and the second “the love of his life.“ It’s textbook sociopathic behavior, which makes the two scenes in which he unravels all the more powerful.

A day or two into their terrifying road trip, Cunanan and Madson pull into a roadside bar where Aimee Mann is singing a mournful cover of The Cars’ "Drive,” because why not? (What a delightful, unexpected cameo this was.) Madson goes to the bathroom, leaving Cunanan alone to watch the song and take in its lyrics: “You can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong / Who’s gonna drive you home tonight?” In a 90-second unbroken take, the camera slowly pulls in on Darren Criss’ face as Cunanan starts to cry, seemingly understanding for a brief moment that Madson may not be coming back.

Though Madson does consider trying to escape through the bathroom window, he does ultimately come back, and for a moment I feel like pure garbage because there’s a tiny part of me that is like “Yay! He came back!” That feeling did not last long.

The second showing of emotion from Cunanan is much scarier, and ends with him spiraling into a murderous rage. Madson finally reaches his breaking point with Cunanan’s delusions, and sharply cuts dead any possibility of their future together. Which is… understandable, but not the right move when you know you’re with a violent lunatic currently in possession of his last murder victim’s gun, David!

4) David Madson gets just enough backstory to make his murder genuinely upsetting.

Madson’s first scene introduces him as an ambitious young architect, elated by the news that he’s just been given a huge opportunity at work. Cunanan, staying at his apartment, immediately kills the mood with a dead-eyed, flat-voiced “I’m so happy for you!”

Later on the road, as Madson is looking back on his life in flashes—maybe because he subconsciously knows he doesn’t have long to live—he remembers coming out to his father, whose reaction lands in a very subtle, complex middle ground. He’s not thrilled, but he doesn’t reject his son, either, and though the scene’s not idyllic, it’s still touching. “I won’t lie and say that it doesn’t make a difference,” Madson’s father says. “You know what I believe… You wanted to be told I don’t have a problem with that. I can’t say that. But what I can say is that I love you more than I love my own life.” This becomes even more affecting in the episodes final moments, when a dying Trail has a vision of running to safety inside a lakeside cabin, where his father is waiting for him.

5) Dogs always know what’s up.

Poor Prints! And props to that doggo actor for his impressive dramatic whimpering. I knew from the source material that a neighbor really did see Cunanan and Madson walking the dog, and by extension, that the dog did not end up dead, but that did not reduce my stress level even slightly when Cunanan calmly announced he was “taking Prints for a walk.” Even before the murder, this is not a guy I would leave alone with my pet.

6) Cunanan is living out a delusional romantic fantasy with Madson.

And it’s chilling to watch. From the moment of the murder onwards, Cunanan slips into the role of a supportive, loving boyfriend, holding the traumatized Madson close and telling him “It’s all gonna be okay” while literally spattered with Trail’s blood. Almost as bad as committing a grisly murder is using that grisly murder as a reason to get naked in the shower with the ex you never got over, amirite?

Cunanan tries to pretend he’s being realistic about what the future holds for him and Madson once they get across the border to Mexico. “I know you probably want to part ways once we get there. I respect that,” Cunana tells him. “But we make such a great team, and the truth is, we have no one else.” And it seems for a while like Madson might actually be coming around to Cunanan’s rose-tinted view—over breakfast, the pair reminisce about the night they met in San Francisco. Cunanan sent a drink over to Madson, inviting him to join his high-society circle, and brought him back to his suite at the Mandarin Oriental. “I thought, what’s this guy gonna see in me?” Madson admits, before his tone shifts. He goes on to recall how he realized the truth: “You’ve never worked for anything. It was all an act.” And that line in the trailer—“You can’t do it, can you? Stop.”—was not about murder, as it turns out, but lying. That’s Cunanan’s real compulsion.

After being so eerily dispassionate through the episode, Cunanan finally flips out when Madson needles him one time too many, pulling the car over and pulling out the gun while screaming, “We had a future, David!” And though Madson, terrified, tries to walk his rejection back, it’s too late. Cunanan shoots him dead, then curls up tenderly with his body for a while. Though I’ve been getting Talented Mr. Ripley vibes from Cunanan throughout the series, this is the most overt homage yet.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Introduces the Unrequited Love of Andrew Cunanan’s Life