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American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace

American Crime Story has proven to be an anthology series that focuses on various social issues. Season 1 followed the O.J. Simpson trial, which turned out to be a great vehicle for examining race in America. The best episodes of that season, like “Marcia Marcia Marcia,” used the intersection of race and gender to paint a devastating portrait of a moment in American life. The second season attempts the same kind of exploration, but for the gay male experience in the United States.

Season 2 of American Crime Story doesn’t succeed as completely as Season 1, partially because Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), the killer at the center of this story, isn’t the same towering cultural figure that Simpson was. Cunanan’s victims, including an aging closeted real estate developer, a man trying to balance his identity as a naval officer and a gay man, and of course, the fashion designer Gianni Versace, prove far more interesting and compelling vessels for exploring this season’s themes. And the lesser episodes are sometimes limited by the depth of their subjects.

ACS: Versace isn’t perfect, but the best episodes (penned by London Spy writer Tom Rob Smith) stand among the top TV of the year. In particular, the pilot, which examines Versace’s complicated and luxurious South Beach lifestyle, and “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” which follows Lt. Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock) as he makes the decision to out himself and end his naval career, will stick with you long after the credits roll.

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American Crime Story

Network: FX

Ryan Murphy and writer Tom Rob Smith had a tough act to follow with the second season of American Crime Story. Veteran biopic writers, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, had already delivered one of the best seasons of television of all time with their work on The People Vs. OJ Simpson which had been released during the run-up to the election, and when the realities of race and gender in America were a daily conversation.

While the second season of the show didn’t receive the same universal critical acclaim or ratings buzz that the show saw in season one, it was no less affecting as a cultural critique.

If season one, more or less, was about race and gender, season two, more or less, was about the LGBTQ experience and the different roads that Gianni Versace, Andrew Cunanan, Jeff Trail, and Lee Miglin were forced to take.

By telling all of these different stories, Murphy and Smith ask us to reflect on the gay experience in America, both in terms of how far we’ve come, and in terms of how far we still have to go.

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