The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap: “House by the Lake”

Interestingly enough, The Assassination of Gianni Versace chose to present another episode without, well, Versace. However, I am not complaining because it means lots and lots of Darren Criss channeling Andrew Cunanan–a role for which he is most definitely snagging an Emmy nomination.

This week we continue to learn about the murders that transpire before Versace’s untimely demise. The episode begins a week before Lee Miglin’s murder in Minneapolis, Minnesota with Andrew and his ex-lover, David Madson (Cody Fern). From the emotional tension of the scenes that follow, we learn that Andrew was rejected by David after he proposed to him–and believes that Madson is having an affair with their friend, Jeff (played by Murphy favorite, Finn Wittrock).

Cunanan’s psychotic crazy starts to pour out as he struggles with Madson’s rejection–and then proceeds to brutally murder Jeff with a claw hammer, aka his very first murder. After witnessing Andrew calmly take someone’s life, David tries to convince him to call the police. As we have learned, Cunanan’s ability to manipulate and emotionally blackmail is next-level and he uses this on David to stop him. He tells him that David will be arrested for being an accomplice to the murder–so, now what?

Whether out of obsession, love, or madness, Cunanan clings to Madson’s side after the murder. David’s absence at work alarms his co-worker who comes knocking on his door looking for him. Before they have a chance to enter and discover the both of them with Jeff’s body, Andrew and David flee the apartment.

Throughout the season, it’s alarming and strange that Cunanan shows no concern about leaving damning evidence behind–whether it’s the murder weapon or the body itself. With the help of the super, the co-worker gets into David’s apartment only to discover the scene of a gruesome murder. However, they initially mistake the dead body for David’s.

The co-worker recalls that David had a friend that was staying with him by the name of “Cuy-nan-nan”. The case takes a twist when the cops realize the body is not David’s because of the dark hair. This places the blame on David for the murder.

Meanwhile, Andrew whisks David away on a road trip–final destination, Mexico. The episode consists of a series of flashbacks showing David as a child and as a teenager coming out to his father. These moments come full circle in the final moments of the episode, but we’ll get to that later.

Andrew tries to connect with David as he maniacally jams out to music and tells him to begin “planning his new life.” While Andrew dreams of their future, David is riddled with paranoia over someone recognizing them, in the case the murder has been reported.

Meanwhile, the authorities visit David’s parents to report that he is a suspect in an ongoing murder investigation. At the same moment, David shares his concerns about his parents being affected with Andrew–who could probably care less. A moment of freedom grazes by David when they decide to take a pit stop at a bar. He breaks the bathroom window but surprisingly returns to Andrew to resume their trip.

This trip, however, is the end of David’s life. As much as Andrew tries to resist his psychopathic tendencies, he finds them taking over when David begins to attack him and calls him fake. The episode closes out with David and Andrew literally next to a house on the lake, where Andrew shoots him in the back and then in the face.

In his final moments, David hallucinates his father and snaps back for his final minute of life. The episode fades out with Andrew lying next to David’s dead body–his face oddly calm and peaceful.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace is diving head-first into the mind of Cunanan and his brutal, spastic murders. While we experience this horrifying journey through Cunanan’s mind, it highlights a very frightening crime story in America’s history. Now that we have seen all four of Cunanan’s murders, it begs the question–where will the story go from here? And will next week’s episode lead us back to Gianni and his story? I guess we will have to wait until next week to find out!

Episode four opens in Minneapolis, 1997, one week before the events of last week’s episode. A young architect, David Madson, probes Cunanan about an argument that occurred a few days ago. Cunanan suggests he has no regrets about the words he spoke.

Another young man, Jeffrey Trail, comes over, and the two whisper about Cunanan asking for David’s hand in marriage before re-entering the apartment. The conversation between Trail and Madson indicates a deep amount of pity for Andrew, but it also hints at the secret affair they were having behind Andrew’s back.

As soon as the door opens, Andrew attacks Trail with a hammer, killing him. In shock, David demands that Andrew call the police. Manipulatively, Andrew claims that Madson will be implicated in the killing and will probably wind up in jail himself.

“They hate us. They’ve always hated us,” says Andrew of the police.

Andrew manages to convince Madson to refrain from contacting his family as well. Andrew starts preparing for the body’s disposal. He’s eerily calm.

Madson, slowly, begins to help.

“I promise you, no one else will get hurt. As long as you’re by my side,” says Cunanan.

A building manager and a concerned co-worker swing by David’s apartment after he fails to show up at work. Cunanan and David have already fled, leaving behind David’s dog. The co-worker discovers blood-stained floors and walls.

The co-worker mistakes the body she discovers for David’s. When police arrive to investigate, they reach for gloves when they find out David is gay. Police start hypothesizing about what went down.

“All this extreme stuff, it goes wrong,” one says upon finding gay porn and a paddle. They assume the murder pertains to an anonymous sexual encounter.

Upon interviewing the co-worker more, they learn David had a guest this past weekend. After further inspection, they realize the body is not David’s, but then mistakenly assume that it’s Andrew’s. They leave to obtain a search warrant and assert that David was likely the murderer.

A flashback: David as a child. His father is taking him on a hunting trip. David is horrified by the sight of a dead animal. His father reproaches him for his terror, but seems understanding of his disgust.

“I never want you to be sad,” says his father.

Back in ‘97, Andrew tells David he’s going to find Lee Miglin to get some funds for an escape to Mexico.

“We make such a great team, and the truth is we have no one else,” says Andrew. David stares off into the distance, somewhat dissociated.

At a rest stop, David thinks a woman is looking at them with disdain. Andrew threatens to run her off the road, but David begs him not to. Later, David tells Andrew about his fear of being discovered and of all the secrets the police will tell his family.

“Was I really afraid, when I got in this car with you, that you were going to kill me?” David asks. “Or was I afraid of the disgrace, the shame of it all? Is that what I’m running from?”

David and Andrew stop at a bar for something to eat. David goes to the bathroom and contemplates escaping through a window, but doesn’t.

Another flashback: David’s father congratulates him for perfect grades. David says that he’s gay.

“You know what I believe,” his father replies. “What I can say is that I love you more than my own life.”

In ’97 again, David recalls the night he met Andrew and describes his envy over Andrew’s riches — until he realized that Andrew’s whole life was a lie.

“You can’t do it, can you?”

“Do what?”

“Stop.”

In the car, David accuses Andrew of planning the killing. David tries to get Andrew to pull over, and Andrew pulls a gun.

“It’s not real.”

“It could have been.”

Fleeing from gunfire, David is shot in the back by Cunanan. In his last breaths, he has visions of his father’s kindness. Andrew drives away.

For two episodes now, “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace” has not shown the Versace family. Instead, Murphy has chosen to create a melancholic diptych on the hideous power of gay shame and loneliness. Andrew’s victims (at least in Murphy’s imagination) were not salacious interlocutors, nor were they complicit in Cunanan’s bloody rampage.

Instead, they were unwitting participants in the psychodrama of a deeply disturbed man — victimized as much by Cunanan himself as by the homophobic society that forced them to bury their desires. His victims’ internalized self-hatred, fortified and created by the intolerance of the world they occupied, are what bound them to Cunanan.

‘American Crime Story’ Episode 4 Spotlights The Loneliness Of Andrew Cunanan’s Victims

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace S02E04: House by the Lake

ANOTHER EPISODE THAT PLAYS TO THE SHOW’S STRENGTHS, WHICH IS NOT THE VERSACE FAMILY

This season of American Crime Story looks a lot different to what many were expecting after the first four episodes. The show which has Versace in the title has misplaced him for the last two episodes and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that this is the right way to tell this story. Versace, his murder, and his relationships, while set up and teased in the opening episodes, have taken a backseat to Andrew Cunanan: it’s TV, the murderer is always more important than the victim, even if the victim is famous.

House by the Lake continues looking backwards to understand Andrew’s actions, why he killed the people he killed, and the mistakes made by the police that contributed to the failure to catch him. While A Random Killing was a superb episode, and still the best episode of the season, House by the Lake is by far the most important. Due to Andrew’s actions in this episode we now have a full account of the murders he committed, yet we still don’t have all of the info to consider why he did these awful things. The Andrew Cunanan we know is a psychotic killer, but he didn’t start out that way.

What’s really refreshing about the series so far is how important Andrew’s victims are to the story. The crime genre, especially serial killer stories, has a tendency to dehumanize the victims of crimes into nothing more than plot points. Crime shows are usually about the “why?” rather than the “who”, but Andrew’s victims are allowed to have their own internal lives as well as being a tool for Andrew’s story. If you haven’t already guessed by now this is Andrew’s story: the show, and the book that it’s based on have used Versace’s pull, his name recognition as a way to entice us into the story of the man who murdered him.

Just as A Random Killing was about how Andrew destroyed the Miglin’s, House by the Lake is about David Madson. Madson was Andrew’s second victim but he may be the most significant one due to his role in the murder of Andrew’s first victim, Jeff Trail. According to Maureen Orth’s book, Andrew was in love with both Jeff and David. While the series hasn’t touched on the beginning of Andrew’s relationships with both men, and Jeff is still to be explored as a character in his own right, a lot can be learned by the way Andrew chose to end them.

David Madson is perhaps the most interesting of Andrew’s victims for what he represents to Andrew. In the second episode we hear Andrew refer to the love of his life that died, which is certainly a reference to his feelings for David. The murder of Jeff is important as it’s Andrew’s first, but the reasons for this seem to be twofold. The first is that he obviously wanted Jeff dead, as David points out later in the episode Andrew planned the scenario. The second is that the murder of Jeff was a way to tie David to him in a way that he couldn’t escape.

The murder itself is absolutely chilling, and if you didn’t know it was coming it’s all the more shocking. As scary as this is, it’s Andrew’s behaviour towards David in the aftermath that is much more frightening. He almost mothers a traumatised David, cleaning David and himself in the shower. Once David comes to Andrew quickly manipulates the situation to trap David, playing up his culpability by his very presence when Jeff was killed. Andrew is like a clingy lover, which is probably how he sees himself, bulling the weaker David into submission.

They then go on the run, to start a new life in Mexico which Andrew will fund through his relationship with Lee Miglin, but David is always looking for the possibility of escape. Even when he gets the opportunity, his own fears stop him from climbing out the bathroom window; going back to Andrew instead. David stays with Andrew for the tragic reason of his own fear of being “found out”. Not only does he think that he will be accused of murder, but he also fears that the magazines and S&M equipment Andrew left on his bed will make him a pervert in the eyes of his family.

What’s most enlightening about David being centre stage is how he pokes holes in Andrew’s image. Like many David was attracted to Andrew because of his confidence, his generosity, and his illusion of infinite resources. He vows to himself that he would work as hard as possible to achieve the same amount of wealth, and that’s how he’s different. Where David is genuine Andrew is a fake, where David works for his achievements Andrew makes his up. It’s know coincidence that Andrew’s victims, except for William Reese who was a case of convenience, Andrew kills men that have achieved the success and stature that he craves but won’t work for.

It’s deeper than that with David though. You get a sense from Darren Criss’ performance that the need for David to love Andrew feels real until he knows it’s impossible. Except Andrew is incapable of being real: there is a good chance that the emotion he exhibits listening to Amy Mann, and how it informs his need for David is just another piece of fiction to make him feel like a real person, not a child that destroys someone when they disappoint them.

9/10 – I know many people are wondering where the Versace family is, but I feel like this season needs to spend this time with Andrew, to peel back the motives and effects of his crimes to get a clearer bearing on the road that leads him to Versace.

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace S02E04: House by the Lake

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’

‘American Crime Story’ Goes On A Gruesome Road Trip Without Gianni [RECAP] – Towleroad

You’re not alone if you confused last night’s episode of American Crime Story for an installment of American Horror Story instead. While last season’s The People v. O.J. Simpson meticulously recreated the courtroom drama of the O.J. Simpson trial, last night’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a bit more akin to If I Did It.

Last night’s episode also marked the second week in a row where The Assassination of Gianni Versace was completely Versace-less. Instead, we stepped back even further in time to trace Andrew’s first two grisly murders. It was a tense hour-plus of television, anchored once again by a chilling performance from Darren Criss. (Give this boy an Emmy nom, folks, he’s quite literally killing it.) It also amounted to one of the more surreal and stylistic episodes given how little substantiated details the team had to work with.

Plus, Aimee Mann showed up looking and sounding beautiful.

Let’s review in our recap, below.

April 27, 1997 (one week before Lee Miglin’s murder)

Andrew is crashing with a young, successful architect, David Madson. They’re exes, but obviously Andrew’s feelings have been lingering longer than David’s. Andrew invited their friend Jeff over, and, look at that, here he is. Now, David, be a dear and let Jeffrey in.

David heads downstairs to grab Jeff, played by Ryan Murphy regular Finn Wittrock. Surely Wittrock — with his dark features and previous experience playing a handsome murderer on American Horror Story: Freak Show — was a leading contender to play Cunanan. In this story, he’s Jeff Trail, an ex-Navy guy and All-American beefcake.

On their way up, David tells Jeff that Andrew proposed to him, but David demured, reminding Andrew they can’t get married, legally. (Remember those days?) He also tells Jeff that Andrew believes Jeff is the reason David is in love with him. Jeff tells David that Andrew stole his gun. Uh oh.

When the guys enter the apartment, Andrew is waiting with a hammer that he uses to bash Jeff lifeless with 25-30 blows, splattering blood all over the walls and floor and David and every other conceivable surface. It’s a gruesome scene, to say the least, and it leaves David in shock.

Andrew lovingly guides David into the shower and gently scrubs him down. He promises not to hurt David, and a horrifying stand-off takes place. Andrew isn’t going to leave David alone long enough to do anything stupid, like rat him out, so they spend a tense evening in a stand-off. Even when David goes to walk his dog, Prints, Andrew accompanies him.

David wants to call the police, but Andrew convinces him that if the police come, they’re not going to see David as a victim, they’re going to see him as a suspect. Once they realize he’s gay, all their prejudices will blind them.

In fact, Andrew is banking on it. After a co-worker comes to check on why David didn’t show up to work, they need to make a quick getaway. Andrew leaves a lot of gay porn and sex toys around the bedroom to be sure the cops know exactly the kind of man that lives there.

He wasn’t wrong. The cops first assume it’s David’s body left behind rolled in a rug. Once they realize the body has black hair, while David is a blonde, they assume, as Andrew suspected, David is the killer. They think Andrew is the corpse. Eventually, the medical examiner finds Jeff’s ID, but David is still a suspect.

The cops go to David’s parents for more info, but they can’t believe David would ever hurt a fly. The cops smugly tell David’s parents that there’s probably a lot they don’t know about their son — a very pointed reference to David’s sexuality.

However, David’s father knows he was gay. Their relationship is a central part of American Crime Story’s interpretation of David’s story. We see flashbacks of David and his father throughout, including seeing them on a hunting trip where David can barely handle the anguish of murdering a duck. Later, we witness David’s coming out. (His dad didn’t approve, but reaffirmed that he loved him anyway, which wasn’t the worst reaction for the time.)

And yet, David worries about his family and their friends learning about his life after Andrew kills him. He wonders aloud while on the run with Andrew if he’s more scared of being murdered or disgraced — a central theme of this season that’s been wielded more bluntly than any of Cunanan’s murder weapons.

If that feels like a convenient thematic overlap to Cunanan’s other victims, it is. The days spent between Jeff’s murder and David’s end are largely a mystery to investigators. Like Lee Miglin and parts of Gianni Versace’s murder, details are scarce, so the show has taken advantage of lots of poetic license to reinforce the ways Cunanan’s sexuality hampered the investigation into his murders.

In this version, Andrew is convinced he and David are going to escape to Mexico and live happily ever after. He refuses to acknowledge that David is his hostage, not the Bonnie to his Clyde. Throughout their early time on the road, he bops merrily along to “Pump Up the Jam” as if this is a Crossroads-style, fun little road trip.

They stop at a divey bar (where alt-rock icon Aimee Mann is playing), and David finally has his chance to escape. He retreats to the restroom, knocks out the window, but where is he gonna go? Will the police believe him? Will Andrew catch him?

Instead, he returns to the table and takes Andrew’s hands into his own as Andrew weeps. It’s an emotional scene, but what emotion exactly is hard to say.

The next day at a diner, David recounts when he met Andrew for the first time in San Francisco. Andrew seemed so rich and worldly. Now he sees through Andrew’s whole act. He’s a fraud. All of it is a lie, and he can’t stop lying.

Back on the road, an increasingly desperate David attempts to grab the wheel and run them off the desolate road they’re driving down. Now perturbed and unable to ignore David’s anger toward him any longer, Andrew drives over to a nearby lake and marches David out of the car.

Facing imminent death, David does his best to try and convince Andrew to spare him, but it’s no use. Andrew raises his gun and David takes off toward the nearby lakehouse.

We see him make it inside, but then his dad is sitting there, just as he was when they went hunting when he was younger. It’s clearly a hallucination/metaphor, and we quickly see David’s true fate: He was shot in the back and then in the face.

Andrew lays beside his body for a bit, before heading back on the road, leaving David’s body behind.

Next week, we jump back yet again to when Andrew met Jeff, and I’m unsure how I’m feeling about it. In isolation, this week’s episode of ACS was a gripping, tense ride. But it felt like a different show. This is The Assassination of Gianni Versace, not The Assassination of Lee Miglin or David Madson. Their stories are important and relevant, but we’re two weeks gone by with nary a marble bust or golden medallion in sight. It’s still much more restrained than Glee or American Horror Story at its most unhinged, but I’m worried Versace is losing its focus, if not thematically, at least aesthetically.

What did you think of the episode?

‘American Crime Story’ Goes On A Gruesome Road Trip Without Gianni [RECAP] – Towleroad

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 4 Recap: Andrew Cunanan Claims His First Two Victims

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story has again put forth an episode that doesn’t feature the titular fashion designer at all, instead focusing on recreating Andrew Cunanan’s string of murders that culminated in Versace’s death. Episode four moves backward in time another week, to the end of April 1997, when Cunanan started his killing spree in Minneapolis.

The two victims are Jeff Trail and David Madson, whose relationships with Cunanan and each other in real life are a bit unclear. No one knows for sure that Trail and Madson were secretly involved with each other and no one knows for sure if Trail and Cunanan were ever more than friends. What is known is that Cunanan was romantically involved with Madson, but according to the police, Madson ended the relationship months before the murders.

On the show, Trail is invited to Madson’s apartment by Cunanan for the express purpose of killing him (which in Cunanan’s mind will free Madson up to be with him). Trail is barely inside the loft before Cunanan bludgeons him to death with a hammer as Madson looks on, horrified. Cunanan tries to explain that he just snapped, and it seems Madson “believes him,” though Madson is obviously terrified for his own life and going along with whatever Cunanan tells him.

Cunanan rolls Trail’s body up in a rug and the two eventually leave in Madson’s Jeep. Cunanan thinks they’re running away together, while Madson is portrayed as a kidnapping victim. When the police find Trail’s body, they initially think Madson is the killer — and in fact, investigators couldn’t definitively prove whether Madson was an accomplice or simply a victim, though nothing ever gave them a reason to think he was anything other than a victim. But once they identified Trail’s body and then later found Madson’s body, investigators decided Cunanan was acting alone.

Before that, though, Cunanan and Madson flee for several days together, with Madson growing increasingly fearful for his life. He muses about being branded a murderer when Trail’s body is found (he doesn’t know that police have already found it) and what that will do to his poor parents. Cunanan, meanwhile, is acting like everything is fine and the two of them are going to live happily ever after. It’s interesting to think about what would have happened if Madson never tried to flee. Cunanan probably would have killed Madson eventually either way, but maybe not before he was caught and charged with Trail’s murder.

We’ll never know, of course, but it’s interesting to think about. However, after three days on the run with Cunanan, Madson tries to escape during one of their stops and is gunned down near a lake north of Minneapolis. Intercut with the kidnapping are flashes of Madson’s childhood and his relationship with his father, who wasn’t thrilled with his son being gay but accepted and loved him nonetheless. It’s a very effective choice on the part of the show because it humanizes Madson in a way that none of the other victims has been humanized so far. The depiction of Lee Miglin last week was strong, but not nearly as poignant as that of Madson’s portrayal.

Trail and Madson’s murders really seem like the product of psychosis and jealousy. The American Crime Story executive producers told me at the 2018 TCA winter press tour that they wanted to examine how Cunanan came to be a spree killer, but so far it mostly seems like he’s just a psychotic, angry, unstable man. Perhaps as the season works its way further and further backward in the timeline, some of that will become clear.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 4 Recap: Andrew Cunanan Claims His First Two Victims

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 4 Recap: Drive

“You can’t do it, can you?” “I can’t what?” “Stop.”

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is what Matt Zoller Seitz once described, by way of a subtitle to his blog, as “a long, strange journey toward a retrospectively inevitable destination” — the titular murder, seen in the cold open of the very first episode. We’ve already seen where we’re going; what’s left to the show is to depict how we got there. Even those swept along and killed by Andrew Cunanan during the journey seem to sense it. Hence the exchange above. Promising young architect David Madson is the love of Andrew’s life, to hear Andrew tell it. He’s a man to whom the murderer is so fanatically committed that he not only slaughters his rival for David’s affections, his own former love interest Jeff Trail, with a hammer, thus beginning his murder spree, but then manages to convince the shellshocked David that he has some how become an accomplice to the crime and must flee by his side. As time wears on and the shock wears off, David grows less pliable to Andrew’s nonsensical advice and admonishments, but also more honest with himself about where his journey as the Bonnie to Andrew’s would-be Clyde will end. He has no more hope of survival than Andrew has a chance of shutting the fuck up and telling the truth. He can’t do it, can he.

Or can he? “House by the Lake” is the second “murder spotlight” episode of ACS Versace in a row, revealing the fate of victims one and two and tantalizingly hinting at the paths the two men walked to put them in Cunanan’s crosshairs in the first place. They’re old California acquaintances since relocated to Minneapolis, where David seems reasonably well-situated to begin a career on a par with the soon-to-be late Lee Miglin’s. Andrew can’t have that — not unless he can have David too, which Jeff renders impossible. So Andrew hoodwinks David into luring Jeff to his death, venting a lifetime of frustration, resentment, and hatred into the man’s skull. “I lost control,” he manages to reassure David half-apologetically, after he bathes the stunned witness clean of all the blood he’s been splattered with. “I love you.” Later, as they walk David’s dog together to keep up appearances, Andrew says “I promise you no one else will get hurt as long as you’re by my side.” They begin a road trip. You can guess how it ends.

The most compelling contrast between “House by the Lake” and its predecessor, “A Random Killing” — as well as the assassination of Gianni Versace itself — is that at this point, Andrew may well believe what he’s saying. He killed Jeff to punish Jeff, yes, that’s clear enough. But he also killed him as a means to an end: a fantasy life with David over the border into Mexico. The operative word there is, of course, life. At this early stage in the spree, Andrew still harbors delusions about being able to move on, escape, perhaps even thrive. To paraphrase his final words to Lee Miglin before he crushed the man’s chest with construction materials, he’s not out to simply destroy. He still wants to build.

What brings it all crashing down is David’s ability to see through it, even if Andrew himself can’t bring himself to do so. Eventually, David realizes that Andrew sent him to let Jeff into his apartment building that awful night rather than doing it himself so that he could incriminate David in the eyes of the law. (Which indeed he did, as well-intentioned but obliviously bigoted cops treat David like a suspect and sex freak at every point in their investigation, wasting time they could have spent saving his life.) He unsuccessfully seizes the wheel of their getaway car, demands they call the police about the murder even as Andrew draws a gun on him in the middle of nowhere. “It’s not real,” he insists. “It could have been,” Andrew replies. “No,” he insists once more. “It couldn’t.”

The episode is structured by writer Tom Rob Smith and director Daniel Minahan (an early Game of Thrones veteran) to contrast the flight of fancy constructed by the murderous Andrew, and David’s ability to see through it, with this relationship’s flipside: flashbacks to earlier times in David’s life, when he feared his deviation from traditional masculinity would incur his father’s anger, only to discover his dad was a loving, forgiving figure. When Mr. Madson takes little David hunting and the kid freaks out, it’s no big deal — hunting’s not for everyone, and besides, they can just go for a walk together. When David graduates college at the top of his class and uses the occasion to finally come out, his dad’s a bit taken aback from a moral perspective, but that takes a serious back seat to his abiding love for his son, which he expresses in no uncertain terms. He’s so sincere and supportive, in fact, that he wonders why David chose now of all times to tell him, leaving the younger man almost embarrassed at the crude “good news/bad news” approach he’d chosen to adopt. During David’s fatal flight from the law, the cops keep insisting to his parents that he’s up to no good, and that he has deep dark secrets from them. The fact that they don’t know shit is one of the most sadly satisfying moments in the whole sordid affair.

There are many darkly funny moments along the way as well. There’s Andrew’s absurd attempt to blow off David’s concerns about getting caught at the border: “Well I’ve been moving product across the border for years.” (This takes place during a lunchbreak that had me thinking the inane phrase “A man, a plan, a sandwich, Cunanan.”) There’s the entire grim splatstick routine that takes place at David’s apartment as various cops and friends and neighbors try to figure out exactly whose ruined corpse is rolled up in a carpet. There’s David’s heartsick, self-contemptuous monologue about being more worried about being disgraced than being killed, which we now know Andrew will plagiarize virtually word for word when he murders Lee Miglin in a few days. There are all the different ways the police mangle Andrew’s last name (my favorite is “Cunainoon”) and the ridiculous descriptions of himself he threw around in front of David’s friends (“a Jewish millionaire from New York”?). Here’s also as good a place as any to praise the casting of Cody Fern and Finn Wittrock as David and Jeff respectively: two all-American boys.

But I’m saving my final praise for Darren Criss as Andrew one more time. Not just for the delicate balance he must strike around David between unpredictable violence and careful reassurance throughout the episode, nor even for his final act of tenderness toward his victim (who’d hallucinated a reunion with his father before dying) — curling up with the corpse for a last embrace before driving away. No, the highlight here is the endless closeup on Criss/Cunanan’s face as he listens to a roadhouse performance of the Cars’ “Drive” by guest star Aimee Mann while his beloved victim sneaks off to the men’s room, debating whether or not to try and flee. He breaks before your eyes, there’s no other way to put it, and he does so over the same sentiment David will eventually express to him, getting himself killed in the process: “You can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong.”

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 4 Recap: Drive

The Fourth Episode of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Isn’t as Legit as It Seems

Here’s what we know about David Madson’s life in the days leading up to his murder: On Friday, April 25, 1997, Andrew Cunanan took a one-way flight from his home in San Diego to Minneapolis to visit his old friend Jeff Trail and former boyfriend Madson. Although Madson wasn’t thrilled to see Cunanan, the young architect did reluctantly host his ex at his loft.

They were spotted at restaurants, bars, and clubs, but after dinner on Saturday, they parted ways. Trail, who had no desire to spend time with Cunanan, had left town with his boyfriend and invited Cunanan to stay in his empty room Saturday night. While it’s not clear whether Cunanan slept at Trail’s place, he was there Sunday morning and back at Madson’s the same evening. At nine that night, Trail got in his car to meet Cunanan at a coffee shop. By 10 PM, Trail was dead.

The coffee shop meetup hadn’t happened, so Trail had come to Madson’s building. Evidence suggests Cunanan killed his friend almost immediately after his arrival, landing his first blow with the door open. It’s possible Madson was home at the time, but in Vulgar Favors, the book this season of American Crime Story is based on, author Maureen Orth judges it “unlikely.” He didn’t show up for work Monday; a neighbor saw two men, one of whom appeared to be Madson, walking a dog that could have been Madson’s on Tuesday morning. The same day, concerned that he’d neither come in to the office nor called in sick, two women Madson knew through work knocked on his door. One thought she heard whispers.

An hour after another neighbor spotted Cunanan and a distraught-looking Madson approaching the building, the women returned with the lofts’ caretaker, opened the door, found the body, saw that the apartment was empty, and called the police. Because his acquaintances knew Madson was gay—and because Cunanan had left a bag containing gay porn videos, steroids, and bullets—Sergeant Bob Tichich’s first guess was that Madson was the victim, and the crime was “a gay thing.”

As Trail’s parents learned of his death (and, then, his homosexuality), Cunanan and Madson were on the run. On May 3, two fisherman in rural Chisago County, Minnesota, found Madson’s body near East Rush Lake. He’d been shot three times with a gun Cunanan had stolen from Trail, and sustained defensive wounds. It’s unclear how long Madson lived; Orth pokes holes in a coroner’s report that puts his date of death at May 2 and debunks a bar owner’s claim to have served Madson and Cunanan that afternoon. The sighting turned out to have happened on April 27, and the two men who visited the bar were, in all likelihood, an entirely different gay couple.

All of which is to say that most of last night’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace episode, “House by the Lake,” was invented by writer Tom Rob Smith. Which is fine! There’s nothing wrong with a docudrama using some artistic license. And in the case of this episode, many of the choices must have been made out of necessity—much of the hour finds Andrew and David alone, and two dead men can’t exactly go on record about their road trip.

So: Did Andrew purposely leave his porn stash at David’s loft? Were they on the road together for several days? Once they left Minneapolis, did Andrew intend for them to go to Chicago and then Mexico together? Did the plan unravel when David started poking holes in Andrew’s Natural Born Killers fantasy? The answer to all of these questions—not to mention the one about the scene where Aimee Mann covers The Cars’ “Drive” at a roadhouse—is “We don’t have the faintest clue.”

In keeping with the show’s running theme, Smith constructs a story about homophobia and the way Andrew uses it to manipulate another gay man. When David tries to call the police, Andrew convinces him that they’d see him as a perpetrator, too. “They hate us, David,” he says. “You’re a fag.” He’s not entirely wrong: the cops really do assume David’s queerness has something to do with the murder, and that Jeff’s body is initially presumed to be David’s and that David, not Andrew, becomes a suspect when police see he’s not the corpse—both of which really happened—imply that the straight world saw these gay men as virtually interchangeable.

The line between the crime of murder and the crime of homosexuality (sodomy didn’t become legal across the United States until 2003) blurs. When the fugitives leave a rest stop, with Andrew’s arm slung over David’s shoulder, a woman gives them a dirty look. David is convinced that she recognizes them as wanted criminals, but the implication is that she was simply revolted to see two gay men. Before and after that encounter, David has plenty of opportunities to escape. He and Andrew walk the dog together before leaving Minneapolis. They stop at restaurants. But David only tries to bolt when he’s alone, by the side of the highway or in the bathroom of the roadhouse, even when Andrew’s behavior becomes more threatening. The big question surrounding Madson’s murder is: Why didn’t he run? As Smith imagines it, he was more afraid of putting himself at the mercy of a homophobic world than he was of a known killer.

David’s fear of his own difference is echoed in the moment when he comes out to his father. He can only summon the courage to do it after winning a prestigious academic award, and though his dad tells David, “I love you more than I love my own life,” he also reiterates that his son’s lifestyle doesn’t jibe with his own beliefs and that the revelation does, in fact, change something about their relationship. (The stuff about David’s close relationship with his family is true, by the way.) You can imagine a lifetime of interactions like this convincing someone that, if even his adoring family sees him as somehow “other,” he had no chance pleading his case to police.

It’s a well-constructed episode. The conversations between Andrew and David are rich with psychological subtext, and even if Smith sometimes states the obvious, he’s careful not to repeat it too often. Actor Cody Fern plays David, by all accounts a kind, talented, and hardworking guy, with heartbreaking sensitivity. Each episode of Versace has had a slightly different feel, and this one was a psychological thriller. From the claustrophobic shots of hallways to the bleak, low-lit, industrial interiors of David’s loft to multiple scenes where Andrew startles him—and us—by appearing as if out of nowhere, it’s eerie from beginning to end.

But I’m kind of frustrated by the liberties it takes with David Madson’s life. He’s painted as a sympathetic character, sure, but is placing him in the loft at the time of Jeff Trail’s murder, when he most likely was not there, absolutely necessary? How about framing him as stupid enough to get back in the car, after the ill-fated diner pit stop, with a killer he’d just read as hard as Jeff once had? What was the point of that moment, in the elevator, when David nervously tells Jeff (who, in real life, spent most of the weekend with his boyfriend), “He knows about us”?

Of course Smith has a right to fictionalize. Even so, Madson wasn’t a public figure like Gianni Versace or Lee Miglin, and I felt sick thinking of how those scenes would look to his family and friends. So I’ll leave you with a quote from Bridget Read’s review of Versace for Vogue, which perfectly sums up my conflicted feelings on “House by the Lake”: “We don’t have to hold all creative works about real-life suffering to the standards of what would hurt or offend surviving family members, but after watching a fictional Cunanan—whose real-life counterpart craved perhaps nothing so much as the type of fame bestowed by a prestige TV series—sadistically torture and humiliate his victims in fine detail, it’s hard not to feel like maybe we should.”

The Fourth Episode of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Isn’t as Legit as It Seems

AMERICAN CRIME STORY Review: “House By the Lake”

With its fourth episode, entitled “House By the Lake,” this season of American Crime Story is really starting to take shape for me. Off the bat, I was expecting it to go like this: a murder involving a high profile figure happens, a media hoopla ensues, followed by a trial where we get a little more into the head of the accused while simultaneously forcing us to take a look at how we were as a society and culture at the time, the end. That’s more or less how The People Vs. O.J. Simpson went. But I did not know the story around The Assassination of Gianni Versace. I never heard the name Andrew Cunanan before this. And so when the first three episodes were not what I expected them to be, I was a little thrown.

It is apparent now that this series, though we have the bulk of the season still ahead of us, will be most memorably about the killer Andrew Cunanan, and what led him to commit these atrocities. Everyone else thus far has taken a back seat. The last two episodes did not even feature Gianni, his love Antonio D’Amico, or his sister Donatella (played by Ricky Martin and Penelope Cruz respectively, who you would think other networks besides FX would fret over putting on the bench for weeks at a time). Last week’s episode was another jump back in time before the murder of Gianni Versace, which we saw in episode one, that time focusing on the murder of Chicago architect and closeted homosexual Lee Miglin. This week we go back in time not long before those events to Minneapolis, where Cunanan was staying with his boyfriend David Madson (Cody Fern).

It is another eerie opener. We now have a sense of what a simultaneous loose canon and calculating monster Andrew Cunanon can be so almost every scene, every line he delivers, is filled with tension. Nobody is safe around him (that is, if you’re like me and don’t recall the actual events). Living in the warehouse district of Minneapolis, David just lands a big job over the phone and is excited to share with Andrew. Andrew is not so pleased. He’s invited their mutual friend Jeff Trail up to the apartment, which David isn’t happy about. He’s about to get a whole lot less happy.

When Andrew brings Jeff up to the apartment, Andrew immediately besieges him and beats him to a bloody death with a hammer. David sit in shock. If you’re the type that yells at the screen, you would probably do a lot of hollering at David this episode. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t call the police (well, he does once, but hangs up when Andrew passively threatens him with a gun). And that’s exactly why this episode stands out from almost any of the series to date, especially season one. We don’t have any record of what went down between David and Andrew. Why didn’t he run? The writers have to piece things together, and can only go off assumptions, whereas almost every corner of People Vs. O.J had been well laid out for them.

We know that Andrew and David stayed in David’s apartment for two days after the murder of Jeff. We know that they were seen walking David’s dog together the day before they ran off, leaving Jeff’s body wrapped in a rug in the apartment. We do not know for certain whether David was an accomplice or a sort of prisoner of Andrew’s. The writers decide to play him as innocent, too afraid of Andrew to make any big moves, eventually coming along for the ride with him to Chicago to see Lee.

But it’s in this vagueness the writers find some time to insert interesting character studies, even if they are just conjecture. David later in the episode questions if he ran with Andrew because he was afraid of him, because he wanted to avoid jail time, or… was it because he was afraid what the world would inevitably find out about him, i.e. his homosexuality? What does this say about how hostile we were (perhaps still are) as a society towards gays when a man would rather go on the run with a murderer than come out of the closet and face us?

Through an effective series of flashbacks to when David was younger in which he interacts with his blue-collar father, the writers and Fern create a character that feels real and that we are sad to see go by the end. We knew it was coming because we know that David is not present with Cunanan in Chicago when he meets with Lee. In the end, he tries to get away and Cunanan executes him, leaving him in a field off an interstate highway. Another tragic, senseless death under Andrew’s belt.

Next week I assume we will flash back earlier than Minneapolis, though I also understand if the writers take us back to the present to show us what is going on with the Versaces post-death. But I am really digging this criminal profile of Cunanan and how they are unfolding it. I almost would be okay with the rest of the episodes were just surrounding him (Darren Criss is killing it, in more way than one). But I finally get what they are doing and am completely on board after being hesitant the first few weeks.

AMERICAN CRIME STORY Review: “House By the Lake”