‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Recap: Andrew Starts His Killing Spree

This is where it starts. In the first three episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace we’ve seen Andrew Cunanan murder three people. But in his entire spree, he killed a total of five. This episode, “House by the Lake,” reveals the start of Cunanan’s deadly rampage with his first two murders.

It’s also another chance to completely abandon the Versace storyline and introduce two brand-new characters, though one is very brief. Like with Lee Miglin last week, we meet these characters at the end of their lives, not knowing the full details of Andrew’s relationships with them.

The Murder of Jeff Trail

The episode opens on April 27, 1997, one week before the murder of Lee Miglin, in Minneapolis. We’re at the apartment of David Madson, a young architect who just landed a big opportunity at work. Andrew is there and David hopes they can stay friends, though it turns out Andrew recently asked David to marry him and got shot down.

A guy named Jeff shows up and Andrew is being more creepy than usual. David goes downstairs to let Jeff in and they talk about how Andrew blames him because David is really in love with Jeff, and it sounds like the two are indeed secretly hooking up.

Jeff is wary of Andrew, saying that he doesn’t trust him anymore and he only came over because Andrew stole his gun. When they enter the apartment, Andrew immediately bludgeons Jeff Trail to death with a hammer. That was sudden, and David is understandably freaked out and paralyzed with fear.

Andrew is a total psycho in this scene, hugging David and promising him that it’s all going to be OK as he ’s covered in blood and still holding the hammer.

The Apartment from Hell

What follows is a nightmarish scenario where David is basically held hostage in his apartment with a murderous sociopath. Andrew is eerily calm while David is scared for his life. David wants to call the police, but Andrew spins a tale about how the cops won’t believe that David had nothing to do with it because they hate gays and he’ll go to jail too for 10 years as an accomplice. David calls 911, but then hangs up because Andrew is very persuasive, mostly because he’s holding the gun.

David goes along with it out of pure self-preservation, trying to ensure that Andrew doesn’t kill him or anyone else. David keeps attempting to find a solution, but Andrew shoots them all down. When David’s co-worker comes to check on him, Andrew and David flee while the woman and the building’s super discovery Jeff’s dead body wrapped in a rug.

It’s a tense and thrilling section of the episode, filled with terror and dread, though since we don’t fully understand their relationship, it doesn’t quite work as a part of the whole series. At this point, American Crime Story season 2 is more of a loose sketch show with strong individual scenes, but not much of a coherent overall narrative.

The Police Investigation

The cops show up to investigate and at first they think David is the victim. The police immediately suspect that the killing was a result of some random gay hook-up involving deviant sex, because of their own biases about gay culture. They’re more preoccupied by the non-working buzzer in the building than the case itself.

David’s co-worker tells the cops that his friend Andrew was staying with him for the weekend and she didn’t trust him. When the cops take a closer look at the body and realize he has dark hair, not blond like David, they conclude that Andrew is the victim and David killed him. The cops are making a lot of sloppy assumptions in this case, which is certainly a theme throughout the series.

Eventually the cops figure out that the body is Jeff Trail, leading them to suspect that David and Andrew killed him together. They talk to David’s parents, and his dad is certain that his son couldn’t have done this.

David’s Memories

As Andrew and David drive away, David remembers a hunting trip with his dad, who was very supportive when David was upset by a duck being shot. We also see a flashback of David coming out to his dad, which is beautiful.

“Do you mind if I take a moment” is his dad’s response. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing.” He adds that he still has his beliefs and he does have a problem with it, but “I love you more than I love my own life.” It’s simple, but perfect.

Road Trip

Back in 1997, Andrew explains that he knows a rich guy in Chicago named Lee Miglin, a close friend who he can get some money from so they can run off to Mexico together. David is still uneasy, reflecting on the possibility that he’s running away from the shame of being gay.

They stop at a bar and Andrew listens to a woman playing “Drive” by the Cars and he gets emotional, tearing up. Am I supposed to feel sorry for him? Because I don’t. He’s a psychotic, murderous monster and humanizing him feels wrong at this point.

The next day at a diner, David explains that they met a year and a half ago in San Francisco. Andrew seemed rich and sophisticated and David was so impressed with him. David’s just a small-town boy who was taken by Andrew’s lavish lifestyle. But now he realizes it was all a lie. He says that Jeff saw who Andrew really was and that’s why he killed him.

Andrew deflects and continues to ramble about how splendid their life in Mexico will be. As they drive away, David pushes harder that Andrew planned the murder all along. David has finally come out of his dazed, surreal stupor and gets angry. Andrew snaps, pulls the car over and forces David to his knees while he points the gun at him.

The Death of David Madson

Andrew, in full delusion, demands that David go along with his plan to live happily ever after in Mexico. David pleads for his life, pretending to go along with it, but Andrew doesn’t believe him. David implores him to stop this and go to the police.

“It’s not real,” David says.
“It could’ve been,” Andrew replies meekly.
“No, it couldn’t,” David adds.

Andrew turns around for a second and David runs for a shed as Andrew shoots at him. David reaches the shed, but it’s a memory of the hunting cabin he visited with his dad inside, offering him some coffee to recreate his happiest childhood moment.

In reality, Andrew shot David and he falls to the gound, gasping for air. Andrew walks over and shoots him again in the eye, killing David. It’s a tragic and somber way to end the episode.

Did you feel sorry for Andrew as he listened to the song at the bar?

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: A series of terrible decisions

We gave it an A-

We’re continuing backwards through Andrew Cunanan’s past, now all the way back to Minneapolis, one week before the murder of Lee Miglin in Chicago.

Cunanan is a master at ingratiating himself to people, worming his way into their lives and becoming close to them before he flips and reveals his terrifying face beneath the mask. That seems to be the situation with architect David Madson, with whom Cunanan appears to share a slightly tense but intimate relationship.

David is on the phone with his company and learns that he’ll be able to give a big presentation. “I’m so happy for you,” Cunanan says with ice in his voice. Everything about his body language is sinister: the slight hunch in the shoulders, the rigidity with which his arms fall to his side. As an actor, Criss has mastered the inexplicably creepy mannerisms of a killer.

Cunanan is about to take the dog for a walk when the buzzer rings — it’s Jeff, and Cunanan tells David to go let him in. “Give you a chance to talk about me,” Cunanan says, bitterly jealous. And they do talk about him: David and Jeff have both gotten Cunanan’s number; they know he’s strange, and a liar. They laugh about him. Until they get back to the apartment and David hears the dog whining from where it’s tied to a table. Cunanan slams the door shut and brutally beats Jeff to death with a hammer, splattering the entire apartment in blood and leaving his face red with American Psycho splotches.

“It’s okay,” Cunanan says, cooing to the stunned David. Still in a daze, understandably, David allows himself to be led to the bathroom, to be showered, and to not fight too hard when Cunanan tells him not to call the police. He does it with the slime of a practiced manipulator: They’ll lock you up to, people hate us for being gay, your dad will have to turn you in if you tell him. And David — perhaps too stunned to think rationally, or too scared by the gun in Cunanan’s waistband, agrees. “No one else will get hurt as long as you’re by my side,” Cunanan says.

The police show up to the apartment after one of David’s coworkers comes with the landlady to be let in, knowing that David would never just not show up to work. By then, Cunanan and David are long gone, David terrified into complicity and Cunanan getting what he wanted all along: the two of them stuck together, partners in crime, without Jeff around to steal any affection.

The police make the logical assumption that it’s David’s body rolled into the rug and guess that — based on the gay pornography on the bed — he had had a romantic encounter that turned sour and the murderer split. A neighbor lets them know that he had a man staying with him that weekend, an “Andrew Cunaynin?” who had black hair, unlike David’s blond. And so the body becomes Cunanan in the policemen’s minds. They leave as soon as they realize that the corpse isn’t David: It means he’s still alive and they’re in his apartment without a search warrant. Everything they find could be inadmissible evidence in court. Eventually they come to the truth: They find Jeff’s wallet and realize the true identity of the body — but not until David and Cunanan have gotten a hefty head start on their twisted road trip.

This episode is called “The House by the Lake” because it’s what David fantasizes about — the place he went with his dad when he was younger. They drank coffee together. David’s dad tried to get him to help him hunt, but it terrified young David. “I never want you to be sad,” his dad says in the car as they leave, telling him it’s okay that he doesn’t like hunting. That relationship between David and his father is at the core of this episode, which could have been just a bloody procedural crime-style episode. We’re anchored around David — the way he came to terms with his sexuality and how rooted he is by his father’s perception of him. That’s where his mind goes when he and Cunanan are driving. He wonders how his parents will react when they find out what happens.

David is rightfully terrified by the way a woman glares at them in a parking lot, but Cunanan is unfazed. He correctly assesses that she’s looking at them “like she hates [them]” because they’re gay, not because their crime has been reported. Cunanan is the same cool, calculating manipulator he’s always been, at least until the two stop in a bar (where Aimee Mann is playing guitar, in a cameo). David says he needs to go to the bathroom and breaks the tiny window above the toilet seat, contemplating escape. Cunanan just sits at the table, listening to the live music until he finally breaks down into sobs, the most genuine emotion we’ve seen from him, as if his first murder was able to crack though his exoskeleton into whatever exists beneath.

David, in his worst decision in a series of terrible decisions, returns to the table and touches Cunanan’s hand. We see in a flashback how he told his father he was gay. He falls asleep in the car, and when he wakes up, it’s as if they’re on a different world. The car is stopped in the woods; Cunanan seems to be gone, and David wanders without shoes. Until reality comes back, and Cunanan reappears from behind a tree, bearing his gun.

In a diner, David reminisces about the night he and Cunanan met with something akin to reverence: Cunanan had seemed so worldly and wealthy, outrageously popular and sophisticated. The two had stayed in an expensive hotel room, and David had told himself he would work as hard as he possibly could to be as successful as Cunanan had appeared to be. But it was all a lie, and David realizes that now. Cunanan never worked for anything. He was a skilled liar and manipulator and killed Jeff because he was in love with him and Jeff had seen what Cunanan really was. And here is David’s fatal mistake: He lets Cunanan know he sees it too.

The two drive in miserable tension for a while, while Cunanan repeats, “I don’t want to talk about it.” Their entire plan, the future he envisioned for them, required David’s love and respect. He has no use for this bitter and resentful man who sees him as a fraud.

“Why couldn’t you run away with me?” Cunanan asks when he’s out of the car, pointing a gun at David. “We had a future, David.” The past tense is essential there. David tries in vain to convince him that they still have a future, that he can lie and play the part Cunanan wants, but it’s too late. David runs, and Cunanan shoots him in the back.

David imagines making it to a shack in the field, opening the door, and finding his dad — they’re back in the house by the lake, and his dad is offering him a cup of coffee. But it’s just a fantasy. He’s lying on the ground, bleeding out, and Cunanan stands over him and shoots him in the face. Cunanan spoons David’s dead body for a while before getting back in the car.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: A series of terrible decisions

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

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

‘American Crime Story’ Recap: Andrew Savagely Murders A Friend & Former Lover

This episode starts out on April 27, 1997, exactly one week before Lee Miglin’s murder. Andrew is in the midst of an argument with David Madson, his former lover. Andrew is acting closed off and robotic. David goes downstairs to get their friend Jeff Trail. David tells Jeff that Andrew proposed. Jeff seems indifferent to Andrew. “He knows about us,” David says to Jeff, who doesn’t believe it. Jeff never wants to see Andrew again. He’s just here to get his gun back from Andrew. But Jeff walks right into his own grave. Andrew attacks Jeff with a claw hammer the second he walks through the door. Andrew hits him over and over again. Jeff’s blood spatters everywhere.

David watches it all go down in horror. Afterwards, Andrew calmly walks over and hugs David. He tries to comfort David. Andrew pulls David into the shower to clean him. “Are you going to kill me?” David asks. Andrew says no, but you can tell David doesn’t believe him. David starts to freak out and wants to call the police. David gives Andrew some space, but when he walks into the living area later, Andrew still hasn’t called. Andrew starts spinning a narrative that could implicate David in the crime. This is David’s apartment, and David is the one who brought Jeff up in the first place. David calls 911, and that’s the first time Andrew seems uneasy. He quickly pulls his gun out and waves it in front of David, which pushes David to hang up the phone.

Andrew says the police will see two suspects, not two victims. David just wants to call his dad. Andrew manipulates David every which way and won’t let him leave. David suddenly realizes that walking the dog could be his way out. As David and Andrew try to leave the apartment, they both realize Jeff’s body is still lying there after Andrew slaughtered him. Andrew doesn’t waste any time grabbing a rug and rolling Jeff’s body up in it. Andrew tells David to look away. David helps him move Jeff’s body across the apartment. Andrew cleans up the blood, and David just watches completely shell-shocked. Andrew stresses that no one else will get hurt as long as David stays by his side.

David’s co-worker Linda comes to check on him after he doesn’t show up to work. When the landlord opens the door, David and Andrew are gone. Detectives Tichich and Jackson arrive. They think the body is David’s body. Linda tells them about Andrew. When she says David’s hair is blond, Tichich checks the body and finds the victim as brown hair. Tichich thinks it’s actually Andrew! He believes David is still alive and the police don’t have a search warrant for the apartment, so the whole case could be compromised. The detectives think David is the killer. But David’s never been a killer. David has never been able to take a life. The body is taken the coroner, and the police finally figure out that Jeff is the one who’s dead.

Andrew acts like nothing is wrong now that he and David are on the run. He says that he knows Lee Miglin in Chicago. “He owes me,” Andrew admits, before adding that Lee will give them money to get to Mexico. David worries about how this will impact his parents. When the police confront his parents, they’re adamant David had nothing to do with Jeff’s murder.

Andrew and David stop at a bar. David thinks about escaping through the bathroom window, but it’s almost as if he’s accepted his fate. Meanwhile, Andrew is crying over a performance of The Cars’ “Drive.” In these brief moments, the broken Andrew finally reveals himself as a lonely and desperate man. David comes back to the table and holds Andrew’s hands.

David looks back on the moment he told his dad he was gay. His dad didn’t agree with David’s lifestyle, but his love for his son meant more than his pride. “I love you more than I love my own life,” David’s dad told him.

David wakes up in his car in the middle of the woods. Andrew is off in the distance. At a diner, David talks about when he met Andrew. He wanted to live like Andrew once upon a time. But now he knows it was all lies. David confronts Andrew about killing Jeff, who had figured out the kind of man Andrew really is. Andrew is still living in a dream world and refuses to accept reality. David embraces his anger. He knows that Andrew wanted him to watch Jeff die. He pushes Andrew to his breaking point. Andrew points the gun at David’s chest and starts rambling about their future. This new side of David didn’t fit into Andrew’s plan.

Andrew pulls off near a lake and points his gun at David. He wants David to convince him why he should let him live. David is shaken to his core. “Why couldn’t you run away with me?” Andrew asks. This life that Andrew has envisioned isn’t real. They have to go to the police. David gets his chance to escape and runs inside a nearby trailer. When he runs through the door, he sees his father. In reality, Andrew shoots David square in the back as he tries to escape. He doesn’t stop there. As David gasps for breath, Andrew shoots him again in the eye. Andrew lies with David’s body for a while, and then leaves David there to rot.

‘American Crime Story’ Recap: Andrew Savagely Murders A Friend & Former Lover

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 4: Feline Intuition

By now, it seems clear that the most compelling characters in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” are neither the slain fashion designer, shot to death outside his Miami Beach mansion in 1997, nor Andrew Cunanan, the psychopath who killed him.

Instead, that distinction belongs to more transient characters: in Episode 3, Marilyn Miglin, the widow of a Chicago real-estate developer whom Cunanan murdered; and now in Episode 4, David Madson, a semi-closeted Minneapolis architect who has the misfortune of attracting Cunanan’s amorous attention.

Unlike “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” this second season of “American Crime Story” lacks larger-than-life characters like Marcia Clark and Johnnie Cochran, with their operatic personalities, ambitions and clashes. Cunanan’s homicidal outburst captured headlines, but largely because of the fame of his final victim. His earlier victims remained mostly obscure.

As “Versace” moves backward in time, it attempts to draw out those victims’ lives — and in the case of Miglin’s husband and Madson, their closeted sexuality is a unifying theme. Whether the portrayals are accurate is for others to decide — several relatives of Cunanan’s victims have criticized the series and “Vulgar Favors,” the book by Maureen Orth on which it is based. But I admit, almost grudgingly, that it has worked powerfully as a narrative frame for portraying the victims, even if their killer’s motivations remain a mystery so far.

Just as Judith Light, portraying a widow in denial about her husband’s homosexuality, was the breakout star of the last episode, so Cody Fern, as David Madson, stands out in this one. His journey of self-discovery is both literal — Andrew coerces David into joining him on a road trip after killing David’s secret lover — and symbolic. David realizes who he is, and what he is running from, only when it is too late. It is the stuff of tragedy.

The episode begins in Madson’s warehouse-size loft apartment, which is lined with gray-metal shelves. David and Andrew have been bickering, and while their relationship isn’t exactly explained, a romance gone sour is implied. The buzzer rings; downstairs is a man named Jeff, whom Andrew has asked over, much to David’s irritation.

Andrew sends David downstairs to let him in. In the lobby and elevator, we learn a lot:

• David tells Jeff that Andrew proposed marriage, calling David “the man of his dreams” and “his last chance at happiness.”

• David says that he declined, noting that gay marriage isn’t legal, but that Andrew thinks Jeff is “the reason I said no.” Jeff is surprised that Andrew knows that Jeff and David have been together. “He has this feline intuition,” David says.

• Jeff says that Andrew took a gun from Jeff’s apartment, and that he has come to get it back.

As we are processing all this, the two men enter the apartment, and what happens next is a murder with a claw hammer too vicious and grisly for me to watch.

Terrified and stricken, David seems to go numb. He asks why Andrew killed Jeff; Andrew replies, “I lost control.”

David calls 911, but Andrew compels him to hang up by saying that if the police arrive, they will both go to prison, disingenuously eliding the fact that it was he who set all this in motion. He goes on to argue that homophobia makes justice impossible anyway. “When the police open the door they’ll see two suspects, not two victims,” he says. And when David insists he is no killer, Andrew replies: “They won’t believe you. They hate us, David, they’ve always hated us. You’re a fag.”

Queer people have a term for such self-serving cynicism: Chutzpah.

As he’s forced to flee with Andrew, David comes to see the journey as a symbol for a life of evasion: “I’m playing over everything the police are going to find out about me, and I realize I’ve been doing this my whole life: playing over and over the moment that people found out about me.” On the road later, he adds: “Was I really afraid, when I got in this car with you, that you were going to kill me? Or was I afraid of the disgrace, the shame of it all. Is that what I’m running from?”

In David’s hometown, Barron, Wis., his stunned parents learn from the Minneapolis detectives that a stranger named Jeffrey Trail was murdered in David’s home, with 27 blows from David’s steel claw hammer. The detectives tell them about another stranger, named Andrew Cunanan, whose friends in San Francisco have described as reliable, intelligent, generous. David’s father insists his son is innocent.

“I can see with certainty, there’s a great deal you don’t know about your son,” the detective says. But as we soon learn in a heart-wrenching scene, he probably knows more than the detective assumes.

In one of several flashbacks, David is shown speaking with his dad in the garage. It’s a workingman’s garage (in an earlier flashback, the two of them had gone hunting), and David has graduated from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, at the top of his class. He tells his father he is gay.

“I won’t lie and say that it doesn’t make a difference,” the father responds. “You know what I believe. And maybe this isn’t what you wanted to hear. Maybe you wanted to be told I don’t have a problem with it. I can’t say that. But what I can say is I love you more than I love my own life.”

It is a bittersweet moment, one that in its overall contours many lesbian and gay people may recognize. That someone with reasonably tolerant parents in the mid-1980s could nonetheless feel such shame and self-loathing says a lot, by implication, about those who lacked such emotional support.

We get another look at how crushing that shame and self-loathing might be, when Andrew and David stop at a roadside bar. As David ponders escaping from the bathroom, Andrew is brought to tears by a singer’s rendition of the Cars’ 1984 song “Drive,” a rare moment of true emotional vulnerability from him, his pain brimming to the surface. David, whether because he feels he can’t escape or won’t be believed, forgoes the chance to save his own life and returns to the table with Andrew. Perhaps their need for human connection is mutual.

In a diner the next day, David recalls how Andrew dazzled him when they met at a bar in San Francisco, a year and a half earlier. “What’s this man going to see in me, a small-town boy?” he remembers thinking. They ended up in a $1,000-a-night room at the Mandarin Oriental. David continues:

I remember thinking: How hard do I have to work to live like him, like Andrew? ’Cause I’ll do it. Except it was all a lie. You’ve never worked for anything. It was an act. Is that why you killed Jeff? You loved him. It was so obvious. But he figured you out in the end, didn’t he? It took him a few years but he finally saw the real you, and you killed him for it.

Andrew tries to change the subject, promising David that they’ll lead a glamorous life in Mexico. He can’t stop lying.

Back in the car, David arrives at a further, belated discovery — that Jeff was set up, that Andrew planned all along to kill him in David’s presence. “Why are you always talking about the past?” an enraged Andrew asks. “We had a plan. We had a future.”

They pull over. David’s fate is sealed.

Episode 3 argued that denial could be a tool of survival. Episode 4 points out that recognition — of oneself, of the true character of others — can exact a lethal price.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 4: Feline Intuition

American Crime Story jumps back to Andrew Cunanan’s first murder

“House By The Lake” B+

There’s a surrealness to “House By The Lake” that manages to heighten the creepiness—and trust me, this episode is plenty creepy. From the bizarre opening advertisement for Minneapolis to that strange dream sequence toward the end, “House By The Lake” plays around with reality, all while remaining completely unsettling as we watch the cruel control Andrew has over the people in his life.

In “House By The Lake,” we see how the series is a character study that examines Andrew—without providing easy answers—and how it does so without erasing or justifying the horrible things Cunanan did. It takes place a week before Lee Miglin’s murder and introduces us to Andrew’s first two victims: Jeff Trail and David Madson. Andrew and David had once been in a relationship—some reports said that Andrew frequently claimed David was the love of his life—though they were broken up at the time of his murder. Post-Minneapolis ad, the episode is immediately tense and awkward: It begins the day after Andrew proposed to David and was turned down. When David, who goes downstairs to let Jeff in, explains this, he recounts that Andrew “said I was the man of his dreams, his last chance at happiness.” (It’s easy to think back to Andrew telling Ronnie that the “love of his life” died, though under different circumstances.)

Jeff’s murder is quick and brutal: Andrew slams the door shut the moment Jeff walks in and begins bludgeoning him with a hammer—27 hits. By the end, there’s blood on the floor, walls, all over Andrew, and even some on David who can’t do anything but stare, horrified. The dog barks the whole time. What’s arguably more chilling (and “chilling” is indeed the word of the episode) is Andrew’s calmness afterward, seamlessly switching from murdering to mothering. “Arm’s up,” he instructs David, the way you do with a child, taking off David’s shirt and putting him into the shower to clean off the blood. Even this feels surreal.

What resonates the most in this episode is watching Andrew post-murder—by all accounts, the first time he’s killed someone—with his stoic actions and conversations. When David understandable asks if Andrew is going to kill him, too, Andrew seems surprised with the question, as if it’s something totally absurd to ask a man you just witnessed murder another man. He dismisses the murder with “I lost control.” Andrew also tests his manipulation skills, attempting to guilt David out of calling the cops (and with a healthy dose of passive-aggression thrown in the mix too). “What will happen to you?” he asks with faux-concern. “I’ll tell them you had nothing to do with it, but what are they going to believe?” After all, Andrew explains, it is David’s apartment, and it was David who let him up. When that doesn’t work, Andrew calmly pulls out a gun but the threat is only visual, not verbalized, and Andrew doesn’t let up his original argument. “I can’t allow you to go to jail. I can’t allow this to destroy your life.”

Later, Andrew switches up the argument for not going to the cops: “They hate us, David. They’ve always hated us. You’re a fag.” I went into Assassination with the assumption that it was going to be a stealth examination on homophobia and gay culture in the ‘90s, similar to how The People vs O.J. Simpson was successfully built around race. The further we go (back) in this story, it’s slowly starting to appear that that’s the case. Even when in imminent danger—forced on the run with a gun-wielding murderer—David’s concerns are about how he was outed, even about his activities (Andrew left BDSM toys and magazines on the bed) and worries about everything the police will uncover about him. Will his parents still be able to live in the same town? Will people still frequent his dad’s shop? Throughout, we get glimpses of David’s internal struggle about coming out: the dreams he has about his father, explicitly wondering aloud “Was I afraid of the disgrace? The shame of it all?” (echoing Andrew’s future murder of Lee Miglin, asking if he’s more afraid of death of disgrace), and then that devastating bait-and-switch in the titular house by the lake where David finds a calm acceptance for only a false moment.

The episode also goes back to the flawed police investigation, which was a trend no matter what city the murder was in. When the building manager lets two detectives into David’s apartment, they do a quick run through of the crime scene where a body is wrapped up in a couch and pushed aside. Immediately, they assume it’s David’s body because it’s his apartment, his wallet on the counter, and his coworker who first sounded the alarm because he hadn’t been at work. Because of the scene on the bed, the police too-quickly chalk it up as some gay hookup gone wrong (“They do what they do, this extreme stuff, David ends up in the rug” Detective Tichtich says). And when they learn about dark-haired Andrew staying with David, Tichtich finally realizes that it isn’t blonde-haired David in the rug so now they assume that it was David who killed Andrew. This mix-up, compounded with the fact that the police then leave the crime scene to instead wait for a warrant, and that they don’t properly ID the body until it’s in the morgue, is so frustrating to watch. (And, if I remember correctly from Orth’s book, it was days before any of this got sorted out.)

But back to Andrew and David, where everything still feels unreal and terrifying: David with his hands out of the window to feel the air; Andrew singing along to “Pump Up The Jam” as if it’s nothing more than a carefree road trip with a friend, or a lover. He even says “I’m so glad you decided to come with me” as if David ever had a choice in the trip or his ultimate fate. Maybe David does, just a bit, because after he smashes a bathroom window to escape, he aborts his plans and returns to Andrew. Or maybe David just knows that he can’t escape—that Andrew would’ve somehow found him—or maybe he just isn’t sure if he wants to return and face everything. (Though he does try again later, but, well.)

“House By The Lake” is bookended by murders—Jeff during the cold open and David during the last few minutes—but we only see Andrew break down once, curiously while watching an acoustic cover of The Cars’ “Drive” (“You can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong / Who’s gonna drive you home, tonight?”), before reaching out to grip David’s hands. But Andrew does “lose control” again after an argument in the car, pulling over to point a gun at the man he supposedly loves. Andrew shoots him once in the back, as he’s running, and the second point-blank through the eye. He cuddles with David’s body, as if trying to recreate a past moment the two shared, before walking away and heading to Chicago, where Lee Miglin lives.

Darren Criss has been getting immense praise for his portrayal this season and this episode really showcases his talent, putting in a performance that is truly haunting from his even speech to his lingering stares.

At least a TV series finally resisted the urge to kill a dog! (Though we still got a dead animal which is probably my least favorite trend in media right now.)

The backwards formula is finally working for me now that it’s less convoluted and because we’re learning more about the victims (and it’s interesting to see the beginning pieces, such as Andrew’s references to visiting Lee Miglin). David’s flashbacks were a highlight, and hopefully next week we’ll learn more about who Jeff Trail was.

So, the Versace family sure has disappeared, huh?

American Crime Story jumps back to Andrew Cunanan’s first murder

‘American Crime Story: Versace’ recap: ‘A Random Killing’ – TheCelebrityCafe.com

“Just think of the little red light as the man you love.”

Well, the third episode of American Crime Story: Versace — entitled “A Random Killing” — made it official: we really, really hate Andrew (even though we still can’t take our eyes off of him).

Also, give Judith Light all of the Emmy nominations for this episode. Every single one.

Everything that happens in “A Random Killing” takes place before the death of Gianna Versace. This episode focuses on Andrew’s interactions and eventual murder of a wealthy Chicago real-estate designer named Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell).

We don’t start with Andrew, though. We begin by looking at the marriage between Lee and his wife Marilyn (Light), — the Home Shopping Network and perfume saleswoman. Yes, this is a real person, and this is what she looks like in real life:

Marilyn returns home one fateful eve, only to realize that her husband is nowhere to be seen. In fact, the instant Marilyn steps foot in the house, she knows something is wrong — there’s ice cream melting on a counter, and a random chuck on deli meat sitting out with a knife in it. She calls the cops, but she already knows the truth: Lee is dead.

It’s her calm yet sorrowful reaction that gets us, though. The soft whisper of “I Knew it” from Light is enough for an Emmy alone. But it only gets better from there…

We flashback to a week earlier. Lee is receiving some kind of award, seemingly for his work in architecture or whatnot, which shows him to be a wealthy and proud man. Lee and Marilyn return home that night, with Marilyn telling her husband she has to leave town for work.

Enter Andrew — the male escort whom Lee is clearly ashamed of, yet can’t seem to say no to. Andrew happens to be in town that night, and Lee wastes no time in inviting him over.

Early on, it’s clear the two have had sexual interactions before. Lee is hoping this will turn into more of a relationship — which is why he makes an effort to show Andrew a new building he’s designing; one that will be right next to the SEARS Tower and be even taller.

Andrew couldn’t be any less interested. Clearly, Lee is just trying to show off and that’s not what he’s here for.

Apparently Andrew isn’t actually here for sex either, as their romantic encounter soon takes a deadly turn. Andrew leads Lee into the garage, stuffs a glove into his mouth and ties him up in tape like we’ve seen him do before. Once Lee is powerless, Andrew punches him in the face confesses all to him — he’s killed two men before and he’s going to kill Lee next.

Why does he want to kill Lee? We’ll leave that one for the psychologist to figure out. His plan, though, is to dress Lee in women’s underwear and surround him with gay porn, so the world may know the truth about Lee. After all, Lee is clearly embarrassed about his little secret, which Andrew makes that pretty evident by asking him, “What terrifies you more, death or being disgraced?”

A few bags of concrete and garden tools later and Lee is dead. Andrew celebrates by burning Lee’s building plans and helping himself to that chunk of meat that was in the fridge — which he then leaves in Lee’s study. He’s long gone by the time Marilyn shows up.

Marilyn, however, is pretty unfazed by the crime scene. She has no initial reaction when told about the gay porn, saying that it clearly must have belonged to the murderer. As the scene goes on, it becomes more and more evident that she doesn’t actually believe that — suggesting that she knew her husband’s secret for some time and has already pieced together everything that’s happened. She’s inclined to keep it to herself, though, as she tells the police “I won’t let him steal my good name. Our good name.”

Speaking of the police, they’re not doing a great job at finding Andrew. They were tracking the car phone that was attached to the vehicle he was using, realizing that he was headed to New York, until a radio station accidentally announced this information on air. Andrew hears the story and immediately destroys the phone and ditches the car.

He pulls into a rest stop and sees a man driving a red pickup truck — the same truck we saw in the previous episodes. He follows him to his home, breaks in and eventually murders the truck’s owner in cold blood. That makes kill number four for Andrew, and that’s why we’re ready to declare him a monster.

Then, in the episodes final moments, we return to Marilyn. She’s back on air with her perfume, talking about what her husband meant to her. It’s an incredible scene that has a whole lot of social relevance, and Light sells every single second of it.

While this episode didn’t contain any footage of Versace itself, it gave some much needed backstory to Andrew — he’s a cruel, remorseless killer who has lost all of our sympathy. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem so surprising that Versace would up dead.

Check out the new episode of American Crime Story: Versace on FX later tonight, and read our other American Crime Story recaps by clicking here.

‘American Crime Story: Versace’ recap: ‘A Random Killing’ – TheCelebrityCafe.com

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: More People Are Dead But the American Dream is Still Alive

“So often, we are told the American Dream is dead,” the fragrance mogul Marilyn Miglin tells the crowd at a fundraiser in this week’s installment of American Crime Story. (At this point, it is hard to tell if I’m the one who’s heavy-handedly foreshadowing the next episode’s themes, or if it’s Ryan Murphy.) Played by Judith Light with alternating hopelessness and chill hauteur, she’s seen first in the kind of uptight pastel-pink suit jacket that can’t help but make a woman look a) like a business-savvy mom, and b) as though she thinks the g-spot is a nightclub in the seedy part of town. She is the wife of the real estate tycoon—and Catholic, closeted gay man—Lee Miglin.

There are no scenes with Gianni in this episode, and none with the Versace family, either. What we see instead is the startling murder that appears to be a killer’s stepping-stone to full psychosis; and a lavender marriage that does not appear to be an outright sham, but merely unconventional. When Marilyn, away on business, calls the house and does not get an answer from her husband, it’s unusual enough for her to worry. When she gets back home, she finds an open, dripping ice-cream carton—chocolate-flavored, as much a visual contagion in their ivory-on-cream-on-alabaster space as the pair of gloomy couches in Todd Haynes’s Safe. It’s a sinister enough development to leave her rattled.

By the time the opening credits roll, she has been widowed, and we’ve guessed that Miglin is another victim of Versace’s killer, Andrew Cunanan; and we’ve guessed, too, how they knew each other. Marilyn says only, in the softest voice and to herself: “I knew it.” How much Marilyn Miglin really knew is never made apparent to us. What is made apparent is that Marilyn and Lee, whatever their dynamic, loved each other. How many men, she asks the TV camera, in a dynamite appearance on a shopping channel not long after Lee is killed, support their wives’ ambitions? How many men lift women up, instead of bring them down?

Conversely, it is never clear if Cunanan kills Miglin and exposes him because he thinks that Miglin is a hypocrite for being closeted, or because he thinks that homosexuality is shameful, something to be punished and reduced to ridicule. “I want you to know that when they find your body, you will be wearing ladies’ panties,” he hisses, “surrounded by gay porn. I want the world to see that the great Lee Miglin is a sissy.” Just after we see Cunanan beside the body, we cut to him carving, and then eating, some great hunk of red meat on the Miglins’ spotless kitchen table; it’s designed to make us think, if only for a second, that he’s actually eating Lee. The trope that a cannibal can eat a great man and absorb his powers seems tailor-made for a social-climbing sociopath who steals from every wealthy man he kills. (Think, too, of wendigos, the mythic demons in the shape of men who eat men, designed to represent the very ordinary human flaw of greed.) He is as guilty of the very Catholic sin of covetousness as he is of the legal crime of murder.

After Marilyn refers to the rumored death of the American dream—just days before the actual death of her husband—she is moved to issue a rebuttal: “Except—look at my husband, Lee. One of seven children. The son of an Illinois coal miner. He began his career selling premixed pancake batter out of the trunk of a beat-up old car. And today Lee manages 32 million square feet of commercial property across the Midwest.” The message is as clear and keenly bourgeois as a cut-glass punch bowl: rags are honorable, an inspiring plot-point, when they end in untold riches and acclaim. It was hardly accurate to say before that there had been no sign of the Versace family in this episode, when its themes of modest origins, of betterment and growth and the anointing power of lovely or expensive things, were the cornerstones of Gianni’s myth—“[originally] from a small village in Calabria overrun with poverty and corruption,” says a recent piece in Numero, “Gianni Versace built a destiny that was the complete opposite [of] his humble beginnings.”

It feels worth mentioning that the episode is called A Random Killing. I had thought at first that this referred to Marilyn’s description of her husband’s death as a random robbery—her defense against the knowledge or suspicion that he had in fact been killed by a man he’d solicited for sex. In fact, the random murder comes in the last five minutes of the show, when Cunanan escapes the scene and realizes he needs a new car. Pulling over and then following a man into a church, he leads him down into to the basement. After listening to him say, politely, that he has a wife and child, that he would very much like it, sir, if he could only see them again, the killer shoots him point-blank in the back of the skull. It is the ugliest and most indelible scene so far in a story filled with brutal, memorable vignettes of pain; and by the time we know what’s happening, it’s far too late to turn our heads away—to disengage.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: More People Are Dead But the American Dream is Still Alive

4 Best Moments From ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ 2×03

Episode 3 is completely committed to sharing Lee Miglin’s devastating story, with William Reese having a little screen time as well.

Here are the 4 best moments from ‘American Crime Story: The Assassination of Versace, “A Random Killing.”

Lee Miglin and Marilyn Miglin

In this episode, we got to watch the life of Lee Miglin – a commercial real estate developer- and his wife, Marilyn Miglin. This relationship was far from perfect; a 38 year marriage based on a lie, yet they made the best of it. Their marriage was definitely one to sympathise with and was incredibly moving, as we see Marilyn continue to live her life as an ambitious woman with a closeted husband. Marilyn comes home from a work trip in Toronto, where she realises that something is very off. When the police arrive, a bloodcurdling scream is heard from the garage as Lee’s dead body is found. Rewind a week before, Lee and Marilyn are happier than ever at a fund-raising luncheon for Gov. Jim Edgar, Republican of Illinois. Marilyn introduces her husband admiringly and shocks Lee with her gushing words.

“So often we are told the American dream is dead. Except I say: Look at my husband, Lee. One of seven children. The son of an Illinois coal miner. He began his career selling premixed pancake batter out of the trunk of a beat-up old car. And today Lee manages 32 million square feet of commercial property across the Midwest.”

Marilyn later catches Lee on the phone to someone – who we know at this point is Andrew – and he lies, telling her it was a business call. With Marilyn now away at this point, Lee invites Andrew to stay over for the night, where he shows Andrew his plans to build a 125-story, 1,952 foot Sky Needle, which would and could have been the world’s tallest building.

Lee Miglin’s Sexuality

It’s safe to say that Marilyn knew of her husband’s secret, however she persevered with the marriage, not allowing this to break them apart. After Lee has shown Andrew his plans for the Sky Needle, the two kiss and Lee says, “It feels like I’m alive.” As hard as it is to watch Marilyn hide her husband’s secret, you also begin to feel a little bit of sympathy for Lee, as Andrew is allowing him to be the man he’s always wanted to be. (Until you know, he murders him – but Lee doesn’t know this just yet.)

“Escorts don’t normally kiss, do they? I am not like most escorts. I am not like most anybody. I could almost be a husband, a partner.”

Again, Lee’s ability to lie and give false hope to people so easily is plain disturbing, as we all know the outcome.

Lee Miglin’s Death

Lee Miglin’s death has to be the most sadistic and painful scenes to watch. I felt so uncomfortable from Andrew’s cold-hearted speech to Lee’s final breath, like I genuinely could have turned the episode off. The fact that this all did really happen in real life and in this exact way just makes the whole thing way too realistic and due to me having no clue about any of Andrew’s victims until this episode, it really left me mourning these two men who did not deserve what they were given and I really hope justice was served for the both of them.

“I know that you’re not wearing your hearing aid, so I am going to speak very loudly and very clearly so you can understand. I want you to know that when they find your body, you will be wearing ladies’ panties. Surrounded by gay porn. I want the world to see that the great Lee Miglin is a sissy. Soon the whole world will know that the great Lee Miglin, who built Chicago, built it with a limp wrist. The cops will know, the press will know, your wife will know, your children will know, the neighbors will know. Tell me something, Lee: What terrifies you more, death or being disgraced?” – Andrew

Andrew once again wraps his victim’s face up with masking tape. Then he begins brutally punching him in the face, knocking him out and stabbing him multiple times. Andrew’s use of homophobic language suggests that is filled with so much self-hatred. The whole scenario of Cunanan making cross-dressing and looking at porn out as a crime and a disgrace is one of the most devastating moments of the season so far.

William Reese’ Death

As twisted and disturbing as Lee’s death was, I have to admit, William’s was down right the most heart-breaking death to witness (between the three murders we have seen). Andrew flee’s to New Jersey after murdering Lee and he finds out from a radio station that the police are currently looking for him and that investigators have been tracking his every movement by car phone. In search of a new car to steal, Andrew follows William Reese, a caretaker, to his home through a cemetery. He holds William at gun point as he forces him in to the basement, where William gets down on his knees and pleads for his own life. His plea was cut short when Andrew heartlessly shot him in the head with no hesitation whatsoever.

At this very moment of the series, my hatred for Andrew grew so strongly and I was absolutely disgusted at his lack of remorse and committing his most mundane murder that really didn’t need to happen. However, that being said, Darren Criss is still absolutely out-standing throughout this show and I am seriously running out of ways to describe how flawlessly he is portraying this character. Give this man all the awards immediately!

With six episodes remaining and two bodies to go, we best start mentally preparing for what’s to come next, as not mentally preparing really has done no good since this episode.

What did you think to this episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story? Write up a comment and let us know your thoughts!

4 Best Moments From ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ 2×03

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