The Assassination of Gianni Versace: “A Random Killing” recap

This week’s episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace whisked us away to the windy city of Chicago. An eerie flashback shows Cunanan at the site of Lee Miglin’s murder which takes place before Versace’s–and it was not pretty. Before focusing on Cunanan, the episode spent time on Lee and his wife Marilyn’s life together, which is not as it appears.

While Marilyn was all the hype on the Home Shopping Network, Lee was known for his accomplishments in real estate. Unbeknownst to his wife, Lee dabbled in other extracurricular activities–a.k.a. hiring young, male escorts. Cue, Andrew Cunanan.

The episode opens with Marilyn returning home from a trip to a freakishly quiet home. The feeling of impending doom was palpable as she enters the home and learns of her husband’s demise. What exactly went down?

The episode wastes no time intricately unfolding Cunanan’s involvement with Lee. Lee and Marilyn’s marriage was a sham and with her out of town, Lee takes the opportunity to invite over his young male escort–Cunanan. As we have witnessed Cunanan doing in previous episodes, he duct-taped Lee’s face for some brief moments of erotic asphyxiation. Yikes. This was an incredibly horrifying moment as we witnessed a sexual escapade turn into one hell of a brutal murder.

With Miglin’s murder behind him, Cunanan stole what he could. This includes the gold coin, which he later pawns in Miami along with Miglin’s car. This was an interesting trend through Cunanan’s murders–stealing the car of the individual whom he had just murdered. Unfortunately for him, the police began tracking his whereabouts via the car phone.

As the manhunt for him began, Cunanan headed to New York City to spend some time in the Versace store. It was only natural he began preparing for the murder he would commit mere months later.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace explained the episode’s title very poetically through Lee’s wife when she refused to acknowledge his involvement with male escorts. She believed it to be a random killing, and nothing more. The idea of a “random killing” persisted when Cunanan learned about the police tracking him and opted to steal another car.

In true Cunanan style, he selected a victim, murdered them in cold blood, and sped off with their car.

This episode was an interesting shift from the previous ones as they did not even focus on Versace. Instead, we were given more insight into the complicated, scary mind of Cunanan–and the events leading up to Versace’s murder.

The series has been doing a stellar job of going past the series title and honing in on who Cunanan was–and what drove his insanity.

This episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace was slightly more disturbing than the two that preceded it. This is merely due to the fact that as we learn more about Cunanan, the more frightened we feel.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Review: A Random Killing (Season 2 Episode 3)

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Season 2 Episode 3, “A Random Killing,” is not as flashy as previous episodes, but it is a necessary episode and a brutal one.

There are no oddly disturbing upbeat songs to go with arresting images on this episode and the whole thing feels cold and subdued.

But that’s not a bad thing.

“A Random Killing” begins with Marilyn Miglin, a Home Shopping Network star, as she phones her husband who didn’t pick her up from the airport like he was supposed to.

Gone are the bright colors and sunshine of Miami Beach. There is a sense of dread as Marilyn pulls up to her Chicago Gold Coast home. Her husband, Lee, doesn’t answer as she calls out to him. She sees a pint of melted ice cream on the kitchen bench and knows something is terribly wrong.

Only The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story make a pint of ice cream look so ominous.

Lee’s tortured body is found in the garage.

The time changes have been distracting on The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, however, this episode is almost linear. It begins with the discovery of Lee’s body and then goes back to the week leading up to the murder before showing us about a week after it.

Gianni Versace is missing from this episode, but Andrew does visit the Versace store in New York, perhaps to show us that Versace is very much on Andrew’s mind even two months prior to the assassination.

“A Random Killing” mostly takes place in Chicago. Although the Miglin family claim there is no connection between Lee Miglin and Cunanan or Duke Miglin, the couple’s son, Lee certainly fits in Andrew’s MO.

Lee’s an older, closeted male with a ton of money, not unlike the john we saw on The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Season 2 Episode 2 “Manhunt.”

Marilyn Miglin is a fascinating character and Judith Light owns the episode with her fantastic performance. Marilyn knows that she doesn’t have a conventional marriage, but that doesn’t mean Lee doesn’t matter to her.

The end of the episode is heart-breaking as Marilyn’s brave façade crumbles.

We’ve seen all sorts of Andrews on the past two episodes, but on “A Random Killing,” we truly see him as a cold and calculated killer. He even brags to Miglin that he has already murdered two people.

Cunanan is a chameleon and therefore, we have seen him pretend to be all sorts of people. But “A Random Killing” shows him as someone who enjoys killing and who is not affected by it.

The way Cunanan kills Miglin is particularly vicious. At one point, he considers shooting him but decides to draw it out a little more. He binds his face with masking tape, just like he did in Miami on “American Crime Story Season 2 Episode 2, “Manhunt.”

But Andrew doesn’t let Miglin survive. Instead, he attacks him and then says that he is going to put women’s underwear on him and surround him with pornographic magazines.

He asks him, what’s Lee more afraid of death or being disgraced?

Marilyn is adamant with the police that Lee didn’t know his killer although evidence would suggest otherwise. I like that when Marilyn rattles off a list of things stolen from the house, she mentions a gold coin which she says will be immediately traced back to Lee.

It’s funny because we know that Cunanan pawns off the gold coin but because the FBI didn’t distribute any flyers of Cunanan, the pawn shop owner didn’t identify Cunanan until after Versace was murdered.

Another fumble for the authorities is when it’s leaked that Cunanan is being tracked by the phone in Lee’s stolen car.

Of course, Cunanan hears that information and throws the phone out the window—but he also needs a new car.

And so here comes the title of the episode, “A Random Killing.”

Andrew is about to carjack a woman and then sees a man in a truck drive away. Why does Andrew want this truck instead? We don’t know. Andrew could have easily taken the keys to the truck and could have spared William Reese’s life.

As Reese starts to tell Cunanan that he had a wife and child, Andrew shoots him point blank.

It’s a cold-blooded act and hits hard.

Overall, “A Random Killing” is an upsetting episode with touching and powerful performances and heart-wrenching murders. We’re starting to see Andrew Cunanan as a true predator and it’s only going to go downhill from here.

What did you think of this episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Reviewer Rating: ★★★★☆

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Review: A Random Killing (Season 2 Episode 3)

‘American Crime Story’ Versace Ep. 3 Explores The Secret Gay Lives Of Cunanan’s Victims

Episode three starts in May of 1997, a perfume salesperson on a home shopping network anxiously calls her husband from the airport. Crime aficionados will have recognized that her last name is shared with one of Cunanan’s victims. She comes home to find melted ice cream on the kitchen table and an otherwise empty and undisturbed house. A neighbor investigates while the police are called.

A scream.

“I knew it.”

One week earlier in Chicago. Marilyn Miglin is giving some form of motivational speech and notes that “so often we are told that the American dream is dead,” while espousing some boot-strap rhetoric about hard work and success. She describes Lee as “the perfect husband.”

Murphy, once again without subtlety, is making a statement on gay life before the current social movement we find ourselves in: when good, kind people had to keep their sexualities hidden and sublimate their desires into shallow successes. But what gets pushed down doesn’t stay buried forever, and Miglin’s eventual death at the hands of a gay hustler named Andrew Cunanan is the veritable return of the repressed.

The love Mr. and Mrs. Miglin share isn’t entirely fake, though, as love between many men on the down low and their partners often isn’t.

Mrs. Miglin is heading out of town, giving Lee a chance for an apparently rare sexual rendezvous. He prays to God before the encounter: “I try. I try!”

Cunanan’s viciousness appears when Miglin attempts to explain his achievements, with Andrew refusing to play along with Lee’s charade of kindness and modesty.

“I’m in control now,” says Andrew as he tapes Miglin’s face and ties him up with electrical cord. Miglin can barely breathe. Andrew breaks his nose with a ferocious punch. “Here I am, this is me,” he says.

Cunanan is threatening to humiliate Lee by killing him and leaving his body surrounded by gay porn, so the whole world discovers his secret.

“You know disgrace isn’t that bad once you settle into it,” says Andrew, clearly taking out his frustrations about his own life on his victim. Cunanan’s venom seems to come from a long history of being forced to hate himself for being gay, and his desire to expose Miglin could be seen as a perverted reversal of his own internalized homophobia.

Marilyn is in some kind of dissociative state. She tells police to hunt for Lee’s killer, but that she’s uninterested in learning about his motives. Disavowal.

Police trace the car Cunanan was driving to a different stolen vehicle, connected to a totally different murder. Andrew visits a Versace store in New York City while detectives scramble.

Marilyn is falling apart, admitting to a detective that she loved Lee: “We had a fairy tale life. We didn’t even fight. He didn’t raise a finger. It was a robbery. And a random killing.”

Aware that he’s being tracked, Andrew steals a red truck after killing the owner.

On the home shopping network, Marilyn eulogizes Lee. A combination of sincerity and denial taints her goodbye.

Gwyneth Horder-Payton’s excellent direction on episode 3 captures both the sadness and brutality of Cunanan and his victims. Her poignant use of silence and empty space helps underscore the themes of Murphy’s show, which has abandoned the campy neons and excesses of the Versace palace for at least this one episode. Cunanan’s malice is being used as a tool to explore LGBTQ identity and shame, and his victim’s lives (their secret tragedies, their forbidden lusts) are made more meaningful through this lens.

‘American Crime Story’ Versace Ep. 3 Explores The Secret Gay Lives Of Cunanan’s Victims

‘American Crime Story’ Shifts Gears to Andrew Cunanan’s Murder Spree

It’s in episode three that American Crime Story season 2 really starts to become “The Andrew Cunanan Story” rather than “The Assassination of Gianni Versace.” It makes sense that Versace’s murder is where the show started, but the season is actually about Cunanan’s murder spree, and Versace is only the tail end of that. There’s a lot more story to tell about Cunanan’s other crimes and his life prior to becoming a murderer, and this is honestly where the season starts to get really good, in my opinion.

Because of the non-linear storytelling, we back up a bit in time to May 1997. This is where Judith Light (who is amazing and should be in all the shows) makes her first appearance as Marilyn Miglin. She’s the wife of Lee Miglin, a Chicago real estate magnate and Cunanan’s third victim. Since the show works backward, showing us the crimes first and the set-up second, this episode begins with Marilyn arriving home after a business trip and sensing something is wrong in her townhouse.

She asks some neighbors who are passing by to help her look around, and they find Lee’s mangled body in the garage (though we don’t know at this point that he had been tortured before his death). The tension and dread were so palpable as Marilyn and her friends walked through the house.

Backing up to a week earlier, we learn that the Miglins clearly have great affection for one another. However, it feels as though Marilyn is in love with Lee and Lee simply cares very much for Marilyn. Those are not the same thing.

But it’s working for them — except for the fact that Lee sees male escorts on the side. That’s who Cunanan poses as, and the show indicates the two have seen each other several times previously, though we aren’t given any details in that regard. But in this particular instance, Cunanan isn’t actually there as an escort — he’s mid-murder spree. He acts like he’s going to sleep with Miglin, but instead he brutally beats and kills him.

When we flash back to after the murder, Marilyn (who must have at least had an inkling about her husband’s real sexual identity) is refusing to believe what the police are telling her, instead citing all the stolen items — clothes, gold coins, money — as proof that this was obviously an intruder whom Lee surprised mid-robbery. She’s holding herself together as well as can be expected, but in private, she breaks down about the death of her husband and how wonderful their marriage was. It’s a heartbreaking monologue, and Judith Light performs the hell out of it. Look for her to earn at least an Emmy nom (if not a win) for guest star later this year.

Meanwhile, Andrew is moving on down the road in Lee’s car, which has a car phone in it. Every time the phone turns on, the police are able to track Andrew’s location. But that bit of information makes it into a news broadcast, and Andrew realizes he has to ditch the car. So he kills his fourth victim, William Reese (Gregg Lawrence), and steals his red pickup truck, heading for Florida to confront Versace.

It’s a bit weird that after two episodes that focused so heavily on Versace, we now have an episode that doesn’t mention him at all. The only Versace blip in episode three is that Cunanan visits the Versace store in New York. I understand the writers wanting to focus on the Miglins — the EPs told me that it’s important to the show to do justice to the other victims who were not famous fashion designers — but it’s still a little jarring.

What do you think of American Crime Story season 2 so far? Tell us @BritandCo.

‘American Crime Story’ Shifts Gears to Andrew Cunanan’s Murder Spree

AMERICAN CRIME STORY Review: “A Random Killing”

There are a lot more crimes in FX’s American Crime Story than there were last season. The series previously explored the killing of his Nicole Brown Simpson, and largely centered on the moving pieces surrounding the murder investigation and the trial. The season largely played with the fact that to this day, people are not 100% certain if O.J. Simpson was in fact guilty of that murder (I mean, c’mon, he did it). This season in contrast shows us exactly who did it right off the bat in the first few minutes of the premiere. We know who did it, where, when, and how… But we don’t know why.

And that’s what Ryan Murphy and the show’s other creators seem to be hanging this season, about the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace, on entirely. We never got flashbacks in season one (except for one Kardashian one, an odd choice) but here we are with each new episode thus far jumping around in time, showing us exactly what Andrew Cunanan did leading up to his infamous shooting outside the Versace home in Miami Beach.

The episode is quite effectively it’s own contained story, without any of the Versace’s making an appearance, or any of the Miami investigators. It begins with a character we haven’t met you, Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light) pushing her perfume on a QVC-type network. After the appearance, she flies back to her home in Chicago and we immediately know something is up when her husband Lee is not there to pick her up. She phones the house from a payphone saying she’s grabbing a gab. When she gets home she noticed that there is an ice cream container open on the counter. She tells some neighbors she knows that something is wrong. Soon the police are there and find Lee’s (Mike Farrell) body in the garage. And all Marilyn can utter is “I knew it.”

We’re flashing back next to not long before Marilyn left to do her TV stint. Marilyn and Lee are at a Jim Edgar for Illinois Governor fundraiser, and Marilyn gives quite an introduction to her husband, calling him not just an example of, but THE American Dream. It’s really quite nice, but at home when it’s the two of them, we get the feeling there is a wedge between them. There is no animosity, but there is no warmth between husband and wife either. When Andrew calls to tell Lee he’s in town, we know where this is heading.

When Marilyn leaves for another TV appearance, Lee is left to his own devices. He has a sort of prayer room in his basement, where he lights candles, gets on his knees, and prays to Jesus. “I try,” he says, tearfully. Maybe he does, but soon there’s a knock on the door and he’s fixing his collar in a mirror. “Andrew,” he greets the young man, and brings him in for a warm embrace. Lee feeds him and asks if he can stay the night, closing the curtains. Whatever qualms he had before Andrew arrived seem to have gone out the window. Lee flaunts his blueprints for the Sky Needle, soon to be the tallest building in Chicago. As he’s doting over them, Andrew raises a gun behind his back. He puts it down before Lee turns around again, though.

Soon they’re arguing over what Lee should call this building of his; Andrew wants Lee to name it after himself, but Lee insists it’s not about him. Andrew gets cross and asks, why did you ask me here to talk about this? “We don’t have to talk,” Lee replies. Not long after that, Andrew has him in the garage (where we know his body ends up), binding and gagging his face like we’ve seen him do to other older wealthy gentlemen in past episode, only this time leaving Lee’s nostrils free to breathe. But before we know it Andrew has Lee on the ground, comes close to chocking him, then smashes Lee’s nose and admits that he has already killed two people. And that when they find his body, he will be wearing ladies panties and surrounded by gay porn. He wants the world to see that the “great Lee Miglin is a sissy.”

So perhaps THIS is a key to the “why” behind Cunanan’s atrocities. He wanted to shine a light on high-profile closeted homosexuals? But then how does that square with what he did to Versace, who was openly homosexual?

“You know, disgrace isn’t that bad… once you settle into it,” Andrew tells Lee just before killing him with a bag of concrete mix, in one of the most chilling moments of either seasons.

From here the investigation gets underway. Superintendent Rodriguez takes the case, assuring Marilyn they will catch whoever did this. The Chicago PD and the Feds are able to ping the car phone of Lee Miglin’s Lexus and track Cunanan’s path. But, despite Rodriguez demanding this stay hush hush, Andrew hears a news broadcast on the radio as he’s driving about the authorities being able to track him through the car phone. He immediately pulls off the road and yanks the car phone out of the vehicle. In a panic to switch vehicles, he ends up following a man with a truck and murdering him senselessly to steal it. How did that fit into Andrew’s plan to out closeted gay men? At the end of the episode, as we know because he needs to be free to murder Gianni, Andrew is still at large and we have no real questions answered. Perhaps we’re not going to get a clear “why” by the end of the season, just like we still don’t know 100% if O.J. killed his wife. Perhaps the question in and of itself is the point.

AMERICAN CRIME STORY Review: “A Random Killing”

Judith Light Was the Best Part of Last Night’s ‘American Crime Story’ [RECAP] – Towleroad

Last night’s episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story tackled one of the most mysterious elements of the Andrew Cunanan killing spree: the gruesome murder of Lee Miglin.

As part of the saga tracing Cunanan’s exploits leading up to Versace’s killing, it makes sense to chronicle Miglin’s murder. However, so little has been confirmed about the nature of Andrew and Lee’s relationship prior to the tragedy, the show leans heavily on artistic license. That’s fine, in terms of dramatic storytelling.

Where this episode suffers is in the writing. Ho boy, were Ryan Murphy and co’s most ham-fisted impulses fully indulged. (At one point, someone actually ate a fistful of ham, and it was the most apt metaphor in all of tonight’s episode.) It was all tell and no show. So much telling. And telling in ways no one would ever actually speak.

“You’re so dominant out there, but so submissive in here,” Andrew tells one of his victims before dropping the only thing more heavy than the hand behind that metaphor — a bag of cement. This is the same team that in American Horror Story: Asylum had one character put lipstick on a Virgin Mary statue while screaming “Whore!”

Subtlety isn’t always their strong suit.

Luckily, the hour of television was significantly buoyed by another knockout performance from Darren Criss and a special guest appearance from the incomparable Judith Light. Thank goodness Ryan Murphy attracts such top-tier talent, because in lesser hands things could get schlocky real quick.

Knowing that we’re taking the details of this story with an extremely large grain of salt, let’s dive into what went down in our recap below.

Spring 1997

Lee Miglin and his wife Marilyn are attending a fancy fundraising function. Marilyn introduces Lee to the stage by describing him as emblematic of the American Dream. He got his start selling pancake batter out of a beat-up car, and now he’s responsible for building some of the most famous buildings in Chicago. He was also instrumental in launching Marilyn’s perfume and cosmetics Home Shopping empire.

Back home, Marilyn dramatically removes her makeup — she’s taking off her brave face, get it, GET IT?

Meanwhile, Lee gets a call from Andrew telling him that he’s going to be in town for a few days. As luck would have it, Marilyn has to travel for business. That’s convenient! Lee joins Marilyn in bed and rests his hand atop Marilyn’s. She squeezes his. There’s clearly love here, but distance too.

With Marilyn out of the house, Lee preps for Andrew’s visit (including a stop at his in-home altar because HE IS CONFLICTED, IF THAT WASN’T CLEAR ALREADY). Andrew parks nearby. He comes into the house, and it seems as if this is a rendezvous they’ve played out many times before.

Lee’s excited to show Andrew plans for a new building he’s working on that’ll be the tallest in the world. He wants to call it the Sky Needle, but Andrew, suddenly very cranky, points out that he might as well call it the Miglin Tower, because it’s clearly all about him.

It’s a tense moment between them, until Andrew plants a hard, passionate kiss on Lee. He asks about that old Pretty Woman rule: Do the other escorts kiss him on th mouth like that? Of course, they don’t. “I’m not like most escorts. I’m not like most anybody,” Cunanan says out loud to Lee like people do.

The quick turn from cutting Lee’s aspirations down to the passionate kiss is to help gain back Lee’s trust. Andrew leads him to the garage, stuffs a glove in his mouth and then proceeds to do that weird tape mask thing that is extremely creepy and for sure going to keep a generation of gay men from hooking up with anybody that keeps a roll of tape in plain sight.

With Lee’s eyes and mouth covered and legs tied, Andrew tells Lee his entire evil plot, Bond-villain style. He already killed two people close to him. Now, he’s going to kill Lee, dress him in women’s underwear and leave gay porn all around him so everyone knows he was gay. “What terrifies you more, death or being disgraced?” (How about option C: Recapping overwrought dialogue?)

Andrew tortures Lee, including dropping huge, heavy bags of cement on his septuagenarian chest. (“Concrete can build, but concrete can kill” — oof!) He stabs him and slits his throat. Then he burns the plans for the Sky Needle at Lee’s altar.

Marilyn arrives home from her business trip and can immediately tell something is amiss. She stands on the front stoop until two neighbors stop by to help her investigate. They notice some things off (including ice cream melting on the counter and a knife stuck inside a ham on Lee’s desk) and call the police.

The cops find the grisly scene in the garage. Andrew is long gone in Lee’s Lexus, but Marilyn refuses to entertain the idea that Lee and Andrew had any kind of pre-existing relationship (a fact the Miglin family maintains to this day). Instead, she tells the police this was an opportunity killing. Lee was old, alone and hard of hearing. It wouldn’t take much to surprise and overcome him. She’s a powerful woman with a lot of political influence. The implication is that she pushed this narrative on the authorities (and it may have hampered the investigation that could have prevented Versace’s murder).

She also rattles off a list of items Andrew took: suits, cash, those gold coins we saw Andrew pawning in previous episodes. Through it all she maintains a calm, collected demeanor. It’s not until she’s alone with someone she trusts later that she allows the grief to fully wash over her.

Light is a powerhouse, carrying the majority of the hour on her shoulders, but here she too suffers from some incredibly heavy-handed writing: “How can someone who cares so much about appearance appear not to care?” She’s holding it together for her family, including her son, an aspiring actor set to appear in the upcoming film, Air Force One. (There’s another theory that Andrew actually had a relationship with Lee’s son, not Lee. The Miglins also deny this.)

Despite all the pressure to keep the story contained, news leaks that the cops have been tracing Lee’s car phone in the stolen Lexus. Andrew hears this on the radio and immediately looks for a way to ditch his ride. He follows a solo trucker, eventually robbing him. He forces the man at gunpoint into a basement. The man pleads to see his wife and child again, but Andrew kills him anyway.

We may never know what really transpired between Andrew and Lee. Maybe Lee’s killing, like the pickup truck owner, was random. However, the narrative American Crime Story is painting is how the closet not only led to getting Lee killed, but the shame around being outed as a gay man at the time was enough to impede an investigation that could have stopped a serial killer. Whether or not this particular element of the story they’re telling is factual, there is certainly some truth to that.

What did you think of last night’s episode?

Judith Light Was the Best Part of Last Night’s ‘American Crime Story’ [RECAP] – Towleroad

American Crime Story: Versace Recap: “A Random Killing” Leads To Heartbreaking Devastation

After last week’s chilling episode where more of Andrew Cunanan’s state of mind was revealed, including his affinity to duct tape and Phil Collins, one would think that would be it for the creep factor. As it turns out, Cunanan’s depravity is limitless.

This week’s episode took us back to May 1997 and introduced us to one of the men that Cunanan had murdered prior to Gianni Versace, Lee Miglin. For many, Miglin’s murder seemed like a random choice but as we learned during this episode, there was so such more to it.

The setting moves the series to Chicago, with top notch guest performances by Judith Light and Mike Farrell as Marilyn and Lee Miglin. She’s a cosmetics maven with a home-shopping TV high profile and a “perfect husband” in Lee, a well-connected real-estate tycoon who’s also a closeted gay of a certain age, making him vulnerable to the narcissistic and murderous predations of Cunanan.

Though this episode may be a Versace-less one, it packs quite the punch and fills us with dread as it makes the fate that befalls Versace even more harrowing.

Gather ’round and let’s discuss “A Random Killing”.

A Wife Always Knows: The episode begins with Marilyn coming home from a trip, expecting Lee to be there to pick her up, but he isn’t. So instead she takes a cab, and returns home to eerie silence and the unmistakable sense that something isn’t right. Marilyn gets the neighbors and calls the police, who tell her what she already knew: Lee is dead.

The Perfect Sham: We are then taken back to a week earlier when Lee and Marilyn were at a fundraiser for Illinois governor Jim Edgar. Marilyn introduces her husband as the guest of honor, and we are given a glimpse of their married life and relationship. He and Marilyn were a partnership, working together to grow their individual careers. They appeared to be the perfect couple until they got home, and the truth comes to light as this isn’t a marriage of convenience, but it’s not one of passion either. Marilyn then leaves for work, which gives Lee the opportunity to invite Andrew over, who just arrived unexpectedly in Chicago.

A Moment of Joy Becomes A Moment of Horror: The second Andrew arrives, it is immediately revealed that the two men had a semi-regular thing going on, though Andrew’s latest visit came as a welcome surprise to Lee. Lee starts their visit off by making Andrew a sandwich and showing off architectural plans for a magnum opus, a skyscraper that would be the Tallest Building in the World. “You’re trying to impress me,” says Andrew as he points out how Lee is pretending “that there’s a genuine attraction between us.” “You can pretend too,” says Lee before Andrew kisses him deeply. “You’ve never been kissed like that, have you?” he teases. “How did it feel?” Lee, exultant: “Feels like I’m alive.”

That moment of exultation doesn’t last long though as Andrew takes Lee into the garage. The beginning of the end for Lee begins with a consensual BDSM encounter until it becomes terrifyingly obvious that Andrew has something god awful in mind. Once Lee is fully bound, with duct tape around his face and cords around his ankles, Andrew punches him hard enough in the face to break his nose (!!!) and reveals to a devastated Lee that he’s killed two men already, and that not only does he plan on killing him but also leaving his body in women’s underwear, surrounded by gay porn. “What terrifies you more, death or being disgraced?”, Andrew taunts the dying man.

Lee doesn’t get the chance to respond unfortunately as Andrew proceeds to crush him with a bag of concrete before stabbing him with a gardening tool.

A Wife’s Heartbreak: The police arrive when Marilyn calls, and when they find the body, they understand that the situation surrounding the murder makes the case more sensitive than most. The death leaves Marilyn in a state of besieged grief: Devastated by her loss, devastated by how society itself is assaulting her marriage. She and her son are staunch in their approach that this was just a random killing, and that Andrew Cunanan had no relationship with her husband aside from being the stranger who took his life.

The Chase Begins: We follow Andrew across state lines into his most random killing as he becomes aware that the police are onto him thanks to the radio leaking the news of their trace; all he wanted was a truck. He stalks some would-be victims at a rest stop, waiting until he sees a man driving a red pickup truck. When the man starts driving away, Andrew follows him, shadowing him through a graveyard where he is the caretaker. Finally, the man arrives at his office, and Andrew follows with a gun drawn. “Stay calm,” Andrew says. “No one’s going to get hurt. I’m here to steal your truck.”

Unfortunately, that isn’t all that happens, as the man gives Andrew his keys and goes down to the basement so Andrew can lock him down there. The man starts to tell Andrew about his wife and their son. “I’m a married man,” he says. “We have a son, Troy. I’d very much like to see them again.” Andrew then shoots him, point blank, in the head.

The final moments of the episode are given back to Marilyn Miglin, back on the air, talking about how much her husband meant to her.

Instant Reactions/Questions:

Mike Farrell is heartbreaking in the scenes with Darren Criss, and it made me hate Criss in those moments, which is a testament to how well Criss is doing in this role.

If you still had any sympathy or affection left for Andrew, this episode should have stripped that away entirely.

As much as I missed Versace in this episode, this spotlight was greatly needed to further reinforce how merciless and cruel Andrew is.

Quote of the Night:

“That’s all I’ll allow that man to steal from me. I won’t let him steal my good name. Our good name.” – Marilyn

American Crime Story: Versace Recap: “A Random Killing” Leads To Heartbreaking Devastation