Gianni and Donatella. Gianni and Antonio. Donatella and Antonio. Andrew and Ronnie. Yes, this week’s episode featured duct tape sex helmets, Daren Criss dancing to Phil Collins in a speedo and Ricky Martin’s butt, but don’t get distracted. The focus of this week’s episode was these fraught relationships. As it jumped around in time, we got a closer look at the dynamic between these various pairs.
First, we see Donatella (Penelope Cruz) hissing at Antonio (Ricky Martin) over Gianni’s illness (fact check: the Versace family denies Gianni having HIV, but Marleen Orth’s 2000 book, “Vulgar Favors,” claims that Gianni’s autopsy revealed that he was HIV positive at the time of his death). Donatella blames Antonio’s promiscuity for Gianni’s illness and she’s upset with Antonio for not giving Gianni the stability he craves.
Donatella seems out of line here, though – why is she intruding on the intimate details of her brother’s relationship with his partner? She may not agree with their lifestyle, but she shouldn’t freeze Antonio out. Gianni seems very capable of fighting his own battles, especially with Antonio. It is especially tragic after Gianni dies. The two could lean on each other, but Donatella sees no reason to keep up the charade and flies back to Italy, with Gianni’s gold-boxed ashes in tow.
Whether it was Donatella’s words or simply good timing, Antonio is finally ready to commit to Gianni. Even though Gianni questions his decision, challenging him and asking if he’ll change his mind when the two are out clubbing like the kings of Miami they are, I truly believe Antonio. All he wants at this stage of his life is Gianni. When Antonio repeats himself outside of the club, his words are shattering because you know it’s too late and Gianni will be dead the next day. The storyline between Antonio and Gianni is arguably the most devastating in the entire show, because they care for each other so deeply in a way that not even Donatella can recognize.
Gianni and Donatella, who clearly share a deep bond and mutual respect, have their moments of discord too, especially when it comes to their creative visions. They clash over a fashion show – Gianni thinks the models are too skinny and she scolds him for not being edgy like McQueen and Galliano. They fight, as families do, and agree to disagree and each dress separate models for their show. This is why their business and personal relationship works so well. They can throw down and quickly pick back up and move forward, despite their passionate creative difference. What an envious partnership they have.
In stark contrast to all of this, we see loner Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) desperately trying to make a connection with someone, even if that connection is as fake and shallow as himself. Arriving in Miami after killing four other men, he latches on to the first junkie he sees at his fleabag motel, Ronnie (an unrecognizably gaunt Max Greenfield). This relationship is the only one that isn’t factual and was probably created for plot reasons, but it shows us how sleazy Cunanan is and how much he yearns for a companion. He breezes in, offering Ronnie a cut of his escort business, regaling him with false stories of his fiancé, Versace.
Despite his transparent braggadocio, Cunanan seems well liked wherever he goes – the kid is charming AF – so it’s hard to understand why he is so broken inside. He seems to feel cheated by life, but perhaps if he put half as much effort into having a career as he does being a conman, he really could have accomplished something. Instead, he uses all of his creativity to snow the people around him.
Next week, we jump in time again, back to one of Cunanan’s other murders. And as for Darren Criss in a speedo, you can resume thinking about that now.
So, are you hooked on this show yet? Honestly, the first two episodes worried me. I loved last week’s American Psycho tribute, but the early scripts still jumped around too much, introducing a huge cast of characters and cramming years’ worth of vignettes about Andrew Cunanan and Gianni Versace into less than two hours. All that exposition made it hard to get emotionally invested in any one story. As soon as you started to care about Gianni and Antonio, there was Andrew bellowing “Gloria” in a stolen truck, or some FBI dope confusing Versace with Liberace.
Last night’s “A Random Killing” was something entirely different—a spare, focused episode and easily my favorite so far. I’ll get to the fact-vs-fiction part soon (promise) but first we need to talk about Judith Light. Who else could’ve played Marilyn Miglin, the wife of Cunanan’s third victim and allegedly closeted Chicago real estate magnate Lee Miglin? She’s a complicated woman. The queen of HSN is sharp enough to realize something’s wrong in her marriage, yet she loves Lee for his belief in her. And yet, her reaction to his murder is so practical! She goes into crisis-PR mode, feeding the police narratives to obscure the reality that a halo of gay bondage magazines surrounded Lee’s body. But there’s pain under the surface. When she finally lets down her guard, the monologue Light delivers about being a “real wife” is heartbreaking.
Darren Criss gives the episode’s other great performance. It’s chilling to watch Andrew slowly turn on Lee, puncturing the romantic veneer of what is actually a business transaction before mocking his powerful prey as he wraps Lee’s face in tape. Does writer Tom Rob Smith sometimes overload his dialogue with symbolism? Absolutely—“Concrete can build, but concrete can kill” is just awful—but the most revealing exchange in a mostly excellent script takes place in Lee’s study, when Andrew psychoanalyzes his host’s plan to build a tower so tall that its observation deck will look down on the Sears Tower.
Andrew sees that the project is really an egotistical power move; Lee protests, unconvincingly, that he’s only thinking of how delighted kids would be by the view. Andrew has a knack for perceiving people’s hidden dark sides, which makes his relationships with the victims he knows personally fascinating. Look for more of that next week. On to the annotations…
Lee and Marilyn Miglin
They weren’t international celebrities like Versace, but Lee and Marilyn Miglin were well known and loved in Chicago society circles. As Marilyn helpfully points out in the episode, the couple’s story was a classic “American Dream” narrative: Lee was the son of an immigrant coal miner who talked his way into his first real estate job at age 31, rising quickly from there. As Maureen Orth reports in Vulgar Favors, the firm he founded with business partner Paul Beitler built many of downtown Chicago’s most prestigious edifices, including Madison Plaza and the Chicago Bar Association Building.
The Miglins also independently owned over two dozen properties in the city. But Lee’s and Beitler’s grandest ambition, to build a 2,000-foot tower called the Skyneedle that would have been the world’s tallest building, remained unrealized. (The Chicago Tribune published a fascinating article on the project shortly after Lee’s murder.)
Marilyn was a model-turned-makeup mogul whose eponymous cosmetics line—particularly, a perfume called Pheromone—became a Home Shopping Network sensation. Orth notes her complicated personality, citing an associate who observed, “She’s not a cream puff… Marilyn hides it till she needs to bring it out.” When she returned from her business trip to Canada to find her Gold Coast townhouse in disarray, she cryptically told her neighbors, “I know he’s dead and they’ll never catch him. They’ll never find who did this.”
The lack of emotion she displayed in the wake of Lee’s murder really was a topic of local gossip. Marilyn remarried in 1999, but her second husband, the businessman Naguib Mankarious, died soon after, while getting a facelift. A lawsuit caused her to file for bankruptcy in 2007. Nevertheless, she persisted. Over a decade later, Marilyn is still alive and hawking her wares on HSN. (Here’s a video from 2017.)
Lee’s Murder
The show’s account of Lee Miglin’s murder and its aftermath sticks pretty close to the facts. Yes, Marilyn returned to find a Coke can and an open carton of ice cream in her normally spotless kitchen, while neighbors spotted a ham with a knife stuck in it in the library and signs that a dark-haired man had taken a bath in one of the bathrooms. Lee’s body was found in the garage next to an assortment of gay porn magazines, fully dressed but wearing lacy Calvin Klein bikini underwear, his ankles tied with an extension cord and his face wrapped in masking tape.
What happened before the murder isn’t nearly as clear. Was Lee Miglin a closeted gay man? How did Andrew end up in his home? Did they already have some kind of relationship? An expert told Orth that there was likely a sexual element to the killing. Signs that Cunanan had hung around at the Miglins’ for a while after the crime suggested he knew Marilyn was out of town. And a neighbor named Betsy Brazis spotted Lee talking with a younger man in his kitchen shortly before his death.
An AIDS educator, Brazis also mentioned to Orth that “Lee’s name would come up occasionally as a gay ‘straight’ man” in the support groups she led. A local queer newspaper published an anonymous report that Miglin had been spotted in gay bars, although other Chicago journalists swore to Orth that they tried and failed to find evidence that he slept with men. Meanwhile, Orth plays up Lee’s stereotypically gay characteristics, from his neatness to his effeminacy. These descriptions are kind of uncomfortable.
But the investigation into Andrew’s motive never got far, in part because Chicago law enforcement and other local officials were personally invested in protecting the family’s good name. The murder was declared random. An anonymous city official told Orth, “The case is closed. There’s nothing in the file. His employees loved him. The church loved him. His wife loved him. Case closed.” Twenty years later, the suggestion that Lee was anything less than a heterosexual family man remains controversial. A recent Chicago Sun-Times headline reads, “Revisiting Chicago murder, FX series depicts Lee Miglin as gay, close to killer.”
The piece quotes American Crime Story executive producer Brad Simspon, who explains, ““Our writer, Tom Rob Smith, had to dramatize what we believe happened that weekend starting from the established facts of the crime scene. Based on the evidence, we believe that Lee and Andrew did know each other, and Andrew’s attack, as with all his victims except for William Reese [the man Andrew kills for his truck later in last night’s episode], was targeted and specific.” The implication is that homophobia not only prevented the truth behind Miglin’s death from coming out, but—along with that exasperating car-phone leak, which did happen—also contributed to the FBI’s failure to catch Cunanan before he killed again.
Duke Miglin
Wait, there’s more. Remember Duke Miglin, Lee and Marilyn’s 25-year-old “Hollywood actor” son? Evidence exists that he and Cunanan knew each other before the murder. Although Duke and Marilyn always denied having ever met him, acquaintances of the family told Orth that there was something off about their evasions. Shortly after Lee’s death, Andrew’s friends confirmed to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that he and Duke “spoke frequently.”
And, in an interview with Orth, two of Lee’s professional acquaintances related a memorable encounter with the Miglins at United Airlines’ Red Carpet Lounge at LAX, a few years before Lee’s death. “The Miglins were on their way to Hawaii for family Christmas, and were waiting for Duke to join them,” Orth writes. “He finally arrived with a friend, who made a great impression.” When they saw Cunanan’s photo, both confirmed that he was the man they’d met at the airport.
So, what happened to Duke? Well, despite his big break in Air Force One, he didn’t pursue his Hollywood dreams for long. Instead, he got married, had kids and got into the family real-estate business. Last year, Duke insisted to a Chicago ABC affiliate, “There was no relationship whatsoever. A lot of false things were brought up and they were very hurtful, very painful, for me personally and there were attacks on me as well that I really didn’t appreciate. And I still don’t.”
One of the most surprising things about The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is how much time the show is spending not just with Andrew Cunanan, but with his less famous victims. Prior to murdering Versace, Cunanan had already killed four men in a killing spree spanning several states, and this week’s episode (in-keeping with the show’s reverse Cunanan chronology) centers on his third victim, Lee Miglin, and briefly on his fourth, William Reese.
“A Random Killing” commits so thoroughly to fleshing out the character of Miglin (Mike Farrell)—a Chicago real estate tycoon whose ties to Cunanan remain ambiguous to this day—that Gianni Versace and his family don’t appear in the episode at all. Let’s get into five talking points from tonight’s hour.
1. Cunanan’s breath-play antics last week were a callback to his third murder.
Remember the nameless elderly man Cunanan seduced and then very nearly smothered with masking tape in last week’s episode? Of course you do. That startling sequence makes a lot more sense in light of this episode, which takes place several weeks prior and sees Cunanan murdering Miglin in a very similar fashion. In real life, it was never proven whether Miglin and Cunanan knew each other prior to the murder (the FBI considers it likely they did, which the Miglin family staunchly denies), but in the show, Miglin’s depicted as a deeply closeted regular client of Cunanan’s—and a pretty heartbreaking character in his own right.
2. Cunanan’s self-loathing emerges in his cruelty to Miglin.
Though the murder itself was brutal—a police officer notes that every one of Miglin’s ribs was broken—it’s the viciousness of Cunanan’s words that really stand out in this episode. Despite knowing theirs is purely a business relationship, Miglin seems quietly besotted with Cunanan, who in turns seems repulsed. Miglin is touchingly eager to tell Cunanan about his plans to build a 125-story tower (the tallest in the world) in Chicago and name it The Sky Needle. “I’ve wanted to share this with you for a long time,” he tells Cunanan, who all but sneers in his face, mocking both Miglin’s ambitions and his clear emotional investment in their relationship.
Later, when Cunanan brutally kills Miglin and leaves his body to be found in a deliberately humiliating fashion—wearing women’s underwear and surrounded by gay porn—I was reminded of the scene early in Episode 1, when Cunanan claims to be straight and casually throws out the F-word (“I mean, what are we supposed to call them? Homosexuals sounds so scientific.”) He doesn’t just want Miglin dead—he wants him outed and humiliated, remembered as “a pansy.” There’s so much internalized homophobia in Cunanan, and it almost feels like Miglin seals his fate when he admits to having real feelings for him—moments before Cunanan calmly confesses that he’s already “killed two people who were very close to me.”
3. The tower conversation tells you everything you need to know about Cunanan’s worldview.
Miglin is excited about the Sky Needle because he imagines families visiting together and children thrilled to ascend the tallest tower in the world. Cunanan, though, hones in on the fact that the hypothetical tower would loom over the Sears Tower, “so you can look down on the Sears Tower Observation Deck.” To Cunanan, there’s nothing more powerful than the idea of looking down on people.
The contrast between these two worldviews really comes into focus, though, when Miglin describes his fantasy of being able to visit his tower and “just roam among people, unannounced. They wouldn’t know who I was!” But the notion of being anonymous is so galling to Cunanan that he flies into a sudden rage, affronted by Miglin’s insistence that the tower is not about him. “Of course it’s about you—it’s the Lee Miglin Tower!” To Cunanan, there is no value in building anything for any reason other than putting your name on it.
4. Did a local radio station really scupper the Illinois police’s investigation of Cunanan?
Miglin is an immensely powerful figure in the community, and as such the police are all over this case, managing to track Cunanan for some time using the car phone in the Lexus he stole from Miglin. But when a local radio station runs a news item giving that information away, Cunanan is able to ditch the car—claiming his fourth victim in the process—and evade justice for another two months.
An activated car phone in [Miglin’s] Lexus was used three times the following week in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia police confirmed a news report of the attempted phone calls, angering Chisago County sheriff Randall Schwegman, who told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “Everyone who was working on [the case] was outraged. Once he heard that, he’d have been a fool to use a phone after that.”
5. William Reese is the only victim not to have an episode to himself.
But he does get a death scene that’s surprisingly affective for its brevity. Unlike Cunanan’s other victims, there was no apparent personal connection between Cunanan and Reese, and investigators concluded he was killed solely for his truck. After giving Cunanan his keys, Reese calmly and politely begs for his life before being shot execution-style in the back of the head.
Episode Three, “A Random Killing,” written by Tom Rob Smith and directed by Gwyneth Horder-Payton, is when “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” kicks into high gear.
It’s a bottle episode of sorts that spotlights the death of real estate developer and business tycoon Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell) and completely leaves out the Versace storyline – neither Edgar Ramirez, Penelope Cruz, nor Ricky Martin appear in this episode.
The episode highlights Lee’s wife Marilyn Miglin, to whom he was married for 38 years, and played by the magnificent Judith Light.
Set in May 1997, the episode opens with Marilyn, who sells beauty products on home shopping networks. “A Random Killing” is a platform for Light, who is on screen a good portion of the hour-long episode, which follows Marilyn discovering her murdered husband’s body in their Chicago home. Like the rest of the episodes this season, “A Random Killing” jumps back and forth in time as the rest of the episode shows the days that lead up to Andrew murdering Lee.
The episode is the first in this season to flesh out Andrew’s victims other than Gianni Versace. Lee and Marilyn, are fully realized people here, instead of ghosts who linger on the sidelines of Andrew’s story. (In the first season of “American Crime Story,” Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were not portrayed by actors.) It’s a powerful and risky move, as most scripted TV shows based on true crime neglect to highlight victims. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is bold for putting the victims of Andrew’s murders front and center, while never making their portrayal feel exploitative.
At age 72, the episode shows Lee’s struggles with his homosexuality as an older man who is also bumping up against his religion. In one moving scene, Lee is praying to a painting of Jesus and says, “I try. I try,” on the brink of tears.
Having accomplished much in his life, and despite a strong bond with his wife, Lee is not living his truth; the episode is a remarkable portrayal of the dangers of the closet. Having met Andrew some time ago as an escort, Lee invites him to his home while Marilyn is away on business. When Andrew arrives he’s already killed two close friends of his, and Darren Criss is as chilling and charismatic as ever.
In a tense scene, Lee shows Andrew his plans to build the tallest tower in the world, which sets Andrew off. Lee explains he wants to call the building “The Sky Needle” and not “The Miglin Tower.”
“I want to inspire people… it’s not about me,” he says.
“Of course it’s about you. It’s the tallest building in the world. It’s The Lee Miglin Tower,” Andrew says.
“It’s not about that,” Lee says.
“Then what are you showing me this for? Do you really think I want to spend all evening listening to how great you are? A great man with a great tower,” Andrew says sarcastically. He later claims Lee is trying to impress him and that their interaction is more than just a business exchange and a hookup.
Andrew then seduces Lee and brings him into the garage, where Lee’s body was discovered earlier in the episode.
“I’m in control now,” Andrew tells Lee before stuffing cloth in his mouth and duct taping his face – a tactic we saw Andrew perform in the previous episode.
Lee goes along with it, assuming it’s part of the kinky hookup. But Andrew suddenly turns violent and binds Lee’s arms and legs.
“So dominant out there. So submissive in here. So powerful out there! So pathetic in here. But you like being pathetic, don’t you?” Andrew says as he ties Lee, making him completely helpless and trapped.
Andrew then punches Lee in the face, breaking his nose, and says, “I’ve killed two people, Lee. Two people that were very close to me. I know it’s hard to believe: ‘Intellectual Andrew. Well-read, well-spoken Andrew. Well-dressed.’ But here I am. This is me.”
Andrew then whispers to Lee that after he kills him, he plans on humiliating him by putting women’s underwear on his body and surround him with gay pornography.
“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,” Andrew says. “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?
"Disgrace isn’t that bad once you settle into it,” he adds before slamming a bag of concrete on Lee’s body and stabbing him.
Indeed, Andrew makes good on his words to the businessman, and Lee’s body is found in the way in which Andrew told him it would be.
When the authorities tell Marilyn, she refuses to believe it and refuses to accept any possibility that Lee was gay. She also makes it clear that she does not want the press to learn how Lee’s body was found. After local police connect Andrew with Lee’s murder, police ask Marilyn if she knows him, explaining that he’s an escort and that the F.B.I. is taking over the investigation.
Light gives a powerful performance as Marilyn, and in one moving scene, has an emotional breakdown. “Am I real wife now?” she asks.
Though the episode is about Lee’s life and death, the title, “A Random Killing,” also refers to the murder of 45-year-old caretaker William Reese. After killing Lee, Andrew steals his car and goes on the run, ending up in New Jersey. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” does a stellar job of making Andrew a figure of destruction and death, showing how being at the wrong place at the wrong time and interacting with Andrew – just by chance – played a part in who he killed.
For William, it was nothing more than unsuspectingly crossing Andrew’s path. As the episode shows, Andrew spotted William at a rest stop, followed him home and murdered him in cold blood to steal his red pickup truck.
“A Random Killing” comes to a close with Marilyn on TV, ready to sell her beauty products again. A co-host explains to the audience that her husband was murdered “in a tragic act of random violence.”
“They killed my husband for a car,” Marilyn says. “…He was my legal counsel, my account, my best friend. He believed in me. How many husbands believe in their wives’ dreams? How many treat us as partners, as equals? We were a team for 38 years and I miss him very much.
"When I first started selling my perfume on television, my friend who hosted her own show gave me a piece of advice. Just think of the little red light as the man you love,” she says as the episode closes.
It’s May of 1997 now, and we fade up on a Canadian Home Shopping Network host giving us some biographical background on Marilyn Miglin, who started out as a dancer and transitioned into cosmetics when the hot stage lights kept melting her face. Her face here belongs to the great Judith Light, still her gloriously bad-ass self beneath an era-appropriate immobile inverted ziggurat of Executive Lady Of A Certain Age hair. Marilyn’s co-host introduces Marilyn’s new line, Pheromone, a direct – and, for the show’s metaphorical purposes, convenient – choice of brand name, and Marilyn is pretty pleased with her grand unifying theory of fragrance: “Perfume is about our bodies talking to each other without words.”
Marilyn’s not able to talk to anyone at her house, though; later, she’s at an airport pay phone, getting the machine. “Lee, I don’t know where you are,” she says, frowning; evidently she expected him to pick her up, but she can’t wait any longer. I mostly note the bit of dialogue above because of the Edie McClurg levels of Chicago torque on the word “are.” The camera studies Marilyn’s expensive jewelry as she says she’s going to catch a taxi…
…and then, when the taxi’s dropped her off, the expensive-looking exterior of the Miglins’ townhouse. Marilyn and her array of bags stand in the manicured mulch beside the sidewalk, apparently expecting Lee – and even if you haven’t “read back” on the case and Cunanan’s non-Versace victims, you’ve probably figured out based on passing mentions of Miglin in prior episodes (and, you know, having watched TV before) that Lee is Marilyn’s husband, and is dead – to rush out the front door full of apologies.
This does not happen, although Marilyn gives Lee ample time to correct his oversight when she flings the front door open and stands expectantly on the stoop. Nothing. She bustles inside with her things and calls, “Lee?” as the camera ensures we note the long vistas of the house; the predominantly pale-neutral color scheme of the décor; and the museum-esque tidiness of the rooms before cutting to a pint of chocolate ice cream melting insolently on the counter. Marilyn is brought up short by this, and returns to the front door to look warily inside. Passing neighbors pause to check her okay. “Something’s wrong,” she asserts, and the neighbors follow her inside. Spotting the ice cream, the Coke can beside it, and Marilyn’s clenching at them, Mr. Neighbor seems to agree that something’s off here, and tells the women to wait outside and call the police.
Mr. Neighbor begins his walkthrough of the house, calling for Lee. I find it odd initially that he doesn’t stop to salivate over the Miglins’ built-ins
but that’s because he’s spotted the “centerpiece” before I have: a ham with a butcher knife buried in it, left unwrapped on the desk in the study. Mr. Neighbor climbs the stairs to the master bedroom – more white, cream, and pale gold – and finds a disorderly master bath with a telling ring of mung around the bathtub. Next, an ankle-height shot set-up watches Mr. Neighbor hustle down the stairs to the basement; behind the door he opens with some trepidation is a chapel, and it too is messy. He has nothing to report to the women waiting at the front steps, but CPD is pulling up, and they do their own walkthrough, discovering bloody clothes in the bathroom and asking if anyone’s checked the garage. Mrs. Neighbor offers to go with the uniformed officer.
Inside, Marilyn sits, rigid, and drums her fingers in an odd way, almost like she thinks she’s supposed to have a nervous tic under the circs but isn’t really feeling it. She stares at The Telltale Ice Cream.
Mrs. Neighbor was told to stay in the alley, but sticks her head into the garage to report that the Miglins’ Lexus is missing. The uniform frowns and walks around the end of what looks like a vintage Corvette, then stops.
Inside, Marilyn hears Mrs. Neighbor’s wail of horror, and flinches. We push in on her as Mrs. Neighbor rushes into the room behind her and brings up short. As if to reflect the falling apart of everything, the cosmetics titan’s lipstick is feathering as she whispers, “I knew it.”
After the title card, it’s one week earlier, at a fundraiser for Jim Edgar for governor. The Miglins exposit for us via telling their tablemates that they’re devoted not just to one another but to one another’s careers – he helped her paint her first storefront – and Lee gives Marilyn the credit for their successes. Lee is played by Mike Farrell, who’s had some later-in-life roles the last few years in which he’s impressed; I’m thinking particularly of the Law & Order: SVU with Brenda Blethyn and Clea DuVall. I’ve been waiting for him and Light to show up in this season, because I like them both, and I like that the less “famous” victims are given a decent amount of the script’s attention and dimensioning here. With that said, by the time the groundwork of the marriage and the Miglins’ rise is laid, it’s nearly 20 percent of the episode’s runtime gone, and I wonder if this shouldn’t move a little faster. Anyway, after Edgar jokingly asks Marilyn never to run against him, Marilyn gives a lovely speech introducing Lee, but also about him, that he was one of seven coal miner’s kids who started out selling pancake mix out of his trunk. He’s a real-estate mogul, but also her partner in every sense, a great father and “a perfect husband.” Well: yeah. In the wings, Lee looks thoughtful as Marilyn calls him “the American dream.”
At home, Lee observes that the dinner seemed to go well, and thanks Marilyn for her effusions: “I wasn’t expecting that.” She’s heading upstairs, but stops to ask if he remembers what color they painted the Oak Street store she mentioned earlier. “What color?” he stalls. “That was years ago.” “We painted it pink,” she says, regarding him for a moment before going up. His smile fades; he closes his eyes and sighs briefly. Not sure what’s intended here, although I will say that you remember the color of every paint job you do yourself, especially if you are an impatient painter who sucks at it, like me. I’m not saying I detour past the paint-chip display at Lowe’s to flip off Benjamin Moore’s Harvest Gold every time I’m at that store? But I’m not saying I don’t. Forest Truffle can also suck it, while I’m up. So yeah, to me it’s somewhat striking that he’s failing this test, if in fact that’s what it is, and I don’t know why she’s administering it – he’s inattentive? she’s concerned about his mental acuity? we’re supposed to take something symbolic from the “pink” aspect?
Upstairs, Marilyn slathers her face with cold cream and begins taking her face off. I kept thinking of the end of Dangerous Liaisons, Glenn Close wiping her mouth so roughly.
Marilyn removes her lashes and, almost absently, dabs behind her ears and at her cleavage with scent while staring at her denuded face in the vanity mirror.
In the study, Lee’s on the phone: “No no, it’s just so unexpected!” He doesn’t seem alarmed when Marilyn comes in, looking curious, and tells the caller, “Those arrangements are fine! …And not before that time.” He adds that “we can discuss this at the office,” and hurries the caller off the phone; pretty good cover, but it’s obviously Cunanan on the other end. Marilyn cocks a brow: “Who was that?”
Cut to a sweaty Cunanan hanging up a pay phone, and to me realizing how…restful, for lack of a better word, the episode has felt without him up to this point, even knowing we’ve just seen Miglin scheduling his own death.
The man himself pads into the bedroom, where Marilyn is already installed with a sleep mask. He peers over at her, then covers her hand with his. She regrips so it’s more handholding, less protection.
As a red Jeep approaches Chicago, Marilyn gets ready to leave for Toronto. She asks what Lee’s plans are, while she’s away; he talks about finishing her “accounts,” catching up with a Paul…he’s sort of vague, and half-staggers to sit down on the stairs, concluding that he’ll go to work, it’s what he does: “Isn’t that what I always do?” Concerned, she sits beside him and asks what’s going on. “If you’re in one of your blue moods, why don’t you come with me?” she says. She likes it when he’s there. I like it when an actor commits to an accent; Light is currently in the middle of Pennsylvania somewhere, I think? The Chicago leaks out of the performance pretty steadily, sad to say, and by episode’s end she’s firmly back in Judge Donnelly territory…speaking of SVU. Anyway: Lee seems surprised to hear that Marilyn likes him to come along; bemused, she says of course she does. He tells her he’s very proud of her: “You know that, don’t you?” She surreptitiously checks her watch and asks if he wants to come or not; he heaves a sigh and considers it for a split second, then says no, he’s “being silly.” He gives her a kiss and helps her gather her things.
Andrew Cunanan pulls the red Jeep into a parking garage, cranks the seat back, and settles in for a nap as Astrid Gilberto’s “A Certain Sadness” starts up on the soundtrack and, at the Miglinhaus, Lee seats himself at Marilyn’s vanity with a couple fingers of bourbon and stares at himself in the mirror…then dabs some of her Pheromone behind his ears. He sips his drink and steels himself.
Later, he heads downstairs to the basement chapel and lights a candle. Kneeling before the cross, facing the picture of Jesus, he shakes his head and crosses himself. His eyes fill. “I try,” he tells his God. “I. Try.” It’s quite affecting, and yet my eye is drawn over to what appears to be a conversation pit in the back of the shot.
Very odd juxtaposition that must be true to life or they’d have scotched it as distracting.
Cunanan parks around the corner and heads to the Miglinhaus. Inside, at Cunanan’s knock, Lee zhuzhes himself sartorially and mentally at the hallway mirror, then answers the door and hurries Cunanan inside, presumably so neighbors don’t see him admitting a young gentleman at night. He hugs Cunanan warmly. Cunanan stands kind of limply; his eyes are a blank as he stiffly raises his arms to return the hug.
Cunanan’s stuffing a huge sammich into his piehole as Lee makes small talk: he didn’t expect Cunanan to be in town. What brings him to Chicago? “Work,” Cunanan grunts, departing the kitchen with the sandwich and no plate or even a paper towel to catch crumbs. Trash. Tellingly, Lee makes sure to wipe the counter before hastening after Cunanan, hesitantly telling him that “a little warning” would have been “useful,” as it’s dumb luck he’s alone in the house. Cunanan asks when Marilyn’s back; Lee naively tells him. “We have some time!” Cunanan chirps. Lee, whose combined eagerness and lack of street smarts are killing me right here, asks if he can stay the night. Cunanan, through a mouthful of sandwich, garbage-persons, “Can you shut the blinds?” Lee goes to do just that.
Lee’s in the study, getting out some drawings and saying he’s wanted to “share this” with Cunanan for a while. Cunanan leans in the doorway, rummaging in his bag for his gun, and as Lee is laying out the drawings, we go to a first-person-shooter POV as Cunanan levels the gun at the back of Lee’s head. “The Skyneedle!” Lee nerds sweetly, and whether Cunanan is touched by his enthusiasm or thinks it’s too easy a shot, I don’t know, but he stashes the gun back in his pack as Lee goes on about it being the tallest building in the world once it’s built, 125 stories, 1,952 feet. This was a real project; it was never built. The Freedom Tower would have made the conversation we’re about to hear irrelevant in the second place, but: Cunanan confirms that the idea is to build it right near Sears Tower, with an observation deck that will look down on the Sears Tower’s – thereby pretty much putting the Sears Tower out of business, at least from a tall-building-tourism standpoint. Lee never thought of it like that. After a pause, Cunanan snorts, “Please. That’s exactly how you thought of it.” Lee shrugs that, actually, he saw himself mingling amongst the families visiting it, and eavesdropping anonymously on their excitement.
But this version of pride in accomplishment is alien to Cunanan – as are actual accomplishments, really, which is why he has to shit on it, asking if it’s ever going to happen. Has he broken ground on the project? Lined up the financing? Not yet, Lee admits, and Cunanan makes a lemon face and booms, “The Miglin Tower!” No no no: it’s the Skyneedle. It’s supposed to inspire people to “reach up – it’s about that, it’s not about me.” Here again, though, Cunanan’s narcissism and his rage at those he perceives as “better” than he makes him unable to tolerate a loftier explanation, and he sputters that it’s the tallest building in the world, it’s the Lee Miglin Tower! Why else is Lee showing him these plans? That he cares about Cunanan and wants to share something he’s stoked about isn’t something Cunanan can register; to him, it’s a power play, and he brats that he doesn’t want to spend the whole night “listening to how great you are.” Lee looks at him with confusion as Cunanan continues snitting about the “great Lee Miglin Tower,” inspiring schoolchildren for eons to come, but instead of suggesting that, for a guy who clearly hasn’t bathed for several large states’ worth of driving, a “the customer is always right” approach is not just indicated here but required, Lee just says they don’t have to talk. “No, we don’t,” Cunanan says, more agreeably, but he’s not done being a twat, smirking that he knows what Lee’s doing: he’s trying to impress Cunanan – to convince himself that this is “more than a business transaction,” that there’s a genuine attraction there. Lee confines himself to pointing out that Cunanan could pretend, too. Cunanan keeps that fatuous challenging smile pasted on, then leans in for a passionate kiss, during which the camera dwells unnecessarily on Lee’s wedding band. Lee’s never been kissed like that, has he? No, Lee says, fairly trembling with desire. “It feels like I’m alive!” Oh, Lee. Cunanan points out that “most escorts” don’t kiss, then crazies that he’s not like most escorts; he’s not like “most anybody.”
Well, that’s true, strictly speaking. “I could almost be…a husband. A partner!” Lee kind of cringes, which probably won’t help him, as Cunanan goes on, “I could almost be. I really could, almost.” He’s probably trying to elevate his own status in the transaction, but Lee misunderstands, thinking he’s rubbing it in more, and says he knows it’s not real; he’s not a fool. But Cunanan makes it seem soreal. “Good,” Cunanan whispers, delighted, then proposes they “go out.” Where are they going? To make a mess, Cunanan says, leading Lee to the garage, and he doesn’t want Lee to worry about it.
In the garage, he shoves Lee up against the wall. “I’m in control now.” Lee seems a little concerned, but mostly titillated, and the proportions don’t change when Cunanan open-up-and-say-ahs a gardening glove into Lee’s mouth. Lee’s little moans of excitement make this particularly difficult to watch, especially when he reaches for Cunanan but is pushed away so Cunanan can search the tool table for masking tape. As Cunanan carefully wraps Lee’s head, Lee starts to look more puzzled than turned on, and when Cunanan’s done, Lee is lowered to the floor and bound with an extension cord while Cunanan burbles about Lee’s dominance in the outside world and submission “in here.” The torture is actually listening to Cunanan blather on about inverting the natural order, in my opinion, never more than when Cunanan smugs that Lee likes “being pathetic, don’t you.” It’s really that Cunanan doesn’t like it and can’t escape feeling it, so he has to humiliate Lee fully, crawling up his body and throttling him for a few seconds, then breaking Lee’s nose with the heel of his hand. Lee emits a muffled wail. Blood leaks out from under the tape as Cunanan announces that he’s killed two people very close to him, hard though it surely is to believe of “intellectual Andrew,” “well spoken, well dressed.” Snort. Cunanan makes a point of blaring into Lee’s ear that he knows Lee isn’t wearing his hearing aid (one more tiny humiliation before the final string of big ones), so he’ll speak very clearly: when “they” find Lee’s body, he’ll have ladies’ drawers on and be surrounded by gay porn, so that “everyone will know” the “great Lee Miglin is a sissy.” This isn’t about Lee at all, of course; it’s about Cunanan feeling like he doesn’t exist, and as Lee continues to groan, Cunanan winds up by asking tearfully which Lee fears more, “death, or being disgraced?” Lee sobs. Cunanan sits back and says, as if realizing it for the first time, “You know, disgrace isn’t that bad – once you settle into it.”
He gets up and heaves a bag of Quikrete over to Lee, panting, “Concrete can build. And concrete can kill.” So on top of everything else, Cunanan’s a C-plus writer. Roger that. He heaves the bag over his head and slams it down on Lee’s torso, then shoves it off, grabs some kind of screwdriver from the pegboard, and stab-falls onto Lee’s chest.
Later, Cunanan tools through the house, almost artfully spattered in blood. He whomps the ham down on Lee’s neatly arranged Skyneedle plans and crams meat into his mouth. Expressionlessly, he picks up the drawing of the building and tears it exactly in half, right through the tower; cut to him burning it on the chapel’s altar. The hold on the shot of the hellish flames oranging his face and dancing in his eyeglass lenses is maybe a little long.
CPD Superintendent Rodriguez marches through the press scrum at the front of the townhouse, not acknowledging questions about whether Lee knew the intruder. The crime-scene techs pause at the sight of the boss, but he tells them to carry on as he looks down on Lee’s corpse, now crimson with blood thanks to torture (apparently with a handsaw) and surrounded as “promised” with porn magazines. Rodriguez’s question about “the underwear” lets us know the rest of Cunanan’s threat was also carried out. Rodriguez sighs as the lead tech says Lee had no defensive injuries to his hands, but every single rib is broken, and says he wants no leaks; the official story is that “an elderly gentleman has been killed.”
Elsewhere, Marilyn is straightening family pictures on the mantel as a guy in a suit – presumably J. Paul Beitler, Lee’s partner – quavers that “this” had nothing to do with their business. Marilyn’s like, duh, of course it didn’t, and as Rodriguez enters, doffing his hat, she begins listing with grim determination everything Cunanan took: money, leather jackets, suits, the Lexus, the “unusual” gold coins Lee gave as gifts, a dozen pairs of black socks. It was a “robbery,” no question. Rodriguez keeps his face impassive in this gust of denial, and also when Marilyn announces to Beitler that she knows who SupRod is; she didn’t call 911, she called a police commander she knows. “We’re all here for you,” SupRod merely says, and as Beitler’s face works in the back of the shot, Marilyn announces, “Lee was alone in the house. He was vulnerable. It was an opportunistic attack.” The burglar could have snuck up on Lee, if he didn’t have his hearing aid in!
Beitler hangs his head as SupRod suggests talking later. “Talk now! Why not!” Marilyn says. SupRod gently broaches the “homosexual pornographic magazines” near Lee’s body. Marilyn barely reacts, blinking and saying they must belong to the killer. SupRod has an almost reflex cop response to that theory, observing that that would mean the killer brought the magazines with him – i.e., knowing his target/that he would need them; having been invited. It took me a minute to register the implication, but Marilyn’s right on top of it, and is not having it, gritting that she’s not interested in the murderer’s “intentions.” Catch the guy; don’t talk to her about what might “or might not” be going through his mind. “I understand,” SupRod says. Marilyn squints: “Do you.” SupRod, now a little worried: “I believe so.” Marilyn, without breaking eye contact: “Dollars. Jewelry. Socks. Suits. That’s all I’ll allow that man to steal from me.” He won’t take her good name – their good name. They worked too hard making it, together.
Rodriguez is likely relieved to escape into the crime scene, then, confirming that Cunanan not only took a bath and shaved, but appears to have slept over. He clenches, looking at the bed, as the lead tech says, “He must have known that Marilyn was coming home.” He clenches again when he finds two of his detectives chowing sandwiches in the downstairs hall, and politely informs Marilyn – who is seated beside her son, Duke, and now wearing a different suit, so the timeline here is a bit shuffly – that she doesn’t have to feed his officers. She chirps that a neighborhood restaurant wanted to help, and donated the food. Then she introduces Duke as “a Hollywood actor!” (hee/aw), and mommily upsells his career as an abashed Duke is like, “‘Aspiring,’ Mom.” He does mention he’s in Air Force One, but notes on Marilyn’s proud “He plays a pilot!” that there are a lot of pilots in the film. Heh. Miglin Jr.’s film career didn’t go much of anywhere, possibly because the murder of his father took him off track, possibly because most film careers…don’t; Cunanan apparently suggested to several people that he and Duke knew each other and were working together, a contention the Miglins have firmly denied.
We cut away from this awkwardness to a uniform finding Cunanan’s Jeep, festooned with parking tickets, around the corner. She peers in to see a map of Chicago and a copy of Out Magazine, and runs a plates check. A hit comes right back: it’s stolen, and linked to the homicide of Jeff Trail. And there’s more good news in terms of leads, as two detectives tell SupRod at the cop shop, namely that Lee’s car phone turns on whenever the car is turned on, which lets them track the car’s location. Based on the pings to date, it looks like he’s heading to New York. SupRod wants this intel kept in a cone of silence – the FBI, them, that’s it – and the three of them exult that wherever Cunanan goes, “we got ‘im.” (Ron Howard, wearily: “They don’t.”)
NYC’s Versace storefront. Cunanan, attired in one of Lee’s suits, I guess? Although Mike Farrell is much too tall for them to fit him properly, but that’s one of those things fictionalized narrative never gets right about borrowed clothing – anyway, he regards himself smugly in the shiny sign on the door and goes in to do some browsing. There’s a home-goods display set up on a dining-room table, and as he’s about to pull up one of the chairs and leaf through South Beach Stories by Gianni and Donatella, the chair makes an echoey skrronnnk along the floor. Darren Criss nails the jumpy “did anyone see that” reaction on Cunanan’s part; it’s just a perfect, tiny smackdown of the striver, satisfying to a viewer who has come to enjoy Cunanan’s discomfiture but also a nod to the hundreds of these tiny mortifications that may have contributed to his becoming a monster. A graffiti-ish rendering of Gianni in the book shifts the soundtrack from peppy retail jazz to the foreboding strings of Cunanan’s madness.
SupRod asks the assembled at the Miglinhaus if they’ve heard of Cunanan. Marilyn says no; who is he? He’s an escort, SupRod tells them (Beitler looks nauseated, and I honestly can’t tell if the actor is just trying to register in a scene dominated by Judith Light’s charisma; if we’re supposed to deduce that Beitler either knew for sure or strongly suspected that Lee may have had extracurricular desires; or if he didn’t know but is now homophobically revolted). Cunanan is wanted in connection with two homicides in Minnesota. “What does this have to do with Lee?” Marilyn asks. Cunanan stole a Jeep from one of the victims; it was found a block from the Miglinhaus. SupRod puts a mugshot of Cunanan on the coffee table. Marilyn says confidently she’s never seen him before; Duke looks uncomfortable, though it’s hard to know how to take that. The camera pushes out from the side of Marilyn’s face to focus on Duke’s, and on Duke hanging his head, as SupRod says reluctantly that they have to understand the case is no longer solely a CPD matter, that the FBI is now involved. Marilyn says all they care about is catching Lee’s murderer. Beitler stares straight ahead, clenching his jaw. Marilyn looks at him and at Duke all, “…What?”
Outside, SupRod is told that Cunanan’s on the move, but the cell phone towers have tracked him to outside Philadelphia. PPD and the FBI are “closin’ in.” SupRod looks over his shoulder at the living room and mutters, “I hope they’re ready.”
Beitler lets himself into the master bedroom just in time for Light’s Emmy reel, as Marilyn updates her blush and snaps that she knows what they’re saying about her. Why hasn’t she cried? Where’s the grief, the emotion? She didn’t love him. “How could a woman who cares so much about appearances appear not to care!” Beitler, probably thinking about the “allegations,” sighs that people say all kinds of nasty things at a time like this. “Especially at a time like this,” Marilyn adds, when you’re weak, when you’re down. She scrabbles around on the vanity top for a lip pencil and snaps, “How dare they say our marriage was a sham,” and points at Beitler’s reflection with the lipliner: “Lee and I – shared our whole – lives.” Breaking down, she talks about the adventures they shared, and how he rescued her when she was lost. “I…loved him,” she weeps. Beitler approaches and puts a hand on her arm. “I loved him very much!” Marilyn claps her hands to her face and starts smearing around the makeup she’s just been carefully touching up, and gasping through a possible panic attack, she snarks, “There. Is that better? Am I a real wife now?” She stumbles to the window and sits on a stool to say that they had a fairytale life, makeup straggling across her face, and as much as I always love Light and as much as I appreciate the script underlining the emotional wreckage Cunanan left in his wake (as all murderers do), the scene is quite stagey – like, there’s really no point to the blocking except to move Light around, and there’s really no point to those theatrical kinetics or whatever, because this is filmed. Light can move this ball by herself, you don’t have to block her like this is the Penfield Academy production of Mother Courage. Just run the camera.
Exhibit A: “We didn’t even fight,” delivered with an almost ashamed glance at Beitler, as if to acknowledge that that could be construed as a lack of passion. See? Light has this well in hand. She chews her upper lip with her lower teeth as she says that Lee never lifted a finger (to her, I believe she means). “But I will,” she says, getting up and crossing back to the vanity – again, for no apparent reason except that The Big Book Of Scene Anatomies appears to have called for it. There’s no “family connection” to “this Cunanan,” she says. “We’ve never heard of him.” Beitler looks stricken some more as Marilyn fairly orders him, “It was…a robbery. A random killing.” She begins to straighten up the vanity top.
It’s not so neat at the cop shop, as one of the detectives has to tell SupRod that Philly radio is running a story about the car phone, and that they’re tracking the signal, which means Cunanan will know they’re onto him – at which time the episode director leafs through TBBOSA to “Reaction Blocking, Frustrated,” drops a fingernail onto “shove everything off desk while shouting angrily,” and nods. And that’s what SupRod does. Come on, guys.
Cut to the Lexus, where Cunanan hears said report; hilariously starts whanging the receiver of the car phone on the console; then screeches over to the shoulder to wrench the antenna off and hurl it into the underbrush. Which is not sketchy at all, except it totally is, and a passing car’s passengers give him a “tf you doing” look. He pulls out again, then quickly heads into the entrance of Fort Mott State Park. (It’s in Pennsville. If you think of the state of New Jersey as a grandma in a rocker – this is the image our eighth-grade earth-science teacher always used; don’t know why it’s a grandma – Pennsville is at the southwestern tip of the state, basically Nana’s nipple.) He parks, and scans the families in the parking lot for targets/prospective carjackees…or waits for the park to empty out of extraneous witnesses, which appears to have taken a while. Cunanan finally sees an older lady who looks likely, and has his gun out, but then her husband appears and Cunanan thinks better of it. Enter the red truck, and a ponytailed caretaker stopping to pick up the mail. This is William Reese, the caretaker of the on-site Civil War cemetery. Cunanan scrambles back to the Lexus and follows Reese into the cemetery, and I am not a botanist, but I’m pretty sure this sort of tree is not native to Jersey.
Let me know in the comments, but if I’m right, it seems strange they wouldn’t just get permits for a local graveyard. Anyway, Reese parks next to the chapel building and heads inside, stopping to remove a weed from the flowerbed near the door as Cunanan is parking along the other side of the building. Reese is settling in in the office when Cunanan comes in, gun drawn, and says pleasantly that Reese should stay calm, nobody’s going to get hurt: “I’m here to steal your truck.” He asks for the keys, but tells Reese not to reach for them and to get away from the desk. Then he asks if there’s a downstairs. There’s a basement. “Can I lock you in there?” “Door’s got a lock, yessir,” Reese semi-answers.
The “basement” is in fact properly – and fittingly, alas – a crypt.
Cunanan orders Reese onto his knees. Reese tries to humanize himself for Cunanan, mentioning his wife and son and that he’d sure like to see them again, but Cunanan is Cunanan, and shoots Reese mid-sentence. He looks around at the crypt with that Starman blankness, then heads upstairs, grabs his backpack from the Lexus, and peels out in the pickup.
Back to the set of CHSN, where the co-host from the opener extends the HSN “family”’s deepest condolences and explains to viewers that Marilyn’s husband was brutally murdered. Marilyn says she had to “think long and hard” about coming back, but believes Lee would have wanted her to: “You see, his name is on these bottles too.” He was her legal counsel, her accountant, her best friend. He believed in her, she says, wiping her eyes, then wonders how many husbands really believe in their wives, treat them as equals and partners. “We were a team,” she quavers, caressing a bottle of perfume, “for 38 years, and I miss him very much.” The co-host asks if she’s able to go on. Marilyn nods, pulling herself together and remembering a piece of advice she got from a friend who hosted a TV show: “Just think of the little red light as the man you love.” Push in on Marilyn, staring sadly at the red light, then closing her eyes.
As the third episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story opens, we see neither Gianni Versace nor Andrew Cunanan. Instead, writer Tom Rob Smith and director Gwyneth Horder-Payton introduce us to Marilyn Miglin. Miglin is a home-shopping icon and the head of a beauty product empire — worthy of a TV show in her own right. Considering the legendary Judith Light is playing her, you might expect Ryan Murphy and co. have suddenly decided to add another star to the mix.
But as much as Marilyn dominates the narrative this week, this is still not her story. We’re still in Cunanan’s; Lee Miglin, Marilyn’s husband (played by Mike Farrell), was his third victim. In flashes back-and-forth, we see both how he died, and how Marilyn handles the immediate aftermath of his murder.
When Marilyn has to go out of town for work, she asks an innocuous question of her husband: “What are your plans for when I’m away?” His struggle to answer — his reach for any possible thread of what he’s doing — depresses him mightily. “I’m going to work, like I always do,” he says, sitting, dejected, on their stairs. She asks if he wants to come with her: “I like it when you’re there.”
This takes Lee aback. “You do?” he asks. As depicted by Light and Farrell, the Miglin’s relationship is one of mixed signals and unspoken secrets. There’s clearly love there, but that’s only half the battle.
See, Lee’s real plans for when Marilyn is away are to meet up with a younger man he knows: Andrew Cunanan. There’s great hesitance within Lee for this meeting. As he goes to let Cunanan in, he freezes in front of his mirror and adjusts his sweater. He then lets out a deep sigh as he can’t quite get it right. The clothes are right; the fit is uncomfortable. Lee is a misfit in his own life, and meeting with Cunanan is his chance to try and find a better fit.
The Cunanan we see here is more aloof than prior. With Versace, he was trying to be the best version of himself. With Lee, he’s sloppy and distracted. This is, we know from history, the Cunanan who has recently killed two men. He can’t even muster the energy to pretend to care about his newest victim.
Unlike most of the episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Darren Criss’ Cunanan has relatively minimal screen time. Light takes center stage, particularly during the time after her husband’s death.
In fact, Marilyn wants Cunanan dropped from Lee’s history. She’s wounded to learn of her husband’s relationship with an escort, but her interest is in preserving his memory, not damning him in death. She wants there to have been nothing intimate between Lee and Cunanan, no connection. “We’ve never heard of him,” she insists icily. “It was a robbery, and a random killing.” It’s what she needs — not just as someone who cares about how things look, but as a widow who wants her relationship with her husband preserved as she remembers it.
In a powerhouse scene, Marilyn applies her makeup while monologuing about her husband’s murder. “I know what they’re saying about me,” she says, applying her face with an unsteady hand. “Why hasn’t she cried? Where’s the grief, the emotion? She couldn’t have loved him. How could a woman who cares so much about appearance appear not to care? … How dare they say our marriage was a sham? Lee and I shared our whole lives. We shared all kinds of adventures. We rode in hot air balloons. When I was lost in the desert, he rescued me. How many couples can say they have that kind of romance? I loved him. I loved him very much.”
She says those last lines through heaving sobs as Light allows Marilyn’s grief to overcome her. “There, is that better?” she spits. “Am I a real wife now?”
Marilyn’s plight is a sympathetic one. She knew her husband as one man; his death is revealing him to be another man entirely. Trying to make those ideas compatible is harder than merely erasing the parts of Lee that trouble her. Unfortunately, this reaction is rooted in internalized homophobia, both within Marilyn and the community at large. Her fear is not just that her husband was hiding secrets; it’s that the secrets would ruin his reputation — ruin the idea of their marriage. And so, she chooses to hide Cunanan’s motive.
Ultimately, it’s this lingering homophobia that keeps the real motive behind Lee’s death a secret — a recurring thread through this season of American Crime Story. We often think of homophobia as personally restrictive, a threat that keeps gay people in the closet and terrified of bullying, discrimination, and even assault. But homophobia is also structurally restrictive: For Marilyn to be secretive about her husband’s sexuality means one piece of the Cunanan puzzle was left out. The same goes for how the police wouldn’t canvas the gayest parts of Miami for Cunanan in the previous episode: Hate stands in the way of justice.
Personal and structural homophobia come together in next week’s episode, “House by the Lake.” Personally, it’s my favorite episode of anything that Ryan Murphy has ever done; think “Looking for the Future,” but so, so much darker.
Horror loses its bite when we learn too much about the villain. It’s not just that the unknown is always scarier than the known, it’s that we can’t help but develop a grudging empathy for a killer the more we get to know them. After Monster laid bare Aileen Wuornos’s many tragic tribulations before her serial killings, it became easy to forget she was a terrifying death-bringer for certain innocent people. Or in fiction, was there ever a bigger blunder than Rob Zombie attempting to explain Michael Myers’ childhood to us in the Halloween remake? Shockingly, finding out that The Shape had been bullied as a child completely robbed him of his terrifying, shark-like unknowability. But what happens when the reverse occurs, and a complex, borderline sympathetic villain is suddenly stripped back and streamlined into a dark void? Horror returns.
Three episodes in and it’s clear that Gianni Versace himself is only a side character in what is ultimately the horror saga of Andrew Cunanan’s crimes. But where the premiere introduced Cunanan as a verbal, witty, clever, and deeply troubled person motivated by jealousy and longing, this week reframed him as a straight-up horror movie slasher. His motives were opaque and unpredictable, his methods bizarre and hard to explain. I was terrified. Is there a chance the American Crime Story subtitle contains a typo? This week The Assassination of Gianni Versace was suddenly much closer in tone and effect to Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story. Which is to say, “A Random Killing” was one of the most disturbing episodes of TV I’ve seen in a while. Let’s talk about it!
We began with two women hawking perfume on the Home Shopping Network in the mid-’90s.
The perfume was ingeniously called “Pheromone,” and its mastermind was one Marilyn Miglin, the IRL baroness of a Chicago-area beauty empire. She was played here by the great Judith Light, who had been mercifully freed of her Transparent wig and personality. Judith Light was INCREDIBLE in this episode, which — though it was about the two murders Cunanan committed prior to Versace’s — centered the story around this woman and how she coped when her husband was murdered.
After her husband failed to pick her up from the Chicago airport, Marilyn arrived at her ominously empty house and recruited some neighbors to help check the place out. But from the long, tense tracking shots of the all-white, fancy home, we knew something was wrong. A stranger had been there. But what kind of maniac would leave ice cream out on the counter? The police definitely needed to be called! (Also there was a corpse in the garage.)
We then flashed back a week and met Marilyn’s husband, Lee, a well-respected and enormously successful commercial real estate developer. Right away we could tell the two adored each other, but in a married-my-best-friend kind of way. Lee was probably not interested in doing sex with Marilyn, but they definitely held hands in bed. We should all be so lucky!
Anyway, while Marilyn was away on her work trip, guess who swung by for a visit? Yep, Andrew Cunanan dropped in unannounced, and we gathered that Lee had hired Cunanan as an escort in the past. And though Lee clearly tried to be a gentleman toward his young companion, Cunanan took matters into his own hands. And in this case those matters were duct tape, a bag of concrete, and eventually a screwdriver.
Aside from brutally murdering older men, Cunanan loves to give a speech while doing so. In this case he monologued about how Lee was a powerful man attempting to build the tallest building in the world, but now Cunanan had power over him. So whereas we mayhave believed that Cunanan’s murders had been opportunistic, or methods for him to gain quick cash and stolen cars… It was now clear he was excited by the idea of destroying powerful men as a way of elevating his own status. Dark, dark stuff. And this extended sequence of torture and murder was one of the less pleasant things I’ve ever seen on TV. Poor Lee.
Rather than show you all that violence, let’s just settle for this image of Cunanan stabbing a honey-glazed ham! Think of it as sort of a metaphor for what had just happened in the previous scene.
Anyway, back to Marilyn. Her whole thing was, she was a sharp, professional woman who wanted the investigation undertaken in the most efficient manner possible. She verbally itemized every item Cunanan had stolen from their home, and vehemently denied any knowledge of why Cunanan had surrounded her husband’s corpse in gay porn rags. The killer must’ve brought them, duh.
I also liked this strange moment when the investigators were asking Marilyn questions but she just wanted to talk about her son’s burgeoning movie career. It’s almost poignant how in the midst of this tragedy she was still trying to maintain her composure as a strong businesswoman and image protectress.
But of course, eventually she crumbled and gave a moving (and convincing) speech about how much she loved her husband, and that it HAD been a genuine marriage, despite whatever his leanings were. They’d been best friends and partners and each other’s support systems. And it goes without saying that Judith Light’s work was devastating in this episode. Hope she still has space on her mantel for more trophies, because dang.
Meanwhile, Cunanan was driving around in Lee’s stolen Lexus, and browsing local Versace boutiques, which in my opinion is foreshadowing. But he soon realized that the built-in car phone was giving his location away whenever he passed a cell tower. It was time to find some new wheels!
And unfortunately for the poor undertaker who drove by Cunanan in a pickup, red was Cunanan’s favorite vehicle color!
Next thing we knew, he was following the man back to his mortuary, leading him into the basement at gunpoint, and then, well, you know. Truly heartbreaking. I have to be honest with you, I am not a fan of Andrew Cunanan.
We then ended with this moving scene, when Marilyn Miglin returned to the Home Shopping Network airwaves and memorialized her husband while clutching a bottle of her perfume. And while the juxtaposition of mixing pathos with consumerism could have been a salient satirical point, Judith Light’s pained emotions made it just simply devastating. In a series ostensibly about one famous murder, it’s clear Cunanan destroyed so many more lives than just Versace’s.
“A Random Killing” also served to make the point that many of the gay-related details of Cunanan’s crimes were swept under the rug in order to maintain reputations. Marilyn Miglin actively sought to prevent the press from knowing that her husband had known Cunanan prior to the murder, and while one can understand the protectiveness a victim’s family might have, it was this kind of public discomfort with gay men that hobbled Cunanan’s swift apprehension. Just another frustrating element to what has become an increasingly American horror story. (Get it? Like the show.) Great, if deeply unpleasant, stuff.
This episode, which lacks any Versace (Gianni or Donatella), felt to me like the freshest so far in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” the second season of “American Crime Story.”
We are introduced to several new characters, chiefly Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell) and his wife, Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light). Their portrayal of a Chicago couple who have made the best of a 38-year marriage despite the lie at its center is both plausible and moving.
Marilyn, a feisty former dancer, has become an entrepreneur who sells her fragrances and cosmetics on the Home Shopping Network. “Perfume is about our bodies talking to each other without words,” she tells viewers.
Lee is a commercial real estate developer, a Catholic who keeps a religious altar in his home where he prays for God’s forgiveness for his sexual attraction to men, and says he has done his best to resist temptation.
It’s all slightly campy, but these two, whose relationship could easily have been portrayed in a mawkish or ridiculous way, came across to me as deeply sympathetic. God only knows how many marriages between ambitious women and closeted gay men were created (and endured, even now) during the decades-long rights revolution in the United States that culminated with the full striking down of sodomy laws, in 2003, and the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage, in 2015. How did these couples manage these lies, while striving to lead lives of decency and integrity?
Like the series over all, this week’s episode is not told in chronological order. It is 1997. We follow Marilyn from a work trip in Toronto back to her home on Chicago’s Gold Coast, where she quickly notices that things are not as they should be. Two passing friends dial the police. Marilyn sits in the kitchen, her polished nails dancing on the granite countertop, as a bloodcurdling scream is heard from the garage: Lee’s mutilated body has been found.
“I knew it,” Marilyn says under her breath.
Flash backward, a week earlier: Marilyn and Lee are at a fund-raising luncheon for Gov. Jim Edgar, Republican of Illinois.
She introduces her husband in terms so admiring as to be gushing: “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.”
Later, at home, Marilyn moisturizes her face and removes her cosmetic eyelashes. It would have been easy for the episode’s writer (Tom Rob Smith) and director (Gwyneth Horder-Payton) to have this moment be the one when the mask of a happy marriage is removed, its ugly face revealed.
In some ways that happens: In a quiet moment before the mirror, Marilyn applies a drop of perfume down the front of her silk robe, her eyes hollowed out with longing. In another room, Lee takes a call from Andrew Cunanan, dialing from a pay phone, and when Marilyn asks who is calling, he lies and says it’s a business call. But the marriage is not merely a sham. When Marilyn asks Lee what he plans to do while she is away on business, he sounds down. She asks him to accompany her.
“I like it when you’re there,” she says, and she means it.
It is their last meaningful encounter.
With Marilyn away, Lee opens his door to the serial killer, who happens to be in town. Lee shows him his plans to build a 125-story, 1,952-foot Sky Needle, which would have been the world’s tallest building.
The conversation does not go well. Andrew thinks the main point of having a building taller than the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) is to surpass the latter structure’s observation deck. Andrew also urges Lee to name the tower for himself, something the self-effacing developer has no intention of doing.
They kiss — “It feels like I’m alive,” Lee says — and Andrew boasts: “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.”
I found this reference to marriage anachronistic, and puzzling, and not for the first time in this series. In earlier episodes, Gianni Versace’s partner, Antonio D’Amico, tired of their hedonistic lifestyle, proposes, and Cunanan tells a friend — falsely, we believe — that Versace once proposed to him.
I’m certainly not making light of commitment or the desire for it. But I’m puzzled by the use of words like “husband” and “proposed.” They don’t seem true to my own memories of the late 1990s, when gay men were more likely to speak of boyfriends, partners and companions, and they seem strangely ahistoric.
My next quibble with this episode is more prosaic: the killing of Lee Miglin, in his garage, by Cunanan is so grisly and sadistic as to be difficult to watch. I’ll spare the details, but the monologue Cunanan delivers before delivering the coup de grâce bears note:
The monologue raises the question: Is Cunanan motivated by self-hatred, a desire to expose hypocrisy, or both? His use of homophobic language suggests self-hatred, but his focus on disgrace suggests some kind of crusade. It is not, of course, a crime to cross-dress, or to look at porn. This mutual failure of recognition — murderer and victim seem to agree on one thing, that to be gay is a disgrace — is perhaps the saddest moment in this series so far.
The rest of the episode is a tour de force by Judith Light, whose portrayal of a wife in denial is simply magnificent. She offers a brisk inventory of what’s missing from the house — a Lexus, $2,000 in cash, two leather coats, two suits, “some inconsequential pieces of jewelry,” rare gold coins and a dozen pairs of socks — as she reaches the conclusion that the killing must have been a random and opportunistic robbery.
Told by the Chicago police superintendent about the gay porn found next to the body, Marilyn surmises that “they must have belonged to the killer,” but goes on to say: “I’m not interested in his intentions. Find him, catch him, but don’t talk to me about what or might not be going through his mind.”
She adds: “Dollars, jewelry, socks, suits — that’s all I’ll allow that man to steal from me. He won’t steal my good name. Our good name. We worked too hard making that name, and we made it together.”
For an ambitious woman born in the 1930s to have a husband who is fully supportive of her professional aspirations might indeed, as she suggests, have been “a fairy tale life.” “How many husbands believe in their wives’ dreams?” she asks her Home Shopping Network viewers — and us — later in the episode. “How many treat us as partners, as equals?”
Left unsaid: Perhaps his being gay allowed him to be such a supportive partner.
Compared with all this, Cunanan’s murderous escapades seem mundane. He flees to New Jersey, and the police failure to capture him after a radio station reveals that investigators have been tracking his movements by car phone. In search of a new car to steal, he stops at a cemetery, where he marches one of the groundskeepers into a basement and makes him get down on his knees.
The man begs for mercy, but his plea is cut short. And for the first time in this series I was so disgusted by this killer’s lack of remorse that — for a moment at least — I didn’t want to keep watching.
At least most of carnage is out of the way. Six more episodes, two more bodies to go.
In “A Random Killing,” it’s the silence that stands out. There’s silence on the other end of the telephone as Marilyn Miglin leaves a message for her husband, not knowing that he’s already been murdered. There’s silence when she swings open the door to find her house just slightly off—ice cream left melting on the counter, a used but uncleaned bathtub. The noises we do hear—exploratory footsteps, Marilyn clacking her nails on the countertop—reinforce the eeriness of the situation. Marilyn barely flinches when a scream breaks the silence to confirm what she suspected. She stares straight ahead before saying, barely above a whisper, “I knew it.”
It’s a masterful cold open, anchored by Judith Light’s performance, and it sets up an episode that’s more focused than last week’s “Manhunt.” Where “Manhunt” was sprawling and scattered, “A Random Killing” has a clear game plan and a narrower focus, zeroing in on the murder of Lee Miglin and the immediate aftermath. Lee, a real estate tycoon, was Andrew’s third victim—second in the backwards chronology of the series—and the details of the circumstances are perhaps the most muddled of all his victims.
As I mentioned while covering the pilot episode, part of American Crime Story’s task is to full in the blanks left out of Maureen Orth’s book. Lee’s family—primarily his wife Marilyn (something of a Home Shopping Network celebrity) and his son Duke (an actor who had a bit part in Air Force One, released a few months after his father’s death)—have always denied that Andrew knew Lee (or anyone; Duke’s actor-status had some rumors swirling). It’s always been emphasized as a random killing, a robbery because Andrew needed cash and a car, and Lee had both. “A Random Killing,” despite the title, says otherwise.
In this narrative, Andrew is Lee’s escort and shows up unannounced. Lee feeds Andrew. They briefly catch up. The two flirt in a way that older, impressive men sometimes flirt with younger nobodies: Lee pulls out his plans for the Miglin-Beitler Skyneedle, posed to become the tallest building in the world, which we know was never built. “Do you think I really want to spend all evening listening to how great you are?” Andrew questions Lee. But a part of Andrew probably does want to hear it: He’s obsessed with power and money, because he doesn’t have it. There is so much packed into this little scene, such as the frustration in Andrew’s voice as he challenges Lee’s claims that Lee wants to be an anonymous man eavesdropping on happy people in the Skyneedle, rather than forcing his name and bravado onto the building. This anonymity is baffling to Andrew, the man least likely to be forgotten. The two have an interesting dynamic, both pretending and not-pretending that this is not about money, but instead a “genuine attraction” though whatever it is—either in real life or in the series—isn’t enough to spare Lee from a brutal murder.
In the garage, Andrew puts a glove in Lee’s mouth and tapes up Lee’s face the way he taped up the businessman’s last week (though a bit more careful in this instance). Lee puts his trust in Andrew the way he would with a dominant partner, submitting to Andrew’s assumed-foreplay because he can’t have expected it would go as far as it did. Whether or not this scene works for you, I think, may depend more on the words than the actual violence. No doubt that both are horrifying, but it’s Andrew’s agenda that’s bone-chilling. He wants to effectively throw Lee out of the closet, making sure that when someone finds Lee, his body is surrounded by gay porn magazines. “I want the world to see that the great Lee Miglin is a sissy,” Andrew says, leaning in close enough so Lee can hear him clearly without his hearing aid, “The great Lee Miglin who built Chicago, built it with a limp wrist.”
It goes back to this season’s recurring thematic element of the weight of being closeted, and maybe the somehow still-existing belief that people—people with fame and power, especially—owe it to the world to be honest and open about their sexuality, regardless of whether or not they want to. For Andrew, the episode seems to be suggesting, it’s almost unfair that Lee is celebrated for being something that he’s not: a straight family man. Andrew doesn’t have that luxury, and he wants to make sure Lee doesn’t, either. Like last week’s incident with the businessman, it’s a scene that I can’t fully parse just yet, or not until I have the finished nine-episode picture. It’s unsettling and queasy, which is certainly the intentions of writer Tom Rob Smith, but maybe in a different way than it’s intended.
Everything else in “A Random Killing” is easier to swallow, and it all works pretty well. Andrew visits a Versace store in New York City, as if test-driving Versace’s life. The police catch a break when they figure out they can track Andrew in Lee’s stolen car due to the car phone … until media botches it by revealing that detail to the public and, in turn, to Andrew who swiftly pulls over to destroy the signal. Another frustrating note regarding the investigation: When Marilyn lists the items that were stolen, she includes Lee’s gold coins which are “unusual and easy to trace” if Andrew brings them to a pawn shop, as he did in Miami. Later, Andrew commits another murder—one that better fits the episode’s title—in order to switch vehicles, this time shooting a stranger in the back.
Light, as Marilyn, gives an impressive performance throughout “A Random Killing,” teetering between stoicism and breaking down. Marilyn has only just started to mourn her husband’s death before police all but say it’s time to start mourning her sham marriage. It’s a hard task, playing a woman who reactions are all internal rather than external: “How can a woman who cares so much about appearances appear not the care?” she asks, aware of how her lack of emotion must be coming off to the public. When Marilyn does begin crying, only for a second before regaining her composure, it’s heartbreaking. But “A Random Killing” leaves some things open-ended. When Marilyn sternly says, “We have no family connection to this Cunanan. We’ve never heard of him. It was a robbery, and a random killing,” there are so many layers to the statement: Are we supposed to take this as fact or is she practicing what to repeat to the press?
Stray observations
Major props to Gwyneth Horder-Payton who did a stellar job directing in this episode, truly capturing the suspense. The wide shot of Andrew dropping concrete on Lee made me actually jump and shut my eyes.
Marilyn telling the detectives that she’ll allow Andrew to steal items but “he won’t steal my good name, our good name. We’ve worked too hard making that name and we made it together” is a powerful sentiment, especially put next to Donatella’s similar statement in the pilot episode.
I’m glad the show is putting in effort to showcase victims’ backstories instead of just depicting the murder and moving on.
To say this hour was gut-wrenching would be an understatement.
There is no Gianni Versace this week. No Donatella. No Antonio. There’s no Miami. Instead, we venture over to Chicago, just a few months before Versace’s death.
Here we meet Lee and Marlyn Miglin, an older, wealthy couple who are apart of Chicago’s elite society. From the outside looking in, these people have it all. Marilyn is a fixture on the Home Shopping Network, and Lee has designed buildings all over the windy city.
But the outside rarely ever tells the full story. And the truth was that Lee was having relationships with male escorts. Andrew Cunanan among them.
I try. I try.
—Lee
Lee seems like a conflicted man, as he’s built himself a Catholic altar in his basement where he can pray and seemingly absolve his sins. But even while he may be living a sort of double life, he doesn’t seem to want to stop.
When Andrew shows up, Lee takes a moment to look at himself in the mirror, making sure he’s presentable. And he greets Andrew with a hug that is begrudgingly accepted by the agitated Andrew.
From the moment Andrew comes inside, he’s abrupt and harsh. He chastises Lee and talks down to him at every turn. Even though Lee is the older, seasoned individual in this dynamic, Andrew is running the show.
No, I’m not like most escorts. I’m not like most anyone. I could almost be a husband. Or a partner. I could almost be.
— Andrew to Lee
After Andrew places an intense kiss on Lee, you can see the look of satisfaction that takes over Lee. That kiss brings him back to life almost. It’s what he wants but can never say out loud.
Since the episode begins by showing us that Lee is dead, it’s an intensely brutal march towards the dreaded moment. Andrew takes pleasure in torturing Lee, detailing everything like the sociopathic killer he is.
I’ve killed two people, Lee. Two people that were very close to me. I know it’s hard to believe. Intellectual Andrew. Well read, well spoken Andrew. Well dressed. But here I am. This is me.
— Andrew
Just like in American Crime Story: The Assassination of Versace Season 1 Episode 2, Andrew covers his victim’s face in tape, rendering them powerless. Andrew has to be the dominant person in every situation, every conversation, every aspect. His narcissism pervades every single action he takes.
It’s unclear how closely these two men are connected, but the narrative leads us to believe they’ve met at least once before. The true motive behind the killing isn’t explicitly clear, but in death, Andrew wants to expose Lee to the world by surrounding him with pornographic magazines and dressing him in ladies underwear.
Lee seems to be the kind of person Andrew hates. And that seems to be reason enough to kill him.
What follows the murder is a bit of a whirlwind. Marilyn isn’t the grieving widow you might expect. She seems to have it together, and she’s staying strong for her children. For herself. For Lee.
She isn’t interested in what the police are insinuating about her husband; she’s interested in preserving the legacy of his name. Their shared name – a name that is synonymous with success, not scandal.
Judith Light brings a depth and realness to a woman we don’t know much about. It’s hard to create a character that connects fully with an audience when they only get roughly 20 minutes of screentime. But she does just that.
I have a feeling when this series concludes, people will still be talking about her performance. It’s just that good.
It was a random robbery. And a random killing.
— Marilyn
Marilyn will not let Andrew Cunanan take anything else from her.
After the murder, Andrew flees town in the Miglin’s car and heads towards New York City. The police figure out fairly quickly that Andrew is behind the murder since the car he’d stolen from his previous victim is parked near the Miglin’s home.
But like all things involving Andrew Cunanan, the police are too late. Once it’s leaked that he’s being tracked, Andrew is on to his next getaway car and his next victim.
While Lee’s murder was somewhat personal and vindictive, Andrew’s fourth victim was opportunistic. Andrew needed a car, and this man was in the wrong place, at the wrong death.
His death is chilling, and clearly, at this point, Andrew is killing to stay alive. He needs to stay alive long enough to reach his target.
He needs to stay alive long enough to kill Gianni Versace.
Are you learning any new information about this case from the series? What did you think about “A Random Killing” being devoid of the Versace’s?
ACS news 