American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is over, and that’s fine. This season was so ambitious, but it had to work with the rough outlines of a true story, and I wonder if that held it back, or at least held back its final episode. The tragic end of Andrew Cunanan’s (Darren Criss) real life may have been violent and graphic, but it wasn’t that dynamic. I know I sound sick, but the manhunt didn’t have any high-speed chases or even that many close calls. For the most part, Cunanan just hung out in an apartment watching his own face on TV and panicking.

While the finale never got all the way to a boil, I did thoroughly relish the supporting characters getting their individual curtain calls. I’m glad Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light) is back because she is a scene-stealing queen. No one dramatically loses their train of thought quite like her. She stirred up more emotion in a single monologue than some of the entire episodes this season. I also thought it was kind of beautiful that the show’s two mothers, Mary Ann Cunanan (Joanna Adler) and Miglin had similar reactions when the FBI came knocking at their door: They immediately asked if their kids are okay.

Lizzie also invoked her kids (and Cunanan’s godchildren) when she spoke to camera asking Cunanan to show the world he still had good in him. She was so sympathetic and angelic, and probably is the person who saw Cunanan at his best moments most often. On the flip side, Ronnie (Max Greenfield) was quick to tell Detective Lori Wieder (Dascha Polanco) that Cunanan was not his friend, but then he kind of sort of had Cunanan’s back later in the interrogation room. I think their non-friendship friendship was one of the more fascinating dynamics of this season. Their accidental comradery may have relied on them not asking too much of each other and a shared interest in drugs, but I think Ronnie respected Cunanan’s chutzpah, or at the very least felt his same anger and struggle to be acknowledged. He has one of the most succinct and sassy lines of the episode when he says, “You couldn’t find a gay, so now you’re gonna blame a gay?”

Which reminds me, could Dascha Polanco’s role have been any smaller? It might have been my mistake to assume her and Ricky Martin’s role as Antonio D’Amico would be bigger based on their celebrity, but I wish we had seen more of both of them. The little we did see of D’Amico felt meaningful, but I don’t think you can say the same for Wieder. It was such a special indignity he was made to suffer. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be the invisible partner, and especially to have a priest swerve on you like that. My only grievance with the funeral scenes is the use of real footage of Princess Diana and Elton John. It gave me the heebie jeebies and felt oddly disrespectful to me, even though I’m sure that wasn’t the intention.

Maybe I was ready for the season to be over, but I found watching Cunanan going crazy in that apartment to be a tiny bit boring. Was throwing up on his own face a bit much to anyone else? I almost feel like they went for that simply because him hiding out without a plan is such bland TV without it. They even resorted to having Cunanan shoot a TV. Sorry to be the nerd with a hard time suspending my disbelief, but gunshots are also loud, and firing guns willy nilly while you’re in hiding is a bad call! Oh and shaving his head and baring his soul was a little extra but I will cop to liking seeing Darren Criss with a new lewk.

The modest surprises for me were that Cunanan called his dad, and Modesto actually managed to come across as a little bit sweet. There’s a darkness there of course, because it almost sounded like his dad proud of him for the awful things he’d done. I thought Cunanan’s dad’s final moments of opportunism might be enough to make him lash out at the police in anger and potentially die by suicide in the process, but he seemed to finally be resigned to his fate.

Maybe I felt deflated after watching this episode simply because this is essentially a show about a man who killed five people and all the watching in the world doesn’t change that, but I actually think it’s something else. I think the show wanted me to feel nourished by the final scene between Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) and Cunanan, and I just didn’t. We see a rejection that is small to Versace and everything to Cunanan, but I don’t know that he visibly looks like he snapped, or that the things they said to each other were any different than I had already filled in with guessing throughout the season. In other words, it didn’t feel like a big reveal, but it had the grand placement in the episode’s pacing as well as with its showy setting that made me feel like it was supposed to mean more, and it just didn’t.

ACS: The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: Episode 9 Recap: “Alone”

The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is up to its old tricks. Last week, I fell right into the trap of thinking the killer’s mother, Mary Ann Cunanan (Joanna Adler) was a completely awful wretch, and now this week I feel terrible for her and the cards life dealt her. Stop making me sympathize with creeps, FX! I don’t want to feel!

If you told me Modesto had a coke addiction, I would 1000% believe it because every word that leaves his mouth has the distinct bravado and aggression of someone who’s high. I feared him as soon as he appeared, and even before he grabs his wife by the neck, you can sense he’s been abusive by how skittish and careful she is around him. Modesto also brings up Mary Ann’s mental health four times when she’s being perfectly normal, which is textbook gaslighting or manipulating somebody into questioning their own sanity. It’s popular amongst predators like Modesto.

Something rubbed me the wrong way in the last episode when Cunanan says, “older men have always liked me,” while breaking eye contact a little sadly. And unfortunately, I think it could be in reference to his father abusing him. There are a million little things that are wrong throughout the first scene with the Cunanan family. Why do they call Andrew a prince; why does he still have a teddy bear; why would he get to ride shotgun; and then later, why would his dad kiss his feet? It’s interesting how long I held out hope that Andrew’s father was not sexually abusive, which I think is both a testament to denial and how dark this subject matter truly is.

This was almost like a teaching tool for priming or grooming for abuse, except for the fact that Modesto probably didn’t need to win his son’s trust because he was already his son. Plus, the gifts he gave Andrew were so over the top and flamboyant. Seeing his dad buy him a car years before he could drive makes the things Andrew does later, like buying lobster and insane hotel suites, make a sick kind of sense. I know Cunanan must have been terrified for most of his childhood because the threat of violence seemed omnipresent, but I did also feel like something hardened in him when he rolled up the window on his mom by his own choice.

She’s a good friend and person, and it’s interesting to know that her first impression of the youngest Cunanan was him at his most vulnerable and in need of a friend. Her character gets more filled in, but it felt so rushed! She’s a married, “real grown up” and is yet another case of Cunanan meeting someone when they were feeling a little bored or down (and then probably leveraging it later.)

Cunanan’s father is such a pure, selfish evil. We know he sold nonexistent stocks to a 92-year-old woman, and the fact that he had that much cash ready and a go bag makes me think his crimes must have been serious and plentiful. I was shocked his dad was actually there when he went to find him, but I was not surprised there was no money. I think he stole to get by, and I actually was impressed with how much sympathy I could muster for him after he said, “You can’t go to America and start from nothing, that’s the lie.”

I was still shook that his dad spit in his face, and I lost all sympathy for the washed up criminal when he started calling his son a sissy. Modesto says crying is weak, and that his son is being just like his mom, which solidifies any doubt I had that the mom wasn’t probably actually mentally ill aside from experiencing postpartum depression. This episode ends up feeling kind of confusing because Andrew says he won’t become his father, but we kind of know he does. A moment stuck with me in this episode when Andrew puts his hands over his mom’s mouth with a little too much natural, controlled rage. It seems like the first reason the two of them have had to fight, but it feels like he’d just seen force used so casually in that house so many times that he didn’t think twice.

“ACS: The Assassination Of Gianni Versace” Episode 8 Recap: “Creator/Destroyer”

American Crime Story came back from a week off and caught me off guard. I was starting to think the show’s reverse storytelling style meant I knew everything that was coming, but the horrific murder of Lincoln by someone other than Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) shook me. Seeing Cunanan become an accidental witness to the killing felt like watching an intense telenovela and I couldn’t look away. I am a little worried that for Cunanan this was the sick, twisted version of “You can’t be what you can’t see.” I worry he felt almost excited and inspired by the violence.

The bludgeoning was terrible but it did allow for one of the best lines of this episode. Norman (Michael Nouri) is so likeable and is even more so when he said, “We fall sick, it’s our fault. We’re murdered, it’s our fault.” The second best line had to be the woman who runs the escort service saying, “I can’t sell a clever Filipino, even one with a big dick.” All the other good lines belonged to Donatella Versace (Penelope Cruz). “I believe for a woman a dress is a weapon to get what she wants” is good enough to hang on a college dorm wall. And when she told her bro, “You want me to wear the dress and talk about female empowerment and then keep my mouth shut when we’re in the studio,” I was with her in a big way. If they’re pandering to this Brooklyn Feminist, I don’t care because I am eating it up.

This was the first time we get to see Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramírez) go full diva, and we get to see his sister be soft. In fairness, the man thinks he’s dying, but he is also the harshest we’ve seen him. It almost felt like his anger was bringing his partner Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) and Donatella together for once. I also think the Versace matriarch deserves credit for how much she held it the heck together, and I appreciate that she wore a badass biker bitch outfit to deliver a truly sweet and vulnerable pep talk to her team. Also, if you love Gianni’s creative meltdown with the scissors, you should really see Phantom Thread.

I guess I should also talk about Cunanan, who starts this episode looking like San Diego Pharmacy Ken or a more handsome version of the creepazoid in 24 Hour Photo. His grooming and dressing are so meticulous, it almost makes him feel untrustworthy. Speaking of untrustworthy, wasting ice cream is easily the most serial killer thing we’ve seen Cunanan do so far. That and answering the question, “Are you drunk?” with “(I’m) drunk on dreams.” Gross. Call 9-1-1.

The relationship between Cunanan and his mother chills me to no end. Who lets their kid throw a fit over ice cream like that? And I say “kid,” when Andrew is a full grown man. I mean, he’s 23, but my mom would have laughed in my face if I had pulled that stunt. I also thought it was bizarre for her to wait up for him the way she did. They simultaneously seem very close and very dysfunctional. I think the scientific term for them is yucky. Cunanan call his mother his “dream woman.” Call me old fashioned, but I don’t love men treating their moms like wives and vice versa.

The rest of the episode felt like the same Cunanan snake oil show. We’re once again forced to reckon with the irony that if the killer had just put the work he puts into being with older men and charming people into something else, he could have done anything, but I sometimes doubt if he really is that smart or he’s just one of those guys who memorized a lot of Wikipedia entries about Häagen-Dazs and operas.

It was nice to see how David Madson (Cody Fern) fell (briefly) for Cunanan’s charms in San Francisco. It is kind of rude that it’s this Patty character’s birthday and Cunanan just brought a boy over, but maybe the friend group was super used to him dominating conversations anyway. I feel like we’re meant to understand that Cunanan’s proclaimed love and ultimate obsession with Madson is partly due to the fact that he’s the only man his own age who he had ever gotten anywhere with. He started to represent a life outside of hooking, but the only problem is that it truly was all an illusion, they wouldn’t always have the luster of the Mandarin Oriental and the fancy steakhouse dinners. Cunanan thinks money is a personality, and it simply is not.

“The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” Episode 7 Recap: “Ascent”

Darren Criss’ butt! American Crime Story knew this heavy season was getting me down and brought me back to life with Darren Criss’ butt. The former Glee actor has been very generous with his rear end, and this is actually the second time we’ve seen it naked in a mere six episodes.

ACS also nurtured me this week by having people who knew Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) read his (less literal) ass to filth. At the beginning of the episode, we learn that Cunanan has been living as a kept man with his older partner, Norman (Michael Nouri), in San Diego. We find out that Cunanan met Norman right after he’d lost his partner to an AIDS-related illness, which fits with Cunanan’s pattern of preying on the desperate but highly successful. I think Norman’s friend said it all when he dragged Cunanan and said he’s “too lazy to work, and too proud to be kept.”

In fact, the sassy gay friend is right about everything. Normally, I’d take issue with him being a trope, but the truth is this is a bigger story with multiple nuanced characters, so it’s not immediately time to sound the think-piece alarms. He played the role of almost an omniscient god character, which is intensified by the fact that Cunanan is forced to spar with him immediately after doing “coke.“

The party is risky because it brings all of Cunanan’s lies and personas out into the open, and it’s clear he’s been a lot of different versions of himself to different people. We glimpse his internal conflict and possible shame when his friend asks him, “Are you officially gay now?,” and he awkwardly replies, “You know I don’t like labels.” His reluctance to tell his female friend he is sleeping with the older man is translucently thin, and she reads his ass more gently when she asks him, “Who are you trying to be?”

It’s depressing because you know Cunanan’s tricks of making his life seem impressive did work, or at least they worked on David Madson (Cody Fern) at first. Norman seemed less naive, and when he finally has his moment to call Cunanan on his bullshit, he doesn’t hold back, but he’s also not especially cruel. When he and Cunanan are arguing on the patio, it’s so much like a father and son fight. It’s not because Norman is weird, but because Cunanan is such a petulant child. When he yelled, “It’s ordinary!” at a man offering to pay for his college, I was infuriated.

Cunanan thinks he’s keeping all these secrets so well, but time and time again people know exactly what he’s up to. When he says, “Do you know that I probably lost the love of my life by living with you?,” Norman answers right away that he knows he’s talking about Madson. I thought it was painful how Cunanan’s friends, Trails and Madson immediately liked each other, which should make Andrew more sympathetic, but NO ONE GETS TO MURDER ANYONE, NO MATTER HOW HEARTBROKEN THEY ARE.

We get to see Cunanan’s temper and lack of self-control flare up a lot in this episode. I was shocked when he broke Norman’s glass table. The older gentleman owes Cunanan nothing and offers him a good deal. I can’t help but think Cunanan wildly overestimates his market value, even Jeff Trails says, “You had a good thing there.”

“ACS: The Assassination Of Gianni Versace” Episode 6 Recap: “Descent”