‘American Crime Story’ Review: ‘Alone’ Brings the Story to an End

This week’s American Crime Story review takes a look at the latest (and final) episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, “Alone.” Spoilers follow.

No Way Out

Time has run out for Andrew Cunanan. After committing one murder after another with ease and seemingly no danger of being caught, Andrew’s luck has finally run out due to his murder of Versace.

The final episode of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is all about the end. Here is the culmination of it all. The final weary days in the short, destructive life of Andrew Cunanan. There’s no catharsis here. No sense of release. Instead, there’s a sense that if Andrew was given the chance to do it all over again, he’d probably do everything exactly the same.

After weeks of episodes moving backwards, we finally arrive where we started: with Andrew gunning down Versace on the steps of Versace’s Miami mansion. But unlike Andrew’s other murders – which, aside from the murder of Lee Miglin, attracted very little attention – this one is markedly different. Cop cars are everywhere, speeding through the Miami streets at night. News coverage splashes tabloid-like headlines left and right.

Andrew retreats to a seemingly abandoned houseboat and watches the result of his work on multiple TVs. He seems elated at first – even when the news anchors report him as a suspect. He’s famous now; he’s changed the world. He celebrates by popping open a bottle of champagne. Later, he’ll watch Versace’s televised funeral with reverence and even a little pride. Versace’s funeral is filled with celebrities – Princess Diana, Elton John, Naomi Campbell – and they’re all there because of something Andrew did.

The celebration is short lived. When Andrew tries to get out of Miami, he finds roadblocks at every turn. The police are leaving no stone unturned. He’s trapped. With no one left to turn to, Andrew frantically places a call to his father, Modesto.

Modesto, never one to miss an opportunity, has been selling interviews to the press ever since it was revealed Andrew was the killer. When Andrew calls, he assures his son that he’ll come to America and whisk him off to safety. Andrew, who has apparently learned nothing, believes him. He packs up some things and waits, hopeful that his father will be there in 24 hours.

But his father never shows. Instead, Andrew catches Modesto on the news, mugging for the camera, insisting this is all some mix-up because his son isn’t a homosexual, and revealing that he’s talked to Andrew on the phone.

For Andrew, this is the final nail in the coffin. He knows it’s hopeless now. No one is going to come save him. Soon, police have discovered his location and have him surrounded. With nowhere left to turn, Andrew places his gun in his mouth, sparing one last look at his reflection in a mirror before pulling the trigger.

Special

While anyone who happened to read the Wikipedia entry for Andrew Cunanan knew where this was all going, there are still a few surprises in the final episode, “Alone.” For one thing, Judith Light returns as Marilyn Miglin, widow of Andrew’s victim Lee Miglin. Marilyn just happens to be in Miami during these events, filming a new commercial for her latest perfume. She seems to sum up the feelings of everyone involved here when she says that all she wants is for this to be over. She’s sick of having her good name attached to Andrew Cunanan, and she wants nothing more than for people to stop associating her, and her husband, with Andrew and his actions.

Meanwhile, in Milan, Donatella Versace is trying to put things in order following the murder of her brother. She’s still wrought with grief – in an emotional scene, delivered with a real sense of sorrow by Penélope Cruz – Donatella reveals that on the day Versace was murdered, he tried to call her, and she deliberately ignored the call.

Donatella also has to contend with Antonio, who is also grieving. But Antonio’s grief is treated as something secondary, and Donatella isn’t interested in helping him out. Versace’s will left Antonio with a pension of 50 million lira a month for life, and the right to live in any of Versace’s homes. But the properties Versace left actually belonged to the company, not Versace himself. As a result, he’s cut out. He has no home now. In one of the most cringe-worthy scenes in the episode, the priest at Versace’s funeral goes down a line, offering comfort to everyone in Versace’s family, but deliberately skips Antonio. By the time the episode has ended, Antonio has tried to kill himself – but failed.

All of these surviving individuals – Marilyn Miglin, Donatella, Antonio – are searching for some sort of closure. They want to subscribe to the French proverb “What you lose in the fire, you will find amongst the ashes.” But there’s no real closure here. No sense of completion.

Yes, Antonio survives his suicide attempt. But he’s still cut-out of all things Versace. Yes, Donatella inherits her brother’s empire, but her grief is overwhelming. Yes, Marilyn takes comfort in the fact that the man who murdered her husband is now dead, but she’ll still forever be tied to Andrew and his actions. After the dust has settled, we see Marilyn pouring over letters sent in offering condolences. Letters from young men Lee clearly had affairs with. She can take comfort in these condolences, but she also has to contend with the fact that Lee lied to her throughout his entire life.

And what of Andrew Cunanan? Did he have a moment of clarity in those moments before he pulled the trigger and blew his brains all over the wall of a houseboat bedroom? A realization of where he went wrong? A sense of remorse for his actions? According to American Crime Story, the answer is no.

At the moment Andrew kills himself, we flashback to the (possibly fictional) evening Andrew spent with Versace. There, standing on the stage at the opera with Versace, Andrew says he’s been waiting his whole life for someone to tell him he’s special, and that all he’s ever wanted to do is persuade other people that he’s capable of doing something great.

“But it’s not about persuading people that you’re going to do something great,” Versace says. “It’s about doing it.”

Andrew is puzzled by this response – he doesn’t get it. All he wants is for someone to just tell him he’s special without having actually done anything to merit it. He begs to be made Versace’s assistant, but Versace politely turns him down. Versace tells Andrew that one day, he’ll understand. But Andrew never will. He’ll spend the rest of his short, violent life continually trying to prove to everyone that he’s special. And while he will certainly make headlines, he’ll also leave nothing behind worth celebrating.

In the end, “Alone” juxtaposes the locations of the earthly remains of Gianni Versace and Andrew Cunanan. Versace’s ashes are housed in a veritable temple; a shrine to his greatness, located in a picturesque location. Andrew body, meanwhile, is tucked away in some mausoleum somewhere, among rows and rows of other people, forgotten. Just one nearly anonymous body in a sea of thousands.

Alone

After a few wishy-washy episodes, “Alone” ends The Assassination of Gianni Versace on a high note (although high note perhaps isn’t the right term for such a depressing episode). Director Gwyneth Horder-Payton captures the sinking feeling washing over Andrew perfectly. In one haunting scene, Andrew is visited by the younger version of himself. The young Andrew watches the TV coverage of the adult Andrew’s deeds, a slight, eerie smile on his face. In another scene, Andrew watches Marilyn Miglin’s infomercial as Horder-Payton has the camera push-in on his blank face, effectively pushing the audience into his headspace.

This season of American Crime Story wasn’t entirely successful. The backwards-moving narrative never quite worked, and resulted in a somewhat uneven season, where the bulk of the action happened very early and left a few episodes spinning their wheels. Yet for all its flaws, The Assassination of Gianni Versace still made for some intriguing, captivating television.

While the backwards narrative didn’t quite gel, it did enable Versace to pull a clever bait-and-switch on the audience. At first, we go in thinking this will be just another true crime saga. But what it really turns into is a compelling character study and also a story of how society treats queer people.

Darren Criss’ portrayal of Andrew Cunanan is exemplary. The actor brought the character to life, and while some of the writing could’ve easily turned Andrew into something close to parody, Criss’ performance walked a tightrope and balanced it all.

Other MVPs of the season: Ricky Martin turned in a surprisingly soulful performance as Versace’s lover Antonio D’Amico, particularly in this final episode. The moments where Antonio realizes he’s being cut loose from all things Versace are handled with appropriate panic and confusion by Martin. Penélope Cruz also shines this season, and in this final episode in particular. While there were times when the writing felt as if it was bending over backwards to find ways to insert Donatella into the story, Cruz always managed to play the part with grace and just the appropriate amount of over-dramatic flourishes.

Next up for American Crime Story: a season that tackles the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina, featuring Dennis Quaid as George W. Bush. While that may not stand out as your typical “true crime” narrative, it’s going to be fascinating to see how the series tells this story. Just as the first season of American Crime Story used its true crime angle to tell a story about racism in America, and this second season was primarily about the way society treats queer individuals, I’m sure the Katrina season will have its own social message buried within the narrative. We’ll have to wait to see how that plays out.

It All Comes To An End On ‘Versace: American Crime Story’ Finale: RECAP – Towleroad

From the finish line of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, this season feels even more muddled in hindsight.

After weeks of unraveling Andrew Cunanan’s motivations backward through time, tracing his pathologies all the way back to childhood, last night’s finale episode brought the story to its only fitting conclusion with Cunanan’s suicide.

The series touched on a variety of potentially interesting topics — from prejudices against the LGBT community to resentment between the haves and have-notes — but none felt nearly as well-developed and clearly articulated as it could. A lot of it has come down to the lack of known details surrounding Cunanan’s killing spree and upbringing. The combination of his penchant for spinning elaborate tales and his desperate death left so many unanswered questions. It gave writers far too much leeway to embellish and rely on some of the usual Ryan Murphy, ham-handed theatrics.

Despite the series’ strong start, much of the luxurious aesthetic fell away instead to shift focus off Versace. The upshot was getting more of Darren Criss’ powerhouse performance, and it was important to shine a light on Cunanan’s other, less well-known victims. The downside was too much time spent making assumptions about Cunanan’s mental state and motivations.

The finale unfollowed with a bit more urgency as authorities drew closer to Cunanan in a tense chase and standoff. Plus, we got another appearance from the incomparable Judith Light as Marilyn Miglin, and any time she’s on screen is a good one.

Let’s recount the events that led to Cunanan’s end in our recap, below.

We begin the conclusion of this story the same way it started: the titular assassination of Gianni Versace.

From those fateful steps, Andrew makes a beeline to a houseboat where he holds up to watch the news coverage.

Lee Miglin’s widow, Marilyn, is in Florida filming for the Home Shopping Network. FBI agents think it’s best for her to leave the area, given their suspicion that Cunanan is still local. She’s frustrated they still haven’t been able to catch him, but, more importantly, she’s never missed a broadcast, and she’s not starting now.

Not that Andrew has plans to stay in town. He steals a car to make a break for it, but police have set up checkpoints at all the major thoroughfares. Frustrated to the point of shouting into the horizon, Andrew gives up escaping by car.

Police turn to Andrew’s mother, but she’s too heartbroken to be of much use to the police. They also track down Ronnie, Andrew’s buddy (played by Max Greenfield in earlier episodes), but he’s not eager to throw his friend under the bus, either. Instead, he opts to deliver a powerful (if not overly dramatic) speech to the authorities about how Andrew disgusted them “before he was disgusting.” It’s an impassioned monologue about their prejudices against gay men; an indictment to society’s blind eye to problems plaguing the LGBT community (including a literal plague) that, despite feeling a little heavy-handed, still resonates today.

Now stuck in the houseboat, Andrew starts running low on supplies. Desperate for food, he turns to the cans of dog food, but he’s hardly able to keep it down. He could not be farther from those free-wheeling nights at the Mandarin Oriental.

As he binges TV coverage, he manages to catch Marilyn shilling her perfume. Marilyn is relaying a story about growing up, and it clearly hits Andrew somewhere deep down. He runs to a pay phone and calls, of all people, his father in Manila. Presumably, the show wants us to believe he was moved by Marilyn’s TV pitch.

His father tells him he’s coming for him and to be ready in 24 hours. Modesto promises to be on the next plane to get him out of there.

Of course, that’s a lie. Andrew catches Modesto on TV bragging about how he’s been in close contact with Andrew and how Andrew has entrusted him to negotiate the film rights to his story. (According to Modesto, the title was to be “A Name to Be Remembered By.”) Modesto also denies that Andrew is nor has he ever been a homosexual. Realizing his father’s not coming, Andrew shoots the TV.

He wheels in a massive projector to watch Versace’s funeral. Now fully resigned to his fate, he eats dog food easily and catches a cockroach under a glass. (“It’s a metaphor, stupid,” the show seems to be telling us.) He watches the grand mass and sings along to the hymn, which is a bit of stretch, even for Ryan Murphy.

The grandiose services are difficult for Versace’s partner, Antonio. First, Donatella tells him that, although Gianni willed him one of the Versace homes on Lake Como, the residences all belong to the company now. Therefore, they weren’t for Gianni to give. Sorry, Antonio! At the services themselves, the priest, unsurprisingly, doesn’t acknowledge Antonio, refusing to even touch his hands as he comforts Gianni’s siblings.

Back in Miami, someone comes to check in on the houseboat Andrew has been crashing in. Andrew is able to scare him off with a warning shot, but it’s too late. The jig is up. He watches as reports come in about his exact location and authorities surrounding the houseboat.

He heads up to the bedroom, seeing an apparition of his childhood self. It all ends like this. Smoke bombs come crashing in the windows and police knock down doors. As they wind their way upstairs, Cunanan puts a pistol in his mouth and kills himself.

We see a flashback to the (likely completely fabricated) meeting between Andrew and Versace. Andrew is trying all his tricks to seduce his way into Versace’s orbit — intellectually and romantically — but it doesn’t work. Versace instead encourages him to finish his novel, become a designer, do something. He wants to inspire Andrew, to nourish his genius.

Even in this (probably completely made up scenario) both men are blind to the other. On the one hand, Andrew can’t see how he can’t just keep faking it until he makes it. To earn the respect of the people he admires, he’s needs some substance behind all style. Versace can’t understand how not everyone has the opportunity to develop their genius with the support he enjoyed. In another world (a third world, outside reality and this alternate telling), maybe the two of them could have actually learned from one another.

Marilyn Miglin receives word that Andrew is dead and finally seems to be at peace that this is “done.” In her dressing room, she reveals she’s been receiving letters about Lee and all the people whose lives he touched. She doesn’t understand why he never spoke to her about these people — probably out of a mix of humility and maybe hiding some of his alleged homosexual affairs — but she answers each letter thanking them for keeping his legacy alive.

In Italy, Donatella confesses she ignored a call from her brother the day he was killed. She’s heartbroken over the decision, but what she should be worried about is how she treated Antonio. Versace’s lover takes a handful of pills and booze, but is found by the maid. (He survived.)

Gianni’s remains end up on an elaborate altar, surrounded by gilded gold. Andrew’s final resting place is a much less glamorous nestled in a community mausoleum. It’s the ultimate disappointment for Cunanan: Spending the rest of eternity blending in, being ordinary.

It All Comes To An End On ‘Versace: American Crime Story’ Finale: RECAP – Towleroad

‘American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Review: An Odd Storytelling Technique Turns a Great Show into Just a Good One

Network: FX

Showrunner: Tom Rob Smith

Main Cast: Darren Criss, Edgar Ramirez, Penelope Cruz, Ricky Martin

Notable Guest Stars: Finn Wittrock, Judith Light, Aimee Mann

Episode Length: 50-90 Minutes

The following review contains some spoilers

For the show’s second season, American Crime Story decided to go in a different true crime direction, albeit with much more flair. Despite being titled after legendary fashion designer Gianni Versace, the show focused much more on Andrew Cunanan, the man that killed him. By going into Cunanan’s past, we explored the violent road he took that led him to Versace, even if the legendary figure wasn’t all that involved in it. At times, the show felt like a SparkNotes version of what happened in real life, but at other times, it articulately showed a man looking to become famous, even if it meant infamy.

The first episode starts off with a bang (literally) as we see Cunanan kill Versace in front of his Miami Beach home on that fateful day in July 1997. From the first episode onwards, the show moves in a backwards chronological order, going from Versace, his fifth victim, all the way until before Cunanan even kills his first. It’s a storytelling format that has both positives and negatives, and it was easy to have mixed feelings about it.

The first half of the season was where the negatives seemed to appear more. For example, when Andrew kills his first victim, it’s a groundbreaking moment for the character; instead of being a weird person, he’s now a murderer. But you don’t really feel the impact of a moment like this because of the show’s backward format. Prior to his first murder, we’ve already seen him kill four other people, and the scene doesn’t hit maximum shock value as a result. A lesser gripe with this format was also the fact that suspense was lost as episodes went on, due to the fact that we knew what would happen to certain characters once they were introduced.

I mentioned previously that the show felt like a SparkNotes version of what happened in real life, and that was partially true. The show doesn’t really get into Cunanan’s motivations for the murders until almost the last third of the season, and by that point, all of his previous crimes had happened already. And when they were happening in the moment, they more or less felt like recreations of what had been reported, rather than looking for insights and motivations into why Andrew was doing everything. His backstory is crucial to these scenes, and without it, the show packs less of a thematic punch.

Despite the backward storytelling technique having some of these problems, I appreciated its boldness, and I was still engaged with the story, even if characters’ dialogue was shaky at times. I was annoyed throughout that the show wasn’t going in chronological order, but it was still intriguing to see where exactly the show would go back to in terms of chronology.

But easily my biggest problem with the show’s story was the much greater focus on Cunanan rather than Versace. Out of the season’s nine episodes, Versace is only in six of them, and he really only has a great presence in two or three of them. The same also applies to his sister Donatella, and his lover, Antonio D’Amico. There’s several recurring characters that have more screen time than they do, despite the fact that they’re considered the “main cast.” And in the early part of the season, where Versace has his greatest presence, he’s a bit of a mute. But towards the end of the season, pretty much all of his scenes consist of him yelling at Donatella. His inconsistent portrayal and lack of screen time were irritating to say the least. Isn’t the show named after him?

The show’s saving grace is, by far, the performances from the cast. Darren Criss is sublime as Cunanan, injecting the right amount of psycho, humor, and even sympathy into every line and action that he does. The one aspect I loved about Cunanan having such a large presence was watching Criss give the performance of his life every episode; he was never a dull sight to see. The rest of the main cast (Ramirez, Cruz, and Martin) all fared well in their roles, even if the scripts never really gave them a chance to shine. The rest of the recurring cast were all great in their roles as well, with particular shoutouts to Finn Wittrock and Cody Fern as Jeff Trail and David Madson, respectively.

If I were to have made this season of the show, I would have done it in a full chronological order. I admire the decision to go backwards, but it had mixed results that could’ve been done better. The show actually attempts to make the point that, prior to the killings, Cunanan and Versace weren’t all that different. If the show had gone in chronological order, explored more motivations and origins, and infused more of Versace, we could’ve seen more parallels between the two, and it would’ve made for a tighter, more suspenseful season.

In the end, The Assassination of Gianni Versace was an enjoyable season of television, even if it had more style than substance. The storytelling technique had some mixed responses, but you may enjoy it for its unique approach. Rounded out by a cast that’s full of all-star performances, you could do a lot worse than watching this show.

How Does it Compare to Previous Seasons?: This season wasn’t quite as good as The People v. O.J. Simpson, but I don’t feel that it’s a fair comparison. The two are very different shows, and you shouldn’t let that season’s presence interfere with watching this one.

Best Episodes: “The Man Who Would be Vogue,” “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” “Creator/Destroyer”

The Assassination of Gianni Versace is Recommended if You Like: True crime, stylish clothes, and people that are definitely richer than you.

Where to Watch: All episodes can be watched on the FX website with a valid cable login.

Grade: 3.4 out of 5 Versace Dresses

‘American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Review: An Odd Storytelling Technique Turns a Great Show into Just a Good One

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace” | Showbuzz Daily

If Ryan Murphy’s goal with the second season of AMERICAN CRIME STORY was to demonstrate the breadth of the show’s anthology branding, not just in subject matter but in style and structure–unlike the relative consistency of his American Horror Story, with its repertory company of writers and stars–well, mission accomplished. Murphy handed the keys of THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE to Tom Rob Smith, previously best known for London Spy, a purported thriller that was much more interested in the sexuality of its characters than in its own plot. Smith, who personally wrote all 9 episodes of Assassination(co-writing one of them) delivered an idiosyncratic rumination on the subject of Versace’s killer Andrew Cunanan that couldn’t have been farther from the provocative but straightforward history of the wildly successful The People Vs. OJ Simpson.

Smith adopted the kind of backwards structure mostly familiar from Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along and Pinter’s Betrayal (and a famous episode of Seinfeld). After beginning with the events surrounding Cunanan’s murder of Versace, each episode went farther back into Cunanan’s past (and occasionally–seemingly randomly–into Versace’s), until the next-to-last episode reached Cunanan’s childhood. Although Smith didn’t shy away from the grisliness of Cunanan’s murders, as the killer became younger and less dangerous with each hour, the effect was to make Cunanan something of a sympathetic figure, the victim of a terrible childhood dominated by a deceitful, demanding father (with whatever hints of molestation the FX legal department would allow), and then of the life of a gay man in the 1990s.

Or at least that seemed to be the intended effect. The shortcoming of Smith’s approach was that Cunanan, as played by a dogged Darren Criss, wasn’t nearly interesting enough to sustain what must have been well over 10 hours of television once FX’s lax approach to running times was factored in. In each episode, Cunanan told fantasy-driven lies about himself, and lashed out violently, and that pathology wasn’t nearly as fascinating as Smith needed it to be. The colorful supporting cast, which included Edgar Martinez as Versace, Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin as his sister and lover, and Judith Light as the widow of one of Cunanan’s closeted victims, were doled out in bits and pieces, with Criss at the center throughout, unable to provide shadings to Cunanan that weren’t in Smith’s scripts.

With nowhere further back to go in Cunanan’s story but to the womb, tonight’s finale, directed by Daniel Minahan, finally returned to Assassination‘s present tense, but it was mostly yet another showcase for Criss. The episode was titled “Alone,” and much of the time we watched Cunanan watch his own manhunt on television, from actual news footage to a very on-the-nose scripted segment in which Light’s character, in an appearance on a telemarketing channel, seemed to speak directly to Cunanan’s longing to be “special” and to have the approval of his father. By the time Cunanan stuck a gun in his mouth and blew his own head off, the season’s themes were hammered in, with guest star Max Greenfield returning to give a set-piece speech to the police about the difference between rich gay men like Versace and the suffering proletariat, and Martin’s character attempting suicide when his status as Versace’s putative husband was ignored by all at and after the funeral.

Where People vs OJ raised questions not just about race, but gender bias, popular culture, class and the criminal justice system, and did so with consistent wit and a vivid set of characters, Assassination was long-winded and monotonous. (USA’s current Unsolved is a more worthy successor to the People vs OJcrown.) The ratings, while not awful, reflected the difference, heavily down from the series’ first installment.

Next up (maybe): Murphy’s already long-postponed story of Hurricane Katrina, which seems like an even less likely fit for the American Crime Story package. After Assassination, it’s impossible to tell what that one may look like.

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace” | Showbuzz Daily

‘ACS Versace’ Never Caught On Like ‘O.J.’, Because It Was After Something Darker

Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story ended its second season on Wednesday night, bringing with it the conclusion to The Assassination of Gianni Versace. After a season’s worth of reverse chronology, the series snapped back to the aftermath of Versace’s death at the hands of Cunanan, followed his devastated family — including sister Donatella and lover Antonio — as they prepared to bury him, while also portraying the suddenly-urgent manhunt that (eventually) tracked Cunanan to the house boat he’d been hiding out on. Versace’s star studded funeral preceded Cunanan’s self-inflicted end, closing out the series on a rather operatic note.

So, not to paraphrase Aaron Sorkin to intentionally or anything, but: what kind of season has it been? Quantitatively, The Assassination of Gianni Versace has underperformed relative to the 2016 juggernaut The People vs. O.J. Simpson. This is true in both ratings and reviews. O.J. averaged 3.29 million viewers per episode, while Versace has averaged 1.09 mil; O.J. scored a 96 from Rotten Tomatoes and a 90 on Metacritic, while Versace did slightly worse at 86 and 74, respectively. Moreover, you can just feel it in the conversations, or lack thereof, in the media. The People vs. O.J. Simpson was a phenomenon. The nation was going through a national re-experiencing of the Simpson scandal, with a competing documentary on ESPN countless retrospectives. We followed every cigarette Sarah Paulson lit up as Marcia Clark, remembered every tertiary character as they crossed our screen, and stayed riveted even though we all knew how it would end. That treatment didn’t extend to The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and at least in this viewer’s opinion, it’s not because it was a major drop-off in quality.

Part of it we can chalk up to unavoidable factors. The murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace by serial killer Andrew Cunanan in the summer of 1997 was an infamous piece of tabloid news, but it didn’t come close to approaching the levels of notoriety that the O.J. Simpson trial got. That was a national soap opera that lasted well over a year and incorporated dozens of side characters who we all had tucked away in the recesses of our memories, ready for American Crime Story to unearth them. The Versace murder was not like that. We knew about the victim and the killer, and if you managed to read Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors (upon which Murphy and writer Tom Rob Smith based Versace), you knew about a few more. But there were no Kato Kaelins or F. Lee Baileys or Mark Fuhrmans to be found. The People vs. O.J. Simpson was great because it tackled the racial, societal, media, and entertainment angles of the Simpson case and made us all re-examine it through new eyes. But it was popular, in large part, because it let the rapidly fracturing and fragmenting American audience re-experience something we had all watched together. That was not a card that the Versace series could play. (If anything, the closest we got to an O.J.-style sensation in the last year was the Harding/Kerrigan revival that accompanied I, Tonya.)

But I think part of it was also that Versace failed the expectation game for a lot of viewers. In tackling the Versace murder under his American Crime Story banner, Murphy unavoidably promised a certain level of over-the-top camp and kitschiness. For all of O.J.‘s raves and respect from the critical community, it still delivered winking scenes with the Kardashians and Connie Britton as Faye Resnick explaining the finer points of the Brentwood Hello. Versace seemed to be promising something similar just by virtue of its cast, including Glee‘s prep-school heartthrob going against type as Andrew Cunanan and out gay pop hunk Ricky Martin as Versace’s longtime beau. And by casting the role of Donatella — by far the campiest character in this story’s orbit — with Academy Award-winner Penelope Cruz, Murphy seemed to be tacitly promising something at least a little bit gaudy.

Viewers hoping for the operatic, quasi-campy version of The Assassination of Gianni Versace could probably have just watched the first and last episodes and have been satisfied. Those are the episodes that feel most like the kind of show people were expecting. The decadent Versace lifestyle, the soapy intrigue surrounding Donatella and Antonio’s prickly relationship, the did-they-or-didn’t-they recreations of an imagined past encounter between Versace and Cunanan, and ultimately Andrew Cunanan stalking around the perimeter of Gianni Versace’s gilded lifestyle and destroying everything in the process. Smash those two episodes together, watch them like a TV movie, let Penelope Cruz in mourning snatch all your wigs off, and you’ll be good.

But what made The Assassination of Gianni Versace such a special season of television was what came in between those first and last episodes. That was where Murphy and Smith stepped away from the glitz and glamour and celebrity and camp and peered into the darker recesses of Andrew Cunanan’s story. The story that they sketch out, sometimes via firsthand accounts, sometimes via speculation, ultimately tells a sinister but deeply grounded story about he corrosive effects of homophobia. How the closet shames and warps; how institutional homophobia silences gay victims and inadvertently abets their killers; how the twin prisons of masculinity and status can wreak havoc on so many lives. The story in these middle episodes pretty much set aside the likes of Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin so they could tell a story about tortured soldiers, frightened sons, prideful widows, and, yes, the making of a murderer. The result was some of the most restrained work of Murphy’s prolific career. And maybe that was the problem.

You can’t know for sure, of course. Nobody sends in a signed affidavit to the network when they choose not to watch something. But when ratings for Versace began to dip much lower than O.J., I had to wonder about Ryan Murphy’s traditionally robust FX audiences. Whether they were happy to watch Murphy’s queer extravaganzas when they were put into the service of grotesque horror stories and dishy tabloid tales about actresses’ animosities, but backed away when he decided to shine a more sober spotlight on the cruel homophobia of the not-very-distant past. Happy to watch Finn Wittrock camp it up as a queer-coded killer but not as a victim of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell bureaucracy. Andrew Cunanan was a queer killer too, of course, but his killings offered no catharsis nor campy thrill. The killings were sad or brutal or unnecessarily cruel. O.J. Simpson got away with murder, but the circus was still pretty fun to watch. Not as much fun to be had here.

So, again, maybe Versace was never meant to catch fire in the culture the way that O.J. did. Maybe in an alternate universe, the Gianni-and-Donatella Fashion Hour told the story of the building of an empire that was cut down by a queer monster. By deciding to peel back the face of that queer monster and stare into the void inside, Murphy and Smith delivered a show that was much darker, though ironically no less illuminating, that the first American Crime Story season. Here’s hoping that with all the possibilities that suddenly lay before him, Ryan Murphy doesn’t take the relative quiet of season 2 as a reason to stay away from this kind of storytelling.

‘ACS Versace’ Never Caught On Like ‘O.J.’, Because It Was After Something Darker

The biggest liar of The Assassination of Gianni Versace

Without its clarifying finale, the aims of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace were almost as hard to unpack as the lies of its protagonist, serial killer and pathological fabulist Andrew Cunanan. That might, in fact, be exactly the point. The series I once criticized for its roaming point of view ended by lying as freely and charmingly as its dancing villain. In so doing, it forged an unlikely and uncomfortable alliance with Cunanan himself.

It’s no secret that, as a series, Versace mixed truth with half-truths and lies almost as much as Cunanan did. Vulture has run a great fact-checking column for each episode that itemizes the liberties the show takes with the truth. The question, to my mind, was how to interpret those departures. When showrunner Tom Rob Smith swapped in an entire ham (with a knife sticking out of it) for the famous ham sandwich Cunanan left behind at the Miglin residence (after having brutally murdering the owner), it seemed clear to me that once we understood that substitution — that blindingly literal instance of the show “hamming it up” — we’d understand a lot of what the series was doing.

What it’s doing, it turns out, is experimenting with narrative identification. And identification is a lot of what this show was actually about: not gender identification, not sexual identification, but empathic identification: who gets it and who doesn’t. Back in 1997, while gauging local reaction to the murders in the area where Cunanan lived and studied, Matthew Lickona reported the following exchange between his wife — who asked about the response in La Jolla — and a La Jolla resident:

“No, he’s from Hillcrest,” he corrected her. “That’s where all the gays are. Nobody in this town is concerned about him at all, because we don’t identify with him.” [The San Diego Reader]

Versace makes you identify with him. It dispenses with that craven, manufactured distinction. It condemns the American indifference to gay deaths around which much of the series is structured. And, however much it sympathizes with his victims (and it does), the series also insists on respecting Cunanan’s fervid need for attention even as it ostensibly disciplines it. One of the facts Versace quotes most about Cunanan was that he was voted (depending on the source) “Most Likely to be Remembered” or “Least Likely to be Forgotten” in high school. The series ends by focusing in on a plaque bearing Cunanan’s name. It turns out to be on a vault in a mausoleum — this feels, then, explicitly like an act of remembrance. But as the camera slowly pans out to show more and more other vaults, the effect becomes punitive: The series seems to focus on the stern, equalizing near-anonymity death finally confers.

If that feels like a finger-wagging lesson, the show inverts that once again. The moral should be “Cunanan, who wanted only to be remembered, failed.” Except, of course, that he didn’t fail: The series itself amounts to a massive act of remembrance. The show explicitly named for Versace was actually about Cunanan. If fame was his goal, he lives on, unchastened.

That lesson about mortality, in other words, feels like exactly the kind of empty wisdom Cunanan (or his abusive, charismatic father, Modesto) might impart.

I’ve made no secret of the ethical questions I’ve had about this series, which has presented as fact things that aren’t even remotely confirmed, including the claim that Cunanan and Lee Miglin were sexually involved and the suggestion that Cunanan was molested by his father, Modesto. These are big truths to bend for dramatic effect, and the series did so without a wink or a tremor — just as Cunanan did.

But if the point was to replicate rather than condemn Cunanan’s curious modus operandi, it was a singular success. Paste Magazine’s Matt Brennan was the first to pick up on the show’s investment in forcing this connection to the villain.

It confronts us — scratch that, it confronted me — with a startling implication: That in the suburban upbringing, the shame, the dissembling, the desperate desire not to be a faggot, I might resemble the murderer more than I do the object of his obsession. [Paste Magazine]

Seen this way, the finale parallels Cunanan’s frenzied effort to escape with the show’s own struggle to escape Cunanan’s stranglehold on its narrative sympathies. We watch Cunanan panicking, calling his father, reduced to eating dog food, just as we see the series roving wildly back to its ostensible protagonists: Versace’s sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz) and his lover Antonio (Ricky Martin). But instead of resting with those characters (or giving them the final say), it invents wildly and well. Donatella and Antonio have an extremely painful conversation, we suffer with Antonio as he’s marginalized at Versace’s funeral, and we witness his tragic suicide attempt. None of these details seem to be particularly well-supported — they are Cunanan-isms — and the show can’t help but revert to its charismatic antihero at the end. Even in death, he remains the show’s most compelling character.

This is not a true-crime story at all, then. It’s creative nonfiction in its most creative sense: a portrait of a serial liar that chooses, in the end, to lie with him.

The biggest liar of The Assassination of Gianni Versace

Dascha Polanco Shines as a Miami Detective in Finale of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

The season began with a murder and ends with a funeral. After diving deep into the troubled life of one Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), the final episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story returns us to Miami and the aftermath of the designer’s death. As the FBI organize one of the biggest manhunts to date to try and find the young serial killer, we get to see how the frayed relationship between Donatella and Antonio (Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin) won’t be mended after all, how Lee Miglin’s widow (Judith Light) has coped with the death of her husband, and how even Andrew’s father has turned his son’s murder spree into an entrepreneurial endeavor.

More importantly, it gave Dascha Polanco’s Detective Lori Wieder even more screen time. A non-nonsense Miami cop who understood just how dangerous Cunanan was (even before he had killed Versace), Detective Wieder emerged over her brief appearances as the kind of law enforcement agent who wasn’t about to let cultural prejudices about gay men get in the way of serving justice. In this episode, when she and her partner go back to interrogate Ronnie (Max Greenfield), she gets to hear Cunanan’s former friend talk at length about why he believes the police and the FBI took so long to even care about his serial killings: “Oh, you were looking for him, weren’t you?” he asks her. “The only lass on the force. But other cops weren’t searching so hard, were they? Why is that? Because he killed a bunch of nobody gays.” It wasn’t Versace’s death made headlines that Wieder’s co-workers began papering the streets with the very signs she’d urged the FBI to print and distribute all around South Beach weeks earlier.

One of the joys of watching American Crime Story this season has been witnessing Latino actors the likes of Edgar Ramirez (as Gianni Versace) and Ricky Martin (as his lover, Antonio) getting plum roles in one of cable TV’s hottest show. But right alongside them we should add Polanco. Whether playing Jennifer Lawrence’s best friend in Joy (alongside Ramirez) or showing up in a bit part in the Adam Sandler comedy The Cobbler, Polanco is proving there’s more to her than the once-mousy-turned-hardened inmate Daya in Netflix’s hit series Orange is the New Black. Moreover, it’s always nice to see a stellar Latina actress get a chance to shine in roles that play to their strengths and refuse to merely box them into playing what they’ve played before.

Sadly, even as Wieder and her colleagues try to find a peaceful resolution to the Cunanan ordeal, the explosive final moments of the season finale show how we all know the story ended: with the serial killer shooting himself in the head after being cornered in a house boat by police and FBI alike. “Andrew is not hiding,” Ronnie tells Wieder, when he explains the flashy murders of the young man he still doesn’t feel comfortable calling a friend, “He’s trying to be seen.” His death, which like Versace’s, could’ve been prevented if the homophobic bias of Wieder’s fellow cops wasn’t so pervasive, becomes a final ode to the kind of infamous fame Cunanan sought. It’s a fitting end (which whisks us off to Italy where Gianni’s star-studded funeral took place) to this sun-kissed drenched exposé on 90s homophobia, which brimmed with explorations on the closet, self-hatred, self-delusions, and plenty of Darren Criss’ rocking bod. But before we bid the show goodbye, we wanted to tally up some of our favorite recurring motifs we kept looking forward to week after week. Enjoy!

The Final Counts:

– Times We Saw Ricky Martin in a Speedo (and out of one): 👙🍑

– Times Dascha Polanco Side-Eyed Her Co-Workers: 👀 👀 👀 👀

– Times Penelope Cruz Exhaled in Exasperation: 😤 😤 😤 😤 😤 😤

– Times Edgar Ramirez Stares at a Design On A Mirror: 👗 👗 👗

– Times Cruz and Martin Had a Melodramatic Quarrel: 😡 😡 😡 😡

Dascha Polanco Shines as a Miami Detective in Finale of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

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

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”

What the Hell Just Happened in the ‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Finale?

The Assassination of Gianni Versace returned to the present-day—that is, July 1997—for its final episode, revisiting Gianni Versace’s death and depicting Andrew Cunanan’s final hours with a touch of melodrama and some serious liberties with the truth. The finale brought back several familiar faces, returned to that controversial Episode 1 dream sequence, and ended on a rather dull note following weeks of bloodshed, fashion, and over-the-top theatrics.

Here, six things to note from the season finale of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, “Alone.”

1) Versace’s murder opens this episode, too.

Like the season premiere, the finale begins with the moment around which the series revolves. But unlike the Technicolor, dream-like rendering of Versace’s murder in Episode 1, this sequence is depicted from Cunanan’s perspective. After he shoots Versace, Cunanan stares down at the designer’s body with a look that’s almost victorious. His face seems to say, “This time, I won.”

Cunanan celebrates by breaking into a houseboat to camp out. He pops a bottle of champagne (timed to a TV news report’s graphic description of Versace’s murder) and watches his own face light up the screen. This is the most relaxed we’ve ever seen Cunanan, so much so that it’s almost unbelievable—Darren Criss looks like a supermodel in this sequence. As helicopters comb Miami Beach on the hunt for the fugitive, Cunanan settles into a deck chair to watch. He’s finally garnered the fame he’s always craved.

2) Marilyn Miglin and Ronnie become crude mouthpieces for showcasing the police’s inefficiency.

Here’s a face I never expected to see again. American Crime Story shows Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light), widow of Cunanan victim Lee Miglin, in Tampa at the time of the Cunanan manhunt, though there’s no evidence to suggest this was the case in real life. When the cops arrive at her hotel room to ask her to leave the state, she attacks, accusing the cops of failing to do their jobs.

“How many more are going to die? How much more pain do you think I can suffer? Two months. You had two months. You had his name, his photo, what did he have? The money he stole from Lee. What has he been doing for two months? What have you been doing?”

Later, the cops pick up Cunanan’s old pal Ronnie (Max Greenfield) for questioning. He delivers a similar diatribe, but blames police homophobia for the failure to capture Cunanan. Ronnie addresses the only woman on the case, Detective Lori Wieder (Dasha Polanco), and acknowledges that she did her homework. “But the other cops here, they weren’t searching so hard, were they? Why is that? Because he killed a bunch of nobody gays?” When the other detective (José Zúñiga) protests, Ronnie goes off: “You know what the truth is? You were disgusted by him long before he became disgusting.”

For a show that promised to navigate how homophobia affected the police’s failure to capture Cunanan, these scenes feel like afterthoughts. The show’s reverse-chronological framing device rendered it more like a biopic of Andrew Cunanan than a thoughtful examination of the authorities’ unsuccessful search for a spree killer targeting gay men. Episode 2 and Episode 4 both touched on the subject, but not enough to feel impactful, so instead of powerful commentary, these finale scenes serve only as a suggestion of what could have been.

3) As his loved ones abandon him, Cunanan’s narcissism also gets the best of him.

The honeymoon is over for Cunanan. After evading the police for several days, the fugitive has had one too many close calls. Back at his houseboat, he watches the television reports with increasing dread. His best friend Elizabeth (Annaleigh Ashford) tapes a televised plea, and it seems to shake Cunanan for a moment. Later, when David Madson’s father gives an interview, Cunanan can’t take it anymore. He’d turned on every television in the house to revel in his newfound celebrity, but now, he’s surrounded by the face of the man he loved—and the voice of that man’s father. He runs frantically through the house to shut off the TVs, but his desperation only grows. He’s never felt so alone.

His salvation comes, for a moment, from an unlikely source—Marilyn Miglin. Cunanan catches an infomercial in which Miglin reminisces about happy memories of her late father. It’s an odd scene that serves a much-too-neat purpose: inspiration for Cunanan to call his own father (Jon Jon Briones) in the Philippines. He’s utterly desperate at this point, begging his father to come get him. Overjoyed at the sound of his son’s voice, Modesto promises to fetch his son from Miami in 24 hours. But the next day, while awaiting his father’s arrival, Cunanan catches news footage of Modesto discussing the movie rights to his own life story. He’s devastated. His father’s not coming, and now, he has no one and nothing left.

4) The moment of Cunanan’s death returns to that baffling scene in the opera house.

Cunanan is eventually discovered squatting in the houseboat, and a standoff with the police ensues. As the authorities enter the house, Cunanan shoots himself in the mouth, but not before taking one final glance in the mirror. As the gunshot goes off, Cunanan’s voiceover ironically declares, “I’m so happy right now.”

We’re back at the opera house, in that much-debated scene from Episode 1. Cunanan’s realizing this miraculous interaction with Versace is his make-or-break moment. “What if you had a dream your whole life that you were someone special, but no one believed it?” he asks the designer. “And then, what if the first person that truly believed you was the most incredible person you’d ever met?” Versace counters: “It’s not about persuading people you’re going to do something great. It’s about doing it.” And that, of course, is what ultimately separates Versace from Cunanan.

It’s here that this scene shifts from too-good-to-be-true dream sequence to cold reality. Versace encourages Cunanan to finish his novel (remember that?) but Cunanan jumps at the chance to prove himself to his idol, offering to work as Versace’s assistant. Now, Versace balks, and their connection is tarnished. Opportunistic as ever, Cunanan tries to kiss Versace in a final, desperate bid for affection and validation. Versace kindly rebukes him, with the promise of dinner “another night.” Cunanan is left alone, as the lights onstage go dark. The scene ends with the sound of the gunshot, implying that Cunanan’s most devastating rejection is also his final, conscious thought.

5) American Crime Story’s version of Antonio D’Amico depicts a suicide attempt.

A truly baffling plot point in tonight’s episode comes by way of Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) and the Versace family. It’s well known that in real-life, Donatella did not really like her late brother’s partner and effectively iced him out of the family. In this episode, Donatella (Penelope Cruz) hints to D’Amico that she intends to eventually evict him from the home he shared with Gianni (according to the real-life D’Amico, this really happened). Later, at Gianni’s funeral, the priest neglects to mention D’Amico and shrugs off his hand with a scowl. So far, so believable. But the episode takes a turn in its final moments, as D’Amico is shown swallowing a handful of pills. Moments later, a maid finds his barely-conscious body. There is no evidence to suggest this ever happened in real life; D’Amico is alive and well today, and it’s appalling that the show neglects to acknowledge that.

6) In death, Cunanan becomes a footnote to Versace’s legacy.

For a show so obsessed with appearances, its final moments are quite anticlimactic. As Donatella mourns at Gianni’s lavish grave and the maid discovers D’Amico on the floor, an unnamed cemetery worker lays Cunanan’s cremated remains to rest, a pointed metaphor for Cunanan’s insignificance within the shadow of Versace’s legacy.

What the Hell Just Happened in the ‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Finale?

FX totally screwed up ‘Versace’ finale

How could FX screw up the ending of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace”?

Don’t believe half of what you saw on Wednesday night’s season finale. It never happened.

Although the credits clearly say “Based on the book ‘Vulgar Favors’ by Maureen Orth,” Murphy and his screenwriter Tom Rob Smith had, up to now, done such a scrupulous job in detailing killer Andrew Cunanan’s descent into madness — minus the weight gain from his crystal meth addiction that made him persona non grata in gay circles.

But they blew it in the end. And fans of the show need to know what really went down.

Note to Hollywood screenwriters: Don’t f - - k up the end of a true-crime story, especially when the facts are there for everyone to read. I know reading is not a big pastime in LA, but the truth is out there.

On page 477 of “Vulgar Favors,” Orth describes how quickly it all went down on the Miami houseboat where Cunanan had been hiding out after shooting Versace in cold blood.

When houseboat caretaker Fernando Carreira saw that the front-door lock was broken, he entered the home at around 3:45 p.m., gun drawn. Orth writes, “As he pulled it out to conduct a search, a loud shot rang out in the second-floor bedroom. ‘It was a very big noise and I have to run out,’ ” Carreira recalls.”

That shot was Cunanan killing himself through the mouth with the gun he stole from his first victim, his friend Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock).

In Wednesday night’s finale, Cunanan (Darren Criss) sees the caretaker from an upstairs balcony and fires a shot to scare him away. In reality, Cunanan was already dead.

Subsequent scenes of the police closing in, of tear gas canisters being thrown into the houseboat and of the electricity being cut off to trap Cunanan did not happen while he was alive.

Why bend the truth for a Hollywood showdown? This is not an episode of “Mannix.” Up to this point, the series had accurately shown how Versace was killed, filming the murder scene in front of his former Miami Beach mansion, and how the FBI screwed up the investigation — for example, by refusing to let Miami police distribute the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list photos of Cunanan in gay bars after he’d killed four men but before he killed Versace (Edgar Ramírez). (They did eventually hang flyers, but too late — Cunanan was already dead.)

The finale’s list of inaccuracies goes on.

In real life, the FBI had a difficult time identifying Cunanan’s corpse. The cops did not happen upon Cunanan until 9:30 p.m. The forensic identification of his fingerprints did not occur until 3 a.m. the following morning. “It was extremely difficult, because he was as stiff as a board,” said Sergeant George Navarro of the Miami-Dade police. Two “nervous” technicians had to match the thumbprint to one on a pawnshop form Cunanan had signed along with a copy of his driver’s license (the original was at the FBI lab in Washington, DC.)

Another extremely annoying inaccuracy: Donatella Versace (Penélope Cruz) did not cut her brother’s partner, Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), out of his inheritance, as the show clearly states.

Let’s go back to Orth’s book. “Antonio D’Amico was given approximately $30,000 a month, ‘inflation-proof,’ for life, and the privilege of living in any of Versace’s houses around the world,” she writes. “Antonio, however, told a Canadian newspaper, ‘I’ll never set foot [in those homes] because it would only be fruitless suffering.’ In a further distancing, Donatella and [Versace’s brother] Santo struck a deal with Antonio to take his monthly payments in one lump sum.”

As for the “Valley of the Dolls”-esque scene of Martin swallowing an entire bottle of blue pills, please. Orth reports D’Amico returned to Florence “to launch his own design company.”

The scenes of Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light) being warned by the FBI to clear out of Tampa, where she was on a business trip, were another Turkish Taffy stretch seemingly designed to give Light another scene for a potential Emmy campaign.

In the end, the “Versace” finale is a disappointment. The truth of the story is sufficiently tragic and moving. No one needed this melodramatic finish to drive a point home.

FX totally screwed up ‘Versace’ finale