Tag: review

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: Brideshead Regurgitated

We gave it a B

I assume this is as far back as the flashbacks are going to take us. Unless Andrew Cunanan had some truly formative experiences as a toddler, ACS: Versace’s eighth episode, “Creator/Destroyer” provides our final, and most intimate, look into Cunanan’s past.

It’s a series of gradually more unsettling vignettes, watching Cunanan’s childhood and seeing the original seeds of truth in his lies: His dad did work for Merrill Lynch, talking his way into a highly coveted job with his professed work ethic and track record of upward mobility. His dad did give him the master bedroom — not as an indulgence, but as a somber reminder of his special status. Even though Cunanan has two older siblings, he is beyond the favorite: His father gives him a car before he’s able to drive, he reads him etiquette books in bed, he reminds him constantly that he’s better than other people.

Cunanan gets into a prestigious private school, where he’s voted “most likely to be remembered.” He happily stands out with a flamboyant flair for attention-seeking behavior. He meets Lizzie at a house party while spinning on the dance floor in a red, leather one-piece jumpsuit. Even by high school, he was dating older men (in this case, a married man who refused to come into the party with him) and dazzling people with his confidence. But he wasn’t a liar yet. He wasn’t a child who skinned squirrels or bullied others. Instead, he read Brideshead Revisited (a massive poster on his bedroom makes sure the audience doesn’t miss the symbolism there) and acts like a manic charmer, seducing people around him with his refusal to fit in.

We get one glimpse of Gianni Versace’s childhood, mostly as a means to contrast Cunanan’s: When Versace is sketching, and called a “pansy” in school, his mother comforts him and promises to teach him. “You must do what you love, Gianni,” she says. When young Andrew Cunanan tells his father he dreams of being a writer, his dad — borderline abusive to his wife and other children — reminds him that writing isn’t an effective way to make obscene amounts of money.

We flash forward to see Modesto “Pete” Cunanan working not at Merrill Lynch, but in a depressing cubicle, scamming the elderly out of their money. That’s how his downfall comes about: called into the boss’s office, who reminds him that he was thrown out of Merrill Lynch under mysterious circumstances, that his track record is spotty at best, that when the FBI comes for him, they’ll give up all of their information. And the FBI comes sooner than anyone might have expected: They’re there at the office, barely giving Modesto enough time to escape home, pry out some cash from underneath floorboards, and exit through a backdoor (agents already made it to the front) before flying away to Manila and leaving his family with nothing.

They’re losing the house, but Cunanan, still loyal to his father, tells his mother that he left money for them — of course his special, genius father would have left money for them. Cunanan’s mother cries, usually so ready to believe pretty lies, but not this one. Cunanan packs his case and leaves her to go to Manila alone to find his father, where he confronts him for his crimes. “Weak, like your mother,” Modesto spits at his special son when Cunanan makes it to the shack where he has been living. “You’re not upset that I stole; you’re upset that I stopped.” And then Modesto spits in his son’s face.

When Cunanan returns home and gets a job at the pharmacy where we saw him at the beginning of last week’s episode, he’s resigned and miserable. His answers in the interview are curt and sad. But then, like a light switch, Cunanan tastes his first lie. He can will a universe into existence where his father owns pineapple plantations. He can build his own future. His yearbook quote was in French: “After me, destruction.” He said he liked how it sounded, but it was prophecy — no matter what personas Cunanan builds for himself, his only talent is in bringing ruin.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: Brideshead Regurgitated

American Crime Story Review: Ego, Therefore I Am

As we’ve discussed, people are not born sociopaths. They are made. And it generally happens in early childhood. It’s a humbling thing for a well-meaning but fallible parent to contemplate, and the idea at the core of “Creator/Destroyer” from the first minutes, in which we see young Gianni Versace in his mother’s dress shop in Calabria, watching her work and sketching. It’s not… well, it’s not entirely a “boy” thing to do in midcentury Calabria. Potentially the kind of thing a conservative parent would try to quash.

Instead, his mother (Francesca Franti) teaches him her trade. Boys in school pick on him for being queer and his teacher tears up his sketches, but his mother promises her support in whatever he wants to be and do—and she means it. When he reports that the teacher has called him a pervert, she quietly reassembles the torn pieces of his sketch and says, “It’s beautiful,” then proceeds to show him how to make it.

And that is one big reason why Gianni Versace grows up to be Gianni Versace, and Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) grows up to be a fraud, a pathological liar and a spree killer enraged by men who have earned respect for their work.

We cut to 1980 San Diego, where the Cunanan family is loading a moving van under the direction of Andrew’s father, Modesto (Jon Jon Briones), a man whose ego issues are apparent from the first frame. The rest of the kids are sweating in the heat while Modesto bombasts about how he will turn the $500 they would have paid for professional movers into $10,000. Meanwhile, Andrew’s upstairs reading Brideshead Revisited. They arrive at, well, let’s say a bit of an upgrade from their previous digs, a huge, white suburban house, and Modesto leaves his three other children and his wife to unpack while he takes “Prince Andrew,” who is blatantly and toxically favored by Dad, into the house for a private grand tour.

Interestingly, Andrew hadn’t been lying about his parents giving him the master bedroom. One of the weirdest details in his bizarre spiel to David Madson was actually true. Modesto says he’s giving the bedroom to Andrew because “When you feel special, success will follow.”

There it is, in a nutshell. One child is told to “feel special,” while the other is guided through the concept of “special” being something you work your ass off for, for years. One is taught empty entitlement; one is given tools.

It gets creepier. Modesto and Andrew get dressed side by side, each laying out their suits and attending to every fussy little detail while staring at their reflections in a closet door mirror (more Narcissus imagery). Andrew goes to a school interview while Modesto does the same at the local branch of Merrill Lynch (so there’s some truth to that, too—sort of). While Modesto goes on like a used car salesman about having come from nothing and pulled himself up by the bootstraps (obviously a superior recommendation to a degree from Harvard), Andrew’s interviewers ask him what he’d choose if he could have one wish. He rattles off a list of cars and assets; the question is re-asked and he answers simply, “To be special.”

Modesto gets the job. Now we know where Andrew’s recurring Lobster Dinner motif comes from. And we get a flash of how Mary Anne (Joanna Adler) became… a bit off. Modesto’s a wee bit of a gaslighter—show of hands, who’s surprised?—as well as a Big Fat Liar at work—again, surprised? He interrupts Andrew and his mom trying to do homework together because he’s bought Andrew a car (Andrew is about twelve and has several older siblings whom Modesto basically ignores). Mary Ann protests that it isn’t fair to the other kids, who are actually old enough to drive, and Modesto calls her crazy again, and grabs her by the throat and throws her to the ground while Andrew watches. Modesto tells Andrew that his brother and sisters aren’t “special” and that his mother has a weak mind and that Modesto is his mother and his father. As Mary Anne dusts herself off and approaches the car, Modesto puts the window up, so her face is reflected in the glass, with Andrew and Dad enclosed on the other side. Andrew mentions wanting to be a writer. Dad says it’s better to be “an opportunist.”

We cut to 1987, when a decidedly queenly Andrew sashays out of that car and into a yearbook portrait session, where he gets called a “fag” for increasingly loud protests over the uniforms and identical poses. “If being a fag means being different,” he says to the jock who’s insulted him, “sign me up!” He marches to the front of the line, unbuttons his shirt, and strikes a campy pose.

Oh, and Modesto’s not at Merrill Lynch any more. He’s doing “trades” from a seedy office in a strip mall. And he seems to be ripping off little old ladies. Hmm.

Andrew’s mom can tell from his cologne that he’s seeing someone: “Who is she?”

“What would you say if I said she was over 30?”

Mary Anne says a young man should be with an older woman, who will teach him to be a man. Andrew goes upstairs and dresses for his date. The date’s definitely over 30, and doesn’t appreciate being brought to a high school house party because he’s married and can’t be seen out with Andrew like that. So Andrew goes to the party alone, tossing aside his trench coat and swaggering into the party in a tomato-red leather jumpsuit. This definitely clears him a lot of space on the dance floor, and also attracts the attention of the delinquent house sitter who’s hosting the party. Hey, Lizzie! (Annaleigh Ashford). She takes to him at once and confides that she’s not a high school student but a bored housewife who promised the owners-—he daSilvas— that she’d watch their place while they were out of town.

So Andrew has now made one of the two closest things to an actual friend he’ll ever have (Jeff Trail will be the other). Meanwhile, the stockbrokers are on to Modesto that he’s been conning little old ladies over fake stocks. The feds are involved. Modesto runs for it, pretty literally—he’s still in the building when the FBI shows up.

Andrew’s senior yearbook page is captioned, “Apres moi, le deluge.”

“I dunno, it just sounded sorta cool,” he says to a classmate of the enigmatic words, attributed to Louis XV and/or Madame Pompadour.

Meanwhile, Modesto runs home, pries open a floorboard, removes cash and passports, knocks his wife out of the way and flees. Andrew pulls up just in time to see Dad jumping a fence. “Don’t believe a word they say,” he says to his son, and takes the car keys from his hand.

Mom tells Andrew they have nothing left, that Modesto had even secretly sold the house because he knew they were coming for him. Andrew decides to go to Manila to track him down, over Mary Anne’s hysterical protests. “He’s dangerous!” she screams, and Andrew puts his hand over her mouth.

“You’re wrong about him.”

Gaslighters are interesting folks, folks. Here’s a kid who has grown up watching his father mentally and physically abuse his mother, and when she says he’s dangerous, he disagrees.

He finds his father in his home village outside Manila, staying with an uncle Andrew’s never met. No, there is no money, and no plan; yes, he defrauded and stole. Modesto never stops defending his actions. Andrew loses it.

“You’re a lie! And if you’re a lie, I’m a lie, and I can’t be a lie!”

Spoiler alert: That ends up not being strictly true.

Modesto’s response? “You’re weak, just like your mother.” Spits on him. Says he’s ashamed of him. Calls him a sissy. Andrew jumps up with a knife in his hand (He’s been chopping pineapple with it) and Modesto dares him to use it. Instead, he just grips the blade until it cuts through his palm.

“You don’t have it in you,” Modesto sneers. One wonders, had his father not said that sentence, whether any of what happened afterward might have been different. See, being a narcissist-sociopath-psychopath involves total dependency on the projections of others. If they say you’re nothing, you’re nothing. If they taunt you to prove them wrong, you’ll do it.

We use the word “ego” almost as if we’re describing a character flaw. In fact, the literal translation of the word is “I am.” To be completely egoless might be the ostensible aim of some religious philosophies, but there’s a big difference between relinquishing one and never developing one in the first place. People with broken or empty or malformed egos are miserable and very often highly dangerous. This episode is basically a primer on how to build a human being with no stable idea of who he is. The pressure of that instability is like the seismic buildup between tectonic plates in a subduction zone. The longer the pressure builds, the more catastrophic the quake’s going to be when the ground finally gives way.

Andrew comes home and applies for the job at the pharmacy, telling the elderly Filipino proprietor about his dad in in Manila running pineapple plantations. “Is that so?” the man says, a bit skeptically.

Cunanan’s eyes are dead as a fish’s. “As far as the eye can see.”

American Crime Story Review: Ego, Therefore I Am

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Recap: Like Father, Like Son

The first seven episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story have followed Andrew Cunanan’s journey backwards in time. We’ve seen his vicious killing spree, his descent into madness and his ascension into the life of luxury. Now it’s time to meet someone even worse: his father.

“Creator/Creation” follows Andrew’s young life, first as an 11-year-old boy and then as a teen and we get introduced to his father, Modesto “Pete” Cunanan. It’s clear that the apple didn’t fall from the tree as Pete is a bit of a con man himself, lying and taking the easy road to live in luxury. And just like with Andrew, the story results in Pete being hunted by the FBI when his house of cards collapses.

The title suggests that Pete is the creator and Andrew is his creation, which makes sense as Pete’s terrible life lessons and heinous actions seem largely responsible for turning Andrew into the monster that he will become.

A Tale of Two Origins

The show goes way back to 1957 to introduce us to Gianni Versace as a young boy in Italy. His mother encourages him to become a dressmaker if that’s what he really wants to do, but the other kids make fun of him and even his teacher calls him a pervert. His mom stands by him, explaining that success only comes with a lot of hard work.

This quick scene at the start is all we get of Versace in this episode, meaning Edgar Ramirez, who plays the title character, has only appeared in five out of the first eight episodes while Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin have only been in four each. It really does seem like false advertising to call this series The Assassination of Gianni Versace when the Versaces are wholly irrelevant to the main story.

Meanwhile, in San Diego in 1980, a young Andrew Cunanan and his family move into a new house. It’s obvious that, despite being the youngest child, Andrew is spoiled rotten by his dad. Pete gives his young son the master bedroom so he’ll feel spcial. There’s a massive difference in how Andrew and Gianni were raised: Gianni was told he needed to work hard for success while Andrew was handed everything and told that success will come to him without any effort because he’s special.

Andrew’s Awful Father

Pete interviews for a stockbroker job and gets it. His biography is impressive, going from a tiny home in the Philippines to the U.S. Navy to having a family and a big house in America. He’s a hustler, but there are plenty of red flags. At work he starts to fabricate accounts so it will look like he’s succeeding when he’s not.

Pete then interrupts Andrew from doing his homework to give the 11-year-old boy a new car. His wife questions the decision, especially since they have two children who are actually old enough to drive, and Pete gets physically abusive with her. He insists that the most important lesson to teach his son is to dream big.

At night, in an incredibly disturbing scene, it’s heavily implied that Pete is sexually molesting his young son. Is the goal of this episode to make me feel sorry for a future serial killer? Because it’s working since Pete is the real monster who essentially screwed up his kid for life.

Andrew: The Teenage Years

The show jumps ahead to 1987 when Andrew (now played by Darren Criss) is 18 and driving the car his dad gave him when he was 11. Andrew is the spitting image of his father, an insufferably confident brat.

Even in high school, Andrew is drinking and sleeping with older married men, though he seems to want a genuine relationship. He goes to a party wearing a hilarious red leather jumpsuit and meets Lizzie, the girl from the beginning of the series. They become fast friends and she reveals that she’s actually older and married, but Andrew loves that she’s an imposter.

Pete on the Run

Pete, however, has gone downhill, still making the exact same stockbroker pitches, but now at a much smaller firm in a tiny cubicle, trying to swindle little old ladies out of their dead husbands’ pensions. His bosses call him in to reveal that he’s being investigated by the feds for fraudulent trades.

Pete claims that he has nothing to hide, but he immediately starts shredding documents and he books a one-way flight to the Philippines. The FBI shows up with a warrant for his arrest, but Pete flees back to his home to get his go-bag filled with money and a passport. The FBI shows up at the house, but Pete escapes again.

Will Andrew Turn Into His Father?

Andrew and his mom are left with nothing as Pete emptied the bank accounts and sold the house before fleeing. Andrew is angry and lost, but he still believes in his dad and flies to the Philippines to find him. His dad is living in a tiny shack and Andrew learns that there is no money or plan. His dad is a fraud and a liar.

Andrew is distraught. His entire world has been shattered as he discovers that none of it was real. Pete refuses to take the blame, spitting on his son and calling him a sissy, claiming that Andrew is just angry that he now has to work instead of getting a free ride. Andrew picks up a knife and his dad dares him to stab him, but he can’t. “‘I’ll never be like you,” Andrew says through his tears.

Andrew flies back home where the house is being packed up so he and his mom can move into a tiny apartment. They’ve lost everything and the episode ends with Andrew applying for a job at the pharmacy. The Filipino manager asks about his heritage and his father, with Andrew lying that his dad owns many pineapple plantations. I guess that trip to the Philippines was pointless because Andrew clearly learned nothing.

Do you feel sympathy for Andrew knowing how he was raised by his father?

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Recap: Like Father, Like Son

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap: Stock Market Crash

Editor’s rating: ★★☆☆☆

Here’s the most surprising thing about Gianni Versace: Even at the age of 10 in Calabria, Italy, he apparently spoke fluent English. He and his mother only speak English to each other, as does his Latin teacher at school and the one classmate who calls him a pansy. This must be an especially good school district, since it teaches English so well that Italians would prefer to speak it at home rather than their native tongue.

I’m teasing the show, of course, but how hard would it have been to translate the two scenes of Versace’s childhood into Italian and put in subtitles? Yes, I know we are all lazy and hate to read while we’re watching TV because it makes us look up from crushing unspeakable amounts of candy on our phone screens, but come on.

While we’re talking about unbelievable things, one of the jocks at Andrew’s school called him a “fag” for yelling in line at school picture day, but we’re really supposed to believe that no one would say anything when he shows up to a house party vogueing on the dance floor in a red leather jumpsuit like he’s Michael Jackson in the “Bad” music video? It’s appropriate that the house party was in 1987, because no house parties are as cool, crowded, or well-behaved, except for the ones in John Hughes movies that were coming out around the same time. Oh, and what happened to that nerdy blonde guy who was going to ask Andrew out? He just disappeared, poor guy. He was just like Duckie in Pretty in Pink.

This episode is called “Creator/Destroyer,” but we get much more of the destroyer than we do the creator. It opens with Gianni sketching dresses in his mother’s atelier and her encouraging his love of fashion as a young boy, but she does it with the kind of platitudes that are usually reserved for motivational posters in sad cubicle farms. “You must do what you love, but it takes hard work and practice.” “Success only comes with hard work. And it’s never easy. And that’s why it’s special.” This opening is more like a Lifetime movie than it is a prestige show on an Emmy-winning cable network.

While the language and dialogue are rather silly, the worst part about this entire episode is that it lasts 90 minutes (with commercials). I’m all for cable channels letting their creators experiment with run times, but no one exploits this privilege like Ryan Murphy and his crew. “Creator/Destroyer” is boring, slack, and full of exposition that we didn’t really need.

Yes, there are lots of good parts, but did we need to see Lizzie talking to Andrew on the couch about how they’re both imposters? No. Did we need Andrew and his father saluting over the American flag in the front yard? No. Did we really need all those cringey moments of Andrew getting his yearbook photo taken and then crowing about it to his one friend we previously hadn’t met? No. We’re nearing the home stretch, and this needed to be a lot tighter to be more effective.

But we did learn some interesting things, mostly about Andrew’s father. Both Andrew and his father never felt like they belonged in the all-white, upper-class world to which they aspired, but Modesto (a.k.a. Pete) taught Andrew to fit in. While Versace’s mother taught him about hard work and persistence, Andrew’s father taught him “to remember that you’re special, and when you feel special, success will follow.” Both Andrew and Modesto felt special, but when success didn’t follow, they both got angry and became violent, thieving liars.

The best and most heated scene comes when Andrew finally tracks his father down to Manila after he’s fled the Feds for bilking old ladies out of their pensions. Andrew is crushed that his father’s success was all lies, that the superiority he based his personality on was all a sham. “You’re not upset that I stole, you’re upset that I stopped,” Modesto says. “Now you have to work. You are a sissy kid with a sissy mind.” He then spits on Andrew and tells him to stab his father with a knife to prove that he’s a man.

Maybe that is the essential difference between Andrew and Gianni. The show has taken great pains to paint them almost as equals — very intelligent, artistic, gifted, and bullied for being gay — but Andrew had a father who used his sexuality against him, whereas Gianni’s mother trained him to be a couturier regardless of what she thought it would say about her son.

The oddest thing about this hour, and the series in general, is that it seems to be suggesting this all wasn’t Andrew’s fault. It keeps trying and trying to make us feel sympathy for a man who killed multiple people in cold blood. Here, Andrew has a father who raised him with the wrong values and made him feel better than everyone else, even his long suffering older siblings. His father also taught him that lying and stealing were the only way to get ahead in America. Andrew was given the education and refinement to reach the upper echelons of society, but not the work ethic to make it stick (something that Norman brought up when they fought on the balcony of his house).

Does that mean that Andrew couldn’t help but become who he was, because he was a sensitive gay kid born to the wrong parents and living in a homophobic world? That can’t be the answer because no one forced him to become violent. Killing all of those people was his choice and he needs to be held accountable for that. Yes, the portrait of every killer might be more nuanced than the nightly news would lead us to believe, but there are plenty of people who escape troubled backgrounds without resorting to spree killing, so why couldn’t Andrew? Maybe next week’s finale will do a little bit more to tarnish the image the show has given him so far.

That’s the big question, isn’t it? After his confrontation with his father in Manila, Andrew says, “I will never be like you,” so what turned him into exactly the kind of person that Modesto was? We see it a little bit at the pharmacy, where he’s filling out a job application and the Filipino owner starts asking about his father. Andrew initially lies out of a sense of survival, because he feels like he won’t get the job if the owner knows that his father is a crook. But then his sense of superiority is dinged and he starts telling the owner that his father owns multiple pineapple plantations. It’s the very start of a road that will lead right to Versace’s front door.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap: Stock Market Crash

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 8: Prince Andrew

Episode 8: ‘Creator/Destroyer’

The penultimate episode of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” is a remarkable hour of television. It is a parallel portrait of two childhoods: those of Versace, the renowned fashion designer, and Andrew Cunanan, the serial killer who shot him to death in 1997. It is a parallel portrait of a father and son: Modesto Cunanan and his darling youngest child, Andrew. And it is a rare, nuanced depiction of an Asian American family that finds heartbreak, not fulfillment, in its pursuit of the American dream.

The episode seems to offer some of the missing pieces of an explanation for Cunanan’s murderous pathology. It is such a masterly hour of drama that I’m tempted to say our patience has been rewarded. Yet, for reasons I’ll explain, I felt somewhat shortchanged: One hour of great television can only do so much to make up for hours of grisly and often hard-to-watch violence. This series has been told in reverse chronological order, putting tremendous weight on the final two episodes to explain the chaos and bloodshed we’ve experienced in the first seven.

The episode begins pleasantly enough. We learn that Versace, growing up in Calabria in austere postwar Italy, was encouraged by his mother, herself a dressmaker, to follow his dreams.

“I see you watching me work,” she gently little Gianni. “There is no need to hide.”

She explains that she wanted to be a doctor as a child, but that her father discouraged her. “You must do what you love, Gianni, what you feel inside here,” she tells her son, tapping his chest. With that encouragement — and in spite of homophobic mocking by a teacher — Gianni begins his rise, one grounded in technical virtuosity and boldness of vision.

Andrew Cunanan’s early years, we learn, were in most respects considerably more complicated.

It is 1980 and the Cunanan family — Modesto (played by a fantastic Jon Jon Briones), who is Filipino; his wife, Mary Ann; and their four children — are moving into a spacious new home in San Diego. Andrew turned 11 that summer. Modesto leads his youngest child — whom an older brother calls “Prince Andrew” — on a tour of the new house. He is given the master bedroom. It is clear that his parents have marked him as special, and not just in the way youngest children are often doted on.

As Andrew interviews for the Bishop’s School, an elite private academy, Modesto interviews at Merrill Lynch. Modesto’s charm is on full display. “Gentlemen, I’m aware that you have a long line of eager Ivy League-educated young men queuing up to be brokers at Merrill Lynch, but ask yourself, how many of them started from nothing?” he asks. When asked to discuss business, not his biography, he protests: “My life is a tale told in dollars,” he tells them, which started in a small village in the Philippines and wound up in an $80,000 home.

“Now is that biography or business?” he asks. “Because I will tell your investors that’s what I plan to do with their money. I will cross oceans with it. I will take it to new lands. I’m talking about growth they can’t imagine.” The monologue is notable because it is so much like the fantastic tales that Andrew will later tell to the many gay men he will try to impress. Modesto gets the job.

Young Andrew, meanwhile, is accepted to the Bishop’s School, after telling the interviewers that his one wish is “to be special.”

It is a high point for the father and son, whose lives start to go down from this point.

But first we learn about the family’s unusual and troubling dynamics. Modesto spoils Andrew to the point of buying a car for him, even though he is too young for a license. Even more troubling, Modesto is physically abusive to his wife, Mary Ann, whom he holds in contempt for her “weak mind.” And his obsession with Andrew is clearly unhealthy. In one particularly disturbing scene at bed time, there’s an intimation of possible sexual abuse. The scene goes dark, and we’re left to wonder. But the effect is unsettling regardless.

Flash forward a few years, to 1987: Andrew is 17 and finishing high school, and he has carved out an identity for himself: flamboyant, exuberant and carefree. Despite a homophobic taunt, he unbuttons his shirt for a school photo. He is determined not to conform. In his high school yearbook, he is voted “most likely to be remembered.” Under his photo is the slogan, “Après moi, le déluge.”

Modesto is meanwhile in serious trouble. Having left Merrill Lynch (presumably for underperforming, as is hinted at in earlier scenes), he now works for a smaller stockbroker, where he is accused of trying to fleece a 90-year-old woman of her life savings. F.B.I. agents arrive at his office; Modesto escapes out the back and races home. He runs upstairs, pries open a floorboard, grabs cash and passports and puts them in a bag. When Mary Ann asks what is happening, he violently shoves her aside. As agents enter the house from the front, Modesto again flees out the back, climbing over a wall … where he encounters Andrew.

“Don’t believe a word they say,” Modesto tells Andrew as he takes his son’s car and flees to the Philippines.

Convinced that Modesto must have stored money away somewhere, Andrew flies to Manila, and — in the most stunning scene of this series so far — confronts his father in what is essentially a tree-canopy-covered shack in the village where Modesto is living.

The father puts down the newspaper he is reading and offers his son another in a long line of fraudulent smiles. “I knew you’d come,” he tells Andrew, as if selling him a used car.

Asked where the money is, Modesto spins again, insisting that there are “millions” but “out of reach.” Later in the night, Andrew wakes up and confronts his father. He knows that there is no money. “My father’s a thief,” he laments. Modesto lashes back:

Andrew is crushed. “You were everything to me, dad,” he says. “But if you’re a lie, then I’m a lie, and I can’t be a lie.” He bursts into tears, but Modesto won’t have it. “Weak, just like your mother,” he sneers. “The two of you talk about honesty, but she never cared that I was stealing as long as there was money.”

He slaps Andrew, spits in his face. Andrew grabs a knife, but he can’t use it. Instead he cuts himself, as he agonizes and holds himself back.

Back in California, Andrew applies for a job a drugstore. When the owner — a Filipino immigrant like Modesto — asks Andrew what his father does, he replies: “He owns multiple pineapple plantations. As far as the eye can see.” And so begins the big lie.

It’s remarkable television, evoking everything from the Madoff scandal (which also destroyed a son) to the dashed aspirations of “Death of a Salesman.” It reveals the dark side of the 1980s, when greed and fraud operated under the veneer of pastels and sunshine. It exposes, to an extent, the myth of the “model minority” that has hobbled Asian-Americans, and of the notion that hard work is all the American dream requires.

It is not, however, an entirely plausible explanation for how Andrew Cunanan became a mass murderer. I’m looking to the season finale to see if this series means to give us one.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 8: Prince Andrew

The Assassination of Gianni Versace, episode 3, review – a deft parable of sunlight and darkness

★★★★☆

In The Assassination of Gianni Versace (BBC Two), scriptwriter Tom Rob Smith has set himself quite a task to keep up interest in a story short of redemptive good cheer. The first episodewent off like a glorious gaudy firework. The second delved into the less riveting anxieties of the Versace siblings. Seven more episodes of Gianni and Donatella squabbling might be quite a trial. So in this cheerless parable of sunlight and darkness, a lot rests on the shoulders of the itinerant psychopath Andrew Cunanan, played by the extraordinary Darren Criss.

Last time around we watched him in action as a creepy S&M escort whose specialism was suffocating closeted elderly clients with duct-tape. (Don’t shoot the messenger: I merely report the facts.) The third episode took a holiday from the Versaces to deliver to a well-shaped, self-contained episode from Cunanan’s serial-killing back story. In the words of Blue Peter, it was a case of “here’s a murder I did earlier. Two, in fact.”

The victim was Lee Miglin, a real estate tycoon prone to furtive gay encounters but still devoted to his wife Marilyn, a shopping-network perfume saleswoman. Deftly portrayed by guest actors Mike Farrell and Judith Light, theirs was a lavender marriage based on loving friendship and rigid denial. The denial continued for the unshocked wife even after her husband’s body was found taped and stabbed in the garage. The murder, she ferociously insisted, must be reported as a random robbery gone wrong.

This was a story about appearances. While Marilyn was fixated on keeping up hers (and her dead husband’s), Cunanan was all for exposing ugly realities under polished surfaces. Miglin was ruthlessly taunted for romanticising their sexual transaction. Then his killer ripped off his mask and announced his true identity: “Here I am,” he boasted. “This is me.”

Watching Cunanan enact rituals of sexual humiliation is not a pleasant experience. Later, he also chucked in another more pragmatic, cold-blooded execution on the run. As Cunanan, Darren Criss is horribly convincing, though I’m starting to doubt if he can convince me to spend six more episodes in his company. There are still two more murders to sit through. Come back, Gianni and Donatella. All is forgiven.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace, episode 3, review – a deft parable of sunlight and darkness

‘American Crime Story: Versace’ recap: ‘Ascent’ – TheCelebrityCafe.com

It’s kind of funny how Andrew keeps saying he’s going to be rich and powerful, when all he really does is end up killing people who are far richer and powerful than he is — something that was made pretty evident in the latest episode of American Crime Story: Versace.

This new episode of Versace, entitled “Ascent,” spends some much needed time examining the power dynamic between Gianni Versace and his sister, Donatella. Guess what folks, Versace wasn’t always the nicest guy after all.

In fact, he had quite the temper, which is why he blows up at his sibling when he doesn’t feel like she’s pushing herself hard enough in the world of fashion. He later apologizes, telling her that she’s his true legacy and all, but it’s not the last time we see him rage.

This initial episode does, however, inspire Donatella to really step out on her own. Working together with Gianni, the two design an erotic looking dress that Donatella then wears to a red carpet. Crowds of cameras swarm to her, as it indicates she has officially made her mark.

A mark that is sadly short-lived, as the Versace’s quickly learn people don’t necessarily want to buy or wear a fancy looking dress that they see someone else look beautiful in. Donatella suggests a second dress based on the same design, but that’s where Gianni’s anger comes back and he just decides to destroy the whole thing instead.

Because, you know, that’s what made the most sense.

That’s when it hits though — Gianni’s ear cancer. He loses his ability to hear right at that very moment and is quickly sent over to Miami to recover. That means, you guessed it, Donatella is now running the business.

All of that has nothing to do with Andrew’s storyline, of course, because this season of American Crime Story is determined to keep the two main characters as separate as possible.

This time, we’re following Andrew shortly after he met Jeff, but before he meets David. Cunanan is working a dead-end job, repeatedly being lectured to by his boss about ‘applying himself’ and all that. Andrew, obviously, couldn’t care less. He just makes up some more lies to escape the situation, then returns home to his mother’s apartment, miserable.

It’s at the bar where his luck begins to change. While Jeff lands an attractive young companion for the night and Andrew thinks he’s initially going home empty-handed, it’s then that an older man begins to make his move. “Either there’s money in your wallet, or there isn’t,” the man says after seeing Andrew can’t pay his tab, and things between the two of them go on from there.

Obviously, this interaction made something click for Andrew — he likes older men. Better yet, older men like him. Like, REALLY like him. Why not try to do something with this?

That’s what leads him to try to get hired by a male escort service — an interview that doesn’t go all too well. Andrew proves he’s willing to work hard and that he certainly has the, ahem, assets to please, but the woman working there informs him that it’s not how hard you work. It’s what people want. And, frankly, people don’t want Andrew.

Instead of dwelling on the truth, Andrew instead decides that they’re wrong and he doesn’t need an agency. He’ll just go around, selling himself. His first target: Norman, the man we saw him living within the previous episode.

At least, that was the original idea. After slyly getting himself invited to dinner with Norman and a couple of his friends, he winds up being bought by one of those companions — a man named Lincoln Aston (Todd Waring).

It’s a simple deal. Andrew gets a weekly allowance and, in return, he keeps Lincoln company for a time and makes sure that his house is always full of like-minded people.

At least, it should be simple. That’s when a little something called love gets in the way. It’s in San Francisco that Andrew sees David sitting alone at a bar. His attraction to him is instant, as he immediately sends him a drink. David is flattered, as no one has ever even bought him a drink before, and the two end up spending the night together.

Lincoln, who sees Andrew’s hotel expenses, doesn’t like this. He instantly knows what’s going on and breaks things off with Andrew. Angry, Andrew returns home to his mother and, in a moment of anger, shoves her and accidentally breaks her shoulder blade.

It’s Lincoln, though, who gets the real blunt end of the stick. Lincoln goes to a gay bar to try and pick up another younger man, only to have the guy he chooses to freak out on him and beat him to death with a nearby statue. Tough break.

Andrew just so happened to see the whole thing go down. He doesn’t feel particularly inclined to say anything to the police and is more surprised that no one is really going to do anything about it. Turns out, you can kill a gay man and no one will bat an eye — something Andrew is going to remember further down the line.

The episode then ends with Andrew reuniting with Norman and moving in with him. Andrew has the wealth he’s dreamed of for so long, while holding the idea of love — with David — still in his heart.

‘American Crime Story: Versace’ recap: ‘Ascent’ – TheCelebrityCafe.com

Organs Go Missing on ‘X-Files’ and ‘SVU,’ ‘American Crime Story: Versace’ Nears End

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace (10/9c, FX): The penultimate episode of the gripping psychological crime drama offers insights into the formative years of future designer Versace, nurtured in a homophobic Italian culture by a mother who advises, “Success only comes with hard work—and it’s never easy.” This is contrasted with the coddled, spoiled upbringing of Versace’s future murderer, Andrew Cunanan, whose conman dad coddles the boy to believe he’s special until the family’s delusional house of cards collapses. By then it’s too late. Living a lie comes way too naturally to Andrew (Darren Criss). When his BFF Lizzie (Annaleigh Ashford) confesses, “I’m an imposter,” Andrew responds, “All the best people are.” Also the worst.

Organs Go Missing on ‘X-Files’ and ‘SVU,’ ‘American Crime Story: Versace’ Nears End

TV Guy: ‘Versace’ returns to the roots of a killer’s troubles

The sins of the father emerge in the powerful penultimate episode of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” (10 p.m., FX, TV-MA).

This emotionally draining series has unfolded one flashback at a time, with characters’ stories emerging in seemingly random order.

Tonight’s episode focuses on Modesto “Pete” Cunanan (Jon Jon Briones), the con man father of serial killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss).

Pete projects a brash belief in the American dream, enlisting in the military so he can arrive as a new citizen from his native Philippines.

His peculiar notion of family values is to lavish all his attention and much of his fortune on Andrew, while his other children languish in a state of emotional starvation.

It’s clear Andrew gets his sense of entitlement (as well as his contempt for his mother) from his old man, who follows a downward trajectory as a financial adviser.

A parallel plot about young Gianni Versace’s choice to defy gender roles and follow his mother’s steps as a seamstress is pretty much overshadowed by the Cunanan backstory.

I was shocked when I read that members of the Versace family complained “American Crime Story” had defamed the designer’s legend.

TV Guy: ‘Versace’ returns to the roots of a killer’s troubles