Why ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Is Not the Show You Think

When FX announced a new anthology series American Crime Story, from prolific writer/producer/director Ryan Murphy, there was skepticism aplenty. That doubled when we learned that the initial season would revolve around the trial of O.J. Simpson. But to almost everyone’s surprise, The People v. O.J. Simpson was excellent. It was enthralling, wonderfully crafted, and most importantly insightful—the series brought new layers to a well-known event, highlighting the misogyny, bias, and racism that hung over the entire trial like a heavy cloud.

Because of that success, any skepticism went out the window for the second season, The Assassination of Gianni Versace. But while the show had a heavy marketing campaign from FX and debuted a month ago, the series has failed to capture the zeitgeist the same way O.J. did. Ratings are down sharply from the previous season, as there simply didn’t seem to be much interest in a retelling of the murder of the titular fashion designer. However, those that are actually watching Versace know that the show Murphy and writer Tom Rob Smith (who penned every episode) have crafted is something wildly different from what the promos would lead you to believe.

Indeed, while the marketing for Versace revolved around the glamorous life of Gianni Versace (played by Edgar Ramirez in the series) and his sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz), the series is something of a bait-and-switch. It opens by showing us a slice of Versace’s life, and the first episode ends with his murder. From then on, the story works backwards, tracing the steps that led to this devastating event. But Versace isn’t the show’s focus—his killer, Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) is. Indeed, Versace barely even appears in the show’s third and fourth episodes, as the series puts its focus squarely on Cunanan.

Versace was actually the fourth person Cunanan killed, and the show is now taking its time in providing context to those first few killings, which put Cunanan on the path towards taking Versace’s life. In the process, Murphy and Smith are offering a terrifying portrait of a killer in the vein of American Psycho. The show’s tonal touchstones have far more in common with that film or Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic Psycho than they do with any kind of wealth porn or hagiographic story of celebrity.

The series is also really zeroing in on Cunanan’s struggles with his homosexuality, and how that contrasts and compares with Versace’s experience as a gay man—albeit one of wealth and fame. Cunanan was clearly mentally ill from the get-go, constantly lying about things big and small and living in his own fantasyland. He worked as an escort for older, oftentimes wealthy men living in the closet, and the show posits that his jealousy and disgust may have been motivating factors in what led him to kill.

Indeed, the mid to late 1990s were still rife with stigma for homosexuals, especially in the wake of the AIDS crisis, and Cunanan had zero empathy or sympathy for closeted men who were ashamed of their sexuality. Was this his sole motivation for killing? Probably not, but American Crime Story makes a compelling case for it to have been a factor nevertheless.

The show’s third and fourth episodes are largely contained, playing out almost like mini horror movies—especially Episode 3, in which we stick with Cunanan in real-time through his first two murders. Given that the individuals involved in these attacks are all dead, the show is obviously dramatizing the exact conversations that went on, but again it’s making an intriguing argument about Cunanan’s motive, which has eluded many for the last few decades.

All of that said, Versace still hasn’t reached the heights of The People v. O.J. The fractured/Memento-esque narrative is compelling at times, but it can also be frustrating, and to be quite honest the Versace-centric portions—at least thus far—lack a certain “oomph” that the rest of the show seems to have. The very best reason to be watching Versace is Darren Criss, who delivers an absolutely phenomenal and terrifying performance as Cunanan. This is a multi-dimensional, complicated, and bold performance as Criss can turn Cunanan’s personality on a dime, in a manner that’ll send chills down your spine.

So if you saw the promotional materials for Versace and thought this would be a series about wealth and glamor and life in the spotlight, it is very much not that show. The series certainly touches on some of these issues, but Cunanan is undoubtedly the protagonist here, and Ramirez’s Versace is but a minor player in the overall story that Murphy and Smith are telling. And thus far, it’s a fascinating and downright disturbing one.

A wrenching episode of American Crime Story: Versace exposes the cost of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

Perhaps the best way to describe this season of American Crime Story isn’t in words, but in one of its most frequent music cues: a long, eerie violin note stretching between major and minor keys, scratching at the screen like branches on a windowpane.

Sometimes the plaintive string slices through scenes to punctuate banal terrors, springing from the insecurity and paranoia engulfing its central characters. Most often, it creeps out of the silence as the camera fixes its gaze on Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), the serial killer whose unnerving magnetism was his greatest asset and biggest tell. Every time, it is disorienting and terrible, piercing and unrelenting.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace is not, in other words, the pulpy recreation of Versace’s luxe life and shocking murder that many assumed it would be. Instead, every episode has been its own slow-building horror movie — and, thanks to a narrative structure that jumps backwards through time from the murders to the events leading up to them, there’s little in the way of relief from the tension.

One of the show’s most distinctive throughlines is also the one that gets a particularly devastating showcase in “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” As the episode cuts between 1995 and 1997, just about every story hinges on the constant, grinding frustration of being stuck in the closet, the potential humiliation of getting unwillingly dragged out of it, and the paralyzing fear of malicious homophobes discovering the truth.

In the first three episodes, the closet loomed large as the bane of Versace’s career and a source of Cunanan’s caustic disdain. In the fourth (“House by the Lake”), the show dove into the past of Cunanan’s second victim David Madson (Cody Fern), heartbreakingly revealing his terror of coming out to his father. But the looming specter of the closet takes center stage in “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” which follows the tragic journey of Jeffrey Trail, a former Navy lieutenant and Cunanan’s first victim, to its violent end.

As played by a steel-jawed Finn Wittrock, Trail is a man bound by duty, determination, and deep-seated fear of his peers realizing he’s gay. The episode tracks his experience in the Navy, his first encounter with a charming Cunanan in a gay bar, and his constant internal conflict over how to reconcile his sexuality with his chosen career. Casting a shadow of inevitable tragedy over the whole thing is Jeffrey’s introduction to the show in the previous episode, when Cunanan killed him by smashing his head in with a hammer.

“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is an unrelentingly wrenching hour. So much of it hangs on the terrifying precipice Jeffrey had to keep from falling over every day in the Navy, and his barely restrained fury at an institution he loves mistreating him so badly, before finally pushing him into the abyss of Cunanan’s rage.

There is a glancing attempt in this episode to tie Jeffrey’s struggle with being closeted to Gianni Versace’s, as both prepare for starkly different interviews in which they tell the truth. Jeffrey, his profile cast in total shadow, gives an anonymous interview to a CBS reporter in a dingy motel about being closeted in the military; Versace (Edgar Ramirez), accompanied by his longterm partner Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), sits down with the news publication The Advocate in a lavish hotel suite for his official coming out. Both men are resolute, adamant that this is the right thing to do — but both are also deeply scared, steeling themselves for the inevitable hell there will be to pay.

More than anything, this episode highlights the value of the approach writer Tom Rob Smith has taken to American Crime Story, giving depth to Cunanan’s victims who didn’t make many headlines at all before they counted Versace among their number, and more broadly, exploring the very real dangers of homophobia. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace is not the detailing of a murder spree as much as it is a taxonomy of gay tragedy,” as Richard Lawson wrote in his review for Vanity Fair. “It illustrates the maiming effect of the closet and the ways a society’s codified reverence for money and clout can badly entangle with private yearnings forced into the margins, into the dark.”

“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” lives in those exact margins. Terrified that he will be found out, Jeffrey clings to the heterosexual mirage the military forces him into — a violation it dares to recontextualize as his duty to uphold. The score’s creeping malaise lurks around the edges, swelling as his paranoia spikes, loading every stolen glance with imminent danger.

In just about every way, this episode makes the political wrenchingly personal

In a series of heartbreaking scenes, Jeffrey steps in to stop sailors from beating a gay peer into a bloody pulp and is immediately seized by terror that they might suspect he’s only doing that because he, too, is gay. (A fear that proves to be accurate.) One of the episode’s best and most devastating moments comes when he tries to comfort the gay sailor, finally allowing himself to be just tender enough — laying a sympathetic hand along the other man’s bruised face — that the man can understand he’s in the company of someone who intimately understands his pain.

Eventually, the episode circles back to Jeffrey’s relationship with Cunanan, revealing that they met during Jeffrey’s first time in a gay bar. In these moments, Dan Minahan’s direction takes on distinct point of view shots, adopting Cunanan’s concentrated glare when he’s angry and even Jeffrey’s reluctantly intrigued gaze at the bar’s glistening go-go boy. And yes, getting the context for why Cunanan snapped so hard at Jeffrey — jealousy over his relationship with David Madson combined with disdain for Jeffrey’s allegiance to the Navy that spurned him — is exactly as painful as it sounds.

But just like when it concentrated on David’s individual hurt in “House on the Lake,” “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” makes its most brutally effective points when it trains its gaze on Jeffrey. If I had to pick one moment that sums it up, it would be when Cunanan accuses Jeffrey of being “confused … and you don’t even know it,” and Wittrock’s face bursts wide open as Jeffrey finally lets himself explode. “I see it, I feel it, I hate it,” Jeffrey cries, looking for all the world like he just tore his own heart out of his chest.

“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is The Assassination of Gianni Versace’s most overtly political hour, explicitly laying out the traumatic effects of its titular policy and condemning the system that put it in place. When it digs this deep and this personal, it’s hard to argue the power of the series’ blunt-force approach to gay trauma — especially not when the history it’s retelling isn’t so long gone after all.

Being reminded that this sanctioned homophobia is much closer in our rearview mirror than it may appear, and in fact still exists in other forms today, is harrowing. But it also makes for a heart-stopping, crucial piece of television storytelling that rightfully recasts America’s history of homophobia as a violent and unforgivable crime.

A wrenching episode of American Crime Story: Versace exposes the cost of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

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EP 33 – THE SPIELBERG POWER POSE 2: THE LUCAS POSITION

Sean and Jon are back and have assumed the position – the Lucas Position! They SHOTGUN THE NEWS, break down Meryl Streep’s 21 oscar noms, debate Spielberg v. Eastwood. They discuss the finer points of Wayans Bros comedy, how important and amazing the Star Wars Special Editions are, and Jon’s terrifying vision of a Michael Bay hellscape. Watch/Rewatches this week include I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore, Dunkirk, Logan Lucky, Celebrity Big Brother, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and a ton of Oscar movies. | 18 February 2018

*from 38:48 – 42:24

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Episode 83: First Period

This podcast features co-hosts Bil Antoniou, Daniel Krolik and Michael Soulard as they explore the best of the worst in LGBT cinema! Join us each month as we pick a film that we feel could have used some of our expert feedback, and hopefully leave it with some dignity. We’ll post the film we are going to watch ahead of the show so you can follow along. Visit our site at www.badgaymovies.com and please send us feedback at badgaymovies2013@gmail.com!

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On TV, It’s Raining Men: An Alienist and a Versace

Unlike The Alienist, the second installment to American Crime Story, the Emmy-winning FX anthology series helmed by Ryan Murphy, is anything but inert. In fact, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is downright lurid and seedy — like the headlines of supermarket tabloids that drool over crimes that merge celebrity gloss and gore.

It’s also unrelentingly grim and stomach-turning, focusing mostly on the killer of the Italian fashion icon, Andrew Cunanan (a very creepy Darren Criss), and the various murders he committed before Versace (Edgar Ramirez, a dead-ringer). One was Cunanan’s former lover, David Madison (an affecting Cody Fern), a Minneapolis architect; another was a friend of Madison’s, Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock, in a brief cameo). Watching Criss’ Cunanan — a glib, name-dropping gigolo turned cross-country killing machine — senselessly stab, shoot and bludgeon one person after another is not my idea of grand entertainment. The show is so awash in darkness, it would make an antidepressant overdose seem uplifting.

Also, the all-encompassing concentration on Cunanan makes the series title a misnomer: by the fourth episode, very little of Versace, sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz, with a hoot of an Italian accent), Versace’s lover Antonio D’Amico (a sensitive Ricky Martin) or their retinue is seen. That’s a shame and a mistake. The series could have used more larger-than-life Versace glamour in flashbacks to counter the chronic misery.

No one really knows what set Cunanan off. Murphy doesn’t succeed in making me want to know why; I’m just glad he’s gone. I feel sorry for the surviving families of the victims, these people unlucky enough to fall into this psycho killer’s orbit — or to be, as in the case of Versace, his fixation. Serial killing is sad stuff, and not for the squeamish.

On TV, It’s Raining Men: An Alienist and a Versace

ACS: Gianni Versace: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” – Blog – The Film Experience

Season two of American Crime Story has taken a more thematic approach to its narrative than the heavily plotted season one. Each episode has been a miniature exploration of an issue revolving around the oppression of the gay community, but you could say that the main thesis has been the different ways in which being in the closet can hurt people: by isolating those around you (Lee Miglin), by taking away your way to keep fighting (David Madsen), by threatening your business and public image (as Donatella fears with Gianni). In the latest episode, framed around Jeff Trail (played by Finn Wittrock), it’s how the closet prevents you from living the only life you want to be living.

Episode 5: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

This is the first episode in three weeks where Gianni, Donatella, and Antonio make an appearance again, although their presence here is more thematic than to forward or inform the murder narrative.

We open with the Versace offices in Milan a couple of years before the murders took place. Gianni is telling his sister that he has agreed to give an interview to The Advocate, in which he will officially be coming out to the world as gay. Donatella is concerned about what this could to their business, but Gianni argues that the right people will stay with them no matter what.

We then cut forward to the four days previous to Jeff Trail’s brutal murder that took place last episode. Andrew is in San Diego, on his way to Minneapolis to escape his debt, and who knows what else. He will be crashing with his dear friends Jeff and David.

But Jeff and David don’t want him. From the moment Andrew arrives at the airport, it’s obvious that they don’t anything to do with him, and are taking him in out of pity and compromise. Andrew immediately senses this, and his mental wiring starts to flare up once again.

Andrew will be staying at Jeff’s apartment, and through his now customary no-boundaries attitude, we discover that Jeff used to be in the army, but his career ended because it was suspected that he was gay. Andrew puts on his uniform and plays a CBS interview that Jeff did to discuss the anti-gay army policies. The episode then does another jump backwards in time to examine that period of time in Jeff’s life.

Being in the army was his entire life; a family tradition and an honor that he took both seriously and proudly. But once he witnessed a brutal attack on a young man accused of being gay, his visceral response in his defense put a target on his back. And before he could do anything about it, he has been discharged. Just like that, his entire life is over.

He has a fateful encounter with Andrew in the first gay bar he ever walked in; talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Andrew promises to introduce him to the gay world that he’s been missing out on, and they start what initially looks like a friendship, but turns into a relationship of convenience. Jeff needed someone, and Andrew was right there.

In what is the best sequence of the episode (and perhaps the series), Jeff goes to a motel to give the interview to CBS that we previously saw taped. But it is presented alongside Gianni Versace’s interview with The Advocate, in which he decides to reveal himself to the world alongside his 13-year partner.

The way these two interviews are juxtaposed with each other show how different being in the closet affects different strati of people. Versace is being interviewed in a luxury hotel, ready to walk out into the world as himself. Yes, a risky and brave move, but having the safety net of a billion-dollar company behind him. Jeff is literally hiding behind shadows after his entire life has been taken away from him.

Their stories both contain tragedy in very different ways, but the show also makes a poignant statement about how society operates its homophobia differently depending on privilege, class, and celebrity status. It was a bold and trailblazing step for Versace to give that interview, but he probably wasn’t too likely to get tied to a bunk bed and almost beaten to death for it.

The last scenes of the episode depict what most likely was the breaking point for Andrew, following a series of live events that we have yet to see. After a failed marriage proposal to David, in which he makes it explicitly clear that they do not think they are a good match, and a confrontation with Jeff in which he screams that he wishes he never met Andrew in the bar that night, and that no one wants his love, Andrew is ready to make his first kill.

A lot has been said about how little this season actually focuses on the titular Versace murder. In the last couple of weeks, it has even focused less on Andrew himself and more on the lives of his victims; this is not the gaudy show that was promised on the promotional materials, but American Crime Story keeps delivering a nuanced portrayal of the gay experience and its many different pains, joys, and obstacles.

It shows just how much things have changed in just a few decades, but that the disorientation and fear of walking into a gay bar for the first time has remained the same.

ACS: Gianni Versace: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” – Blog – The Film Experience

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 5: No bloodshed, but violently heartbreaking | Chicago News

Without any gory scenes, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” was bloody heartbreaking to watch. In reverse-chronological order, this episode depicts the events that led to Naval Academy graduate Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock) meeting serial murderer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) at a gay bar in San Diego. In 1995, Trail stops a handful of prejudiced sailors from murdering one of their homosexual colleagues. Trail demands that the badly beaten victim receive medical treatment for his injuries. The battered and weeping man begs Trail to reconsider because, if his sexual orientation becomes common knowledge, he’ll be discharged from the maritime force. Trail understands, relents and consoles his shaking peer. Regrettably, a commanding officer witnesses the display of physical affection and outs Trail.

Shortly hereafter, Trail attempts to hang himself to death. Following a few intense and distressing moments, the demoralized hero reconsiders and safely regains his footing. A disoriented and crushed Trail then ventures to the establishment where Cunanan happens to be drinking. Cunanan immediately concludes that Trail is closeted and he purchases him a beer. Cunanan proceeds to buy Trail countless beverages and the two forge a friendship. Trail tells Cunanan about his predicament and says he’s going to reveal his plight in an interview on national television. Despite Cunanan’s strong objections, Trail discusses his experiences being gay in the military on CBS’s news program “48 Hours.”

This gut-wrenching dialogue cuts to Gianni Versace’s (Edgar Ramirez) decision to announce his decade-long relationship with Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin). With complete ease and comfort, Versace and D’Amico address their romance with a journalist from The Advocate. Versace’s confidence and ability to speak freely again shows how tragic Trail’s secretive existence was. While Trail almost committed suicide, Versace and D’Amico were praised for being so forthright about their homosexuality.

Approximately two years later, in 1997, Cunanan takes a flight to Minneapolis to spend time with his ex-boyfriend, architect David Madson (Cody Fern), and Trail. The tension among the trio is palpable and Trail flatly tells Cunanan that they are no longer friends. Criss’ acting here is stellar and his eyes alone explain that he’s mentally unraveling. Cunanan’s gaze is beyond unnerving and viewers know that the fates of Trail and Madson have been sealed.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 5: No bloodshed, but violently heartbreaking | Chicago News

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ACS S2E5 – “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”

The People are … loving the Jeff Trail-centric episode of ACS: Versace. Polka bars & somber decor… We must be in Minneapolis! Natalie and Maren are reading your praise over this week’s Minnesota expedition and Finn Wittrock, unpacking potential sybolism of dirty underwear, and finding out more details about Jeffrey Trail.

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Pop Culture à la Mode: The surprising sensitivity of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

Aside from Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy is inarguably the most prolific — and successful — showrunner and producer working at the moment. Even if you don’t know him by name, you’ve likely seen at least one of his shows. Just in the last decade, he’s headed such long-term projects as “Nip/Tuck,” “Glee,” “American Horror Story,” “Scream Queens,” “American Crime Story,” and “Feud.”

Murphy is unusually skilled at what he does. Whereas other TV producers like Aaron Spelling and Joss Whedon saw diminishing returns with increased notoriety, Murphy has managed to get better with age. When he’s particularly passionate about a certain subject, he can deliver, even if that means forgoing the quality of previous endeavors. (Notice how “American Horror Story” started sucking the moment he started putting all his attention onto “American Crime Story.”)

If Murphy has proven anything thus far, it’s that he’s at his best when he and his co-conspirators tackle heavy subject matters rooted in reality. His most acclaimed project to date, “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” was lauded for inviting viewers to reevaluate seemingly larger-than-life individuals and the story they played a part in. Last year’s “Feud” did the impossible and turned the oft-caricatured Golden Age actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford into sympathetic, deeply vulnerable women.

Murphy’s latest project, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” is no different. Set in 1997, it revolves around the pre-stages and aftermath of the murder of the eponymous fashion titan, unfolding nonlinearly to showcase the shifting perspectives of Versace’s loved ones and, most notably, his murderer, Andrew Cunanan.

Though Murphy has not been as involved with “Versace” as he was with “O.J.,” the series nonetheless capitalizes on what he delivered so well with the latter series and “Feud”: three-dimensionalizing extraordinary people made more untouchable by sensationalized storylines.

Yet what has caught my eye about this series, which is now at its midway point, is how superbly and sensitively it has characterized those who fell victim to Cunanan’s bloodlust. Before senselessly murdering Versace on the front steps of his beachside home, Cunanan also killed an acquaintance, a lover, real-estate developer Lee Miglin, and a handful of others.

So often in the media, victims are overlooked and underrepresented. Because they act as components of a larger, sickening narrative, they frequently serve as examples of a madman’s mania rather than actual people. There’s a reason why we likely cannot name even one of Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy’s victims off the top of our heads.

There is a danger, then, to programs like “Versace.” By rehashing a heinous crime, there is a risk of reinforcing the harms done by the media at the time the event occurred, unintentionally glorifying the crimes of a monster while minimizing his or her victims. This sort of thing is done on the regular: Popular true crime programs turn tragedies into entertainment and tend to emphasize the most sensational aspects of a crime.

“Versace” does give a lot of screen time to Cunanan, who is portrayed by the handsome, charismatic Darren Criss. But the show makes an effort to underline his beastliness and more prominently provide his victims with the moving narratives they should have been given immediately after their deaths.

Cunanan’s lover, David Madison, is portrayed as a kind-hearted, talented architect who struggled with accepting his sexuality until the day he died. Miglin is shown as a tortured spirit whose financial prowess couldn’t ease the pains of hiding his homosexuality well into his 70s. Versace himself is not presented as the impenetrable demigod we might have imagined him as but rather as an anxiety-ridden individual very aware of his mortality. The episodes featuring these characters are less about Cunanan and more about how they were susceptible people who were preyed upon. Our hearts break for them in ways that weren’t as possible in the face of the inherently homophobic media frenzy of the late ’90s.

So while watching “Versace,” I couldn’t help but instead more often think about how rare it is — and how necessary it is — for a crime-based television show or a movie to so perceptively or emotionally portray victims. And how much better the show is for arguably giving more weight to the prey than to the predator. True crime shows, take note. This is how you should be doing it.

Pop Culture à la Mode: The surprising sensitivity of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 3 Recap: A Death in the Family

I caught the flu the day this episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace aired. In the (almost) a week it’s taken me to write this review, I’ve (almost) gotten over the illness. I have not gotten over the episode.

Journey back in time to the third and fourth slayings in Andrew Cunanan’s five-person killing spree, “A Random Killing” bears a half-truth as a title. Victim number four was random indeed, needlessly slain for his truck after a careless leak tipped Andrew off that his stolen car was being tracked. The need felt by victim number five’s surviving loved ones to paint his murder, too, as random — and Andrew’s need to make this impossible for them to do — is the crux of the story. The resulting hour is as menacing, as moving, as good as live-action drama about murder can get.

Any discussion of this extraordinary episode of television must begin with the casting of its two new principals, millionaire Chicago real estate developer Lee Miglin and his beauty-queen turned home-shopping entrepreneur wife Marilyn. Hiring Mike Farrell, M*A*S*H‘s B.J. Hunnicutt, and Judith Light, Who’s the Boss‘s “Angeluhhh,” isn’t quite the stunt showrunner Ryan Murphy pulled off when, say, he made John Travolta and David Schwimmer part of Cuba Gooding Jr.’s defense team and made a masterpiece out of the result. For one thing, the career peaks that trio were hitting around the time of the actual O.J. Simpson case added to The People v. O.J.‘s ’90s-retro frisson. For another, Farrell lacks the “hey, it’s that guy!” cachet held by the others for today’s viewers, while on the other hand, shows from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit to Transparent have given Light ample opportunity to show off her dramatic chops.

What matters, then, isn’t merely the fact that famous faces animate both Andrew Cunanan’s closeted client and target and that target’s determined yet devastated widow. What matters is what those faces do, and the remarkable degree to which writer Tom Rob Smith and directer Gwyneth Horder-Payton allow them to do it.

As Lee, Farrell is revelatory, his kindly face registering a heartbreakingly familiar range of emotions. Pride in his wife’s accomplishments and gratitude for her pride in his. Coldness at the prospect of actual physical intimacy with her but comfort and relief for her continued friendship. The agonizing, eroticized decision to lie to her and allow her to make a business trip without him so he can arrange a liaison with his young escort lover. (His strange, hard-to-watch mini-breakdown when she asks him to join her and he realizes he’s going to refuse is just unbelievably strong work.) The unshakeable religious guilt he feels as an older Catholic man keeping his orientation in the closet, a pain akin to a chronic illness. (“I try,” he whimpers to Jesus and Joseph in his private basement chapel. “I…try…”)

Puppydog enthusiasm for Andrew’s presence and affection, so strong that not even Cunanan’s sour sarcasm and cruelty about the transactional nature of their relationship can truly dampen it. (“I feel alive! You make it seem so real!”) Genuine, almost childlike love of architecture, particularly his world’s-largest-building dream project and his vision of anonymously hanging around on the observation deck, enjoying others’ enjoyment of the results.

It’s this last bit more than anything else that triggers Andrew’s homicidal rage, not that it would take much at this point at any rate; Andrew actually holds his gun on Lee behind the man’s back, just to feel the power he imagines Lee feeling. “I want it to inspire people to reach up,” Lee says of his “Sky Needle.” “It’s about that, not about me.” To Andrew, the very idea that any achievement is not about the immediate glory of the person responsible for it, much less the tallest building in the word, is a heresy of the highest order, and must be punished as such.

So Andrew drags his aroused, oblivious partner into the garage, tools arrayed ominously in the background, and debuts the face-tape routine we remember from the previous episode’s “Easy Lover” sequence. “You like being pathetic, don’t you?” he sneers, before showing Lee how truly helpless he is by suddenly smashing his face in. By now that marvelously expressive face is totally obscured by the tape, so we are only left to imagine the horror, panic, and pain in his eyes by cross-referencing it with his muffled whimpers — worse, perhaps, than seeing it straight up. As Lee lies there, Andrew announces that he’s killed two people already, he’ll stage his soon-to-be corpse with women’s underwear and gay porn, outing him through the act of murder. “You know, disgrace isn’t that bad, once you settle into it,” he says, before lugging over a bag of concrete mix, staving in the man’s chest, and then stabbing him repeatedly. To add insult to this fatal injury, Andrew uses Lee’s beloved blueprints as a placemat for a meal of meat before burning them up. No dreams get out of here alive.

Farrell’s role is interactional, emerging from conversations with his wife, his killer, and his God. It’s a dialogue. Light’s Marilyn is a monologue. She’s constantly speaking to other people, to be sure — to more of them than Lee, in fact. She’s got an television audience for her home-shopping show, a live crowd for her speech introducing her husband at a fundraiser where she touts him as the embodiment of the American Dream, a host of neighbors and cops with whom she must interact as they first discover and then investigate the crime. She even has a son, on hand as glum-faced comic relief when she touts his ostensibly burgeoning acting career. (“He plays a pilot!” “A Russian pilot. There’s lots of pilots in the movie.”)

But except in the few intimate moments she shares with Lee — and even then she’s arguably more focused on her behind-the-scenes suspicions than the here and now — Marilyn’s main task is the Sisyphean labor of maintaining outward appearances. She’s not shy about this, either. “How can a woman who cares so much about appearances appear not to care?” she rhetorically asks at one point, when she realizes her lack of visible signs of grief must be apparent to others.

What makes this character, and Light’s performance, so crushing is the opposite of what you’d expect, though. It’s not that she’s a perfectly put-together Woman With It All who’s trying to cover up her husband’s homosexuality by any means necessary — the kind of part Light, with her severe facial structure and stentorian voice, could play in her sleep. It’s that she’s trying to reveal the real bond she had with this man, despite what she knows to be true and cannot say — a bond that Cunanan’s actions have made it harder and harder for her to get other people to believe in. She finally breaks down not when confronted with evidence of Lee and Andrew’s preexisting relationship, contra to her preferred narrative of a break-in and burglary, but when she starts telling a cop about the “adventures” they had together back in the day, all hot-air balloon rides and romantic desert rescues. “I loved him,” she sobs, starting to smear her makeup. “I loved him very much! There. Is that betterrrr?” Her bitterness stretches out that terminal -r like she’s ripping flesh from a carcass. “Am I a real wife now?” Her pain isn’t over the lie, it’s over what was true. During the harrowing opening sequence, when Marilyn returns home from her trip and realizes something is amiss when Lee fails to pick her up from the airport, that truth is what haunts her face the whole time.

I’m glad, in that beautiful terrible way tragedy can make you glad, that she gets the last word of the episode, even as Andrew continues shopping and driving and killing on the way to his appointment in Miami. (Cunanan misses the chance to carjack and older woman and winds up hunting down and shooting truck-driving family man William R. Reese instead, pulling the trigger almost as soon as the frightened father tries to turn his assailant’s heart by saying he’s a married man with a son. He had no way of knowing how little Andrew wanted to hear that particular song. With a taste for killing in his mouth, he’ll destroy stability on sight.)

Marilyn returns to her gig hawking her signature line of fragrances on the home shopping channel almost immediately — a gutsy move with which the show challenges us to continue to feel empathy for her as she slips into the uncanny valley between sincerity and showmanship, just as the mere presence of any older woman with a glamorous background triggers our societally induced suspicion and revulsion at female failure to remain young. “He believed in me,” she tells her audience, completely honestly. “How many husbands believe in their wive’s dreams? How many treat us as partners? As equals? We were a team for thirty-eight years.” That’s what they were, even if it’s all they were. That’s an achievement. That’s what Andrew destroyed.

Marilyn ends the episode by recounting the advice she got when she first began selling stuff on TV, a technique for connecting with the camera and the people on the other side. “Just hink of the little red light as the man you love.” She stares at the light, at the camera, at us, and as the impenetrable black mascara of her wet eyes closes and the scene cuts to black, her thoughts are ours to imagine.

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