‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 4 Recap: Drive

“You can’t do it, can you?” “I can’t what?” “Stop.”

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is what Matt Zoller Seitz once described, by way of a subtitle to his blog, as “a long, strange journey toward a retrospectively inevitable destination” — the titular murder, seen in the cold open of the very first episode. We’ve already seen where we’re going; what’s left to the show is to depict how we got there. Even those swept along and killed by Andrew Cunanan during the journey seem to sense it. Hence the exchange above. Promising young architect David Madson is the love of Andrew’s life, to hear Andrew tell it. He’s a man to whom the murderer is so fanatically committed that he not only slaughters his rival for David’s affections, his own former love interest Jeff Trail, with a hammer, thus beginning his murder spree, but then manages to convince the shellshocked David that he has some how become an accomplice to the crime and must flee by his side. As time wears on and the shock wears off, David grows less pliable to Andrew’s nonsensical advice and admonishments, but also more honest with himself about where his journey as the Bonnie to Andrew’s would-be Clyde will end. He has no more hope of survival than Andrew has a chance of shutting the fuck up and telling the truth. He can’t do it, can he.

Or can he? “House by the Lake” is the second “murder spotlight” episode of ACS Versace in a row, revealing the fate of victims one and two and tantalizingly hinting at the paths the two men walked to put them in Cunanan’s crosshairs in the first place. They’re old California acquaintances since relocated to Minneapolis, where David seems reasonably well-situated to begin a career on a par with the soon-to-be late Lee Miglin’s. Andrew can’t have that — not unless he can have David too, which Jeff renders impossible. So Andrew hoodwinks David into luring Jeff to his death, venting a lifetime of frustration, resentment, and hatred into the man’s skull. “I lost control,” he manages to reassure David half-apologetically, after he bathes the stunned witness clean of all the blood he’s been splattered with. “I love you.” Later, as they walk David’s dog together to keep up appearances, Andrew says “I promise you no one else will get hurt as long as you’re by my side.” They begin a road trip. You can guess how it ends.

The most compelling contrast between “House by the Lake” and its predecessor, “A Random Killing” — as well as the assassination of Gianni Versace itself — is that at this point, Andrew may well believe what he’s saying. He killed Jeff to punish Jeff, yes, that’s clear enough. But he also killed him as a means to an end: a fantasy life with David over the border into Mexico. The operative word there is, of course, life. At this early stage in the spree, Andrew still harbors delusions about being able to move on, escape, perhaps even thrive. To paraphrase his final words to Lee Miglin before he crushed the man’s chest with construction materials, he’s not out to simply destroy. He still wants to build.

What brings it all crashing down is David’s ability to see through it, even if Andrew himself can’t bring himself to do so. Eventually, David realizes that Andrew sent him to let Jeff into his apartment building that awful night rather than doing it himself so that he could incriminate David in the eyes of the law. (Which indeed he did, as well-intentioned but obliviously bigoted cops treat David like a suspect and sex freak at every point in their investigation, wasting time they could have spent saving his life.) He unsuccessfully seizes the wheel of their getaway car, demands they call the police about the murder even as Andrew draws a gun on him in the middle of nowhere. “It’s not real,” he insists. “It could have been,” Andrew replies. “No,” he insists once more. “It couldn’t.”

The episode is structured by writer Tom Rob Smith and director Daniel Minahan (an early Game of Thrones veteran) to contrast the flight of fancy constructed by the murderous Andrew, and David’s ability to see through it, with this relationship’s flipside: flashbacks to earlier times in David’s life, when he feared his deviation from traditional masculinity would incur his father’s anger, only to discover his dad was a loving, forgiving figure. When Mr. Madson takes little David hunting and the kid freaks out, it’s no big deal — hunting’s not for everyone, and besides, they can just go for a walk together. When David graduates college at the top of his class and uses the occasion to finally come out, his dad’s a bit taken aback from a moral perspective, but that takes a serious back seat to his abiding love for his son, which he expresses in no uncertain terms. He’s so sincere and supportive, in fact, that he wonders why David chose now of all times to tell him, leaving the younger man almost embarrassed at the crude “good news/bad news” approach he’d chosen to adopt. During David’s fatal flight from the law, the cops keep insisting to his parents that he’s up to no good, and that he has deep dark secrets from them. The fact that they don’t know shit is one of the most sadly satisfying moments in the whole sordid affair.

There are many darkly funny moments along the way as well. There’s Andrew’s absurd attempt to blow off David’s concerns about getting caught at the border: “Well I’ve been moving product across the border for years.” (This takes place during a lunchbreak that had me thinking the inane phrase “A man, a plan, a sandwich, Cunanan.”) There’s the entire grim splatstick routine that takes place at David’s apartment as various cops and friends and neighbors try to figure out exactly whose ruined corpse is rolled up in a carpet. There’s David’s heartsick, self-contemptuous monologue about being more worried about being disgraced than being killed, which we now know Andrew will plagiarize virtually word for word when he murders Lee Miglin in a few days. There are all the different ways the police mangle Andrew’s last name (my favorite is “Cunainoon”) and the ridiculous descriptions of himself he threw around in front of David’s friends (“a Jewish millionaire from New York”?). Here’s also as good a place as any to praise the casting of Cody Fern and Finn Wittrock as David and Jeff respectively: two all-American boys.

But I’m saving my final praise for Darren Criss as Andrew one more time. Not just for the delicate balance he must strike around David between unpredictable violence and careful reassurance throughout the episode, nor even for his final act of tenderness toward his victim (who’d hallucinated a reunion with his father before dying) — curling up with the corpse for a last embrace before driving away. No, the highlight here is the endless closeup on Criss/Cunanan’s face as he listens to a roadhouse performance of the Cars’ “Drive” by guest star Aimee Mann while his beloved victim sneaks off to the men’s room, debating whether or not to try and flee. He breaks before your eyes, there’s no other way to put it, and he does so over the same sentiment David will eventually express to him, getting himself killed in the process: “You can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong.”

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is the TV show to follow right now

There’s been a murder and a crowd has gathered at the doorstep of the Versace mansion. Cops, emergency-care nurses, journalists, passersby, tourists clicking pictures. One onlooker runs over to the corpse, dips a page she’s torn off a glossy in the pool of blood – Gianni Versace’s blood – and quickly seals this ‘souvenir’ in a zip-lock bag.

You’ll realise pretty quickly that the second installment of American Crime Story doesn’t have all that much to do with Versace or his empire or haute couture. It’s not a courtroom trial either, even if a Ryan Murphy courtroom trial is a whole other animal. What it is, is a sprawling nationwide manhunt for the serial killer who murdered the biggest fashion designer of that era, and four other powerful men before him.

And with the search for Andrew Cunanan, the not-so-charming psychopathic prostitute, comes an inquisition of a homophobic society: The America of the Eighties and Nineties, also the time that the AIDS crisis was at its peak.

Adapted from Maureen Orth’s investigative book, and dismissed by the Versace family as a piece of fiction only, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is riveting TV, a thriller that, while only gathering pace and properly engaging you at end of the second episode, is buoyed by spectacular performances. Edward Ramirez’s Gianni is a gentleman, dignified and generous, driven by the pursuit of beauty; Penelope Cruz’s Donatella molded in granite compared to him, enchanting, persistent, business-minded; Ricky Martin slightly over-doing the heartbroken ‘partner’, but it works. And Darren Criss, magnificent as the beautiful and grotesque Cunanan, oozing charm and becoming whatever people wanted him to be, saying whatever they wanted to hear.

Over nine episodes, the show will show us all five murders, and countless other petty crimes of Cunanan’s. And it’s pretty hard stuff: such as the scene just after Cunanan’s finished with Lee Miglin in the third episode, “A Random Killing”, and appears in the Chicago real-estate tycoon’s kitchen holding a giant hunk of meat, slices off a sliver and practically inhales it. It’s nausea-inducing stuff, but there’s other, more to make you queasy: Like that scene described at the beginning of this piece; Or when suits at the FBI office discussing the murders confuse Versace with Liberace; or when the cop interrogating Antonio D’Amico refuses to ‘comprehend’ what he means by being Gianni’s ‘partner’. Makes you think the ‘assassination’ in the title isn’t just for dramatic effect, after all.

Of course, there’s a lot of attention to detail in re-creating that Nineties atmosphere – the discotheques and La Bouche thumping through sunny, progressive Miami’s streets and Speedo-dotted-beaches and denim cut-off shorts. But who has time for nostalgia when there’s a murderer on the prowl; and a tabloid-hooked society bent on keeping the closet locked?

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is the TV show to follow right now

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Recap: We Want More Ricky Martin & Dascha Polanco

Much like last week’s episode, “House By The Lake” leaves Gianni and Donatella Versace behind to give us more insight into the events that led to the moment that gives this show its name. We keep moving back in time, before Andrew (Darren Criss) shot Versace outside his Miami home in 1997; before he tortured and killed Chicago tycoon Ed Miglin. We meet him here, months before, when he was just a guy that David Madson (Cody Fern) and his erstwhile lover Jeffrey Trail (Finn Wittrock) found rather creepy and hoped wouldn’t flip out when he found out about them. This being a show with “assassination” in the title and us knowing that Cunanan had already killed several men by the time he showed up in Miami, we know where this is headed. But that doesn’t make the brutal violence — amidst Madson’s minimalist and industrial apartment — any less shocking.

The entire episode is an exercise in eeriness. Cunanan’s calm approach to his latest killing is all the more shocking as it’s laced with the inherent threat that only his love of David will stop him from causing more havoc. And so the two men flee Minneapolis to potentially start anew, with the young architect vacillating between fearing for his life and fearing having to face the life he’s just left behind.

As he did with Miglin, Cunanan talks with David about the homophobia that riddles their lives. “They’ve always hated us. You’re. A. FAG,” he spews at the man he professes to love, all the while blackmailing him into running away with him to Mexico where they’ll start a new life together. The delusion of normalcy would be hilarious were it not also so terrifying. In Cunanan’s worldview, killing for love and besmirching a world that already hates you for who you are is the only way to move forward.

“All you need is love” is turned into a serial killer-in-the-making’s motto. Except, as he finds out while out on the road with David, it’s hard to earn that love, even from a young man who’s had to wrestle with his own shameful demons. Echoing the question Cunanan asked Miglin before he killed him (is he more scared of death than of the scandal that was sure to erupt when they found him next to gay porn mags?), David asks himself whether he was afraid of the disgrace, the shame of the messy, bloody scene he’d left behind in his apartment. For a show driven by murder, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is squarely focused on the way dirty secrets and shameful desires fuel the deadliest of American crimes.

This Week’s MVP:

Cody Fern as David Madson in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.’ Photo by Ray Mickshaw. Courtesy of FX

Fern as David Madson is a revelation. Where the show has done well by showcasing A-list talent hitting it out of the park — Penelope Cruz as Donatella! Ricky Martin as Antonio! Edgar Ramirez as Gianni Versace! Judith Light as Marilyn Miglin! — I was happily surprised to see producer Ryan Murphy go with this mostly unknown Aussie actor for such a pivotal role. Madson is, at this point in the story, the key to Cunanan’s violence and you can see the exact moment when whatever love Cunanan had for the wealthy, beautiful architect sours enough for him to pull the trigger.

Where these past two episodes (the best of the series so far) have plunged us deeper into Cunanan’s psyche, giving us a fuller picture of what drove him to such barbaric violence, I can’t wait back to dive back into the world of Versace next week. I miss its gaudy style, its popping colors, its delicious accents, and its speedo-clad men. I need more Edgar! I need more Penelope! I need more Ricky! I especially want more of Orange is the New Black’s Dascha Polanco’s no-nonsense Miami cop.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Recap: We Want More Ricky Martin & Dascha Polanco

The Fourth Episode of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Isn’t as Legit as It Seems

Here’s what we know about David Madson’s life in the days leading up to his murder: On Friday, April 25, 1997, Andrew Cunanan took a one-way flight from his home in San Diego to Minneapolis to visit his old friend Jeff Trail and former boyfriend Madson. Although Madson wasn’t thrilled to see Cunanan, the young architect did reluctantly host his ex at his loft.

They were spotted at restaurants, bars, and clubs, but after dinner on Saturday, they parted ways. Trail, who had no desire to spend time with Cunanan, had left town with his boyfriend and invited Cunanan to stay in his empty room Saturday night. While it’s not clear whether Cunanan slept at Trail’s place, he was there Sunday morning and back at Madson’s the same evening. At nine that night, Trail got in his car to meet Cunanan at a coffee shop. By 10 PM, Trail was dead.

The coffee shop meetup hadn’t happened, so Trail had come to Madson’s building. Evidence suggests Cunanan killed his friend almost immediately after his arrival, landing his first blow with the door open. It’s possible Madson was home at the time, but in Vulgar Favors, the book this season of American Crime Story is based on, author Maureen Orth judges it “unlikely.” He didn’t show up for work Monday; a neighbor saw two men, one of whom appeared to be Madson, walking a dog that could have been Madson’s on Tuesday morning. The same day, concerned that he’d neither come in to the office nor called in sick, two women Madson knew through work knocked on his door. One thought she heard whispers.

An hour after another neighbor spotted Cunanan and a distraught-looking Madson approaching the building, the women returned with the lofts’ caretaker, opened the door, found the body, saw that the apartment was empty, and called the police. Because his acquaintances knew Madson was gay—and because Cunanan had left a bag containing gay porn videos, steroids, and bullets—Sergeant Bob Tichich’s first guess was that Madson was the victim, and the crime was “a gay thing.”

As Trail’s parents learned of his death (and, then, his homosexuality), Cunanan and Madson were on the run. On May 3, two fisherman in rural Chisago County, Minnesota, found Madson’s body near East Rush Lake. He’d been shot three times with a gun Cunanan had stolen from Trail, and sustained defensive wounds. It’s unclear how long Madson lived; Orth pokes holes in a coroner’s report that puts his date of death at May 2 and debunks a bar owner’s claim to have served Madson and Cunanan that afternoon. The sighting turned out to have happened on April 27, and the two men who visited the bar were, in all likelihood, an entirely different gay couple.

All of which is to say that most of last night’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace episode, “House by the Lake,” was invented by writer Tom Rob Smith. Which is fine! There’s nothing wrong with a docudrama using some artistic license. And in the case of this episode, many of the choices must have been made out of necessity—much of the hour finds Andrew and David alone, and two dead men can’t exactly go on record about their road trip.

So: Did Andrew purposely leave his porn stash at David’s loft? Were they on the road together for several days? Once they left Minneapolis, did Andrew intend for them to go to Chicago and then Mexico together? Did the plan unravel when David started poking holes in Andrew’s Natural Born Killers fantasy? The answer to all of these questions—not to mention the one about the scene where Aimee Mann covers The Cars’ “Drive” at a roadhouse—is “We don’t have the faintest clue.”

In keeping with the show’s running theme, Smith constructs a story about homophobia and the way Andrew uses it to manipulate another gay man. When David tries to call the police, Andrew convinces him that they’d see him as a perpetrator, too. “They hate us, David,” he says. “You’re a fag.” He’s not entirely wrong: the cops really do assume David’s queerness has something to do with the murder, and that Jeff’s body is initially presumed to be David’s and that David, not Andrew, becomes a suspect when police see he’s not the corpse—both of which really happened—imply that the straight world saw these gay men as virtually interchangeable.

The line between the crime of murder and the crime of homosexuality (sodomy didn’t become legal across the United States until 2003) blurs. When the fugitives leave a rest stop, with Andrew’s arm slung over David’s shoulder, a woman gives them a dirty look. David is convinced that she recognizes them as wanted criminals, but the implication is that she was simply revolted to see two gay men. Before and after that encounter, David has plenty of opportunities to escape. He and Andrew walk the dog together before leaving Minneapolis. They stop at restaurants. But David only tries to bolt when he’s alone, by the side of the highway or in the bathroom of the roadhouse, even when Andrew’s behavior becomes more threatening. The big question surrounding Madson’s murder is: Why didn’t he run? As Smith imagines it, he was more afraid of putting himself at the mercy of a homophobic world than he was of a known killer.

David’s fear of his own difference is echoed in the moment when he comes out to his father. He can only summon the courage to do it after winning a prestigious academic award, and though his dad tells David, “I love you more than I love my own life,” he also reiterates that his son’s lifestyle doesn’t jibe with his own beliefs and that the revelation does, in fact, change something about their relationship. (The stuff about David’s close relationship with his family is true, by the way.) You can imagine a lifetime of interactions like this convincing someone that, if even his adoring family sees him as somehow “other,” he had no chance pleading his case to police.

It’s a well-constructed episode. The conversations between Andrew and David are rich with psychological subtext, and even if Smith sometimes states the obvious, he’s careful not to repeat it too often. Actor Cody Fern plays David, by all accounts a kind, talented, and hardworking guy, with heartbreaking sensitivity. Each episode of Versace has had a slightly different feel, and this one was a psychological thriller. From the claustrophobic shots of hallways to the bleak, low-lit, industrial interiors of David’s loft to multiple scenes where Andrew startles him—and us—by appearing as if out of nowhere, it’s eerie from beginning to end.

But I’m kind of frustrated by the liberties it takes with David Madson’s life. He’s painted as a sympathetic character, sure, but is placing him in the loft at the time of Jeff Trail’s murder, when he most likely was not there, absolutely necessary? How about framing him as stupid enough to get back in the car, after the ill-fated diner pit stop, with a killer he’d just read as hard as Jeff once had? What was the point of that moment, in the elevator, when David nervously tells Jeff (who, in real life, spent most of the weekend with his boyfriend), “He knows about us”?

Of course Smith has a right to fictionalize. Even so, Madson wasn’t a public figure like Gianni Versace or Lee Miglin, and I felt sick thinking of how those scenes would look to his family and friends. So I’ll leave you with a quote from Bridget Read’s review of Versace for Vogue, which perfectly sums up my conflicted feelings on “House by the Lake”: “We don’t have to hold all creative works about real-life suffering to the standards of what would hurt or offend surviving family members, but after watching a fictional Cunanan—whose real-life counterpart craved perhaps nothing so much as the type of fame bestowed by a prestige TV series—sadistically torture and humiliate his victims in fine detail, it’s hard not to feel like maybe we should.”

The Fourth Episode of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Isn’t as Legit as It Seems

AMERICAN CRIME STORY Review: “House By the Lake”

With its fourth episode, entitled “House By the Lake,” this season of American Crime Story is really starting to take shape for me. Off the bat, I was expecting it to go like this: a murder involving a high profile figure happens, a media hoopla ensues, followed by a trial where we get a little more into the head of the accused while simultaneously forcing us to take a look at how we were as a society and culture at the time, the end. That’s more or less how The People Vs. O.J. Simpson went. But I did not know the story around The Assassination of Gianni Versace. I never heard the name Andrew Cunanan before this. And so when the first three episodes were not what I expected them to be, I was a little thrown.

It is apparent now that this series, though we have the bulk of the season still ahead of us, will be most memorably about the killer Andrew Cunanan, and what led him to commit these atrocities. Everyone else thus far has taken a back seat. The last two episodes did not even feature Gianni, his love Antonio D’Amico, or his sister Donatella (played by Ricky Martin and Penelope Cruz respectively, who you would think other networks besides FX would fret over putting on the bench for weeks at a time). Last week’s episode was another jump back in time before the murder of Gianni Versace, which we saw in episode one, that time focusing on the murder of Chicago architect and closeted homosexual Lee Miglin. This week we go back in time not long before those events to Minneapolis, where Cunanan was staying with his boyfriend David Madson (Cody Fern).

It is another eerie opener. We now have a sense of what a simultaneous loose canon and calculating monster Andrew Cunanon can be so almost every scene, every line he delivers, is filled with tension. Nobody is safe around him (that is, if you’re like me and don’t recall the actual events). Living in the warehouse district of Minneapolis, David just lands a big job over the phone and is excited to share with Andrew. Andrew is not so pleased. He’s invited their mutual friend Jeff Trail up to the apartment, which David isn’t happy about. He’s about to get a whole lot less happy.

When Andrew brings Jeff up to the apartment, Andrew immediately besieges him and beats him to a bloody death with a hammer. David sit in shock. If you’re the type that yells at the screen, you would probably do a lot of hollering at David this episode. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t call the police (well, he does once, but hangs up when Andrew passively threatens him with a gun). And that’s exactly why this episode stands out from almost any of the series to date, especially season one. We don’t have any record of what went down between David and Andrew. Why didn’t he run? The writers have to piece things together, and can only go off assumptions, whereas almost every corner of People Vs. O.J had been well laid out for them.

We know that Andrew and David stayed in David’s apartment for two days after the murder of Jeff. We know that they were seen walking David’s dog together the day before they ran off, leaving Jeff’s body wrapped in a rug in the apartment. We do not know for certain whether David was an accomplice or a sort of prisoner of Andrew’s. The writers decide to play him as innocent, too afraid of Andrew to make any big moves, eventually coming along for the ride with him to Chicago to see Lee.

But it’s in this vagueness the writers find some time to insert interesting character studies, even if they are just conjecture. David later in the episode questions if he ran with Andrew because he was afraid of him, because he wanted to avoid jail time, or… was it because he was afraid what the world would inevitably find out about him, i.e. his homosexuality? What does this say about how hostile we were (perhaps still are) as a society towards gays when a man would rather go on the run with a murderer than come out of the closet and face us?

Through an effective series of flashbacks to when David was younger in which he interacts with his blue-collar father, the writers and Fern create a character that feels real and that we are sad to see go by the end. We knew it was coming because we know that David is not present with Cunanan in Chicago when he meets with Lee. In the end, he tries to get away and Cunanan executes him, leaving him in a field off an interstate highway. Another tragic, senseless death under Andrew’s belt.

Next week I assume we will flash back earlier than Minneapolis, though I also understand if the writers take us back to the present to show us what is going on with the Versaces post-death. But I am really digging this criminal profile of Cunanan and how they are unfolding it. I almost would be okay with the rest of the episodes were just surrounding him (Darren Criss is killing it, in more way than one). But I finally get what they are doing and am completely on board after being hesitant the first few weeks.

AMERICAN CRIME STORY Review: “House By the Lake”

TV Review: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story S02E02 “Manhunt” ⋆ Rogues Portal

I’m a serial killer.

The title of this episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is a bit of a bait and switch. It seems like we’ll be covering more of the aftermath of the death of Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez). The actual manhunt for Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) will start to drive the narrative.

Surprisingly, after a post-death scene that shows us Versace being prepared for his funeral and the icy relationship between Donatella Versace (Penelope Cruz) and Antonio (Ricky Martin), Versace’s boyfriend. The show transports us to days before the killing. The titular “Manhunt” plays out in different ways in the two big storylines of the episode.

Andrew arrives in Miami, changing the license plates on his truck and already on the run from the FBI after committing four murders. Even more than the premiere, we get to know Andrew. I almost said that we delve into who he is as a person, but that really isn’t true at all. Except for a few looks in his eye, a desperate urge to meet Versace and an engrossing final scene, Andrew is still a mystery to us. The way that Andrew is presented in the show so far takes more than a few cues from American Psycho, which is a reasonable way to portray him. When you see him charm a hotel worker with such obvious lies, it’s hard not to feel like you’d at least partially fall for it as well. People, in general, don’t like calling seemingly polite folks out on their bullshit.

What’s interesting is when Andrew befriends Ronnie (Max Greenfield). They discuss their lives and whether or not they’ve lost people to the HIV/AIDS. Andrew tells Ronnie all about why he’s in Miami. He’s going to reconnect with Versace. They were engaged once, but it ended amicably, and they’re still friends. Ronnie clearly has a better bullshit detector than some others. He still finds Andrew entertaining and if Andrew’s willing to prostitute himself and share the profits, why not hang out with him?

A large focus of the episode is about living in the gay community in the ‘90s, specifically in Miami as well as abroad. Controversially, the series implies that Versace was HIV-positive — something that’s been denied by his family — which ties into Ronnie and Andrew’s story. Versace and Antonio deal with committing themselves to each other, which seems especially difficult in a world that won’t officially let them. While those with a much lower socioeconomic status contend with sex work. They live out of a motel or even just scoring something to feel good for a little while. It’s certainly covering a wide spectrum of issues within the gay community, which I assume will continue to be an undercurrent throughout the rest of the series.

Max Greenfield as Ronnie joins the ranks of David Schwimmer from American Crime Story: The People v. OJ Simpson and Ricky Martin from this season as a nice surprise. Ronnie was likable and sympathetic, without us feeling sorry for him. When he parts ways with Andrew, I legitimately worried for his safety. He knows there’s something off with Andrew, but who can he go to? Like the man that Andrew picked up on the beach, there were barely any lifelines available for a closeted family man. Let alone a poor, HIV-positive drug user. The brief scene with the FBI coordinating with local cops showed how little they seem to care about catching a man whose victims might be gay. That a serial killer with four victims didn’t even seem close to their top priority is sad but not at all shocking.

Andrew Cunanan’s American Psycho-lite presentation is both aesthetically interesting and completely horrifying. The show seems to even quote Michael Mann’s Manhunter when Andrew emerges from the bathroom, face taped up like the man he picked up earlier. It’s important to display those awful elements and keep into perspective that, even though Andrew seems to be the centre of the series, he was a monster. The moments when he isn’t performing are morbidly intriguing. Darren Criss shines in every scene, but there’s something deeper when we see Andrew being Andrew. When he’s doggedly trying to track down Versace. Or, when he says this to a man at the club who just wanted to know what he does:

I’m a serial killer… I said, ‘I’m a banker’. I’m a stockbroker. I’m a shareholder. I’m a paperback writer. I’m a cop. I’m a naval officer. Sometimes I’m a spy. I build movie sets in Mexico and skyscrapers in Chicago. I sell propane in Minneapolis. I import pineapples from the Philippines. You know, I’m the person least likely to be forgotten. I’m Andrew Cunanan.

But the true heart of the show is Versace. Especially his relationship with Antonio. Ramirez is a ray of sunshine and does a fantastic job showing the difficulties of being an artist and the joy he wanted to send out into the world. Versace’s death was a loss to the world. This series is definitely showing us that.

Verdict: Keep watching. “Manhunt” had a lot of interesting, interpersonal drama as well as some big, standout setpieces. Andrew with the businessman and Andrew searching the club for Versace are both flashy and tense scenes. Versace’s fight with Donatella and, even more, his conversations with Antonio were played extremely well. The series continues to be acted and shot perfectly.

TV Review: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story S02E02 “Manhunt” ⋆ Rogues Portal

My plea to Ryan Murphy: Please ditch ‘Horror Story’ for ‘Crime Story’

In Vulgar Favors: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, author Maureen Orth recounts a brief memory from Howard Madson — father of Andrew Cunanan’s second victim, David Madson — about the time he took his son duck hunting. “We shot this duck, and he cried so bad I finally hid the thing over by the tree,” he recalled. “David was just beside himself.” This week’s fourth episode of American Crime Story takes this tiny, poignant detail from the book and expands on it artfully, creating a scene that might be even more heartbreaking than Jack’s death on This is Us.

The episode tells the story of David Madson (Australian actor Cody Fern, in a star-making performance), who is forced to go on the run with Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss). Shortly after a flashback to David’s hunting trip with his dad, he tries to flee during an argument with Andrew by a secluded lake. Cunanan shoots him in the back, and as he’s dying, David has a dream-like vision: He escapes into an abandoned trailer home nearby, where he finds his father, dressed in his camo hunting vest, patiently waiting to share a cup of coffee with his son.

The moment is absolutely gutting, and it exemplifies why true crime is such a perfect genre for American Crime Story megaproducer/mastermind Ryan Murphy. Adapting true stories allows Murphy to create the vivid characters and captivating, socially-relevant narratives he and his team are so known for — but the iron framework of facts surrounding true-to-life subjects forces Murphy to apply a discipline to his storytelling.

In contrast, American Horror Story plays to Team Murphy’s worst instincts – the temptation to shock, terrify and titillate (usually all at once) at the expense of story, and the need to go bigger and more “bats**t” each successive season. And so a legless, syphilis-ridden Chloe Sevigny crawling out of school stairwell in season 2 leads to a frightened Gabourey Sidibe masturbating in front of a minotaur in Season 3… which leads to Max Greenfield getting raped by a drill-bit dildo in season 5… which leads to Sarah Paulson and Angela Bassett being force-fed the flesh of Adina Porter’s leg in season 6… need I go on? (Maybe not, but I will: Season 7 featured a masked clown murderer with three penis noses.)

Both seasons of American Crime Story, though, have brimmed with humanity. The People vs. OJ Simpson completely rehabbed the public image of Marcia Clark — a woman who had been maligned, mocked, and sentenced to punch line status by the court of public opinion. By taking the time to tell Clark’s story through the lens of the challenges she faced as a working single mom, People vs. OJ (and Sarah Paulson’s Emmy-winning performance) gave a voice to a woman, and a population, that is more often silenced than heard. And with Versace, Murphy and his writers have pulled back the layers of a sensational crime to show us the lives and loves of the men who were overlooked: Cunanan’s first four victims, Jeffrey Trail, David Madson, Lee Miglin, and William Reese. The show uses the stories of Trail, a gay former Marine, and Madson to illuminate the very real, very relatable fear many young gay men and women still face. “I’m playing over everything the police are gonna find out about me,” muses Madson, before his forced road-trip with Cunanan comes to a violent end. “And I realize, I’ve been doing this my whole life — playing over and over the moment people find out about me.”

Moving away from the Horror franchise would allow Team Murphy to free up time and creative energy for their myriad of other — less nihilistic — projects, which range from anthologies (Emmy magnets Crime and Feud) to a prequel (Netflix’s Ratched, starring Sarah Paulson) to a groundbreaking dance musical (Pose) to what may just be the best gay fever dream ever conceived (the Barbra Streisand, Gwyneth Paltrow-starring The Politician). As Murphy himself has proven again and again, TV is a medium that can move, delight, and scare us immensely — and you really don’t need a killer clown to do it.

My plea to Ryan Murphy: Please ditch ‘Horror Story’ for ‘Crime Story’

Versace Recap: We Go Back To The Start Of Cunanan’s Murder Spree In “House By The Lake”

Emmy is out this week so you are stuck with me as your recapper. Luckily for you all, she’ll be back next week.

Last week we delved further into the state of mind our killer Andrew Cunanan was in in the lead up to his final murder, that of Gianni Versace in July 1997. We met his third and fourth victims, Chicago real estate developer Lee Miglin and New Jersey cemetery caretaker William Reese and saw just a few of the mistakes the FBI and local law enforcement made that could have stopped Cunanan before he hit Miami and murdered Versace, and possibly even spared William Reese. This week we move back to the start of his killing spree, heading to Minnesota and the “House by the Lake”.

The First Murder: Following a tourist bureau ad for Minneapolis, we discover that it’s April 27, 1997 and a week before the murder of Lee Miglin. Andrew is visiting for the weekend with his friend David Madson (Cody Fern). Things are a bit tense between the pair as Andrew has asked David to marry him, telling him that he is the love of his life. David refused using the fact that same-sex marriage was not legal in the US to get out of truly answering him. However, it is implied that David has actually started up a relationship with Jeffrey Trail (Finn Wittrock) and that is the real reason for his refusal, well among other things.

Andrew has somehow cotton-on to the fact that there’s something between David and Jeff and has invited Jeff over. Jeff arrives and Andrew tells David to go and bring him up to the loft spitting out that it will “Give you a chance to talk about me”. Which they do, light-heartedly laughing about how strange Andrew is, but that they know he’s a liar. They enter the loft and see David’s dog whining, tied up to a table. David rushes over to the dog. Meanwhile Andrew has come up behind them, slams the door shut and then proceeds to bludgeon Jeff to death with a hammer, striking him 27 times in the head (and yes I screamed at the TV in shock and horror again, thank you very much Darren Criss).

Needless to say it’s a bit of a bloodbath in the loft, so Andrew takes David into the bathroom to clean them both up. After the shower, he gets out David’s collection of porno mags and sex toys, leaving them scattered over David’s bed. He also cleans up the murder scene a bit – rolling Jeff’s body up in a rug and hiding it behind a table.

Using his charm and a gun tucked into his waistband, Andrew manages to convince David not to call the cops, telling him “When the police open the door, they’ll see two suspects, not two victims,” that they’ll lock him up too, he’ll be hated for being gay, and that he can’t tell his Dad because then he’ll have to turn David in and you don’t want your Dad to have to do that. Cunanan does promise though that “No one else will get hurt as long as you’re by my side.”

The cops arrive: When David fails to show up at work the next day, they become concerned, as he never misses a day of work. A co-worker and David’s building manager knocks on his door but only hear his dog barking. Andrew and David, hearing the couple leave to go get keys to get into the loft, make a run for it. The couple come back and find the loft empty and the dead body. The cops arrive, find out David was gay, see the sex paraphernalia and make the assumption it was sex play gone wrong. It’s only on discovering that David was blonde and the murder victim was black-haired that they believe Andrew had been murdered and that David had fled. Realising they are now in the home of a suspect not a victim and without search warrants or permission to be there, the cops make a hasty retreat wanting to ensure the investigation is “by the book”, waiting for the proper paperwork and clearance to come back.

Men on the run: Having oh so calmly escaped, Andrew informs David of his plan for them to be together. He has a good friend in Chicago, Lee Miglin, who’s rich and owes Andrew some favours so would be willing to help out. They can then escape to Mexico and live the life he’s always dreamed of for them together. David meanwhile is in an obvious state of shock and fear for his life and merely acting on autopilot.

They’ve got the wrong man: The cops are back at David’s apartment and searching for clues. Jeff’s body has been taken away and they are beginning the autopsy on him when they discover that the body does not belong to Andrew Cunanan, but to Jeffrey Trail. They still believe that David is the killer and pay his parent’s a particularly hard visit, questioning them on how well do they truly know their son.

A chance for escape: Andrew continues on, apparently completely unaffected by the whole thing, planning this wonderful life with just him and David and no one else to bother them. David is starting to lose it though, fearing people are looking at him suspecting him of murder, when really its just their homophobia surfacing as the murder has not hit the news yet. They pull into bar (with a lovely cameo by Aimee Mann) and David excuses himself to the bathroom. Seeing an opportunity to escape, he smashes the bathroom window.

Back at the table Andrew is listening intently to the cover of “Drive” when he finally drops his façade and breaks down. It is such an intense moment of vulnerability from Andrew (and Criss) where you start to feel the beginning of sympathy for him. He really is just a little lost boy, wanting to be loved and thought of as someone special and extraordinary. In one of the many big mistakes David makes, instead of jumping out the window to freedom, he returns to Andrew and the table. The next morning marks another possibility of escape when David wakes alone in the car in the middle of wooded area. He jumps out and starts walking trying to make his escape, only to come across Andrew wielding his gun – if only he went in the opposite direction from the car.

The truth comes out: Later that day, Andrew and David are in a diner reminiscing about the night they met. David talks about how he so wanted to be just like Andrew: rich, suave, popular, charming, the whole world at his feet. However, he also reveals that he knows that that whole of his is all a lie. That Andrew is a master manipulator and that he just can’t stop lying. He accuses Andrew of killing Jeff because he was in love with Jeff but that not only did Jeff not return his feelings, but he had discovered just who Andrew was: a fraud.

The second murder: Following a tense car ride in which Andrew doesn’t want to talk about anything, David tries to veer them off the road and make an escape that way. He fails. He ends up off road, next to a lake pleading with Andrew for his life and a life for them together. He doesn’t succeed. Reminiscent of an earlier flashback scene where he remembers sitting in a house by the lake with his father drinking coffee after a failed hunting expedition, David dreams of opening the house door and finding his father offering him coffee once again. Instead, he’s outside the house bleeding out after Andrew shot him.

On the run again: Having spent some time cuddled up with David’s dead body, Andrew gets up, gets back in the car and heads off – presumably to Chicago and Lee Miglin.

Instant Reactions:

Where the hell is the Darren Criss I know and love??!!! He is unbelievable in embodying Cunanan. He’s charming, he’s creepy, he’s sinister, and yet he’s also oh so tragic and this episode more than any before it showed a real vulnerability and a sense that even he can see things are starting to spiral out of control. Week after week Criss blows me away with his performance and this week’s ep just had everything.

OMG David, why didn’t you escape?? There were so many opportunities – at least how it was portrayed here and given both David and Andrew are dead, we’ll never know exactly what took place over the period of time leading up to Jeff’s death to David’s death – and yet he kept going back to Andrew. Cody Fern was amazing and another great Ryan Murphy find. His ability to shut down and still be completely present in his scenes was so painful, yet great to watch.

I need more Finn Wittrock. We can’t just have that short opening scene! Luckily the preview for next week’s ep guarantees us more Jeff.

Wow another ep without the Versace’s and their storyline – I have to admit, I didn’t even realise they were missing until well after watching the ep, I was that caught up in the drama of Andrew’s story. They do return next week though.

Versace Recap: We Go Back To The Start Of Cunanan’s Murder Spree In “House By The Lake”

‘American Crime Story’ Review: ‘House By the Lake’ Tells a Tragic Tale

The Victims

Welcome to April 27 1997, one week before the murder of Lee Miglin, the victim of last week’s episode. With episode four of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, “House By The Lake”, we witness the beginning of Andrew Cunanan’s killing spree. This is where it all started – this is the moment that would eventually bring Cunanan right up to Gianni Versace’s doorstep.

Like last week’s episode, though, Versace is nowhere to be see in “House By The Lake.” Versace’s death was merely the rocket fuel to launch this season of American Crime Story into orbit. Ever since this season began its grim backwards march, it’s been moving further and further away from the overlit world of Miami Beach to show us the deceptive, manipulative reality of Andrew Cunanan.

“House By The Lake” begins in Minneapolis, with Andrew staying at the spacious loft apartment of friend and former lover David Madson. Clearly, something awkward has occurred between these two men right before this episode begins. The air in the room is thick with tension. “We both said some things we regret,” David says, trying to make peace. “I don’t regret anything I said,” Andrew replies, each word deliberate and meticulous as he utters it.

This passive aggressive mood seems almost unbearable, but things get a lot worse, fast. Andrew and David’s friend Jeff Trail soon arrives. He’s come to retrieve a gun Andrew stole from his apartment (big red flag alert). David has to let Jeff into the building, and as the two make their way back to the apartment – where Andrew waits in the shadows – they converse about Andrew the way someone talks about a volatile child. It’s clear they both think they need to handle Andrew with kid gloves. David seems sympathetic; Jeff, not so much.

“He has no one,” David says.

“He should ask himself why,” Jeff shoots back.

Before the opening title card has even appeared, Jeff is dead – brutally bludgeoned to death by Andrew with a hammer. From here, the episode settles into a steady, unrelenting feeling of nameless, inescapable dread. Andrew is able to manipulate David into going on the run with him. But it can’t last. Andrew wants to live in a fantasy where David will love him for who he is – but that’s the problem. Andrew isn’t anyone. He’s a blank slate; a shapeshifter who can be whatever the situation needs him to be. You get the sense throughout “House By The Lake” that Andrew is really trying to make his new arrangement with David work. But it’s impossible. David is Andrew’s emotional (and in some cases, physical) prisoner, and when the realization seeps in that David will never accept him, Andrew kills David too. And then it’s off to Chicago, and towards last week’s murder of Lee Miglin.

No One Else

Unlike previous episodes, “House By The Lake” isn’t ultimately about Andrew. It’s about David, and the tragedy of his all-too-brief life. In various flashbacks, we see David as a younger man with his gruff, outdoorsman father. While out hunting one day as a small boy, David runs from the sight of a dead animal. He’s later ashamed at his perceived weakness, but his father is sympathetic. “I never want you to be sad,” his father tells him.

Later, we see David coming out to his father in an uncomfortable, not entirely hopeful, but ultimately realistic scene. “Mind if I take a moment?” David’s father asks after David confesses he’s gay. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

The father follows this up with, “Maybe you wanted to be told I don’t have a problem with it; I can’t say that, but what I can say is I love you more than I love my own life.” It’s a heartbreaking moment, made all the more heartbreaking later when, as David lays dying, he has a vision of sharing a cup of coffee with his father.

David’s sexuality, and his ultimate fear of disgrace – a fear that was brought up last week as well, but about Lee Miglin – is what colors all of David’s ultimately terrible decisions following Jeff’s murder. A rational, reasonable thing to have done following Andrew’s brutal crime would have been to call the police and report Andrew immediately. But Andrew, so adept at manipulation and exploitation, is able to talk David out of this. And when enough time passes, it’s too late. As Andrew puts it, if David tries to call the cops, the cops will simply believe he was in on the murder with Andrew. “They hate us, David. They’ve always hated us,” Andrew says. “You’re a fag.”

These fears turn out to be ultimately reasonable. Later, when two detectives arrive at the apartment after Jeff’s body is discovered, their first assumption is that the murder is some sort of “gay thing.” They arrive rather quickly at the assumption that David was in some way involved with the murder, and they go so far as to bring that assumption to David’s frightened parents.

The most telling moment of the episode comes when, while on the run, David and Andrew stop at a bar. Andrew is still riding high, seemingly unperturbed that he’s committed a murder and is now a fugitive. In this moment, David excuses himself to the bathroom, where he shatters a window and sees a clear path to escape. The camera lingers on this moment, as we wait for David to do the obvious thing: get the hell out of there.

Andrew, meanwhile, sits in the bar, listening to the soothing sounds of special guest star Aimee Mann crooning a sad, slowed-down cover of The Cars’ “Drive.” Here, in this brief moment, Andrew’s barriers fall away and he begins to weep. Is he weeping because of the music (it’s pretty damn sad), or is he weeping because he knows he’s dug himself into a hole he can never climb out of? Up until he murdered Jeff Trail, Andrew’s crimes were petty – long cons and little (and sometimes big) lies. There’s no going back from murder, however. And in this moment, perhaps Andrew realizes that nothing matters anymore. That if he wants something going forward, he might as well kill to get it.

This moment of reflection is broken when David unexpectedly returns to the table, having decided not to escape. Why? The answer comes later, as the two are on the road again. David confesses he’s thinking about what the police are going to find out about him, and says he realizes he’s been doing this his entire life – thinking about people “finding out” about his sexuality. He wonders how his parents are going to live in their small town “with all that talk.”

“Was I really afraid…that you were going to kill me, or was I afraid of the disgrace?” he asks Andrew. David is stuck. He’s fear of people judging his sexuality has tethered him to Andrew, and it will, tragically, lead to his doom. As Andrew puts it: “The truth is, we have no one else.”

It Was All A Lie

By now, the viewer has likely caught on to the bait and switch American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace has pulled. This isn’t a bad thing; in fact, it’s rather ingenious in its construction. The first two episodes lull the viewer into assuming they know exactly what type of season this will be. Episode three, however, hints that things are going to turn out much differently. And now, by episode four, Versace seems to be pulling back the curtain completely. If this were a card game, this episode would be the moment the player who has been brilliantly bluffing you shows you their hand.

Perhaps this is why, ultimately, the season is moving backwards rather than forwards. Andrew Cunanan’s murder of Versace made headlines, but it wasn’t an isolated incident. By moving back in time, we’re getting the whole story, bit by bit. We’re learning the true, terrible nature of Andrew Cunanan.

Director Dan Minahan approaches this episode on two different fronts: one is that ever-mounting tension mentioned earlier. The first half of the episode, set in the nightmare that is David’s apartment, is full of pulse-quickening moments of dread, all of it underscored by an unsettling, ever-present droning sound on the soundtrack. The other front of this episode is the tragic side; the sad life and death of David Madson, who ultimately dies by a river in the middle of nowhere. These heartbreaking elements are the more effective, made all the more so by the performances, particularly Cody Fern as David.

By the episode’s end, David has realized Andrew’s true nature. He recounts the romantic evening he and Andrew once spent years ago, sounding wistful before ultimately ending with a harsh, blunt: “It was all a lie.” “Is that why you killed Jeff?” he asks Andrew. “You loved him…but he figured you out in the end, didn’t he? He finally saw the real you, and you killed him for it.” Fern’s delivery of these lines, with just the right mixture of anger and misery, is pitch-perfect.

As always, Darren Criss’ performance as Andrew remains a highlight, but Andrew has grown more and more despicable and detestable as the season has continued, which ultimately makes spending time with him distasteful. It’s a very tough balancing act, and Criss pulls it off for the most part. But there’s only so much we can take. A shot near the end of Andrew cuddling David’s dead body is particularly blood curdling.

Stray Observations:

– As I’m pretty sure I’ve said multiple times in this review, this is a sad, heartbreaking episode. But there’s some (darkly) funny stuff, too. The way Criss delivers Andrew’s line, “I’m so glad you decided to come with me!” after he’s virtually kidnapped David is bleakly hilarious.

– One subtle but unmissable running motif in the episode: Whenever David and Andrew walk somewhere, Andrew puts his arm over David’s shoulder possessively, like property.

– Finn Wittrock makes a very brief appearance in this episode as Jeff Trail. Next week’s episode, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” will give him center stage. It’s also the best episode of the entire season.

– This week’s pop songs: the aforementioned “Drive” by The Cars (as covered by Aimee Mann), and “Pump up the Jam” by Technotronic.

– Yes, that really was Aimee Mann in the bar. “We talked about who we could get to play this,” producer Brad Simpsontold Vanity Fair. “Somebody who was first known in the 1980s, who had a strong voice and you could buy as somebody who would live in this landscape. When we went to Ryan [Murphy] for suggestions of who could it be, he instantly said, without a beat: ‘Aimee Mann. Send her the pages, tell her we’re gonna figure out the song, but it has to be her.’”

‘American Crime Story’ Review: ‘House By the Lake’ Tells a Tragic Tale

Dailybreak.com

One challenge I’ve found while watching this show is separating fact from fiction. Much of the series is based on the heavily researched book “Vulgar Favors” by Maureen Orth, but as that book supplies facts, many of the private conversations shown on television must have been invented for the plot. As many of the key players are dead, we may never know the truth about what really happened between Andrew Cunanan and his victims.

In episode four, we see Cunanan murder his first victim (that we know of), Jeffrey Trail (Finn Wittrock), and second victim, David Madson (Cody Fern). It was unclear during this episode how the three are related – friends, lovers, exes? For now, we mostly focus on Cunanan and Madson on the run after the murder of Trail. The episode paints Madson as an innocent bystander and possible kidnapping victim, but what if none of that were true?

After Trail’s murder, Madson seems afraid for his life and possibly shell shocked. But as time goes on, he stays silent, helping Cunanan make his getaway. Madson appears to have many opportunities to escape from Cunanan – when the two walk the dog, during several stops for food, a night out in a bar (shout out to the totally random guest star of the week, Aimee Mann, as a bar singer). So why didn’t Madson run? They were on the road together for five days, surely during that time he could have bolted, asked for help or simply overpowered Cunanan. What if he wasn’t so much a hostage…but more of an accomplice?

Personally, I don’t know which way I think it went (in reality, Madson was initially blamed more for the murder, since it was his apartment), but the show definitely takes a stance that Madson was innocent, seemingly based on his stable, middle-class upbringing. He is painted as a sympathetic victim in comparison to Cunanan’s cold monster. Could Cunanan, master of lies and manipulation, have talked Madson into being more than a bystander? Did he brainwash Madson into helping him kill Trail?

All of this remains a huge question mark, and we STILL don’t have a clear motive for any of these murders (aside from the fourth, William Reese, who was carjacked by Cunanan). Maybe Trail’s and Madson’s backstories with Cunanan will help with that a little, but I’m starting to feel like no one really knows why Andrew Cunanan murdered these people. Here’s to hoping (for my sake and for that of the victims) that isn’t the case.

Do you think David Madson was more of an accomplice than the show let on?

Dailybreak.com