Rating: 9.0
And now we know where he got the gun.
It’s interesting, going backward. I mean, we all do it sometimes; life isn’t linear, as much as we’re trained to expect it to be. But in a TV or film narrative the convention of starting at the end and heading back, not to the beginning and forward again, but to the previous step, the one before that, the thing that happens the week before—that trick seems to inject a level of horror born of its own banality. The quotidian-ness of psychopathy might be its scariest feature. By this point it’s clear that we’re building backward to a horrifying back story about Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss). I found myself wondering if we were supposed to be developing a strange pity for him, for whatever happened to him to make him what he is. I have concluded that we are not—let’s see if I still feel that way by the end.
If last week’s episode was in some ways the most artistically interesting episode we’ve seen so far, this one’s definitely the biggest kick to the gut. We open in the apartment of David Madson (Cody Fern), a young architect. He seems to have fallen into a boyfriend situation with Andrew, but there’s a third guy, Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock), who seems to have been involved with both of them (and been duly creeped out by Andrew). “I don’t feel sorry for him,” Jeff insists on the way up to the apartment with David.
“Then why are you here?”
“He took something from my apartment.”
“What?”
“My gun.”
Jeff’s bludgeoned to death with a hammer the minute he walks in, and the shocked and terrified David can’t quite get away. Andrew proposes a “road trip” to start a new life in Mexico. David seems to know he’s probably not going to survive this, but he’s determined to try.
I don’t know, I remember the ’90s pretty clearly and even spent a brief portion of that decade in Minnesota, and in my memory there was not really this level of shock and shame and secrecy around being gay, though for sure I knew plenty of people for whom coming out to their parents was an ordeal. I think there’s a little poetic license being taken to heighten the homophobia in the series and this episode especially. But it doesn’t lessen the truth of the situation at all: It does what poetic license should do and makes poetry of the thing. Here, though it’s been hinted at, toyed with, before, is where homophobia, shame, and sociopathy become dazzlingly and horribly entwined. The episode is relentless in its casual brutality, from David’s flashback of stroking the bill of a duck his dad’s just shot on a father-son hunting trip (as barely depicted as it is, David’s relationship with his father is heartrending) to the gloriously bleak appearance of Aimee Mann in a roadside bar, to the obvious fear David and Jeff feel toward Andrew and its inextricability from a feeling of needing to stick together. As Cunanan drags David through a rest stop parking lot, David sees a woman watching them, arms around each other, and exclaims, “She knows who I am! Why else would she be looking at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like she hates me.”
Cunanan doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. The actual crime of murder and the social crime of being queer have suddenly become linked. It’s horrible to watch. Good-natured, hard-working David doesn’t even see it; he’s (understandably) consumed by the fact that he’s been abducted by a man who’s just committed a murder and could easily kill him as well. The look on Cunanan’s face is a little different. And it speaks volumes. He knows what the woman is reacting to, and you get a sense for just a minute that, in his own mind, this somehow confirms, justifies, indemnifies his actions—in society’s eyes he’s already a frightening aberration, right?
It’s the notion that they are both already condemned for being gay that Cunanan uses to manipulate and coerce David from frying pan to fire. David tries to get away, fails. Tries, fails. Tells Andrew he was briefly fooled by his lies, but sees him for what he is. Enrages him. Begs for his life.
Fails.
Meanwhile, the casually creepy homophobia that infiltrates the police investigations into all of the Cunanan killings is brought into the sharpest focus we’ve seen since the interrogation of Versace’s partner in the first episode. The minute the cops learn David’s gay, they start acting “different.” Despite eyewitness accounts from friendly neighbors who could tell something was going on, the immediate assumption when they learn that David is blond, unlike the body in the living room, is that David has killed Andrew. It takes a remarkably long time for them to get that there’s a third man involved, and it’s all full of subtle hints that gay porn and sex toys found in the apartment somehow have something significant to do with the murder. When questioning David’s distraught parents, the detective smugly informs them, “Oh, trust me, there’s a lot you don’t know about your son.” The way the scene is juxtaposed with a flashback of David showing his dad his architecture school award and then coming out to him is all the more bittersweet and all the more enraging for it. Two things are beginning to swim into focus. The people Andrew Cunanan targets do have something in common. They are makers of one sort of another, creators of real, actual, tangible things. And they have a particular kind of earned self-acceptance that he will never have. He knows he will never have it, and the only thing he can come up with to do about it is destroy it.
He shoots David in the back as David tries to run away. We re-enter his memory of that father-son hunting trip, only now his father is handing the cup of coffee to the adult David. Same cabin, same clothes, same smile. It’s the last thing David sees before Andrew shoots him again, in the face. Andrew seems to have a proclivity for mutilating people’s faces. Then he snuggles up to David’s body, lying with him in the grass for a few minutes before getting up and back into the car.
Next stop: Chicago.
Tag: review
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Recap: Andrew Starts His Killing Spree
This is where it starts. In the first three episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace we’ve seen Andrew Cunanan murder three people. But in his entire spree, he killed a total of five. This episode, “House by the Lake,” reveals the start of Cunanan’s deadly rampage with his first two murders.
It’s also another chance to completely abandon the Versace storyline and introduce two brand-new characters, though one is very brief. Like with Lee Miglin last week, we meet these characters at the end of their lives, not knowing the full details of Andrew’s relationships with them.
The Murder of Jeff Trail
The episode opens on April 27, 1997, one week before the murder of Lee Miglin, in Minneapolis. We’re at the apartment of David Madson, a young architect who just landed a big opportunity at work. Andrew is there and David hopes they can stay friends, though it turns out Andrew recently asked David to marry him and got shot down.
A guy named Jeff shows up and Andrew is being more creepy than usual. David goes downstairs to let Jeff in and they talk about how Andrew blames him because David is really in love with Jeff, and it sounds like the two are indeed secretly hooking up.
Jeff is wary of Andrew, saying that he doesn’t trust him anymore and he only came over because Andrew stole his gun. When they enter the apartment, Andrew immediately bludgeons Jeff Trail to death with a hammer. That was sudden, and David is understandably freaked out and paralyzed with fear.
Andrew is a total psycho in this scene, hugging David and promising him that it’s all going to be OK as he ’s covered in blood and still holding the hammer.
The Apartment from Hell
What follows is a nightmarish scenario where David is basically held hostage in his apartment with a murderous sociopath. Andrew is eerily calm while David is scared for his life. David wants to call the police, but Andrew spins a tale about how the cops won’t believe that David had nothing to do with it because they hate gays and he’ll go to jail too for 10 years as an accomplice. David calls 911, but then hangs up because Andrew is very persuasive, mostly because he’s holding the gun.
David goes along with it out of pure self-preservation, trying to ensure that Andrew doesn’t kill him or anyone else. David keeps attempting to find a solution, but Andrew shoots them all down. When David’s co-worker comes to check on him, Andrew and David flee while the woman and the building’s super discovery Jeff’s dead body wrapped in a rug.
It’s a tense and thrilling section of the episode, filled with terror and dread, though since we don’t fully understand their relationship, it doesn’t quite work as a part of the whole series. At this point, American Crime Story season 2 is more of a loose sketch show with strong individual scenes, but not much of a coherent overall narrative.
The Police Investigation
The cops show up to investigate and at first they think David is the victim. The police immediately suspect that the killing was a result of some random gay hook-up involving deviant sex, because of their own biases about gay culture. They’re more preoccupied by the non-working buzzer in the building than the case itself.
David’s co-worker tells the cops that his friend Andrew was staying with him for the weekend and she didn’t trust him. When the cops take a closer look at the body and realize he has dark hair, not blond like David, they conclude that Andrew is the victim and David killed him. The cops are making a lot of sloppy assumptions in this case, which is certainly a theme throughout the series.
Eventually the cops figure out that the body is Jeff Trail, leading them to suspect that David and Andrew killed him together. They talk to David’s parents, and his dad is certain that his son couldn’t have done this.
David’s Memories
As Andrew and David drive away, David remembers a hunting trip with his dad, who was very supportive when David was upset by a duck being shot. We also see a flashback of David coming out to his dad, which is beautiful.
“Do you mind if I take a moment” is his dad’s response. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing.” He adds that he still has his beliefs and he does have a problem with it, but “I love you more than I love my own life.” It’s simple, but perfect.
Road Trip
Back in 1997, Andrew explains that he knows a rich guy in Chicago named Lee Miglin, a close friend who he can get some money from so they can run off to Mexico together. David is still uneasy, reflecting on the possibility that he’s running away from the shame of being gay.
They stop at a bar and Andrew listens to a woman playing “Drive” by the Cars and he gets emotional, tearing up. Am I supposed to feel sorry for him? Because I don’t. He’s a psychotic, murderous monster and humanizing him feels wrong at this point.
The next day at a diner, David explains that they met a year and a half ago in San Francisco. Andrew seemed rich and sophisticated and David was so impressed with him. David’s just a small-town boy who was taken by Andrew’s lavish lifestyle. But now he realizes it was all a lie. He says that Jeff saw who Andrew really was and that’s why he killed him.
Andrew deflects and continues to ramble about how splendid their life in Mexico will be. As they drive away, David pushes harder that Andrew planned the murder all along. David has finally come out of his dazed, surreal stupor and gets angry. Andrew snaps, pulls the car over and forces David to his knees while he points the gun at him.
The Death of David Madson
Andrew, in full delusion, demands that David go along with his plan to live happily ever after in Mexico. David pleads for his life, pretending to go along with it, but Andrew doesn’t believe him. David implores him to stop this and go to the police.
“It’s not real,” David says.
“It could’ve been,” Andrew replies meekly.
“No, it couldn’t,” David adds.Andrew turns around for a second and David runs for a shed as Andrew shoots at him. David reaches the shed, but it’s a memory of the hunting cabin he visited with his dad inside, offering him some coffee to recreate his happiest childhood moment.
In reality, Andrew shot David and he falls to the gound, gasping for air. Andrew walks over and shoots him again in the eye, killing David. It’s a tragic and somber way to end the episode.
Did you feel sorry for Andrew as he listened to the song at the bar?
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Recap: Andrew Starts His Killing Spree
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: A series of terrible decisions
We gave it an A-
We’re continuing backwards through Andrew Cunanan’s past, now all the way back to Minneapolis, one week before the murder of Lee Miglin in Chicago.
Cunanan is a master at ingratiating himself to people, worming his way into their lives and becoming close to them before he flips and reveals his terrifying face beneath the mask. That seems to be the situation with architect David Madson, with whom Cunanan appears to share a slightly tense but intimate relationship.
David is on the phone with his company and learns that he’ll be able to give a big presentation. “I’m so happy for you,” Cunanan says with ice in his voice. Everything about his body language is sinister: the slight hunch in the shoulders, the rigidity with which his arms fall to his side. As an actor, Criss has mastered the inexplicably creepy mannerisms of a killer.
Cunanan is about to take the dog for a walk when the buzzer rings — it’s Jeff, and Cunanan tells David to go let him in. “Give you a chance to talk about me,” Cunanan says, bitterly jealous. And they do talk about him: David and Jeff have both gotten Cunanan’s number; they know he’s strange, and a liar. They laugh about him. Until they get back to the apartment and David hears the dog whining from where it’s tied to a table. Cunanan slams the door shut and brutally beats Jeff to death with a hammer, splattering the entire apartment in blood and leaving his face red with American Psycho splotches.
“It’s okay,” Cunanan says, cooing to the stunned David. Still in a daze, understandably, David allows himself to be led to the bathroom, to be showered, and to not fight too hard when Cunanan tells him not to call the police. He does it with the slime of a practiced manipulator: They’ll lock you up to, people hate us for being gay, your dad will have to turn you in if you tell him. And David — perhaps too stunned to think rationally, or too scared by the gun in Cunanan’s waistband, agrees. “No one else will get hurt as long as you’re by my side,” Cunanan says.
The police show up to the apartment after one of David’s coworkers comes with the landlady to be let in, knowing that David would never just not show up to work. By then, Cunanan and David are long gone, David terrified into complicity and Cunanan getting what he wanted all along: the two of them stuck together, partners in crime, without Jeff around to steal any affection.
The police make the logical assumption that it’s David’s body rolled into the rug and guess that — based on the gay pornography on the bed — he had had a romantic encounter that turned sour and the murderer split. A neighbor lets them know that he had a man staying with him that weekend, an “Andrew Cunaynin?” who had black hair, unlike David’s blond. And so the body becomes Cunanan in the policemen’s minds. They leave as soon as they realize that the corpse isn’t David: It means he’s still alive and they’re in his apartment without a search warrant. Everything they find could be inadmissible evidence in court. Eventually they come to the truth: They find Jeff’s wallet and realize the true identity of the body — but not until David and Cunanan have gotten a hefty head start on their twisted road trip.
This episode is called “The House by the Lake” because it’s what David fantasizes about — the place he went with his dad when he was younger. They drank coffee together. David’s dad tried to get him to help him hunt, but it terrified young David. “I never want you to be sad,” his dad says in the car as they leave, telling him it’s okay that he doesn’t like hunting. That relationship between David and his father is at the core of this episode, which could have been just a bloody procedural crime-style episode. We’re anchored around David — the way he came to terms with his sexuality and how rooted he is by his father’s perception of him. That’s where his mind goes when he and Cunanan are driving. He wonders how his parents will react when they find out what happens.
David is rightfully terrified by the way a woman glares at them in a parking lot, but Cunanan is unfazed. He correctly assesses that she’s looking at them “like she hates [them]” because they’re gay, not because their crime has been reported. Cunanan is the same cool, calculating manipulator he’s always been, at least until the two stop in a bar (where Aimee Mann is playing guitar, in a cameo). David says he needs to go to the bathroom and breaks the tiny window above the toilet seat, contemplating escape. Cunanan just sits at the table, listening to the live music until he finally breaks down into sobs, the most genuine emotion we’ve seen from him, as if his first murder was able to crack though his exoskeleton into whatever exists beneath.
David, in his worst decision in a series of terrible decisions, returns to the table and touches Cunanan’s hand. We see in a flashback how he told his father he was gay. He falls asleep in the car, and when he wakes up, it’s as if they’re on a different world. The car is stopped in the woods; Cunanan seems to be gone, and David wanders without shoes. Until reality comes back, and Cunanan reappears from behind a tree, bearing his gun.
In a diner, David reminisces about the night he and Cunanan met with something akin to reverence: Cunanan had seemed so worldly and wealthy, outrageously popular and sophisticated. The two had stayed in an expensive hotel room, and David had told himself he would work as hard as he possibly could to be as successful as Cunanan had appeared to be. But it was all a lie, and David realizes that now. Cunanan never worked for anything. He was a skilled liar and manipulator and killed Jeff because he was in love with him and Jeff had seen what Cunanan really was. And here is David’s fatal mistake: He lets Cunanan know he sees it too.
The two drive in miserable tension for a while, while Cunanan repeats, “I don’t want to talk about it.” Their entire plan, the future he envisioned for them, required David’s love and respect. He has no use for this bitter and resentful man who sees him as a fraud.
“Why couldn’t you run away with me?” Cunanan asks when he’s out of the car, pointing a gun at David. “We had a future, David.” The past tense is essential there. David tries in vain to convince him that they still have a future, that he can lie and play the part Cunanan wants, but it’s too late. David runs, and Cunanan shoots him in the back.
David imagines making it to a shack in the field, opening the door, and finding his dad — they’re back in the house by the lake, and his dad is offering him a cup of coffee. But it’s just a fantasy. He’s lying on the ground, bleeding out, and Cunanan stands over him and shoots him in the face. Cunanan spoons David’s dead body for a while before getting back in the car.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: A series of terrible decisions
Rest easy, American Crime Story fans, Cunanan didn’t kill that sweet dog
In the late spring of 1997, Andrew Cunanan kicked off a murder spree that would make international headlines. This week, American Crime Story stepped backwards in time yet again in order to show us the very start of that killing spree. It’s a terrifyingly tense episode that, at times, feels more like an installment of sister series American Horror Story than itself. Caution: Spoilers follow for episode “House By The Lake”.
The hour imagines the week of utter – yet mostly unknown – horror that young architect David Madson experienced after Andrew Cunanan mutilated and murdered their friend Jeffrey Trail. The first half hour of the episode plays like a bottle episode as Madson and Cunanan co-exist in an apartment as they navigate the grisly aftermath of the killing.
But the two men aren’t alone. Madson’s beloved pup Prints is with them too. As portrayed by American Crime Story, there’s a constant veil of dread that follows the poor pup whenever he’s on screen. The terror is executed so fully that, throughout the first half of the episode, I was more worried about the welfare of little Prints than either of the men on screen.
I’m clearly a dog person, y’all. And, to all my fellow animal lovers out there, I’m pleased to report that, in reality – as in the show – Cunanan didn’t harm Prints.
While the episode is a brutally tense high wire act between Cunanan (Darren Criss) and Madson (Cody Fern), most of their encounter is fictionalized. The story is based on Maureen Orth’s reporting in Vanity Fair, which quotes Todd Rivard of the Chicago County Sheriff’s Department as saying, “From Tuesday early a.m. till Saturday, it’s a big gray area.”
However, the presence and fate of the dog is actually one of the only things that’s based on solid fact. Just as portrayed in the episode, Madson and Cunanan were witnessed walking the dog several hours after Jeffrey Trail was murdered. And when two of Madson’s co-workers came to check on him two days later, the dog was alive and well in the apartment, scratching at the door. Oddly enough, Orth notes that once the door was opened by the superintendent, there were “no feces or urine anywhere”, indicating not only that Cunanan and Madson had recently fled the scene, but that they were actively caring for the dog even while they remained in the apartment.
But the dog tale doesn’t end there. After Cunanan executed Madson in a grassy field outside of Rush Lake in the Minnesota area, he set out to Chicago and toward the murder of another man, Lee Miglin. American Crime Story showed us the horrors of that scene last week, but what they didn’t show was that Miglin had a dog, too. Orth says, “the dog, a Labrador named Honey, which had been there the whole time, was calm and unharmed.”
It’s not clear why Cunanan would have left these dogs alive while he heartlessly and violently concluded the lives of their humans. Perhaps his twisted love for Madson convinced him to care for Honey as the two of them had cared for Prints only a few disturbed days prior. Or maybe he had a deep bond with a dog in his childhood. We’ll probably never know why, but we do know that no dogs were harmed in the making of Andrew Cunanan’s murder spree.
Rest easy, American Crime Story fans, Cunanan didn’t kill that sweet dog
The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap: Hunting Season
Editor’s rating: ★★☆☆☆
For a show with “Gianni Versace” in its title, we sure haven’t seen a lot of Gianni Versace the past couple of weeks. This is the second episode in a row that totally drops the story of the fashion designer, his family, and the aftermath of his murder to examine the killing spree and motivations of his killer, Andrew Cunanan. Last week I was willing to take a diversion, mostly thanks to Judith Light playing Marilyn Miglin, but now I’m starting to miss Gianni.
Part of the allure of this series, at least based on the first two episodes, was the Versace of it all. The lush clothes, the ornate interiors, and the cadre of sexy half-naked boys running around made for some really great viewing. As did the parallels between Versace and his eventual killer, who both deal with issues of being gay in America but from different ends of the spectrum. But that show seems to be over. Instead, we’re looking at a brutal murder in a greige loft in Minneapolis. Where are all of the flowing silk dressing robes I was promised?!
The other strange thing about the way ACS: Versace is unfolding, as I mentioned last week, is that we’re still only guessing at Andrew’s motivations. Just like in “A Random Killing,” we get to really humanize his victim — this time architect and former lover David Madson — while Andrew is once again seen as this vicious, calculating monster with a chip on his shoulder. That chip is easily the most interesting part. If we could understand why he’s doing what he’s doing, the action would seem a lot less murky. However, his victims certainly didn’t have that luxury and maybe that’s the point.
From what we can tell, Andrew kills David’s secret lover Jeff (the briefest of cameos by Ryan Murphy regular Finn Wittrock) because David refused to marry Andrew. He tells David that he was his “last chance at happiness” before he goes on his crime spree. David says he dismissed Andrew by telling him it is illegal to get married, a reality of gay life in 1997 that seems so odd and distant considering the state of gay civil rights in the 21st century.
Andrew is really trying to make a life with David, yet another of the many fictions of fabulousness he constantly spins, but David knows it’s impossible. Still, Andrew is strangely tender with him, washing Jeff’s blood off his body in the shower and then trying to comfort him. There’s even something sweet about the way that Andrew moves Jeff’s body on his own, only asking for David’s help when he absolutely needs it, a touch that is as scary as it is heartbreaking.
There does seem to be something about Andrew that is just aping emotion. We see it later in the car, when Andrew tries to get the party started by turning up “Pump up the Jam.” He doesn’t seem to realize how wildly inappropriate it is, or that Jeff would be mourning his dead friend. We also see it in Andrew’s menace, when insisting he walk the dog with David or when he’s ordering him around the house. It’s like he can’t see why David doesn’t love him. Maybe it’s because he’s so invested in believing these reveries that he creates for himself, where he’s a wealthy set designer from New York with a society family and famous friends. The only way Andrew can feel loved and wanted is if he feels superior.
What Andrew does understand is how police investigations work, or at least how the police completely fail to understand gay people. Andrew leaves all sorts of porn and sex toys out on David’s bed before they flee so that the cops will think it’s some sort of sex crime gone wrong. He knows that as soon as they find out this is a gay case, they’ll be distracted by their stereotypes and misinformation about gay life and he’ll have that much more of a jump on them. Andrew tells David that if he calls the police, they “won’t see two victims, they’ll see two suspects,” which is how Andrew gets him to go along with being on the lam. My one question is why does a man like David, who has a Twink Bottoms of Mykonos DVD, also have a copy of Bear Love magazine? Based on Andrew and Jeff, David very clearly has a type and it is not anyone who is hairy.
The cops certainly play their part according to plan, assuming that David must be the killer, just like Andrew said they would. They even go so far as to tell David’s parents that there are all sorts of things they don’t know about their son, effectively prosecuting him before he’s even been charged. All of this because he was known to be gay, so they just assume he’s up to all sorts of horrible business.
David’s relationship with his family is the truly heartbreaking part of this episode, even if it is played more than a little heavy-handed. Newcomer Cody Fern does an excellent job playing David, even though the stories about him going hunting with his father and his coming out feel like a mixed bag. On one hand, those are experiences that many gay men, especially in the ‘80s and ‘90s, had with their fathers. But on the other hand, it’s so typical to be almost cliché.
The coming out scene is especially strange: David’s father says that he doesn’t like gay people or what they do, but he will always love his son. Is that supposed to make us angry at the father? Is it supposed to endear him to us? It’s certainly supposed to make it sadder when he eventually loses his son and never gets to tell him how proud he was of him, but he kind of already did that. Real life is never as neat and clean as a 60-minute television drama, but this is a 60-minute television drama. Adding those scenes had to serve some purpose other than just muddying the waters.
David’s murder, obviously, is tragic, but I wanted him to fight back so many times. I wanted him to escape when they were in the restaurant watching some sad girl in a shitty bar sing a slow song like this was True Detective season two. I wanted him to cause a scene in one of the many public places where Andrew wouldn’t be able to shoot him without a street full of witnesses. I wanted him to really escape into that cabin and have a chance of making it, instead of just imagining it while his ex-boyfriend shot him in the back. But none of that ever happened. Life isn’t so lucky for actual people as it is in most television dramas, especially when you’re a gay man in America in the ‘90s and the deck is stacked against you. That’s the tragedy of everyone in this series, but this week, I feel the worst for David.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Introduces the Unrequited Love of Andrew Cunanan’s Life
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is not generally interested in making us feel sorry for Andrew Cunanan. The reverse chronological structure of his storyline actually ensures the opposite; we begin with Cunanan at his most monstrous, at the tail end of his killing spree, and throughout the season gradually move backwards, to explore his descent and his origin story. But while tonight’s episode is bookended by Cunanan’s first and second murders—the first physically gruesome, the second psychologically so—it features Darren Criss’s most vulnerable performance yet.
The episode introduces Cunanan’s first two victims, Jeffrey Trail (Finn Wittrock) and David Madson (Cody Fern), whose murders were rooted in a long and complicated personal history with the killer. As with Miglin last week, much of what we see in this episode is speculation rather than confirmed fact, but it’s true that Cunanan considered Trail a very close friend, and Madson and Cunanan were exes—Cunanan called him “the love of my life,” and that intense unrequited love becomes the focus of tonight’s episode.
Here, six talking points from The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Episode 4, “House By The Lake.”
1) Cunanan, Trail and Madson share a very complicated history.
Though we won’t see the full backstory of this trio’s past until later in the season, the dialogue early in this episode gives us enough clues to piece the following together: Cunanan proposed to Madson recently, telling him he was “the man of his dreams, his last chance at happiness.” Madson said no, and Cunanan thinks Trail is the reason why. “Did you tell him that he’s the reason you said no?” Trail asks Madson of Cunanan, shadily but understandably—it’s clear this is a friendship of obligation at this point, and neither Trail nor Madson would be that sorry if they never saw Cunanan again. But Trail and Madson’s dialogue suggests that Cunanan is not wrong to be jealous of their relationship (“He knows about us.”)
There’s also been some kind of bitter recent argument between Cunanan and Madson, and while Madson tries to apologize, Cunanan seems disinterested and just emotionally off, and that’s before it turns out that he’s invited Trail over unannounced. Madson is irritated—but not for long, because within a few minutes he’s watching in numb terror as Cunanan beats Trail to death with a claw hammer.
2) What happened in the six days between Trail’s murder and the discovery of Madson’s body is a huge question mark.
As this episode shows, investigators had good reason to assume that Madson and Cunanan had conspired together to kill Trail, and that Madson went on the run willingly with Cunanan. This is one of the big gaps in the known facts, and so ACS writer Tom Rob Smith has to decide on a narrative: that Cunanan coerced Madson into joining him on the run by convincing him the police would never believe he’s innocent—basically, his life will be ruined if he stays behind. “I can’t allow that to happen, David,” Cunanan says, his voice breaking with faux-emotion. “I can’t allow this to destroy your life.”
It works. Even though people are now seeing through the elaborate lies that used to work for him, and he’s getting sloppy in his manic, violent state, Cunanan is still a masterful emotional manipulator. He also uses the homophobia of the period as a tool to persuade Madson that he can’t trust the police: “They hate us, David. They’ve always hated us. You’re a fag.” And there’s a lick of truth here; the local police are indeed shown jumping to a lot of conclusions about Madson’s “lifestyle,” and by extension, his culpability, when they discover he’s gay.
3) Cunanan is disturbingly emotionless throughout most of this episode—with two striking exceptions.
Even though these are his first murders, Cunanan is completely impassive after killing both Trail and Madson, despite considering the first to be “his brother” and the second “the love of his life.“ It’s textbook sociopathic behavior, which makes the two scenes in which he unravels all the more powerful.
A day or two into their terrifying road trip, Cunanan and Madson pull into a roadside bar where Aimee Mann is singing a mournful cover of The Cars’ "Drive,” because why not? (What a delightful, unexpected cameo this was.) Madson goes to the bathroom, leaving Cunanan alone to watch the song and take in its lyrics: “You can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong / Who’s gonna drive you home tonight?” In a 90-second unbroken take, the camera slowly pulls in on Darren Criss’ face as Cunanan starts to cry, seemingly understanding for a brief moment that Madson may not be coming back.
Though Madson does consider trying to escape through the bathroom window, he does ultimately come back, and for a moment I feel like pure garbage because there’s a tiny part of me that is like “Yay! He came back!” That feeling did not last long.
The second showing of emotion from Cunanan is much scarier, and ends with him spiraling into a murderous rage. Madson finally reaches his breaking point with Cunanan’s delusions, and sharply cuts dead any possibility of their future together. Which is… understandable, but not the right move when you know you’re with a violent lunatic currently in possession of his last murder victim’s gun, David!
4) David Madson gets just enough backstory to make his murder genuinely upsetting.
Madson’s first scene introduces him as an ambitious young architect, elated by the news that he’s just been given a huge opportunity at work. Cunanan, staying at his apartment, immediately kills the mood with a dead-eyed, flat-voiced “I’m so happy for you!”
Later on the road, as Madson is looking back on his life in flashes—maybe because he subconsciously knows he doesn’t have long to live—he remembers coming out to his father, whose reaction lands in a very subtle, complex middle ground. He’s not thrilled, but he doesn’t reject his son, either, and though the scene’s not idyllic, it’s still touching. “I won’t lie and say that it doesn’t make a difference,” Madson’s father says. “You know what I believe… You wanted to be told I don’t have a problem with that. I can’t say that. But what I can say is that I love you more than I love my own life.” This becomes even more affecting in the episodes final moments, when a dying Trail has a vision of running to safety inside a lakeside cabin, where his father is waiting for him.
5) Dogs always know what’s up.
Poor Prints! And props to that doggo actor for his impressive dramatic whimpering. I knew from the source material that a neighbor really did see Cunanan and Madson walking the dog, and by extension, that the dog did not end up dead, but that did not reduce my stress level even slightly when Cunanan calmly announced he was “taking Prints for a walk.” Even before the murder, this is not a guy I would leave alone with my pet.
6) Cunanan is living out a delusional romantic fantasy with Madson.
And it’s chilling to watch. From the moment of the murder onwards, Cunanan slips into the role of a supportive, loving boyfriend, holding the traumatized Madson close and telling him “It’s all gonna be okay” while literally spattered with Trail’s blood. Almost as bad as committing a grisly murder is using that grisly murder as a reason to get naked in the shower with the ex you never got over, amirite?
Cunanan tries to pretend he’s being realistic about what the future holds for him and Madson once they get across the border to Mexico. “I know you probably want to part ways once we get there. I respect that,” Cunana tells him. “But we make such a great team, and the truth is, we have no one else.” And it seems for a while like Madson might actually be coming around to Cunanan’s rose-tinted view—over breakfast, the pair reminisce about the night they met in San Francisco. Cunanan sent a drink over to Madson, inviting him to join his high-society circle, and brought him back to his suite at the Mandarin Oriental. “I thought, what’s this guy gonna see in me?” Madson admits, before his tone shifts. He goes on to recall how he realized the truth: “You’ve never worked for anything. It was all an act.” And that line in the trailer—“You can’t do it, can you? Stop.”—was not about murder, as it turns out, but lying. That’s Cunanan’s real compulsion.
After being so eerily dispassionate through the episode, Cunanan finally flips out when Madson needles him one time too many, pulling the car over and pulling out the gun while screaming, “We had a future, David!” And though Madson, terrified, tries to walk his rejection back, it’s too late. Cunanan shoots him dead, then curls up tenderly with his body for a while. Though I’ve been getting Talented Mr. Ripley vibes from Cunanan throughout the series, this is the most overt homage yet.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Introduces the Unrequited Love of Andrew Cunanan’s Life
The Assassination of Gianni Versace Episode 3 Review: By The Lake House
This week, we continue to work our way backwards through Andrew Cunanan’s killing spree, going to Minneapolis in April of 1997, a week before he killed Lee Miglin. Once again Gianni is absent from the story named for him, though we all know true crime cares more about perpetrators than victims, and so far it has paid off for American Crime Story.
Unlike last week, this week’s murder comes right away. Or at least, the first one does. Andrew murdering Jeff is immediate, calculated, and blocked so it isn’t shown on-screen. But the sound and the blood-spatter are bad enough. They use scene blocking strategic framing to hide the murder, hiding Jeff’s mangled dead body with the dog the way another show would jokily obscure nudity.
Going backwards like this is an interesting choice. The obvious advantage is starting the first episode with the death of Gianni Versace. One thing we lose, ironically, is the sense of Andrew becoming a killer. This way, it feels like he always was one, like it was some sort of dark destiny for him, to the point where his not murdering the john in episode 2 was a bit of a surprise. This episode tries to walk us back to a time when murder wasn’t Andrew’s default. It’s marginally successful at that specific task, though superb at others. When Andrew tells David no one else will get hurt it feels obviously untrue, but when Andrew tells David that he will never hurt him, Darren Criss sells it: Cunanan might even believe his own lies.
Cody Fern gave an excellent performance here as David, as did Finn Wittrock with his brief, restrained performance as Jeff, a man who was both terrified and certain he was worrying for nothing. David’s fear is palpable as he backs away from Andrew in his own apartment, runs from him in his final moments, or in more reserved moments like interacting with neighbors outside while fearing what Andrew will do to them. The best moments, though, are his interactions with his father, and seeing him realize that everything about killing Jeff was calculated. It naturally begs the question: how did Andrew make the leap to someone who carries out such grisly, intentional murders?
There’s something brutal about watching another person Cunanan victimizes call 911 and then hang up. Whether he believed Andrew, or simply sensed that he was unstable and becoming agitated, David complied and hung up. Andrew directly engages with how homophobia would color David’s interactions with the authorities, praying on very real fears of the time. David’s use of gay marriage being illegal as a way to brush off the over-eager Andrew is another sign of the times.
It’s painful to watch the cold, controlled way Cunanan uses genuine fear of homophobia to his advantage, particularly when it’s juxtaposed with a story of David and his father, who ultimately stood by him when he came out. Once again – or rather, for the first time – Cunanan intentionally leaves his victim’s gay porn out for law enforcement to find, which feels a bit like the impulse of many perpetrators of domestic violence (which this surely is) to decide that if they can’t have their partner, they will ruin them, one way or another.
I’ve got to think one of the only things as terrifying as being told your child has been murdered is being told they are a murderer, and both happened within a week to David Madson’s parents. But they knew their boy – we see that David’s inclination to call his father when he was in trouble was a good one. It also makes his imaginary safety with his father particularly poetic. His father surprised me by not forcing hunting onto his son any further, and by not giving him a hard time for not liking it. Coming out didn’t go quite as well, though also not as terrible as I imagined. His father didn’t approve, but he still loves his son. Sadly, this is what passes for “taking it well” in the 90s.
Darren Criss continues to wow as Andrew Cunanan, and this week we see a few different shades of the killer. After killing Jeff, Andrew treats David the way one might treat a scared loved after saving them from a violent intruder, reassuring him and gently guiding him toward next steps. But here, Andrew is the intruder.
There is an echo of David’s squeamishness around hunting with his father in the way Andrew tells him to turn away when he rolls up Jeff’s body in the rug. Andrew has cast himself as protector, and later as gleeful boyfriend on his first road trip as a couple. As David points out, there’s a very fuzzy line between when Andrew knows he’s lying and when he falls for himself. He seems to wrestle with that, or perhaps the realization that he will need to kill David, as Aimee Mann covers Drive by The Cars at a roadside bar. David sees through Andrew’s lies and Andrew can’t live with that, even if that means murdering the man he thought he loved.
More so than in the prior episode, ACS shows us how law enforcement falls short. From the beginning, they make assumptions that buy Andrew more time, rather than investigating. It’s unclear whether these shortcomings are motivated by any prejudice or simply the universal neglect that is corner-cutting assumptions. These assumptions lead them to jump from the theory that David is the victim to David as killer, ignoring the only real evidence they have in two character witnesses, David’s work colleague and apartment building manager.
★★★★☆
The Assassination of Gianni Versace Episode 3 Review: By The Lake House
‘American Crime Story’ Recap: Andrew Savagely Murders A Friend & Former Lover
This episode starts out on April 27, 1997, exactly one week before Lee Miglin’s murder. Andrew is in the midst of an argument with David Madson, his former lover. Andrew is acting closed off and robotic. David goes downstairs to get their friend Jeff Trail. David tells Jeff that Andrew proposed. Jeff seems indifferent to Andrew. “He knows about us,” David says to Jeff, who doesn’t believe it. Jeff never wants to see Andrew again. He’s just here to get his gun back from Andrew. But Jeff walks right into his own grave. Andrew attacks Jeff with a claw hammer the second he walks through the door. Andrew hits him over and over again. Jeff’s blood spatters everywhere.
David watches it all go down in horror. Afterwards, Andrew calmly walks over and hugs David. He tries to comfort David. Andrew pulls David into the shower to clean him. “Are you going to kill me?” David asks. Andrew says no, but you can tell David doesn’t believe him. David starts to freak out and wants to call the police. David gives Andrew some space, but when he walks into the living area later, Andrew still hasn’t called. Andrew starts spinning a narrative that could implicate David in the crime. This is David’s apartment, and David is the one who brought Jeff up in the first place. David calls 911, and that’s the first time Andrew seems uneasy. He quickly pulls his gun out and waves it in front of David, which pushes David to hang up the phone.
Andrew says the police will see two suspects, not two victims. David just wants to call his dad. Andrew manipulates David every which way and won’t let him leave. David suddenly realizes that walking the dog could be his way out. As David and Andrew try to leave the apartment, they both realize Jeff’s body is still lying there after Andrew slaughtered him. Andrew doesn’t waste any time grabbing a rug and rolling Jeff’s body up in it. Andrew tells David to look away. David helps him move Jeff’s body across the apartment. Andrew cleans up the blood, and David just watches completely shell-shocked. Andrew stresses that no one else will get hurt as long as David stays by his side.
David’s co-worker Linda comes to check on him after he doesn’t show up to work. When the landlord opens the door, David and Andrew are gone. Detectives Tichich and Jackson arrive. They think the body is David’s body. Linda tells them about Andrew. When she says David’s hair is blond, Tichich checks the body and finds the victim as brown hair. Tichich thinks it’s actually Andrew! He believes David is still alive and the police don’t have a search warrant for the apartment, so the whole case could be compromised. The detectives think David is the killer. But David’s never been a killer. David has never been able to take a life. The body is taken the coroner, and the police finally figure out that Jeff is the one who’s dead.
Andrew acts like nothing is wrong now that he and David are on the run. He says that he knows Lee Miglin in Chicago. “He owes me,” Andrew admits, before adding that Lee will give them money to get to Mexico. David worries about how this will impact his parents. When the police confront his parents, they’re adamant David had nothing to do with Jeff’s murder.
Andrew and David stop at a bar. David thinks about escaping through the bathroom window, but it’s almost as if he’s accepted his fate. Meanwhile, Andrew is crying over a performance of The Cars’ “Drive.” In these brief moments, the broken Andrew finally reveals himself as a lonely and desperate man. David comes back to the table and holds Andrew’s hands.
David looks back on the moment he told his dad he was gay. His dad didn’t agree with David’s lifestyle, but his love for his son meant more than his pride. “I love you more than I love my own life,” David’s dad told him.
David wakes up in his car in the middle of the woods. Andrew is off in the distance. At a diner, David talks about when he met Andrew. He wanted to live like Andrew once upon a time. But now he knows it was all lies. David confronts Andrew about killing Jeff, who had figured out the kind of man Andrew really is. Andrew is still living in a dream world and refuses to accept reality. David embraces his anger. He knows that Andrew wanted him to watch Jeff die. He pushes Andrew to his breaking point. Andrew points the gun at David’s chest and starts rambling about their future. This new side of David didn’t fit into Andrew’s plan.
Andrew pulls off near a lake and points his gun at David. He wants David to convince him why he should let him live. David is shaken to his core. “Why couldn’t you run away with me?” Andrew asks. This life that Andrew has envisioned isn’t real. They have to go to the police. David gets his chance to escape and runs inside a nearby trailer. When he runs through the door, he sees his father. In reality, Andrew shoots David square in the back as he tries to escape. He doesn’t stop there. As David gasps for breath, Andrew shoots him again in the eye. Andrew lies with David’s body for a while, and then leaves David there to rot.
‘American Crime Story’ Recap: Andrew Savagely Murders A Friend & Former Lover
“ACS: The Assassination Of Gianni Versace” Episode 4 Recap: “House By The Lake”
I wish I was not the kind of fool who roots for a happy ending because The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story keeps putting my heart in a vice. This week’s “The House By The Lake” was another visually distinct episode that started out in Minneapolis, and followed architect and nice man David Madson (Cody Fern) on the run with Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss).
The start of the episode was such a classic horror show. It was immediately tense, and Cunanan was so looming. I realized that I hate him so much now, which is impressive considering how likable Darren Criss normally is. Every interaction between Madson and Cunanan inside that ominous ‘90s apartment feels like it goes on forever, and it reminded me of the uneasy gut feeling Get Out built up, where you can’t help but yell at the screen, “Run!” I just wanted the tension to end so badly.
I lost some respect for Cunanan’s charisma in this episode since he is actually not that great of an emotional manipulator. Not that emotional manipulation is such an admirable skill, but I sense Cunanan takes pride in it. The ugly truth of this episode is that Cunanan is actually just physically threatening Madson the entire time. Some moments feel like more gentle coercion maybe, but a significant amount of the episode takes place at gunpoint. Later, when Cunanan is trying to be sweet and offer Madson the carrot instead of the stick, I just wanted to slap the glasses off his handsome face. It got to the point where it was therapeutic for me to have Madson as my onscreen surrogate, getting madder and madder at him until the very end.
I keep harping on this because I’m brilliant and always right, but women are yet again the ones who follow their intuition and check on Madson’s apartment. Maybe we were meant to feel the detective’s judgment of homosexuality, but it also felt to me like there was a subtle distrust of the women by the cops, when in fact, they appeared to be helpful. Without them, it could have taken way longer to start the investigation. I also just thought the cops were garbage because who would ever say, “your friend’s the killer” after taking a few quick glances around a loft? Ass. Plus, his comments to Madson’s parents that there’s a great deal they don’t know about their son were incredibly condescending and ultimately inaccurate, but I appreciate that American Crime Story frequently revisits the sometimes antagonistic relationship between victims, their families, and the police. All parties are human, and the system is imperfect.
The rest of the episode reminded me of Misery on wheels. After the moment when Cunanan tells Madson that he should start thinking about his new life, I realized what an insane hostage experience Madson is having. Why would he want a new life? His life seems good. He’s working as a hot shot architect in a more hip version of the American Psycho apartment. I would almost go as far as to say that Cunanan might have misjudged the extent of Madson’s loneliness and loyalty to him, judging by how much resistance he gets from him at each step of the journey.
A beautiful shining oasis of calm in this episode came when I realized it was Amy Mann singing that gorgeous cover of The Cars’ ”Drive.” She was so casual, almost as if she’s rubbing it in your face that being fabulous isn’t hard for her. We also see Cunanan cry, which terrifies me, but is also a dirty trick that got me to think maybe I’ve been wrong about him. When Madson woke up alone in the next scene, for one naive moment, I was hoping Cunanan had let him go.
I thought Cody Fern did a masterful job of playing David, who was a real lover of Andrew’s. I thought he looked incredibly young, and it turns out he was only 33 when he was murdered. He was absolutely someone with a full life ahead of him, and the scene where he presented his achievements to his dad while also coming out to him reminded me of the “Best Little Boy in the World” hypothesis, or the idea that some gay men will seek out traditional and measurable successes in a potential attempt to deflect attention away from their sexuality. A little digging into Madson’s real life revealed that he had applied and been accepted to both architecture and law school. Cunanan told his friend’s that Madson was the love of his life, which must be taken with a grain of salt because of his compulsive lying, but it is interesting that he’s one of the only love interests we’ve seen so far that was roughly a peer. But as soon as you start to like someone in this series, they’re gone. Given the frantic pace, Cunanan’s red Jeep is starting to feel like the only recurring character I can count on.
I was caught off guard but not mad when the episode slipped into surrealism for its big finish. When Madson is drinking coffee with his father, I knew he was dead, but I still left 1% of my heart open to the possibility that he got away, or that someone else was inside the trailer. I think true crime does a darkly magical thing: you know what’s going to happen and it still manages to be shocking and painful.
“ACS: The Assassination Of Gianni Versace” Episode 4 Recap: “House By The Lake”
ACS: Versace Recap: Hammer Time
Finn Wittrock’s appearance on Wednesday’s American Crime Story: Versace was over as quickly as it began. (Don’t worry, we’ll see him again next week.)
This week’s installment — the second in a row to be completely devoid of all things, you know, Versace — turned back the clock yet again, this time to a week before Andrew Cunanan drove to Chicago and killed Lee Miglin.
At this point, he was living with a handsome young architect named David Madson — played by Cody Fern, the latest in a series of phenomenal guest stars — but we quickly learned there was trouble in paradise. In fact, David had recently turned down Andrew’s marriage proposal, leading him to suspect that David was in love with a guy named Jeff, played by Wittrock. To be fair, David and Jeff did have feelings for one another, but I hardly think Jeff deserved to be bludgeoned to death with a hammer and rolled up in a carpet.
Yet that’s exactly what Andrew did, planning out the whole evening so that David would appear to be the one who let Jeff into his apartment. “They’re not going to see two victims,” Andrew argued when David tried to call the police. “They’re going to see two suspects.” And when that didn’t work, Andrew resorted to Plan B, letting his gun do the talking.
Andrew had essentially taken David captive at this point, forcing him into the life of a fugitive on the run. But they never made it to Mexico, no sir. After David attempted to steer their truck off the road, Andrew pulled over, giving David a head start before pumping his chest full of lead. Tragic as it was, though, there was something beautiful about the portrayal of David’s death; in his final moments, he imagined entering a cabin and seeing his father, finally connecting to a man with whom he’d had a complicated relationship in life. (Andrew cradling David’s corpse, on the other hand, was notably less beautiful.)
Prior to his murder, David gave Andrew the full dressing down audiences have been waiting for, telling him that his entire life is a lie, an act, which is why no one would ever truly get close to him. The two also had an honest — as honest Andrew could be, anyway — conversation about shame, which David thought he might fear even more than death.
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