The third episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story moved away from Miami and away from the Versaces. Series regulars Edgar Ramirez, Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin were completely absent from the episode as Gianni Versace, his sister and his partner.
Instead, the episode moved to Chicago to tell the story of Lee and Marilyn Miglin and how Andrew Cunanan killed Lee. But does a season with Versace in the title work without the fashion designer?
Oddly, I think the answer is “Yes.” First, “A Random Killing” featured the single best piece of acting in the show’s three episodes courtesy of Judith Light as Marilyn Miglin. Her bold, show-stopping performance was brilliant from start to finish, worthy of the tremendous acting in the show’s first season. For her alone, the third episode was a success.
Despite the show’s title, it’s clear that the second season of American Crime Story isn’t about Gianni Versace. He might be the most recognizable name, but this is Andrew Cunanan’s story. The series is a deep look at the psychology and journey of a demented spree killer. Gianni Versace’s role in Andrew’s story is minimal, so putting him and his family aside for an episode or two makes sense.
The only real problem is that it feels like a bait-and-switch. The first two episodes established the world of the series, but the third episode changed everything and seemed to exist in a completely different series. I would argue that the third episode is far more indicative of the series as a whole than either of the first two, which were very misleading when it comes to what the story is really about.
“A Random Killing,” in many ways, was the real start of The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Future episodes will continue to be told in that style (for example, the fourth episode will once again not include any Versaces). This is what the show is, a series of vaguely connected vignettes from the life of Andrew Cunanan.
Did you miss the Versace storyline or did you prefer the show without it?
This week’s episode rewound once again, this time to May 1997 to the killing of Lee Miglin. As Andrew Cunanan crosses the country on a murder spree, Miglin was victim three of five and the second murder we see.
As far back as episode one, a subtle theme of the series is the masks we all wear. Beyond the fashion, there is our persona and how we present ourselves to the world.
Lee Miglin’s wife Marilyn (the impeccable Judith Light) wore a literal mask of makeup. During a Home Shopping Network broadcast for her perfume brand and while introducing her husband at a political fundraiser, Marilyn exuded confidence and power. You could tell by looking at her she was all about getting shit done. She brags about her epic romance with her husband, but behind closed doors, you could feel a strain between them.
As Marilyn takes off her mask by slathering on the cold cream, she lets her guard down and she is vulnerable and yearning for something her husband isn’t giving her. After her husband’s murder, she lets her façade crack so very briefly to show her grief, but then it’s back to literal business at HSN. It’s all about keeping up appearances for her and sticking by her statement “It was a random killing.” No one must know the truth, especially Marilyn. Is is sadder that she lies to herself or to society?
Miglin’s (Mike Farrell) mask was more metaphorical than his wife’s. On the surface, he seemed like a typical Chicago millionaire, a doting husband who helped his wife with her business, a religious man who kept a prayer altar in his basement. The show portrayed him to be racked with guilt at his infidelity and at odds between his Catholicism and gayness. “I tried,” he pleads in prayer.
It seems like a punishment worse than death when Cunanan sets out to not only murder Miglin, but expose him to the world as he wraps him in one of his signature tape helmets, changes him into women’s underwear and scatters the crime scene with gay porn magazines. Miglin can no longer hide and he knows this will expose him to Marilyn and to the world. What is the worse fate for him – to be dead or disgraced?
Finally, there’s Cunanan. He seems to wear a different mask all the time and his motives still are not clear. The writers and producers of the show told Vanity Fair that Cunanan loathed successful people like Miglin who only magnified his supposed failures, but that didn’t come through clearly except with Cunanan getting annoyed with Miglin’s plans for a Chicago skyscraper.
Otherwise, three episodes in and we still don’t know who the real Cunanan is. Clearly, he’s a monster, but what broke and how? Did anyone get a chance to see behind his mask? Or is it uglier than we can even imagine?
Next week, we’ll see Cunanan’s first and second victims and get an insight into his homelife, which will hopefully answer some of these questions!
Gianni and Donatella. Gianni and Antonio. Donatella and Antonio. Andrew and Ronnie. Yes, this week’s episode featured duct tape sex helmets, Daren Criss dancing to Phil Collins in a speedo and Ricky Martin’s butt, but don’t get distracted. The focus of this week’s episode was these fraught relationships. As it jumped around in time, we got a closer look at the dynamic between these various pairs.
First, we see Donatella (Penelope Cruz) hissing at Antonio (Ricky Martin) over Gianni’s illness (fact check: the Versace family denies Gianni having HIV, but Marleen Orth’s 2000 book, “Vulgar Favors,” claims that Gianni’s autopsy revealed that he was HIV positive at the time of his death). Donatella blames Antonio’s promiscuity for Gianni’s illness and she’s upset with Antonio for not giving Gianni the stability he craves.
Donatella seems out of line here, though – why is she intruding on the intimate details of her brother’s relationship with his partner? She may not agree with their lifestyle, but she shouldn’t freeze Antonio out. Gianni seems very capable of fighting his own battles, especially with Antonio. It is especially tragic after Gianni dies. The two could lean on each other, but Donatella sees no reason to keep up the charade and flies back to Italy, with Gianni’s gold-boxed ashes in tow.
Whether it was Donatella’s words or simply good timing, Antonio is finally ready to commit to Gianni. Even though Gianni questions his decision, challenging him and asking if he’ll change his mind when the two are out clubbing like the kings of Miami they are, I truly believe Antonio. All he wants at this stage of his life is Gianni. When Antonio repeats himself outside of the club, his words are shattering because you know it’s too late and Gianni will be dead the next day. The storyline between Antonio and Gianni is arguably the most devastating in the entire show, because they care for each other so deeply in a way that not even Donatella can recognize.
Gianni and Donatella, who clearly share a deep bond and mutual respect, have their moments of discord too, especially when it comes to their creative visions. They clash over a fashion show – Gianni thinks the models are too skinny and she scolds him for not being edgy like McQueen and Galliano. They fight, as families do, and agree to disagree and each dress separate models for their show. This is why their business and personal relationship works so well. They can throw down and quickly pick back up and move forward, despite their passionate creative difference. What an envious partnership they have.
In stark contrast to all of this, we see loner Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) desperately trying to make a connection with someone, even if that connection is as fake and shallow as himself. Arriving in Miami after killing four other men, he latches on to the first junkie he sees at his fleabag motel, Ronnie (an unrecognizably gaunt Max Greenfield). This relationship is the only one that isn’t factual and was probably created for plot reasons, but it shows us how sleazy Cunanan is and how much he yearns for a companion. He breezes in, offering Ronnie a cut of his escort business, regaling him with false stories of his fiancé, Versace.
Despite his transparent braggadocio, Cunanan seems well liked wherever he goes – the kid is charming AF – so it’s hard to understand why he is so broken inside. He seems to feel cheated by life, but perhaps if he put half as much effort into having a career as he does being a conman, he really could have accomplished something. Instead, he uses all of his creativity to snow the people around him.
Next week, we jump in time again, back to one of Cunanan’s other murders. And as for Darren Criss in a speedo, you can resume thinking about that now.
So, are you hooked on this show yet? Honestly, the first two episodes worried me. I loved last week’s American Psycho tribute, but the early scripts still jumped around too much, introducing a huge cast of characters and cramming years’ worth of vignettes about Andrew Cunanan and Gianni Versace into less than two hours. All that exposition made it hard to get emotionally invested in any one story. As soon as you started to care about Gianni and Antonio, there was Andrew bellowing “Gloria” in a stolen truck, or some FBI dope confusing Versace with Liberace.
Last night’s “A Random Killing” was something entirely different—a spare, focused episode and easily my favorite so far. I’ll get to the fact-vs-fiction part soon (promise) but first we need to talk about Judith Light. Who else could’ve played Marilyn Miglin, the wife of Cunanan’s third victim and allegedly closeted Chicago real estate magnate Lee Miglin? She’s a complicated woman. The queen of HSN is sharp enough to realize something’s wrong in her marriage, yet she loves Lee for his belief in her. And yet, her reaction to his murder is so practical! She goes into crisis-PR mode, feeding the police narratives to obscure the reality that a halo of gay bondage magazines surrounded Lee’s body. But there’s pain under the surface. When she finally lets down her guard, the monologue Light delivers about being a “real wife” is heartbreaking.
Darren Criss gives the episode’s other great performance. It’s chilling to watch Andrew slowly turn on Lee, puncturing the romantic veneer of what is actually a business transaction before mocking his powerful prey as he wraps Lee’s face in tape. Does writer Tom Rob Smith sometimes overload his dialogue with symbolism? Absolutely—“Concrete can build, but concrete can kill” is just awful—but the most revealing exchange in a mostly excellent script takes place in Lee’s study, when Andrew psychoanalyzes his host’s plan to build a tower so tall that its observation deck will look down on the Sears Tower.
Andrew sees that the project is really an egotistical power move; Lee protests, unconvincingly, that he’s only thinking of how delighted kids would be by the view. Andrew has a knack for perceiving people’s hidden dark sides, which makes his relationships with the victims he knows personally fascinating. Look for more of that next week. On to the annotations…
Lee and Marilyn Miglin
They weren’t international celebrities like Versace, but Lee and Marilyn Miglin were well known and loved in Chicago society circles. As Marilyn helpfully points out in the episode, the couple’s story was a classic “American Dream” narrative: Lee was the son of an immigrant coal miner who talked his way into his first real estate job at age 31, rising quickly from there. As Maureen Orth reports in Vulgar Favors, the firm he founded with business partner Paul Beitler built many of downtown Chicago’s most prestigious edifices, including Madison Plaza and the Chicago Bar Association Building.
The Miglins also independently owned over two dozen properties in the city. But Lee’s and Beitler’s grandest ambition, to build a 2,000-foot tower called the Skyneedle that would have been the world’s tallest building, remained unrealized. (The Chicago Tribune published a fascinating article on the project shortly after Lee’s murder.)
Marilyn was a model-turned-makeup mogul whose eponymous cosmetics line—particularly, a perfume called Pheromone—became a Home Shopping Network sensation. Orth notes her complicated personality, citing an associate who observed, “She’s not a cream puff… Marilyn hides it till she needs to bring it out.” When she returned from her business trip to Canada to find her Gold Coast townhouse in disarray, she cryptically told her neighbors, “I know he’s dead and they’ll never catch him. They’ll never find who did this.”
The lack of emotion she displayed in the wake of Lee’s murder really was a topic of local gossip. Marilyn remarried in 1999, but her second husband, the businessman Naguib Mankarious, died soon after, while getting a facelift. A lawsuit caused her to file for bankruptcy in 2007. Nevertheless, she persisted. Over a decade later, Marilyn is still alive and hawking her wares on HSN. (Here’s a video from 2017.)
Lee’s Murder
The show’s account of Lee Miglin’s murder and its aftermath sticks pretty close to the facts. Yes, Marilyn returned to find a Coke can and an open carton of ice cream in her normally spotless kitchen, while neighbors spotted a ham with a knife stuck in it in the library and signs that a dark-haired man had taken a bath in one of the bathrooms. Lee’s body was found in the garage next to an assortment of gay porn magazines, fully dressed but wearing lacy Calvin Klein bikini underwear, his ankles tied with an extension cord and his face wrapped in masking tape.
What happened before the murder isn’t nearly as clear. Was Lee Miglin a closeted gay man? How did Andrew end up in his home? Did they already have some kind of relationship? An expert told Orth that there was likely a sexual element to the killing. Signs that Cunanan had hung around at the Miglins’ for a while after the crime suggested he knew Marilyn was out of town. And a neighbor named Betsy Brazis spotted Lee talking with a younger man in his kitchen shortly before his death.
An AIDS educator, Brazis also mentioned to Orth that “Lee’s name would come up occasionally as a gay ‘straight’ man” in the support groups she led. A local queer newspaper published an anonymous report that Miglin had been spotted in gay bars, although other Chicago journalists swore to Orth that they tried and failed to find evidence that he slept with men. Meanwhile, Orth plays up Lee’s stereotypically gay characteristics, from his neatness to his effeminacy. These descriptions are kind of uncomfortable.
But the investigation into Andrew’s motive never got far, in part because Chicago law enforcement and other local officials were personally invested in protecting the family’s good name. The murder was declared random. An anonymous city official told Orth, “The case is closed. There’s nothing in the file. His employees loved him. The church loved him. His wife loved him. Case closed.” Twenty years later, the suggestion that Lee was anything less than a heterosexual family man remains controversial. A recent Chicago Sun-Times headline reads, “Revisiting Chicago murder, FX series depicts Lee Miglin as gay, close to killer.”
The piece quotes American Crime Story executive producer Brad Simspon, who explains, ““Our writer, Tom Rob Smith, had to dramatize what we believe happened that weekend starting from the established facts of the crime scene. Based on the evidence, we believe that Lee and Andrew did know each other, and Andrew’s attack, as with all his victims except for William Reese [the man Andrew kills for his truck later in last night’s episode], was targeted and specific.” The implication is that homophobia not only prevented the truth behind Miglin’s death from coming out, but—along with that exasperating car-phone leak, which did happen—also contributed to the FBI’s failure to catch Cunanan before he killed again.
Duke Miglin
Wait, there’s more. Remember Duke Miglin, Lee and Marilyn’s 25-year-old “Hollywood actor” son? Evidence exists that he and Cunanan knew each other before the murder. Although Duke and Marilyn always denied having ever met him, acquaintances of the family told Orth that there was something off about their evasions. Shortly after Lee’s death, Andrew’s friends confirmed to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that he and Duke “spoke frequently.”
And, in an interview with Orth, two of Lee’s professional acquaintances related a memorable encounter with the Miglins at United Airlines’ Red Carpet Lounge at LAX, a few years before Lee’s death. “The Miglins were on their way to Hawaii for family Christmas, and were waiting for Duke to join them,” Orth writes. “He finally arrived with a friend, who made a great impression.” When they saw Cunanan’s photo, both confirmed that he was the man they’d met at the airport.
So, what happened to Duke? Well, despite his big break in Air Force One, he didn’t pursue his Hollywood dreams for long. Instead, he got married, had kids and got into the family real-estate business. Last year, Duke insisted to a Chicago ABC affiliate, “There was no relationship whatsoever. A lot of false things were brought up and they were very hurtful, very painful, for me personally and there were attacks on me as well that I really didn’t appreciate. And I still don’t.”
Coming off the heels of two solid, yet slightly underwhelming episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is the next chapter in the saga titled “A Random Killing” directed by Gwyneth Horder-Payton.
Despite having his name in the title of the show, Gianni Versace only makes a cameo of sorts in this episode. In fact, it has very little to do with the Versace family as a whole. One thing mentioned in the review of the season premiere was the discovery that instead of the show focusing on Gianni Versace, as the first season did with its premiere character, O.J. Simpson, the show focuses on Andrew Cunanen (Darren Criss), the murderer of Versace and the lead-up to the murder, which occurred in the season premiere.
This particular episode is the show’s version of a flashback to May 1997 – before the assassination of Gianni Versace – and is about a “random” murder that takes place in Chicago, Illinois.
The opening scene is brilliantly done. It begins in Chicago with a lady, Marilyn Migland (Judith Light), returning home to discover something wrong in the house – and the disappearance of her husband, Lee (Mike Farrell). The suspense during the entire sequence is crafted magnificently. The police and one of her neighbors eventually find Lee’s body in the garage. The episode then shifts back in time to when Marilyn was leaving out of town and to Lee meeting Cunanen for his “services.”
As the show has done thus far, it highlights Lee’s struggle with his sexuality in private and this is explored in a scene that takes place in a room in his basement that appears to look like his small version of a church. During this scene, he tells the painting of Christ on the wall that he is “trying so hard,” which, in hindsight, is to be about him trying to be a straight man for his wife, but cannot contain himself and invites Cunanen over, which eventually leads to Lee’s death in which he is found wearing women’s panties and surrounded by homosexual pornographic magazines.
The episode then takes a turn that makes this one easily the best in the season so far. It focuses on Marilyn trying to process and deal with her husband’s death and how she tries to hide from it, but cannot do so. The episode also spends a great deal of time with the police and their efforts to track down Cunanen after Lee Migland’s death and the trouble they continue to have in that department. Cunanen is also a central point in the episode (since he is the show’s main character) as he is on the move.
Even though Cunanen is viewed as the “bad guy,” we see through his eyes how he is escaping and the tension-filled choices he makes, which might not necessarily make us care more for him, but rather keep us on the edge of our seats to see what he does to get out of a bad or dangerous situation for him. Cunanen also takes another life in an attempt to steal a man’s truck to lose the police, in which he is obviously successful.
With this episode embracing and highlighting the troubled efforts of the police and FBI tracking down Cunanen, spending time with the loss’s loved ones and their attempts to grieve, and Cunanen himself on the move, the intensity has picked up and the so has the quality. This episode felt much more like the suspenseful, murderous, manhunt version I was expecting to see when I started, which is clearly a big positive for me.
To make a comparison, this episode was much more in the vain of acclaimed films such as Zodiac and Se7en. In this particular episode, the performances were all fantastic and the cinematography was top-notch as always. It will be interesting to see where the next installment in this season ventures into and if it will continue to increase the tension and have enough of a backstory to fulfill the season’s mandate – although so far, the show is on track to do so.
This week’s review takes a look at the latest episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, “A Random Killing.” Spoilers follow.
The Victims
It’s May 1997, and the murder of Gianni Versace is is still three months away. Versace may still be alive in the timeframe of this episode, but he’s absent here – off somewhere living his life, still blissfully unaware that Andrew Cunanan is weeks away from destroying it all.
It’s fitting that since episode 3, “A Random Killing,” is the first Versace-less episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, it’s also the first episode of the season that feels drastically different. As this show continues to tick backwards, like Christopher Nolan’s Memento, the timeline shifts, altering itself, ever-changing. Gone are the brightly-lit beaches and pastel colored buildings of Miami Beach. In its place are the affluent suburbs of Chicago, where Cunanan has brought his own brand of destruction.
“A Random Killing” opens with a chilling, horror-movie-tinged opening sequence in which Home Shopping Network saleswoman Marilyn Miglin returns home from a business trip and quickly discovers something is very wrong. Her husband Lee was supposed to pick her up at the airport – but he never arrived. Marilyn takes a cab home, and the tension builds, and builds, and builds, to a point where it feels as if the episode will burst. Marilyn’s affluent row home seems haunted, or cursed, when she steps through the door. It’s too quiet, too barren. Things that might be perfectly mundane under normal circumstances, like a pint of ice cream left out on a kitchen counter, suddenly take on an ominous feel. Soon, neighbors and police have arrived, and what they discover is enough to make a neighbor let out a blood-curdling scream: Lee Miglin has been brutally murdered.
He’s not the only victim who loses his life at the hands of Andrew Cunanan. Later, we see Cunanan gun down William Reese, a caretaker at a Civil War cemetery. While this act is carried out on the spur of the moment – Andrew shoots Reese almost as an afterthought – the title of the episode indicates only one of these killings is random, and yet when that distinction comes up, it’s applied to the murder of Lee Miglin, not William Reese. The devil is in the details.
“I Could Almost Be”
The Andrew Cunanan at the center of “A Random Killing” is a completely different Cunanan than we’ve seen in previous episodes. At the end of last week’s episode, “Manhunt,” Cunanan’s mask of sanity began to slip as he rattled off a laundry list of all the different phony personalities he’s used throughout his life. Here, the smooth, fast-talking con artist is lying dormant while the cold, calculated predator is on full display. Andrew is on the run here – he later mentions he’s already killed two people very close to him, and later still police mention that a stolen vehicle Andrew was driving was “linked to the homicide of Jeff Trail.” Remember that name.
While we have yet to witness these two previous murders Andrew mentions, it’s clear that he’s unhinged. He’s fleeing for his life, and not really sure where to go. He ends up at the home of the wealthy Lee Miglin, a man who has seemingly be happily married for years, with a grown son – yet he’s also a man who is also hiding a secret.
Secret lives are a big theme of this season of American Crime Story, and just as Andrew has spent his entire life trying to pretend he was someone else, so, too, has Lee Miglin. The episode flashes back a week before his murder, and we see that Lee and his wife Marilyn are, indeed, happily married…yet Lee is struggling. He kneels in the homemade chapel he has tucked away in his large house, and swears to God that he tries, he really tries, to fight his urges. But it’s no use.
When Lee receives a late-night phone call from Andrew Cunanan, just as Marilyn is about to go out of town, Lee gives in to his urges, and gives Andrew permission to come over. When Andrew arrives, he skips the pleasantrees. He’s not trying to impress Lee, or lure him. Lee, seemingly oblivious to this, embraces Andrew. He wants to be loved by this young man, whom we later learn had worked as a male escort for Lee. “I’m not a fool,” Lee says, “I know it’s not real.” But he wants it to be real. He wants it to be real just as Andrew wants his constant lies about his own success to be real. Andrew senses the weakness in Lee, and like any sociopath, decides to exploit it. There’s a quick moment where Andrew has a gun raised at Lee’s back, ready to cut the elderly man down. Yet he hesitates – not out of sympathy, but rather because he realizes he can draw Lee Miglin’s death out; change it from a quick, cold slaying into a calculated act of torture. He passionately kisses Lee, then says, “You’ve never been kissed like that before, have you?”
Befuddled and under Andrew’s romantic spell, Lee whimpers that Andrew isn’t like the other escorts. “I could almost be a husband,” Andrew says, “or a partner. I could almost be. I really could…almost.”
Almost.
What follows is a horrifying sequence in which Andrew wraps Lee’s head in tape – a call-back to last week’s episode, where Andrew did the same thing with a John. From here, Andrew brutally murders lee, taunting him as he does so, telling the dying man that he’s going to dress his corpse in women’s panties and leave gay porn strewn around his corpse. “I want the world to see the great Lee Miglin is a sissy,” Andrew snarls, then adds: “What terrifies you more: death, or being disgraced?”
It’s a chilling sequence, and if the previous two episodes haven’t already destroyed any sort of empathy you might have for Andrew Cunanan as a character, surely this moment will do the trick (note: Andrew’s actions get even worse in the next two episodes, so be warned).
A Random Killing
I’m still having trouble accepting the backwards narrative of The Assassination of Gianni Versace. As the show unfolds, it becomes increasingly unclear as to why Ryan Murphy and company chose to approach this story this way. Perhaps it’s meant to emulate the way a detective investigating the murder of Versace might uncover the story: starting at the end, and working their way back. Perhaps. Yet this approach remains more distracting than innovative.
What continues to make Versace work, however, are the performances, and the direction. Darren Criss’ work as Cunanan remains stunning, even if Cunanan as a character grows more and more repulsive. Criss’ ability to slip from charming to terrifying is no easy feat, yet the actor handles this, and the other intricacies of the part, masterfully.
This week’s guest stars turn in stellar work as well. Mike Farrell, as the doomed Lee Miglin, is inherently sympathetic, making his murder all the more heart wrenching. Scenes showing Lee struggling to fight his sexual urges are handled deftly by Farrell, and the way the actor reacts to his wife telling him she always enjoys his company, seeming both touched and surprised, is one of the episode’s best moments.
The always-amazing Judith Light, as Lee’s wife Marilyn, gets the bulk of the heavy emotional lifting here, and Light doesn’t fail to disappoint. Moments after Lee’s murder is uncovered, Light’s Marilyn springs into action, taking stock of all the items Andrew stole from the house. She fights to remain strong, yet breaks down ever-so-briefly near the episode’s conclusion. This momentary sign of weakness is quickly replaced by fury. Marilyn makes it abundantly clear that everyone, including the police, whom she has influence over thanks to her wealth, are to treat Lee’s murder as a random killing. She refuses to let anyone claim that Lee knew his murderer, because she doesn’t want her husband’s name dragged through the mud. The personal items, and Lee’s life, are the only things Marilyn says she’ll allow Andrew to steal from her. “He won’t steal my good name,” she says.
There is a question of propriety here. The Assassination of Gianni Versace is not a documentary, and as a result, it’s free to play fast and loose with the facts. Yet the real Miglin family still maintains to this day that the murder was random, and that Lee had no connection to his killer. Whether or not it is in good taste for Versace to ignore this is a question the viewer has to ask themselves, and about which they should draw their own conclusions.
Like the previous two episodes, the direction in “A Random Killing” is the real show-stopper. Director Gwyneth Horder-Payton fills the episode with ominous, low-angles, the camera pointing up, warping the image above. This is an overall horrifying episode, and the first few minutes, with Marilyn wandering around her silent home, give most modern horror movies a run for their money. A real-life friend of the Miglins who went to the Miglin residence after Marilyn came home, later said, “There was a horrible feeling in the house,” and Horder-Payton is able to portray that horrible feeling through the silent, unsettling way the cameras move about the home. That “terrible feeling” starts the episode, and it doesn’t let up until the credits roll. By then, Andrew has murdered one more person, and is on the run. His next stop, as we know from last week’s episode, will be Miami. That’s not our next stop, however. We’ve already been there. We’re going backwards. Next week, we’ll learn the events that lead Andrew to Lee’s doorstep. It won’t be pleasant.
One of the most surprising things about The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is how much time the show is spending not just with Andrew Cunanan, but with his less famous victims. Prior to murdering Versace, Cunanan had already killed four men in a killing spree spanning several states, and this week’s episode (in-keeping with the show’s reverse Cunanan chronology) centers on his third victim, Lee Miglin, and briefly on his fourth, William Reese.
“A Random Killing” commits so thoroughly to fleshing out the character of Miglin (Mike Farrell)—a Chicago real estate tycoon whose ties to Cunanan remain ambiguous to this day—that Gianni Versace and his family don’t appear in the episode at all. Let’s get into five talking points from tonight’s hour.
1. Cunanan’s breath-play antics last week were a callback to his third murder.
Remember the nameless elderly man Cunanan seduced and then very nearly smothered with masking tape in last week’s episode? Of course you do. That startling sequence makes a lot more sense in light of this episode, which takes place several weeks prior and sees Cunanan murdering Miglin in a very similar fashion. In real life, it was never proven whether Miglin and Cunanan knew each other prior to the murder (the FBI considers it likely they did, which the Miglin family staunchly denies), but in the show, Miglin’s depicted as a deeply closeted regular client of Cunanan’s—and a pretty heartbreaking character in his own right.
2. Cunanan’s self-loathing emerges in his cruelty to Miglin.
Though the murder itself was brutal—a police officer notes that every one of Miglin’s ribs was broken—it’s the viciousness of Cunanan’s words that really stand out in this episode. Despite knowing theirs is purely a business relationship, Miglin seems quietly besotted with Cunanan, who in turns seems repulsed. Miglin is touchingly eager to tell Cunanan about his plans to build a 125-story tower (the tallest in the world) in Chicago and name it The Sky Needle. “I’ve wanted to share this with you for a long time,” he tells Cunanan, who all but sneers in his face, mocking both Miglin’s ambitions and his clear emotional investment in their relationship.
Later, when Cunanan brutally kills Miglin and leaves his body to be found in a deliberately humiliating fashion—wearing women’s underwear and surrounded by gay porn—I was reminded of the scene early in Episode 1, when Cunanan claims to be straight and casually throws out the F-word (“I mean, what are we supposed to call them? Homosexuals sounds so scientific.”) He doesn’t just want Miglin dead—he wants him outed and humiliated, remembered as “a pansy.” There’s so much internalized homophobia in Cunanan, and it almost feels like Miglin seals his fate when he admits to having real feelings for him—moments before Cunanan calmly confesses that he’s already “killed two people who were very close to me.”
3. The tower conversation tells you everything you need to know about Cunanan’s worldview.
Miglin is excited about the Sky Needle because he imagines families visiting together and children thrilled to ascend the tallest tower in the world. Cunanan, though, hones in on the fact that the hypothetical tower would loom over the Sears Tower, “so you can look down on the Sears Tower Observation Deck.” To Cunanan, there’s nothing more powerful than the idea of looking down on people.
The contrast between these two worldviews really comes into focus, though, when Miglin describes his fantasy of being able to visit his tower and “just roam among people, unannounced. They wouldn’t know who I was!” But the notion of being anonymous is so galling to Cunanan that he flies into a sudden rage, affronted by Miglin’s insistence that the tower is not about him. “Of course it’s about you—it’s the Lee Miglin Tower!” To Cunanan, there is no value in building anything for any reason other than putting your name on it.
4. Did a local radio station really scupper the Illinois police’s investigation of Cunanan?
Miglin is an immensely powerful figure in the community, and as such the police are all over this case, managing to track Cunanan for some time using the car phone in the Lexus he stole from Miglin. But when a local radio station runs a news item giving that information away, Cunanan is able to ditch the car—claiming his fourth victim in the process—and evade justice for another two months.
An activated car phone in [Miglin’s] Lexus was used three times the following week in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia police confirmed a news report of the attempted phone calls, angering Chisago County sheriff Randall Schwegman, who told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “Everyone who was working on [the case] was outraged. Once he heard that, he’d have been a fool to use a phone after that.”
5. William Reese is the only victim not to have an episode to himself.
But he does get a death scene that’s surprisingly affective for its brevity. Unlike Cunanan’s other victims, there was no apparent personal connection between Cunanan and Reese, and investigators concluded he was killed solely for his truck. After giving Cunanan his keys, Reese calmly and politely begs for his life before being shot execution-style in the back of the head.
Episode Three, “A Random Killing,” written by Tom Rob Smith and directed by Gwyneth Horder-Payton, is when “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” kicks into high gear.
It’s a bottle episode of sorts that spotlights the death of real estate developer and business tycoon Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell) and completely leaves out the Versace storyline – neither Edgar Ramirez, Penelope Cruz, nor Ricky Martin appear in this episode.
The episode highlights Lee’s wife Marilyn Miglin, to whom he was married for 38 years, and played by the magnificent Judith Light.
Set in May 1997, the episode opens with Marilyn, who sells beauty products on home shopping networks. “A Random Killing” is a platform for Light, who is on screen a good portion of the hour-long episode, which follows Marilyn discovering her murdered husband’s body in their Chicago home. Like the rest of the episodes this season, “A Random Killing” jumps back and forth in time as the rest of the episode shows the days that lead up to Andrew murdering Lee.
The episode is the first in this season to flesh out Andrew’s victims other than Gianni Versace. Lee and Marilyn, are fully realized people here, instead of ghosts who linger on the sidelines of Andrew’s story. (In the first season of “American Crime Story,” Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were not portrayed by actors.) It’s a powerful and risky move, as most scripted TV shows based on true crime neglect to highlight victims. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is bold for putting the victims of Andrew’s murders front and center, while never making their portrayal feel exploitative.
At age 72, the episode shows Lee’s struggles with his homosexuality as an older man who is also bumping up against his religion. In one moving scene, Lee is praying to a painting of Jesus and says, “I try. I try,” on the brink of tears.
Having accomplished much in his life, and despite a strong bond with his wife, Lee is not living his truth; the episode is a remarkable portrayal of the dangers of the closet. Having met Andrew some time ago as an escort, Lee invites him to his home while Marilyn is away on business. When Andrew arrives he’s already killed two close friends of his, and Darren Criss is as chilling and charismatic as ever.
In a tense scene, Lee shows Andrew his plans to build the tallest tower in the world, which sets Andrew off. Lee explains he wants to call the building “The Sky Needle” and not “The Miglin Tower.”
“I want to inspire people… it’s not about me,” he says.
“Of course it’s about you. It’s the tallest building in the world. It’s The Lee Miglin Tower,” Andrew says.
“It’s not about that,” Lee says.
“Then what are you showing me this for? Do you really think I want to spend all evening listening to how great you are? A great man with a great tower,” Andrew says sarcastically. He later claims Lee is trying to impress him and that their interaction is more than just a business exchange and a hookup.
Andrew then seduces Lee and brings him into the garage, where Lee’s body was discovered earlier in the episode.
“I’m in control now,” Andrew tells Lee before stuffing cloth in his mouth and duct taping his face – a tactic we saw Andrew perform in the previous episode.
Lee goes along with it, assuming it’s part of the kinky hookup. But Andrew suddenly turns violent and binds Lee’s arms and legs.
“So dominant out there. So submissive in here. So powerful out there! So pathetic in here. But you like being pathetic, don’t you?” Andrew says as he ties Lee, making him completely helpless and trapped.
Andrew then punches Lee in the face, breaking his nose, and says, “I’ve killed two people, Lee. Two people that were very close to me. I know it’s hard to believe: ‘Intellectual Andrew. Well-read, well-spoken Andrew. Well-dressed.’ But here I am. This is me.”
Andrew then whispers to Lee that after he kills him, he plans on humiliating him by putting women’s underwear on his body and surround him with gay pornography.
“I want the world to see that the great Lee Miglin is a sissy. Soon the whole world will know that the great Lee Miglin who built Chicago, built it with a limp wrist,” Andrew says. “The cops will know, the press will know, your wife will know, your children will know, the neighbors will know! Tell me something Lee, what terrifies you more: Death or being disgraced?
"Disgrace isn’t that bad once you settle into it,” he adds before slamming a bag of concrete on Lee’s body and stabbing him.
Indeed, Andrew makes good on his words to the businessman, and Lee’s body is found in the way in which Andrew told him it would be.
When the authorities tell Marilyn, she refuses to believe it and refuses to accept any possibility that Lee was gay. She also makes it clear that she does not want the press to learn how Lee’s body was found. After local police connect Andrew with Lee’s murder, police ask Marilyn if she knows him, explaining that he’s an escort and that the F.B.I. is taking over the investigation.
Light gives a powerful performance as Marilyn, and in one moving scene, has an emotional breakdown. “Am I real wife now?” she asks.
Though the episode is about Lee’s life and death, the title, “A Random Killing,” also refers to the murder of 45-year-old caretaker William Reese. After killing Lee, Andrew steals his car and goes on the run, ending up in New Jersey. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” does a stellar job of making Andrew a figure of destruction and death, showing how being at the wrong place at the wrong time and interacting with Andrew – just by chance – played a part in who he killed.
For William, it was nothing more than unsuspectingly crossing Andrew’s path. As the episode shows, Andrew spotted William at a rest stop, followed him home and murdered him in cold blood to steal his red pickup truck.
“A Random Killing” comes to a close with Marilyn on TV, ready to sell her beauty products again. A co-host explains to the audience that her husband was murdered “in a tragic act of random violence.”
“They killed my husband for a car,” Marilyn says. “…He was my legal counsel, my account, my best friend. He believed in me. How many husbands believe in their wives’ dreams? How many treat us as partners, as equals? We were a team for 38 years and I miss him very much.
"When I first started selling my perfume on television, my friend who hosted her own show gave me a piece of advice. Just think of the little red light as the man you love,” she says as the episode closes.
It’s May of 1997 now, and we fade up on a Canadian Home Shopping Network host giving us some biographical background on Marilyn Miglin, who started out as a dancer and transitioned into cosmetics when the hot stage lights kept melting her face. Her face here belongs to the great Judith Light, still her gloriously bad-ass self beneath an era-appropriate immobile inverted ziggurat of Executive Lady Of A Certain Age hair. Marilyn’s co-host introduces Marilyn’s new line, Pheromone, a direct – and, for the show’s metaphorical purposes, convenient – choice of brand name, and Marilyn is pretty pleased with her grand unifying theory of fragrance: “Perfume is about our bodies talking to each other without words.”
Marilyn’s not able to talk to anyone at her house, though; later, she’s at an airport pay phone, getting the machine. “Lee, I don’t know where you are,” she says, frowning; evidently she expected him to pick her up, but she can’t wait any longer. I mostly note the bit of dialogue above because of the Edie McClurg levels of Chicago torque on the word “are.” The camera studies Marilyn’s expensive jewelry as she says she’s going to catch a taxi…
…and then, when the taxi’s dropped her off, the expensive-looking exterior of the Miglins’ townhouse. Marilyn and her array of bags stand in the manicured mulch beside the sidewalk, apparently expecting Lee – and even if you haven’t “read back” on the case and Cunanan’s non-Versace victims, you’ve probably figured out based on passing mentions of Miglin in prior episodes (and, you know, having watched TV before) that Lee is Marilyn’s husband, and is dead – to rush out the front door full of apologies.
This does not happen, although Marilyn gives Lee ample time to correct his oversight when she flings the front door open and stands expectantly on the stoop. Nothing. She bustles inside with her things and calls, “Lee?” as the camera ensures we note the long vistas of the house; the predominantly pale-neutral color scheme of the décor; and the museum-esque tidiness of the rooms before cutting to a pint of chocolate ice cream melting insolently on the counter. Marilyn is brought up short by this, and returns to the front door to look warily inside. Passing neighbors pause to check her okay. “Something’s wrong,” she asserts, and the neighbors follow her inside. Spotting the ice cream, the Coke can beside it, and Marilyn’s clenching at them, Mr. Neighbor seems to agree that something’s off here, and tells the women to wait outside and call the police.
Mr. Neighbor begins his walkthrough of the house, calling for Lee. I find it odd initially that he doesn’t stop to salivate over the Miglins’ built-ins
but that’s because he’s spotted the “centerpiece” before I have: a ham with a butcher knife buried in it, left unwrapped on the desk in the study. Mr. Neighbor climbs the stairs to the master bedroom – more white, cream, and pale gold – and finds a disorderly master bath with a telling ring of mung around the bathtub. Next, an ankle-height shot set-up watches Mr. Neighbor hustle down the stairs to the basement; behind the door he opens with some trepidation is a chapel, and it too is messy. He has nothing to report to the women waiting at the front steps, but CPD is pulling up, and they do their own walkthrough, discovering bloody clothes in the bathroom and asking if anyone’s checked the garage. Mrs. Neighbor offers to go with the uniformed officer.
Inside, Marilyn sits, rigid, and drums her fingers in an odd way, almost like she thinks she’s supposed to have a nervous tic under the circs but isn’t really feeling it. She stares at The Telltale Ice Cream.
Mrs. Neighbor was told to stay in the alley, but sticks her head into the garage to report that the Miglins’ Lexus is missing. The uniform frowns and walks around the end of what looks like a vintage Corvette, then stops.
Inside, Marilyn hears Mrs. Neighbor’s wail of horror, and flinches. We push in on her as Mrs. Neighbor rushes into the room behind her and brings up short. As if to reflect the falling apart of everything, the cosmetics titan’s lipstick is feathering as she whispers, “I knew it.”
After the title card, it’s one week earlier, at a fundraiser for Jim Edgar for governor. The Miglins exposit for us via telling their tablemates that they’re devoted not just to one another but to one another’s careers – he helped her paint her first storefront – and Lee gives Marilyn the credit for their successes. Lee is played by Mike Farrell, who’s had some later-in-life roles the last few years in which he’s impressed; I’m thinking particularly of the Law & Order: SVU with Brenda Blethyn and Clea DuVall. I’ve been waiting for him and Light to show up in this season, because I like them both, and I like that the less “famous” victims are given a decent amount of the script’s attention and dimensioning here. With that said, by the time the groundwork of the marriage and the Miglins’ rise is laid, it’s nearly 20 percent of the episode’s runtime gone, and I wonder if this shouldn’t move a little faster. Anyway, after Edgar jokingly asks Marilyn never to run against him, Marilyn gives a lovely speech introducing Lee, but also about him, that he was one of seven coal miner’s kids who started out selling pancake mix out of his trunk. He’s a real-estate mogul, but also her partner in every sense, a great father and “a perfect husband.” Well: yeah. In the wings, Lee looks thoughtful as Marilyn calls him “the American dream.”
At home, Lee observes that the dinner seemed to go well, and thanks Marilyn for her effusions: “I wasn’t expecting that.” She’s heading upstairs, but stops to ask if he remembers what color they painted the Oak Street store she mentioned earlier. “What color?” he stalls. “That was years ago.” “We painted it pink,” she says, regarding him for a moment before going up. His smile fades; he closes his eyes and sighs briefly. Not sure what’s intended here, although I will say that you remember the color of every paint job you do yourself, especially if you are an impatient painter who sucks at it, like me. I’m not saying I detour past the paint-chip display at Lowe’s to flip off Benjamin Moore’s Harvest Gold every time I’m at that store? But I’m not saying I don’t. Forest Truffle can also suck it, while I’m up. So yeah, to me it’s somewhat striking that he’s failing this test, if in fact that’s what it is, and I don’t know why she’s administering it – he’s inattentive? she’s concerned about his mental acuity? we’re supposed to take something symbolic from the “pink” aspect?
Upstairs, Marilyn slathers her face with cold cream and begins taking her face off. I kept thinking of the end of Dangerous Liaisons, Glenn Close wiping her mouth so roughly.
Marilyn removes her lashes and, almost absently, dabs behind her ears and at her cleavage with scent while staring at her denuded face in the vanity mirror.
In the study, Lee’s on the phone: “No no, it’s just so unexpected!” He doesn’t seem alarmed when Marilyn comes in, looking curious, and tells the caller, “Those arrangements are fine! …And not before that time.” He adds that “we can discuss this at the office,” and hurries the caller off the phone; pretty good cover, but it’s obviously Cunanan on the other end. Marilyn cocks a brow: “Who was that?”
Cut to a sweaty Cunanan hanging up a pay phone, and to me realizing how…restful, for lack of a better word, the episode has felt without him up to this point, even knowing we’ve just seen Miglin scheduling his own death.
The man himself pads into the bedroom, where Marilyn is already installed with a sleep mask. He peers over at her, then covers her hand with his. She regrips so it’s more handholding, less protection.
As a red Jeep approaches Chicago, Marilyn gets ready to leave for Toronto. She asks what Lee’s plans are, while she’s away; he talks about finishing her “accounts,” catching up with a Paul…he’s sort of vague, and half-staggers to sit down on the stairs, concluding that he’ll go to work, it’s what he does: “Isn’t that what I always do?” Concerned, she sits beside him and asks what’s going on. “If you’re in one of your blue moods, why don’t you come with me?” she says. She likes it when he’s there. I like it when an actor commits to an accent; Light is currently in the middle of Pennsylvania somewhere, I think? The Chicago leaks out of the performance pretty steadily, sad to say, and by episode’s end she’s firmly back in Judge Donnelly territory…speaking of SVU. Anyway: Lee seems surprised to hear that Marilyn likes him to come along; bemused, she says of course she does. He tells her he’s very proud of her: “You know that, don’t you?” She surreptitiously checks her watch and asks if he wants to come or not; he heaves a sigh and considers it for a split second, then says no, he’s “being silly.” He gives her a kiss and helps her gather her things.
Andrew Cunanan pulls the red Jeep into a parking garage, cranks the seat back, and settles in for a nap as Astrid Gilberto’s “A Certain Sadness” starts up on the soundtrack and, at the Miglinhaus, Lee seats himself at Marilyn’s vanity with a couple fingers of bourbon and stares at himself in the mirror…then dabs some of her Pheromone behind his ears. He sips his drink and steels himself.
Later, he heads downstairs to the basement chapel and lights a candle. Kneeling before the cross, facing the picture of Jesus, he shakes his head and crosses himself. His eyes fill. “I try,” he tells his God. “I. Try.” It’s quite affecting, and yet my eye is drawn over to what appears to be a conversation pit in the back of the shot.
Very odd juxtaposition that must be true to life or they’d have scotched it as distracting.
Cunanan parks around the corner and heads to the Miglinhaus. Inside, at Cunanan’s knock, Lee zhuzhes himself sartorially and mentally at the hallway mirror, then answers the door and hurries Cunanan inside, presumably so neighbors don’t see him admitting a young gentleman at night. He hugs Cunanan warmly. Cunanan stands kind of limply; his eyes are a blank as he stiffly raises his arms to return the hug.
Cunanan’s stuffing a huge sammich into his piehole as Lee makes small talk: he didn’t expect Cunanan to be in town. What brings him to Chicago? “Work,” Cunanan grunts, departing the kitchen with the sandwich and no plate or even a paper towel to catch crumbs. Trash. Tellingly, Lee makes sure to wipe the counter before hastening after Cunanan, hesitantly telling him that “a little warning” would have been “useful,” as it’s dumb luck he’s alone in the house. Cunanan asks when Marilyn’s back; Lee naively tells him. “We have some time!” Cunanan chirps. Lee, whose combined eagerness and lack of street smarts are killing me right here, asks if he can stay the night. Cunanan, through a mouthful of sandwich, garbage-persons, “Can you shut the blinds?” Lee goes to do just that.
Lee’s in the study, getting out some drawings and saying he’s wanted to “share this” with Cunanan for a while. Cunanan leans in the doorway, rummaging in his bag for his gun, and as Lee is laying out the drawings, we go to a first-person-shooter POV as Cunanan levels the gun at the back of Lee’s head. “The Skyneedle!” Lee nerds sweetly, and whether Cunanan is touched by his enthusiasm or thinks it’s too easy a shot, I don’t know, but he stashes the gun back in his pack as Lee goes on about it being the tallest building in the world once it’s built, 125 stories, 1,952 feet. This was a real project; it was never built. The Freedom Tower would have made the conversation we’re about to hear irrelevant in the second place, but: Cunanan confirms that the idea is to build it right near Sears Tower, with an observation deck that will look down on the Sears Tower’s – thereby pretty much putting the Sears Tower out of business, at least from a tall-building-tourism standpoint. Lee never thought of it like that. After a pause, Cunanan snorts, “Please. That’s exactly how you thought of it.” Lee shrugs that, actually, he saw himself mingling amongst the families visiting it, and eavesdropping anonymously on their excitement.
But this version of pride in accomplishment is alien to Cunanan – as are actual accomplishments, really, which is why he has to shit on it, asking if it’s ever going to happen. Has he broken ground on the project? Lined up the financing? Not yet, Lee admits, and Cunanan makes a lemon face and booms, “The Miglin Tower!” No no no: it’s the Skyneedle. It’s supposed to inspire people to “reach up – it’s about that, it’s not about me.” Here again, though, Cunanan’s narcissism and his rage at those he perceives as “better” than he makes him unable to tolerate a loftier explanation, and he sputters that it’s the tallest building in the world, it’s the Lee Miglin Tower! Why else is Lee showing him these plans? That he cares about Cunanan and wants to share something he’s stoked about isn’t something Cunanan can register; to him, it’s a power play, and he brats that he doesn’t want to spend the whole night “listening to how great you are.” Lee looks at him with confusion as Cunanan continues snitting about the “great Lee Miglin Tower,” inspiring schoolchildren for eons to come, but instead of suggesting that, for a guy who clearly hasn’t bathed for several large states’ worth of driving, a “the customer is always right” approach is not just indicated here but required, Lee just says they don’t have to talk. “No, we don’t,” Cunanan says, more agreeably, but he’s not done being a twat, smirking that he knows what Lee’s doing: he’s trying to impress Cunanan – to convince himself that this is “more than a business transaction,” that there’s a genuine attraction there. Lee confines himself to pointing out that Cunanan could pretend, too. Cunanan keeps that fatuous challenging smile pasted on, then leans in for a passionate kiss, during which the camera dwells unnecessarily on Lee’s wedding band. Lee’s never been kissed like that, has he? No, Lee says, fairly trembling with desire. “It feels like I’m alive!” Oh, Lee. Cunanan points out that “most escorts” don’t kiss, then crazies that he’s not like most escorts; he’s not like “most anybody.”
Well, that’s true, strictly speaking. “I could almost be…a husband. A partner!” Lee kind of cringes, which probably won’t help him, as Cunanan goes on, “I could almost be. I really could, almost.” He’s probably trying to elevate his own status in the transaction, but Lee misunderstands, thinking he’s rubbing it in more, and says he knows it’s not real; he’s not a fool. But Cunanan makes it seem soreal. “Good,” Cunanan whispers, delighted, then proposes they “go out.” Where are they going? To make a mess, Cunanan says, leading Lee to the garage, and he doesn’t want Lee to worry about it.
In the garage, he shoves Lee up against the wall. “I’m in control now.” Lee seems a little concerned, but mostly titillated, and the proportions don’t change when Cunanan open-up-and-say-ahs a gardening glove into Lee’s mouth. Lee’s little moans of excitement make this particularly difficult to watch, especially when he reaches for Cunanan but is pushed away so Cunanan can search the tool table for masking tape. As Cunanan carefully wraps Lee’s head, Lee starts to look more puzzled than turned on, and when Cunanan’s done, Lee is lowered to the floor and bound with an extension cord while Cunanan burbles about Lee’s dominance in the outside world and submission “in here.” The torture is actually listening to Cunanan blather on about inverting the natural order, in my opinion, never more than when Cunanan smugs that Lee likes “being pathetic, don’t you.” It’s really that Cunanan doesn’t like it and can’t escape feeling it, so he has to humiliate Lee fully, crawling up his body and throttling him for a few seconds, then breaking Lee’s nose with the heel of his hand. Lee emits a muffled wail. Blood leaks out from under the tape as Cunanan announces that he’s killed two people very close to him, hard though it surely is to believe of “intellectual Andrew,” “well spoken, well dressed.” Snort. Cunanan makes a point of blaring into Lee’s ear that he knows Lee isn’t wearing his hearing aid (one more tiny humiliation before the final string of big ones), so he’ll speak very clearly: when “they” find Lee’s body, he’ll have ladies’ drawers on and be surrounded by gay porn, so that “everyone will know” the “great Lee Miglin is a sissy.” This isn’t about Lee at all, of course; it’s about Cunanan feeling like he doesn’t exist, and as Lee continues to groan, Cunanan winds up by asking tearfully which Lee fears more, “death, or being disgraced?” Lee sobs. Cunanan sits back and says, as if realizing it for the first time, “You know, disgrace isn’t that bad – once you settle into it.”
He gets up and heaves a bag of Quikrete over to Lee, panting, “Concrete can build. And concrete can kill.” So on top of everything else, Cunanan’s a C-plus writer. Roger that. He heaves the bag over his head and slams it down on Lee’s torso, then shoves it off, grabs some kind of screwdriver from the pegboard, and stab-falls onto Lee’s chest.
Later, Cunanan tools through the house, almost artfully spattered in blood. He whomps the ham down on Lee’s neatly arranged Skyneedle plans and crams meat into his mouth. Expressionlessly, he picks up the drawing of the building and tears it exactly in half, right through the tower; cut to him burning it on the chapel’s altar. The hold on the shot of the hellish flames oranging his face and dancing in his eyeglass lenses is maybe a little long.
CPD Superintendent Rodriguez marches through the press scrum at the front of the townhouse, not acknowledging questions about whether Lee knew the intruder. The crime-scene techs pause at the sight of the boss, but he tells them to carry on as he looks down on Lee’s corpse, now crimson with blood thanks to torture (apparently with a handsaw) and surrounded as “promised” with porn magazines. Rodriguez’s question about “the underwear” lets us know the rest of Cunanan’s threat was also carried out. Rodriguez sighs as the lead tech says Lee had no defensive injuries to his hands, but every single rib is broken, and says he wants no leaks; the official story is that “an elderly gentleman has been killed.”
Elsewhere, Marilyn is straightening family pictures on the mantel as a guy in a suit – presumably J. Paul Beitler, Lee’s partner – quavers that “this” had nothing to do with their business. Marilyn’s like, duh, of course it didn’t, and as Rodriguez enters, doffing his hat, she begins listing with grim determination everything Cunanan took: money, leather jackets, suits, the Lexus, the “unusual” gold coins Lee gave as gifts, a dozen pairs of black socks. It was a “robbery,” no question. Rodriguez keeps his face impassive in this gust of denial, and also when Marilyn announces to Beitler that she knows who SupRod is; she didn’t call 911, she called a police commander she knows. “We’re all here for you,” SupRod merely says, and as Beitler’s face works in the back of the shot, Marilyn announces, “Lee was alone in the house. He was vulnerable. It was an opportunistic attack.” The burglar could have snuck up on Lee, if he didn’t have his hearing aid in!
Beitler hangs his head as SupRod suggests talking later. “Talk now! Why not!” Marilyn says. SupRod gently broaches the “homosexual pornographic magazines” near Lee’s body. Marilyn barely reacts, blinking and saying they must belong to the killer. SupRod has an almost reflex cop response to that theory, observing that that would mean the killer brought the magazines with him – i.e., knowing his target/that he would need them; having been invited. It took me a minute to register the implication, but Marilyn’s right on top of it, and is not having it, gritting that she’s not interested in the murderer’s “intentions.” Catch the guy; don’t talk to her about what might “or might not” be going through his mind. “I understand,” SupRod says. Marilyn squints: “Do you.” SupRod, now a little worried: “I believe so.” Marilyn, without breaking eye contact: “Dollars. Jewelry. Socks. Suits. That’s all I’ll allow that man to steal from me.” He won’t take her good name – their good name. They worked too hard making it, together.
Rodriguez is likely relieved to escape into the crime scene, then, confirming that Cunanan not only took a bath and shaved, but appears to have slept over. He clenches, looking at the bed, as the lead tech says, “He must have known that Marilyn was coming home.” He clenches again when he finds two of his detectives chowing sandwiches in the downstairs hall, and politely informs Marilyn – who is seated beside her son, Duke, and now wearing a different suit, so the timeline here is a bit shuffly – that she doesn’t have to feed his officers. She chirps that a neighborhood restaurant wanted to help, and donated the food. Then she introduces Duke as “a Hollywood actor!” (hee/aw), and mommily upsells his career as an abashed Duke is like, “‘Aspiring,’ Mom.” He does mention he’s in Air Force One, but notes on Marilyn’s proud “He plays a pilot!” that there are a lot of pilots in the film. Heh. Miglin Jr.’s film career didn’t go much of anywhere, possibly because the murder of his father took him off track, possibly because most film careers…don’t; Cunanan apparently suggested to several people that he and Duke knew each other and were working together, a contention the Miglins have firmly denied.
We cut away from this awkwardness to a uniform finding Cunanan’s Jeep, festooned with parking tickets, around the corner. She peers in to see a map of Chicago and a copy of Out Magazine, and runs a plates check. A hit comes right back: it’s stolen, and linked to the homicide of Jeff Trail. And there’s more good news in terms of leads, as two detectives tell SupRod at the cop shop, namely that Lee’s car phone turns on whenever the car is turned on, which lets them track the car’s location. Based on the pings to date, it looks like he’s heading to New York. SupRod wants this intel kept in a cone of silence – the FBI, them, that’s it – and the three of them exult that wherever Cunanan goes, “we got ‘im.” (Ron Howard, wearily: “They don’t.”)
NYC’s Versace storefront. Cunanan, attired in one of Lee’s suits, I guess? Although Mike Farrell is much too tall for them to fit him properly, but that’s one of those things fictionalized narrative never gets right about borrowed clothing – anyway, he regards himself smugly in the shiny sign on the door and goes in to do some browsing. There’s a home-goods display set up on a dining-room table, and as he’s about to pull up one of the chairs and leaf through South Beach Stories by Gianni and Donatella, the chair makes an echoey skrronnnk along the floor. Darren Criss nails the jumpy “did anyone see that” reaction on Cunanan’s part; it’s just a perfect, tiny smackdown of the striver, satisfying to a viewer who has come to enjoy Cunanan’s discomfiture but also a nod to the hundreds of these tiny mortifications that may have contributed to his becoming a monster. A graffiti-ish rendering of Gianni in the book shifts the soundtrack from peppy retail jazz to the foreboding strings of Cunanan’s madness.
SupRod asks the assembled at the Miglinhaus if they’ve heard of Cunanan. Marilyn says no; who is he? He’s an escort, SupRod tells them (Beitler looks nauseated, and I honestly can’t tell if the actor is just trying to register in a scene dominated by Judith Light’s charisma; if we’re supposed to deduce that Beitler either knew for sure or strongly suspected that Lee may have had extracurricular desires; or if he didn’t know but is now homophobically revolted). Cunanan is wanted in connection with two homicides in Minnesota. “What does this have to do with Lee?” Marilyn asks. Cunanan stole a Jeep from one of the victims; it was found a block from the Miglinhaus. SupRod puts a mugshot of Cunanan on the coffee table. Marilyn says confidently she’s never seen him before; Duke looks uncomfortable, though it’s hard to know how to take that. The camera pushes out from the side of Marilyn’s face to focus on Duke’s, and on Duke hanging his head, as SupRod says reluctantly that they have to understand the case is no longer solely a CPD matter, that the FBI is now involved. Marilyn says all they care about is catching Lee’s murderer. Beitler stares straight ahead, clenching his jaw. Marilyn looks at him and at Duke all, “…What?”
Outside, SupRod is told that Cunanan’s on the move, but the cell phone towers have tracked him to outside Philadelphia. PPD and the FBI are “closin’ in.” SupRod looks over his shoulder at the living room and mutters, “I hope they’re ready.”
Beitler lets himself into the master bedroom just in time for Light’s Emmy reel, as Marilyn updates her blush and snaps that she knows what they’re saying about her. Why hasn’t she cried? Where’s the grief, the emotion? She didn’t love him. “How could a woman who cares so much about appearances appear not to care!” Beitler, probably thinking about the “allegations,” sighs that people say all kinds of nasty things at a time like this. “Especially at a time like this,” Marilyn adds, when you’re weak, when you’re down. She scrabbles around on the vanity top for a lip pencil and snaps, “How dare they say our marriage was a sham,” and points at Beitler’s reflection with the lipliner: “Lee and I – shared our whole – lives.” Breaking down, she talks about the adventures they shared, and how he rescued her when she was lost. “I…loved him,” she weeps. Beitler approaches and puts a hand on her arm. “I loved him very much!” Marilyn claps her hands to her face and starts smearing around the makeup she’s just been carefully touching up, and gasping through a possible panic attack, she snarks, “There. Is that better? Am I a real wife now?” She stumbles to the window and sits on a stool to say that they had a fairytale life, makeup straggling across her face, and as much as I always love Light and as much as I appreciate the script underlining the emotional wreckage Cunanan left in his wake (as all murderers do), the scene is quite stagey – like, there’s really no point to the blocking except to move Light around, and there’s really no point to those theatrical kinetics or whatever, because this is filmed. Light can move this ball by herself, you don’t have to block her like this is the Penfield Academy production of Mother Courage. Just run the camera.
Exhibit A: “We didn’t even fight,” delivered with an almost ashamed glance at Beitler, as if to acknowledge that that could be construed as a lack of passion. See? Light has this well in hand. She chews her upper lip with her lower teeth as she says that Lee never lifted a finger (to her, I believe she means). “But I will,” she says, getting up and crossing back to the vanity – again, for no apparent reason except that The Big Book Of Scene Anatomies appears to have called for it. There’s no “family connection” to “this Cunanan,” she says. “We’ve never heard of him.” Beitler looks stricken some more as Marilyn fairly orders him, “It was…a robbery. A random killing.” She begins to straighten up the vanity top.
It’s not so neat at the cop shop, as one of the detectives has to tell SupRod that Philly radio is running a story about the car phone, and that they’re tracking the signal, which means Cunanan will know they’re onto him – at which time the episode director leafs through TBBOSA to “Reaction Blocking, Frustrated,” drops a fingernail onto “shove everything off desk while shouting angrily,” and nods. And that’s what SupRod does. Come on, guys.
Cut to the Lexus, where Cunanan hears said report; hilariously starts whanging the receiver of the car phone on the console; then screeches over to the shoulder to wrench the antenna off and hurl it into the underbrush. Which is not sketchy at all, except it totally is, and a passing car’s passengers give him a “tf you doing” look. He pulls out again, then quickly heads into the entrance of Fort Mott State Park. (It’s in Pennsville. If you think of the state of New Jersey as a grandma in a rocker – this is the image our eighth-grade earth-science teacher always used; don’t know why it’s a grandma – Pennsville is at the southwestern tip of the state, basically Nana’s nipple.) He parks, and scans the families in the parking lot for targets/prospective carjackees…or waits for the park to empty out of extraneous witnesses, which appears to have taken a while. Cunanan finally sees an older lady who looks likely, and has his gun out, but then her husband appears and Cunanan thinks better of it. Enter the red truck, and a ponytailed caretaker stopping to pick up the mail. This is William Reese, the caretaker of the on-site Civil War cemetery. Cunanan scrambles back to the Lexus and follows Reese into the cemetery, and I am not a botanist, but I’m pretty sure this sort of tree is not native to Jersey.
Let me know in the comments, but if I’m right, it seems strange they wouldn’t just get permits for a local graveyard. Anyway, Reese parks next to the chapel building and heads inside, stopping to remove a weed from the flowerbed near the door as Cunanan is parking along the other side of the building. Reese is settling in in the office when Cunanan comes in, gun drawn, and says pleasantly that Reese should stay calm, nobody’s going to get hurt: “I’m here to steal your truck.” He asks for the keys, but tells Reese not to reach for them and to get away from the desk. Then he asks if there’s a downstairs. There’s a basement. “Can I lock you in there?” “Door’s got a lock, yessir,” Reese semi-answers.
The “basement” is in fact properly – and fittingly, alas – a crypt.
Cunanan orders Reese onto his knees. Reese tries to humanize himself for Cunanan, mentioning his wife and son and that he’d sure like to see them again, but Cunanan is Cunanan, and shoots Reese mid-sentence. He looks around at the crypt with that Starman blankness, then heads upstairs, grabs his backpack from the Lexus, and peels out in the pickup.
Back to the set of CHSN, where the co-host from the opener extends the HSN “family”’s deepest condolences and explains to viewers that Marilyn’s husband was brutally murdered. Marilyn says she had to “think long and hard” about coming back, but believes Lee would have wanted her to: “You see, his name is on these bottles too.” He was her legal counsel, her accountant, her best friend. He believed in her, she says, wiping her eyes, then wonders how many husbands really believe in their wives, treat them as equals and partners. “We were a team,” she quavers, caressing a bottle of perfume, “for 38 years, and I miss him very much.” The co-host asks if she’s able to go on. Marilyn nods, pulling herself together and remembering a piece of advice she got from a friend who hosted a TV show: “Just think of the little red light as the man you love.” Push in on Marilyn, staring sadly at the red light, then closing her eyes.
Sarah D. Bunting’s old-school recap would like to avoid ‘hamming it up’ wordplay here, but as American Crime Storyinvestigates Lee Miglin’s demise, it does make some melodramatic choices.
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