I recall two times when people are having sex, both gay and both wide shots.

What else do we have on the horizon that could upset this for limited series?  The first full review that came out for this was Dan Fienberg’s, which Metacritic scored as a 70.  That sounds about right to me.  (He was admittedly harsher on the first season than most; his review was an 80 for that, ten points lower than the Metacritic weighted average and it did not make his top ten for the year.)

It was just last year that the category was so packed and it seems pretty empty right now.  Mosaic might be nominated or it might go the way of The Young Pope, which was also quickly burned off by HBO in January.  Godless has its fans, but its Golden Globe and PGA shutouts do not inspire much confidence.  Will have to watch the three screener episodes of Trust that I have, but who knows if that will even be eligible?  Other possible nominees are The Long Road Home, Manhunt: Unabomber and Gunpowder, but none of those are winning.  Genius missed PGA, but maybe the next season is amazing?

The other full review that we have so far is much more positive.  New York Post critic Robert Rorke singles out “an excellent Finn Wittrock” and “future Emmy winner Jon Jon Briones”.

“The performances of the leads are outstanding, but special mention must be made of Criss, who beautifully captures Cunanan’s ability to tell the biggest lies anyone has ever heard and literally charm the pants off anyone he sets his sights on. He’s a lot like Patricia Highsmith’s Mr. Ripley, but Ripley was a fictional creation. Cunanan […] was sadly all too real.  Murphy’s ability to showcase well-known performers in surprising cameos continues apace with gems from Mike Farrell, Max Greenfield and even Cathy Moriarty as a wily pawnshop owner.  The Assassination of Gianni Versace is more personal and heartfelt than Murphy’s The People v. O.J. Simpson, and proves that when it comes to seductive allure laced with menace, no one in TV is Murphy’s match.”

Watched the last two screeners that the press has, so I have now seen all but the finale of this nine-episode season.

#7 was the first one with an arc for Cruz that ran through the episode.  She was better in #2 though.  Then of course she, Ricky Martin and Edgar Ramirez were absent from #8.  It would not even surprise me if they all missed the finale.  It is not so much that their story is done as it was never theirs in the first place.  This is the story of Andrew Cunanan as played by Darren Criss, as well as the story of his victims, in reverse-chronological order.  Versace was his last, so we got to spend some time with Ramirez/Cruz/Martin early on, then the show moved on to before Cunanan had anything to do with Versace.  But because Ramirez/Cruz/Martin are big names under contract, the show randomly checks in with them.

Criss has been in all eight episodes, Ramirez has been in five (including one with only a cameo) and Cruz, Martin, Cody Fern and Finn Wittrock have been in four.  Somebody vaguely recognizable plays Cunanan’s mother in three episodes, but there were no credits on those ones and I cannot place her.  Max Greenfield (Schmidt on New Girl), Dascha Polanco (Daya on Orange is the New Black), Jay R. Ferguson (Stan on Mad Men) and Giovanni Cirfiera were in the first two.  Annaleigh Ashford (Betty on Masters of Sex) and Michael Nouri (Flashdance, Summer’s dad on The O.C.) were also in two.  Mike Farrell (Emmy nominee for M*A*S*H) has a notable one-off appearance as the husband of Judith Light’s character.

#1 and #8 are the best episodes.  Matt Bomer directs the latter and it the only one that runs over an hour.  The story of Cunanan’s childhood and teenage years, it features an excellent one-off guest performance by Jon Jon Briones as Cunanan’s father.  Who knew that Darren Criss is half Filipino?  I suppose that people usually do not think that I am half Asian either.

Sex is minimal in this show.  There is a lot of shirtlessness in the opening two Miami-set episodes.  Criss has some nice dancing and nude swimming sequences later on in the season.  Violence is not so bad, considering that this is a show about a serial killer.

I have seen six episodes so far.

Penelope Cruz:
Episode 1: Finally arrives on private jet 37 minutes in
Episode 2: Leaves on private jet 10 minutes in, later in flashback
Episode 3: Absent
Episode 4: Absent
Episode 5: Only in opening 4 minutes
Episode 6: Absent

Cruz might end up submitting the second episode because it has her grieving, but it is not a showcase like the third episode for one-off guest Judith Light, the fourth for recurring guest Cody Fern (halfway between Chris Zylka and Domhnall Gleeson) or the fifth for recurring guest Finn Wittrock.  Max Greenfield is unrecognizable in the first two episodes.  Donatella often appears with her brother Santo, played by Javier Bardem doppelgänger Giovanni Cirfiera.

Ricky Martin is also missing in the third, fourth and sixth episodes.  Ramirez is missing in the third and fourth, appears in a dream sequence in the sixth and spends most of the first episode on a gurney.  The point is that this is decidedly Darren Criss’s show, even though the credits in the first two episodes are:

Starring Edgar Ramirez
Darren Criss
Ricky Martin
and Penelope Cruz

The rest of the screeners did not have credits on them, so I am not sure if people are still credited when they do not appear.  Criss is very good, although it is not far off from his performance as Blaine Anderson on Glee.  If Blaine were a serial killer instead of a singing teenager, this would be it.  There is talk in the Call Me by Your Name thread about how gay guys in film are often played by straight guys seemingly playing straight guys who are apparently gay.  Suffice it to say that this is not that.

As for the show itself, it does not live up to The People v. O.J. Simpson or even Bette and Joan.  Cult was more entertaining.  Despite the title, the show follows Andrew Cunanan on his cross-country killing spree.  Is he worthy of such examination though?  He is a compulsive liar, so nothing that he says matters.  It is a bit repetitive over so many episodes.  His victims fit a pattern, but they are all innocent.  It is sad that they randomly got killed, but it is sad when innocent people randomly get killed.  The show is supposedly about the pursuit of the American dream and the failures of institutions and—most effectively conveyed—how being gay in the nineties sucked, but Andrew being a homicidal psychopath transcends all of that as far as I am concerned, two-thirds into the season.

There is some jumping around early on, but for the most part, episodes are ordered reverse-chronologically.  The first eight minutes of the show have almost no dialogue, but the score never stops.  It would be a good reel to submit in cinematography as well.  The premiere is very well directed by Ryan Murphy, but the show is less dynamic after that.  The second episode, directed by the cinematographer, has an excessively warm filter, like when Breaking Bad would go to Mexico.