In the first season ofAmerican Crime Story,Cuba Gooding Jrs O.J.
Simpson was like snowball rolling down a mountain.
His trial gathered together every wild idea about America, race, gender, class, celebrity.
Credit: Matt Dinerstein/FX
The Assassination of Gianni Versacemoves in different directions, backwards, and inwards.
Wednesdays third episode tracks Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) further back in time from the titular murder.
But this episode also feels more intimate, miles away from the media circus ofthe bloodsoaked premiere.
Much of the action in A Random Killing takes place in one location, a townhouse in Chicago.
Its home to the Miglins, an old married couple with old married secrets.
Lee (Mike Farrell) is a real estate tycoon.
Marilyn (Judith Light) owns a cosmetic company.
Its great castingandgreat stuntcasting.
We meet Marilyn in front of the cameras on the Home Shopping internet.
She is an entrepreneur-performer peddling fragrances and a certain idea of herself.
My Lee is the American Dream, she explains.
Pay attention to one of Marilyns first lines, from the Home Shopping segment.
Perfume, she says, is about our bodies talking to each other without words.
The Miglin marriage is built on some wordless talking.
And there is love here, a mutual feeling of profound pride.
Like many of the main characters inVersace, Lee lives inside some variant of the closet.
When Marilyn leaves, Andrew arrives.
Mike Farrell is heartbreaking in the scenes with Criss.
And he radiates shame when Andrew cuts through the facade.
you’ve got the option to pretend too, says Lee.
Farrell gives that desperate line deep melancholy.
How much of his life is pretending?
Andrew kisses him, ravenously.
Youve never been kissed like that, have you?
How did it feel?
Lee, exultant: Feels like Im alive.
The murder is violent, and pushes A Random Killing into a higher state of melodrama.
Concrete can build, says Andrew with a flourish, Concretecan kill.
Lines like that feel overripe, come close to portraying Cunanan as horror-film character.
We shared all kinds of adventures.
We rode in hot air balloons.
When I was lost in the desert, he rescued me.
How many couples can say they have that kind of romance?
The episodes final act is boldly unstructured.
We follow Andrew across state lines into his most random killing; all he wanted was a truck.
But his victims last words resonate throughout the episode.
Im a married man, he says.
We have a son, Troy.
Id very much like to see them again.
The mention of a family activates something.
Andrew pulls the trigger.
All those families, those children…I could just roam among them, eavesdropping.
Its a generous image and a lonely one: A man apart, hiding in plain sight.
Andrew himself had told Lee something that could be equally revealing.
I could almost be a husband, a partner.
I could almost be.
The portrait of this marriage is complicated, free of cliche or simple answers.
How many husbands believe in their wifes dreams?
Marilyn asks in the final scene, returned to the Home Shopping data pipe.
How many treat us as partners?
Its a truly demolishing moment.
Lights performance such a wonder, nails tapping on formica, makeup as body armor.
She turns to face us, explaining a lesson she learned about living on camera.
Think of the little red light, she says, As the man you love.
The man is gone, but the red light remains.
