#americancrimestory:assassinationofgianniversace

[wigwurq]

WIG REVIEW: AMERICAN CRIME STORY - THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE

It’s finally here!! After months and months of random set pictures and Entertainment Weekly photoshoots, we can finally bask in the wigs of this true crime nonsense. As with Twin Peaks Return and Stranger Things, I will be updating this entry with weekly wig reviews and adjusting whether the wigs wurq as a whole. Let’s discuss! 

EPISODE ONE

We begin in the quiet morning of July 15, 1997, the day Gianni Versace was murdered. Yes, this show literally starts with a bang. But first, we see Versace going through his normal morning rituals of breakfast with his staff in the gorgeous museum he lives in. Straight up: Edgar Ramirez looks EXACTLY LIKE VERSACE. Granted, he is about a decade younger than Versace was but this wig WURQS. You know I am not a fan of 99.9% of male wigs but this thing is great - excellent texture and seams and no weird flipping out in the back as with most male wigs.

We also get some flashback wigs to the early 90s when Versace met his assassin, Andrew Cunanan (the truth of which I definitely question) but sadly, the internet refuses to give me these younger Versace wigs (which are also good) so please enjoy another Versace in 1997 pic. 

Darren Criss is also excellent, if wigless, as Cunanan. Though he is definitely about 1000% more attractive than the actual Cunanan. Also can this show please explain to me who this rando couple is that he hangs out with? One of the issues with this show is it is hella disorganized about its storytelling (and I actually know a lot about this story - I think someone who doesn’t would be lost) but I guess we have a whole season to find out who the hell Annaleigh Ashford is supposed to be playing. FINE. 

Also excellent (but wigless) is RICKY EFFING MARTIN as Versace’s partner. He spends most of this episode being drenched in blood while having to answer homophobic questions from cops AND then being totally bitch slapped (sadly only metaphorically) by Donatella.

AND THEN THERE’S DONATELLA. Penny Cruz, good lord. The Versace family has already publicly denounced/disowned this TV show but Donatella should be SO EFFING HAPPY that this goddess is playing her. At first glance, this is obviously a terrible wig but let us all remember what Donatella’s hair looks like...

So...actually pretty accurate.

The seamwork is a little iffy but I’m still going to give this wig a pass since the color and texture are spot on as is Penny Cruz’s performance.

EPISODE TWO

I see what they’re doing here: rather than going ALLLL the way back to the beginning, we’re just going back episode by episode until we finally get why Cunanan did what he did...I think? I dunno. Anyway, in this episode we travel back to 1994 when Versace was diagnosed with some mystery disease (mmmmmhmmm) which wikipedia will have you believe was ear cancer...

We also get Penny Cruz in a flashback wig WITH BANGS and learn that she was always a dick to Ricky Martin. BOO!

Meanwhile, in the not-so-distant past (of 1997), Cunanan has arrived in Miami with full Laura Branigan underscoring to recreate select scenes from Staying Alive with some shady old dudes he finds on the beach. He also gets propositioned to start a beachside florist business with a cocaine addict.  Seems legit!

Also despite being one of the FBI’s Most Wanted, a severe paper shortage (and/or some patriarchal bureaucracy) has lead to 0% FBI flyers with Cunanan’s picture on it to be made MUCH TO THE CHAGRIN of Daya from OITNB. TRUST DAYA, random dude from Mad Men! UGH.

Oh, and Ricky Martin and Edgar Ramirez are totally in LURVE. Aw. 

EPISODE THREE

This episode didn’t involve one goddamned Versace and was essentially an hour long “for your consideration” episode for Judith Light getting an Emmy FINALLY. PLEASE? The fact that Judith Light has never won an Emmy is a whole other issue but I’m hoping this episode will fix that. 

As this show moves slowly back in time, we begin in May 1997 when Chicago real estate mogul Lee Migler was murdered by Cunanan. Judith Light plays Marilyn Migler, the “queen of perfume” and straight up queen of my heart. She also wears the only wig in the episode. 

Yes, this wig is your average ‘90s power ‘do and the texture is all over the place but it is not a far cry from how the real Marilyn Miglin’s hair looked and might actually be an upgrade? Everything Judith Light does is an upgrade. 

In general, this is a really upsetting episode and showcases how many mistakes were made that led to Cunanan murdering more people (don’t tell the murderer that you are tracking him via his fancy car phone, for instance?!) but Judith Light’s subtle blonde waves and fake fingernail tappings were everything. 

EPISODE FOUR

Okay this show is officially really upsetting. And I already knew this upsetting story fairly well to begin with. UGH.

This is the second week without a Donatella wig (which is upsetting enough!) but this episode is all about how Cunanan murdered his first victim, and then, after a week of Stockholm Syndrome that could rival Beauty and the Beast, his second. We’re still moving back ever so slightly in the timeline so the whole Versace story (which IS in the title...) is really just becoming the Cunanan show. 

And wigless though he is (there are actually no wigs in this episode!) Darren Criss is definitely a revelation: he is both sinister, charming, ridiculous, and heartbreaking at the same time. Gurlfriend wants that Emmy, henny. 

This dude who plays David is also really good and his haircut/blonde highlights definitely give me bad high school flashbacks.

Not for nothing, Aimee Mann is in this episode singing a Cars cover in a midwestern roadhouse while David tries and fails to escape from Cunanan through a bathroom window. And yes: that sentence was PEAK Ryan Murphy. 

EPISODE FIVE

VERSACE IS BACK! Thank god. The last few episodes have been hella depressing (don’t worry - this one is too!) but at least we get some fabulous wigs from the Versace family. This episode is mainly in 1995 and is all about coming out of the closet! Which was actually not that fun back in 1995 despite being the same year that cinematic gay masterpiece Too Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar! came out. I think everyone in this episode just needed a hug from Miss Vida Boheme.

Anyway, Penny Cruz and her fabulous BANGS as Donatella are none too pleased about Gianni wanting to come out, though she tells him it’s not because she hates his partner Antonio (it’s totally why) but because she thinks it’ll damage the business. Because we all know how much people have historically hated gay fashion designers (eyeroll emoji). UGH DONATELLA.

Anyway, Gianni tells Donatella to STFU and goes ahead with a splashy Advocate spread (that’s how you do it, gurl!) which makes Ricky Martin really happy and it’s nice though ultimately super depressing since this real-life happiness was obvs shortlived. But regardless: Gianni’s wig still wurqs.

Elsewhere in wigless storylines, we learn all about Cunanan’s first murder victim, Jeff Trail, and his decidedly NOT splashy coming out story as a member of the US Navy during the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell years. This episode has the kitchen sink of upsetting things: hate crimes, suicidal thoughts, anti-gay comic books, self-inflicted tattoo-removing wounds, sad gay bar scenes, and finally finding who you think is your gay ally.... who then ends up murdering you a couple years later. Cheers! Sobbing.

This episode leads us right up to where we started in the last episode....with Cunanan murdering Trail. But not before stealing his gun.....dun dun dun.

EPISODE SIX

We begin this episode in the lap of luxury and also with Darren Criss’s lap as he skinnydips his way around Michael Nouri (OF FLASHDANCE FAME)’s La Jolla estate. At this point (in 1996), Cunanan is a rent boy (who barely puts out - good deal!) for Nouri’s older millionaire character.  

Anyway, Nouri is throwing Cunanan a birthday party and invited all his friends over, plus a few of Cunanan’s friends and we get the return of his rando galpal played by Annaleigh Ashford. Despite being described as his best friend, gurlfriend straight up asks Cunanan if he is 100% gay now. GURL HE IS LIVING WITH AN OLD MAN AS A RENT BOY. DO THE MATH.

Basically the whole party turns into a lie-filled ruse to impress Cunanan’s ain’ true love, David, who is far more interested in talking to Jeff. Oh, also Lee Miglin shows up which I found highly dubious but regardless: Ryan Murphy presented us with 3/5 murder victims at this bday party. What a fete!

Jeff and David clearly were starting to see through Cunanan’s veneer, but no one had his number like Nouri’s queen on the scene friend (played by SNL alum Terry Sweeney) who READ CUNANAN FOR FILTH. The library was open!

Sufficed to say, it wasn’t the best party. Still: Nouri offered to keep Cunanan on as his rent boy but of course, Cunanan got greedy and asked for a bunch more perks (including but not limited to being Nouri’s sole heir...)....so it was byeeeeeeeee to the La Jolla lifestyle and HELLO to a really depressing studio apartment.

Of course, this in no way stops Cunanan from continuing to do his favorite thing: lying and spending money he doesn’t have! Despite a lavish weekend in LA, David made it clear that he was not THE ONE which sent Cunanan into a crystal-fueled drug sequence (UGH RYAN MURPHY) which offered us the only glimpse this week of Gianni’s fabulous wig. And the only wig of the week! Bring back the wigs!

In the end, Cunanan ends up broke and desperate at his mom’s ultra-depressing apartment and we get a glimpse of where he got his crazy genes. Mama did NOT wanna hear about her goldenboy having any issues so...it was byeee and off to Minneapolis (which for the record does actually have an opera house if you were wondering...)

EPISODE SEVEN

So this episode involved a LOT of Donatella wig action and I am here for it. Circa mid-90s Donatella is busy at work NOT designing the dresses she’s supposed to design and instead telling actual designers to read her mind and design the dresses she’d like to design. Since the only one with a glass ball into Donatella’s noggin is Gianni hisself, he steps in to show a bitch how it’s DONE.

The two collaborate and by “collaborate” I mean Penny Cruz stood around while a belt was placed around her neck and BOOM - the Versace belt dress is created! Somehow? 

We are gifted with this rando storyline because Versace is suffering from a bout of ear cancer and is priming Donatella to take over the company JUST IN CASE which obvs foretells when she actually has to take over the company a few years later. But mostly it just shows Penny Cruz in a pretty good wig wondering if she’s pretty enough to model a dress, which by all accounts is peak nonsense. 

Spoiler: she wears the dress and it is a big hit! Well, with fashion critics anyway but apparently not with the buying public (which we’re left just to assume they work out since this dress ended up being a hit?) Basically, this storyline is kind of a waste of time other than the fact that we are gifted with Donatella’s LEWK above which is everything the 90s loved in hair - bangs, wisps, Elaine Benes updo poof, and chunky hair clip. WURQ!

Things are decidedly less glamorous (and less wiggy) over in Cunanan’s storyline. He’s working at a pharmacy where they won’t even let him spend his downtime reading Vogue magazines. RUDE! Even ruder: his mom buys LOW COST ICE CREAM which does not befit his fancy schmancy pharmacy ways. SUPER RUDE! So to fuel his high-cost ice cream needs (I assume?) he tries to get a job at a prominent (?) male escort company but doesn’t make the cut because gay men who get escorts apparently don’t want Asians (?!?!?!?!)

So Andy of course takes matters into his own tentacles and becomes his own damn pimp! He achieves his high class hooker status pretty easily: he randomly looks through some newspapers to identify rich gays, buys some opera tickets, conveniently meets a rich gay man, becomes his house boy, witnesses his murder, convinces the victim’s friend to move from Arizona to La Jolla and buy a needlessly expensive house and become HIS house boy. EASY! 

Whilst out celebrating his (secret) high class hooker status, he meets his ain’ true love (and 2nd murder victim): David! They spend a romantic (?) night together at a fancy hotel which seems to be Andy’s only time with a dude his own age and David charms him with a story about telling some rando chick he’s gonna build her a house (which Andy conveniently retells as his own story to his rich gay dude). What a tangled web!

EPISODE EIGHT

We begin this episode in 1950s Italy. Sure! There, a young Gianni Versace sketches dresses and sucks at school, and everyone speaks English for some reason (seriously, Ryan Murphy - you couldn’t have these actors speak Italian with subtitles? True weirdness). Anyway, he loves making dresses which is also what his mom does and in a true forward-thinking twist, this old-school Catholic Italian mama seems to not mind that her son wants to follow in her dress-making ways. Ok?

Over to 1980s San Diego, things are decidedly less accepting and 1000% weirder. We finally meet Andrew Cunanan’s dad, Modesto. He is a true psychopath who moves his family to a fancy new house, inexplicably gives young Andy the master suite (but retains ownership of the closet - metaphor much?) leaving him and the missus (who he abuses physically and mentally) to have a tiny bedroom and his 3 other kids who he treats like garbage into what appears to be a pantry with bunk beds. Everyone accepts this behavior somehow because he’s a complete lunatic monster who would probably murder them at any moment. Like father like son, eh?

Anyway, we get to see Andy’s high school days at a private school in La Jolla (this school is also my husband’s alma mater if you seriously want the library to be open....). At said school, Andy is gay bashed but also unabashedly takes his shirt off and showboats at school keggers in full Michael Jackson cosplay so I guess it wasn’t all bad? 

Oh but you know what is bad? When your already awful dad steals a lot of money from old ladies and then flees the feds AND the country leaving you and your mom (and your 3 unaccounted for garbage siblings) completely penniless and you have to fly to Manila just to see for yourself if your father is terrible and then he’s even MORE terrible and you give yourself a really bad hand wound and have to go home and get a job at a crappy pharmacy. Pretty bad! Which is not to say that this is bad enough to make you later kill 5 people because there’s still no excuse for that. 

EPISODE NINE

We’ve finally come to the end, and what a long strange trip it’s been! After moving backward in Cunanan’s narrative every week and, frankly, making him far too sympathetic a character for someone who murdered five people, we end as we began: with Cunanan murdering Versace. But this time we move forward instead of backward - to Cunanan’s final, pitiful days. 

Immediately after murdering Versace, Cunanan hottailed it to a conveniently abandoned houseboat. We are not told how he discovered this houseboat, or how its closet magically has clothes that fit him and its refrigerator has champagne that pops for emphasis at exactly the right time because Ryan Murphy isn’t interested in such trivialities when he can focus on how many TVs it has (3! so go ahead and shoot one!) and how many Cunanan ghosts are in the bedroom (1! well, 2 if you count Cunanan after he kills himself...) Indeed, after being found out by the caretaker of said boat and running out of dogfood to eat, and quite literally being smoked out by police, Cunanan, as we all know, shot hisself. Though not before seeing a lot of footage of hisself on TV, being doublecrossed by his father again, and ultimately giving hisself a really butch makeover (at which point my eyes absolutely rolled out of my head into the water). They rolled back long enough to see yet ANOTHER totally made up scene of Cunanan and Versace at the Opera and then they fell out again. Yes, Ryan Murphy wants us to sympathize with this monster but let’s not shall we?

Instead, let’s focus on the triumphant return of JUDITH LIGHT! YAYYYSS KWEEN! As Marilyn Miglin, wife of Cunanan’s 3rd victim, she, like the rest of America, rightly wants to know why the effff the FBI hasn’t found Cunanan yet and just WANTS THIS TO BE OVER SO SHE CAN SELL HER DAMN PERFUME, MMMMKAY? Bitch has priorities, and I’m here for them. I will say that this show does rightly shed a light on how much authorities really effed up this case - from revealing that they were tracking Cunanan through Miglin’s car, leading him to ditch it and murder a rando caretaker with a special needs son for his truck (SOB) to not listening to Daya and refusing to print enough WANTED posters in Miami, not realizing that Cunanan used his own name to sell one of Miglin’s coins at a pawn shop and essentially not stopping him before he killed Versace. Anyway, Judith and her perfect  woman-of-a-certain-age 90s wig is serving PERFECTION and had better be remembered come Emmy award season.

Also Daya from OITNB was back (yes I already used this picture - this is literally the only picture available of her in this show). Anyway, she interviewed Ronnie (OH RONNIE!) about Cunanan and made sure he knew that she knew about those 2 gay clubs in Miami. Ronnie was NOT HERE FOR IT and had prepared a lengthy monologue about 1990s attitudes toward gay society which essentially shut down the entire FBI for a full day I think.

Speaking of shutdowns, somewhere in Milan, Penny Cruz as Donatella in a flawless blonde wig was getting ready for Versace’s funeral but not before throwing some extra shade at Ricky Martin (seriously most of this show was about everyone being such a dick to Ricky Martin!) She told him that no, he couldn’t go live in Versace’s Lake Como house, because, uh, the Versace board wasn’t on board with it? Ricky Martin then got some more shade from a rando priest at the funeral and then took a bunch of pills and wine and was found half-dead by a maid and we’re led to believe he also died. Which is pretty messed up since this dude is actually still alive and I’d like to believe he spent the last 20 years playing bocci with George Clooney.

Anyway, in Donatella’s final reveal, she tells her husband (who, like most dayplayers on this show is essentially just furniture) that on the day Versace died....SHE DIDN’T TAKE HIS PHONECALL! DUN DUN DUN! I guess this is supposed to be some big surprise but honestly, this isn’t even as cold as every single thing she has done on this show to Ricky Martin. She then takes her flawlessly flatironed wig to the Versace mausoleum where she looks into the Versace logo and I swear to god for a second turns into Medusa. FAIR. And...then we see Cunanan’s crypt in a long anonymous hallway and then the whole thing feels like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark which kind of makes sense since Cunanan, like the lost ark, is full of haunted ghosts and violence but...what the hell Ryan Murphy?!?! THE END!

VERDICT: WURQS!