‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 7 Recap: Two of a Kind

“We must be talked about, or we are nothing.” —Donatella Versace, to the Versace staff

“For me, being told ‘no’ is like being told I don’t exist. It’s like I disappeared or something.” —Andrew Cunanan, to Jeff Trail

“Is this normal? Is this normal enough?” —Gianni Versace to his sister Donatella, on creating a less unique ready-to-wear version of the haute couture dress they designed together for her

“It’s just a name they made up to sound special.” —Andrew Cunanan to his mother Mary Anne, on Häagen-Dazs ice cream

“It needs confidence.” “It gives confidence.” —Donatella and Gianni, on the dress

“So you can hold your own at a dinner table conversation.” “I am the dinner table conversation.” —an escort agency owner and Andrew Cunanan, on Andrew Cunanan

“I want the world to see you in a way that you have never been seen before.” —Gianni to Donatella

“Oh, if they could see me now.” “Who?” “Everyone.” —Andrew Cunanan to Norman Blachford

“This dress is not my legacy. You are.” —Gianni to Donatella

“He’s a good boy. He’s always been a good boy.” —Mary Anne on Andrew Cunanan

“Ascent,” the seventh episode of ACS Versace, is the one where my admiration for what writer Tom Rob Smith has accomplished with his scripts and structure for the series shifted into something approaching awe. Returning to the Versaces’ world of high fashion for the first time since Episode 2 (their appearance in Episode 5 centered on Gianni’s coming out, not their work as designers), it creates a series of parallels between the the artist and the man who would murder him that are all the more striking for how different they are in intention and affect.

When Donatella tells her employees “We must be talked about, or we are nothing,” it’s a demand that they raise their collective artistic bar, creating things that are bold and new. When Andrew tells his friend and future victim Jeff that rejection makes him feel like he doesn’t exist, it’s a cry for help that neither Jeff nor Andrew recognize as such — a sign that if who he is isn’t working, he’ll simply steal ideas from others to create a man who gets told “yes” instead of “no.”

And that’s exactly what he spends the episode doing. When his Filipino heritage costs him a job with an escort agent who cloaks anti-Asian racism in capitalist realism — she says her clients don’t want “Asians With Attitude,” then mocks his promise to work harder than all her other escorts with “this isn’t a sweatshop, sweetheart” — he rechristens himself Andrew DeSilva, Portugese-Italian-American. When he hears his new flame David Madson tell a beautiful story about promising to build a loved one in pain a house where they can be safe, he claims the story for his own and repeats it almost verbatim to Norman Blachford, his latest rich older conquest. Donatella and Gianni busted their asses to shift the fashion paradigm; Andrew works just as hard to shift into whatever paradigm other men have already created for him.

“Andrew DeSilva,” meanwhile, echoes the Häagen-Dazs incident, in which Andrew throws the off-brand ice cream his mother bought for them to the floor rather than eat an inferior product. Yet he knows every last detail of how the name “Häagen-Dazs” is a fugazi, selected by the company’s Polish-Jewish immigrant founder to sound vaguely Danish (it doesn’t, but you can convince people it does), both in tribute to Denmark’s actions in protecting Jews during World War II and to sound like a high-end dairy product to American consumers.

His angry shout of “I WANT THE BEST!” when he destroys the cheaper ice cream (which his mother, heartbreakingly, eats off the floor without batting an eyelash) shows that he feels as strong about this as Gianni does about the integrity of his showstopping design when Donatella suggests making a simpler version to increase sales to women who are less bold about being “the center of attention.” “Well then this is not a dress for them!” he yells, in part because he’s angry, and in part because his illness has begun to affect his hearing to the point of near-deafness. (When he breaks down and cries after realizing he suddenly can no longer hear his sister and his partner Antonio talking to him, it’s a magisterially upsetting performance from Édgar Ramírez…as is Darren Criss‘s performance when Andrew breaks down after his mother covers for him when he shoves her into a wall and breaks her shoulder blade.)

Both men are obsessed with having the best, and suspicious of normies. But Gianni is intent on creating greatness himself; he resents the faking of greatness to please the masses. Andrew, by contrast, will happily accept fake greatness if that’s what it takes to separate him from the hoi polloi.

Here we reach the nature of their statements about how others see them and their loved ones. Andrew weasels his way into the life of millionaire Norman Blachford, encouraging him to move to San Diego, purchase a preposterous house, and let Andrew live in and decorate it with him. When he stands on the balcony he didn’t buy, he believes it’s his ticket to the place where, as he told his mom, “They all look up at us, and we look down on them.” The triumph and the resentment are inextricably linked. That’s a world apart from Gianni, who genuinely doesn’t care how other people feel about him. He simply wants to express himself and celebrate everything he finds wonderful about his sister — her talent, her intelligence, her drive, her looks, her power — so that others can celebrate it too.

Gianni isn’t kidding when he tells Donatella she is his legacy. She’s his muse, his business partner, his co-creator, and (as we see in an adorable anecdote about holding her on his shoulders so she could watch a performance) his kid sister. If, as it seemed at the time, he might succumb to his illness, this brilliant and beloved woman will take their shared name and make it her own, carrying his company into the future by transforming it into her company. To quote another great show about a killer, family is everything.

Andrew thinks so, too. He brings up his father in conversation constantly, but tells a different story every time. He dotes on his mother, when he’s not leaving her behind or berating her ice-cream purchases or shoving her across the room. In a very real way he’s his mother’s son: He has all of her desperate need to be needed, but unlike her he has the cunning and charisma to do something about it. And given how different things might have gone had she reported the true origin of the injury she sustained at his hands, she winds up being just as crucial to the Cunanan legacy as Donatella is to Versace’s.

There’s one more thing to say about this remarkable piece of work, once again directed with stately elegance by Gwyneth Horder-Payton; one last parallel to point out. This one doesn’t involve the Versaces. It involves Lincoln Aston, the real estate and oil mogul Andrew hooks up with the night he first tracked down and made a move on his intended target, Norman. (Norman had a business trip to make the next night, and Andrew decided to make the best of it.) It also involves a drifter Lincoln picks up at a gay bar and brings home, who then does this to him:

Andrew witnesses the attack, and the killer witnesses him, but neither wind up saying anything about their encounter to the police after the killer flees and turns himself in. There’s a potentially obvious reason for that: The encounter most likely never happened, and it’s an invention of the show that rhymes the macabre coincidence of Aston’s murder by a stranger with the similar bludgeoning death Andrew inflicted on Jeff Trail years later.

But ACS Versace only invents when all the parts are right there in front of them. The entire episode uses the resonating frequencies of Andrew and the Versaces to show how Andrew would do anything to be noticed, admired, loved, remembered, special; how fury kicks in when he isn’t; how he’ll lie, cheat, and steal ideas and identities to ensure his success. Why wouldn’t his career as a murderer require a little outside inspiration, just like everything else he does?

Which brings us to the final parallel, a callback to an event that hasn’t even happened yet. The ambition, the ego, the anger, the chameleonic ability this episode portrays — they’re what transform this…

…into this.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch ACS: Versace on FXNow