Line #1 YMMV/TheAssassinationOfGianniVersace


1	* {{Anvilicious}}: Homophobia and the societal demonization of gay people/gay culture is bad. If you didn't get the message from explicit statements to that effect, the show goes on to the blame Andrew's predation on the marginalization of his victims in society. The show depicts them as too afraid to come forward about minor concerns and yellow flags concerning Andrew in fear of the public ridicule, shame, family fallout, and legitimate loss of their livelihoods that potentially outing themselves would cause.
2	* BrokenBase: The VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory nature of this series has divided fans. On one side are those who are appalled at the liberties the show has taken (including details about Cunanan's relationships with his victims, which the show created from whole cloth) while others are pissed at the fact that the book the show is based off of (''Vulgar Favors'') promotes controversial rumors that the show takes at face value, such as Versace having AIDS (which the show hints at via vague scenes which are later shown to reference to Gianni's well-documented fight with cancer) and knowing Cunanan beforehand (for which there is no evidence, besides Cunanan's own, decidedly-unreliable testimony). Other fans argue that, given the dearth of information available about why Cunanan carried out his crimes, liberties would have to be taken in order to make the show compelling.
3	* DracoInLeatherPants: Andrew is played by the attractive Darren Criss, eliciting perhaps more sympathy than the show intended and leading some viewers to coo over scenes of Andrew and David together without a hint of irony.
4	* EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory: A popular interpretation of the series, that is referenced in numerous reviews of episodes of the show, is that Ryan Murphy is using the murders of Andrew Cunanan less as a true crime story drama, but as a springboard to explore the homosexual experience of the 1990's and how dangerous it was to be gay, even during an era when gay acceptance started gaining mainstream traction.
5	* HarsherInHindsight: In the midst of this series about a case where the FBI performed notoriously poorly and missed numerous opportunities to bring the perpetrator in, came the Parkland school massacre, in which they also turned out to have ignored numerous reports that the shooter was dangerous.
6	* {{Squick}}: The murders are shown in full violent detail, plus the final episode has Cunanan desperately licking garbage after being unable to eat all day.
7	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The series could be really called "The ''Assassin'' of Gianni Versace" since its main focus is clearly focused on Andrew Cunanan. Versace himself works as an accessory, framing character, which is a pity because the circumstances of this SelfMadeMan who became a global celebrity are quite captivating but only shown sparsely.
8	* TooBleakStoppedCaring: It's the story of one of the biggest failed manhunts in American history, many of the characters introduced will end up horribly murdered within one or two episodes of their introduction, and Cunanan, who gets most of the focus, is so relentlessly cruel and manipulative that it's very hard to sympathize with him even when he's portrayed in a more complex light. UsefulNotes/GianniVersace himself is a sympathetic and rather compelling character but is [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter hugely]] OutOfFocus in most episodes after the first one, and the rest of the other victims get only an episode or two of characterization before they too are killed.
9	* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical: While the show is more about Andrew than Gianni Versace, the show does a very good job of humanizing almost all of Andrew's victims, giving all but William Reese one episode devoted to them. From the episodes to the title of the entire series, the show seems determined to not center Andrew which, for a psychopath fixated on his relative lack of success in comparison to other gay men, is pretty political in of itself.
10	* TheWoobie:
11	** The Miglins. Lee is a rich and successful man who's also in the closet during a time when he cannot afford to be out, and his attempts at being gay discreetly cost him his life and wrecks his reputation posthumously. Marylin is his wife and widow who is forced to wrestle with her grief publicly and try to make sense of her husband's sudden death.
12	** "House by the Lake" introduces poor David Madsen, Andrew Cunanan's long-suffering crush, who desperately wants Andrew out of his life but instead ends up being killed by him.
13	** Antonio D'Amico, Gianni Versace's lover, loses the love of his life in the very first episode. Besides having to deal with the grief, he also has to contend with Gianni's homophobic sister, who ruthlessly cheats him out of his inheritance and ousts him from the company within days of Gianni's funeral despite having being his partner for 15 years.

Context YMMV / TheAssassinationOfGianniVersace