‘American Gigolo’ Episode 7 Recap: Whodunnit, Who Cares

Here’s a quick question for you: Remember when American Gigolo was about being a gigolo?

Admittedly, it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it situation. Since his exoneration for murder and reemergence from prison, Julian Kaye has, by my count, gone on precisely one date with a client. They skipped out on a high-school reunion and had sex in a dive-bar bathroom before she revealed to him that she’d once accidentally killed someone, putting something of a damper on the evening. He coached her through her guilt and escorted her to the doors of the high school, yes, but that was where their evening ended. 

All the other sex work we’ve watched Julian/Johnny perform has been via flashback, and much of that coerced while he was a juvenile. To the extent that his titular job is a factor in the series at all, it’s purely as context, the world in which the various crimes, lies, betrayals, and heartbreaks with which the show is more concerned emerge from. The killing for which Julian was framed; the death of his high-school girlfriend upon her involvement in this other part of his life; his complicated relationships with fellow veterans of the trade Lorenzo and Isabelle; his continued dealings with Detective Sunday, the cop who put him away and now feels guilty about it; his child with former client-turned-girlfriend Michelle Stratton; his son running away with an older woman, that older woman’s murder by one of Michelle’s husband’s employees, and his kidnapping by a second such employee; the revelation that the woman he was accused of murdering was the sister of the girl who killed herself: All of these things stem from Julian’s life as a gigolo, without actually providing us with any insight into or commentary on that life. He could just as easily be a (very sexy) cop, or teacher, or paleontologist.

It’s frustrating! Come on, guys, it says “American Gigolo” right there in the title!

This week’s episode (“Atomic”) is, I think, where several slowly mounting frustrations I’ve had with the show finally come to a head. It’s not just that the show has proven to be a murder mystery much more than an exploration of an equally glamorous and sordid and workaday job, the kind of job that doesn’t get much non-sensationalized treatment on television — it’s that this mystery has proven increasingly self-referential and hermetically sealed, with characters from different segments of the story suddenly proving to be intimately connected. Every murder mystery is a puzzle, but this one increasingly feels like one of those children’s puzzles with only a handful of pieces, their slots die-cut for ease of placement.

For example, we learn this week that Lisa Beck — Julian’s teenage girlfriend, who seems to have gone to work for his old madam Olga and subsequently killed herself in Olga’s bathtub — was discovered not just by Julian but also by Isabelle, Olga’s niece turned heir and successor. 

What’s more, Janet Holmes, the woman Julian was accused of killing, turns out to have been Lisa Beck’s sister, using an assumed surname. In the week leading up to her death she made a whole bunch of calls to Olga, her employees, and her clients, presumably in order to track Julian down…and tipping off whoever ordered her murder and pinned it on Julian.

And that’s not all! Remember McGregor, the weird-lookin’ dude who abducted Julian and Michelle Stratton’s missing son Colin and held him for ransom? He was there the day of Lisa’s suicide, and helped clean up the crime scene by removing little Isabelle’s bloody shoes. In the present day, Isabelle calls him the moment she learns from Julian that Colin has been kidnapped, recognizing his description of the abductor and his vehicle. The episode ends with Isabelle showing up at the hotel where the pair are holed up. (Richard Stratton’s dogsbody lawyer Panish, who killed Colin’s girlfriend and is thus responsible for much of this mess, winds up absconding with the ransom money Richard ordered him to pay McGregor to get the kid back and getting pinched for it.)

Let’s see, what else: Sunday accidentally breaks a date with Paloma (not a wise move, insofar as that lady is a looker) before tipping Julian off to the connection between Lisa and Janet. Julian angrily confronts Lorenzo about perhaps setting him up to take the fall with Janet, and Lorenzo angrily retorts that from now on, Julian’s on his own. Julian vaguely remembers being drugged and passing out during his date with Janet. Sunday learns that McGregor was present at the crime scene that night, though she doesn’t yet know his name or his connection with either Isabelle or Richard. Richard and Michelle candidly discuss the fact that she’s never really loved him. And Julian goes to the Strattons’ house to tell them both what he knows.

So that’s where we’re at: with everything refracting back at itself, everything connected, everything a closed circuit. Personally, I think it defeats the purpose of telling a story about a guy whose job inherently involves meeting and forming intimate (if brief) connections with tons and tons of people. I think it defeats the purpose of telling a story about a guy with this job in particular, eliding the nature and specifics of that job, which is surely where the most interesting aspect of the story can be found. (After all, you can get a murder mystery out of anyone.) I think it flattens the story to have effectively created a world where only half a dozen people matter or factor into the story in any substantial way. Give us some red herrings, at least, instead of crafting a world in which the only suspects are, well, the only suspects! Or lay off the mystery thing altogether, the way Paul Schrader’s film did, making the whodunnit a distant second consideration versus how the “it” in the whodunnit affects the main character. Give us a gigolo worthy of the title.

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.