Where Kaye, her ​“prop­er” WASP-wife ana­logue, is a blonde, col­lege-edu­cat­ed school teacher who (at least at the out­set) loves Michael uncon­di­tion­al­ly, embody­ing both famil­ial inno­cence and a ​“New World” kind of fem­i­nine con­sumeris­tic con­tent­ment (she’s shown buy­ing Christ­mas presents, orga­niz­ing trips, going to the the­ater, get­ting ready to set­tle down with Michael), To Die For goes out of its way to stress that Suzanne is only par­tial­ly edu­cat­ed (“junior col­lege” her father reluc­tant­ly admits), and anti-mater­nal, a seduc­er of school chil­dren, a would-be work­ing woman des­tined to fail­ure by her own van­i­ty and shal­low­ness. As the pre­vi­ous quote sug­gests, many reviews con­tin­u­al­ly empha­sized Suzanne’s lack of intel­li­gence – or, per Nation­al Review, ​“just the right amount of dumb­ness” – and it’s this dimwit­ted­ness, paired with an overde­vel­oped sense of elit­ist enti­tle­ment, that leads to Suzanne’s ulti­mate demise. ​“Vague­ly fem­i­nist emo­tions stir in my breast,” David Den­by wrote of this aspect of Suzanne’s char­ac­ter (some­what iron­i­cal­ly giv­en his own misog­y­nis­tic descrip­tion of the char­ac­ter), ​“Hen­ry and Van Sant have hal­lowed [her] out, as if an ambi­tious dri­ven woman need­ed to be exposed as a jerk. What would hap­pen if ​“Matt Dil­lon were the ambi­tious one?” he asks. Well, he might have been Michael Corleone. 

At the same time, Suzanne is no Kaye either. While Kaye’s WASPy puri­ty and inno­cence frame her as a poten­tial oasis of all-Amer­i­can­ness for Michael, Suzanne’s sur­face-lev­el sim­i­lar­i­ties to Kaye are framed as a ster­ile trap for Lar­ry. ​“She’s so pure and del­i­cate” Lar­ry ini­tial­ly mar­vels, com­par­ing her looks to a frag­ile chi­na doll, ​“You just have to look at her and you wan­na take care of her the rest of your life.” But Suzanne doesn’t want Larry’s care, she wants inde­pen­dence and suc­cess, and she will kill to get it, despi­ca­ble in part because the movie posits she was nev­er smart enough to make it. When Lar­ry asks whether she wants kids, Suzanne spits, ​“If you want­ed a babysit­ter you should’ve mar­ried Mary Pop­pins.” She’s bewitch­ing, but dead­ly, a fem­i­nine mon­ster who’s repeat­ed­ly asso­ci­at­ed with witch­es through cuts to Bell, Book and Can­dle on TV in the back­ground and the use of Donovan’s ​‘Sea­son of the Witch’ at the film’s con­clu­sion. Like a witch who enchants men for her own pur­pos­es, Suzanne is hyper-per­for­ma­tive and über-prag­mat­ic, using the racist, clas­sist, elit­ist log­ics of tele­vi­sion as her yard­stick for life. 

Suzanne views her doll-like ​“ice queen” beau­ty as a means to an end, weaponiz­ing her sta­tus as an avatar for the tele­vi­su­al benef­i­cence Kaye types typ­i­cal­ly rep­re­sent. She reli­gious­ly pre­serves her pal­lor (or her ​“pure” white­ness in con­trast to what she calls the ​“eth­nic” dis­ad­van­tages of anchors like Con­nie Chung), con­stant­ly tries to lose the five pounds the cam­era adds, and wears her pas­tel miniskirts and kit­ten heels like an army uni­form, no mat­ter how schlub­bi­ly her cowork­ers may dress for the office. She tells every­one around her to ​“opti­mize” them­selves to ​“suc­ceed,” and final­ly uses ​“trail­er trash” teens to kill Lar­ry. Lack­ing the excus­es Michael has for his actions, she weaponizes the famil­iar nar­ra­tive true crime tropes her Kaye-like exte­ri­or offers – inno­cence and vic­tim­iza­tion – turn­ing them on her hus­band and draw­ing the cam­eras she so des­per­ate­ly craves in the process. ​“Who are they gonna believe?” she asks prim­ly, ​“I come from a good fam­i­ly.” One review put it this way: ​“What jury would con­vict such an attrac­tive and pop­u­lar TV weath­er girl? (ask O.J., he’ll tell you).” 

Only Larry’s sis­ter, Jan­ice (Illeana Dou­glas), sees through this del­i­cate façade, call­ing Suzanne ​“an ice queen” and ​“a four let­ter word: C‑O-L‑D, cold.” Where Michael Corleone’s sig­na­ture cold­ness is pre­sent­ed as an exten­sion of the Amer­i­can cap­i­tal­ist imper­a­tive, Suzanne’s sta­tus as an ​“ice queen” is pre­sent­ed as a mon­strous exten­sion of that all-Amer­i­can medi­um of ​“New World” moder­ni­ty, tele­vi­sion. In this sense, Suzanne’s rel­a­tive ​“cold­ness” is her defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic and the prin­ci­ple that uni­fies the film’s themes – as Mar­shall McLuhan sug­gests, tele­vi­sion is a cool medi­um, mes­mer­ic and pas­si­fy­ing, and, icy though she may be, it’s her ​“avid­i­ty,” her pas­sion­ate desire to make it (her fail­ure to tru­ly embody Michael’s busi­nesslike ​“New World” men­tal­i­ty) that fails her. ​“She looks very frag­ile and del­i­cate right?” Lar­ry tells Jan­ice when they start dat­ing, ​“But when we’re– when I’m… the details are too graph­ic, but she’s like a volcano.”