Welcome back to my weekly review and recap of “How to Get Away with Murder.” To catch up on previous coverage, click here.
While far from my favorite show on television, this series more than most sweeps me up into the heart of it’s own hype. Having left us on not one, but two cliffhangers during the winter finale (a series best episode) the show has a lot to catch up on and a lot to explain as we find ourselves back with the Keating Five and Annalise herself, all reeling from the past events.
I feel like I can’t keep track anymore of who is lying to who and I think the Annalise thread where she hallucinates a baby being dropped off at her doorstep only works because of how good Viola Davis is, but here are some things that stood out to me.
- Wes was interesting! One of the biggest issues that the show has had since the very beginning has been it’s inability in making Wes an intriguing character. This was troublesome considering her began the show as something of a co-lead with Annalise but only grew to be more and more irksome as the show went on, his obsession with Rebecca soon defining the character. Now however, after all that he’s done and all that Annalise has done to worm her way into his head, he’s lost it a bit. Him being someone that Annalise would truly be frightened of makes him instantly a stronger character to watch and Alfred Enoch runs with it, dropping many of his tics that have stuck out in the past and instead playing Wes’s deterioration with an unflinching certainty. Now, finally, Wes and Annalise are the gripping duo the show has wanted them to be since the very beginning. Annalise’s hollowed out accusation that Wes ruined her goes both ways, as both are considerably more damaged for having known one another.
- While I thought the Keating Five all having family dinners at Frank’s each night seemed a bit odd, even if it is all to save face, I thought some of the other character bonding moments played well. Laurel taking care of Wes was nice beat, especially as we learn she covered for him in shooting Annalise and was then tasked by Annalise to watch him. I especially enjoy the idea of Connor looking after Asher, especially as the latter buries himself in his own delusions of what he thinks happened to his dad. Connor has often been the quickest to cut another down (along with Michela) and Asher has never been written to be his favorite person so it’s surprising but also nice to see Connor being a bit more empathetic in this regard. It’s certainly more interesting than seeing him once again fall to pieces. Although, at this point, it’s alarming how well everyone is handling covering up more murders. Hopefully the upcoming episodes will look further into how they’re handling the stress of it all.
- Annalise is a wonderful character and while she is undoubtedly the main antagonist of the series (in my mind) she is also a character we want to root for. The fact that she was able to pull so many strings to work in her favor and protect Bonnie, Frank and the Keating Five while under the influence of pain killers was remarkable to watch play out. She didn’t get to where she is without being more intelligent than the people around her, and her being not one step ahead but five at any given moment makes her instantly more threatening but also fantastically powerful. Caleb and Katherine quickly fall to her will and everyone else falls in line. Even better is that we’re finally learning more about her past and despite all the dizzying twists and turns of the episode we leave the episode with two more nuggets of information. One, that Annalise did in fact know Wes’s mother when he was child-something that we’d come to suspect-and two, that Annalise herself was pregnant when they met. That throws a wrench into what we understand of the character.
It’s a bit of a wobbly start to the back half of the season where everything is going to be non-stop action from here on out but it’s ridiculously addicting from the minute the episode starts to the minute it ends. Hopefully next week will bring more (any) clarity.
7.5/10
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