by Miles Behn

Well, it’s official. I am definitely hate-watching How to Get Away with Murder. Yes, I’m as surprised as you. How did a show with this much potential go down so quickly? It couldn’t have been the terrible writing, the worse acting, and the corny soap-opera twists, right? When did I start watching the CW?

Last week we left our heroes all set up to get their murder on. Michaela almost slapped her future mother-in-law (I’d slap her too if she called me a stubborn bitch), and Laurel’s steamy romance with Frank turned sour when she discovered his secret girlfriend. Nate (Annalise’s scorned ex-lover) told Rebecca that he knows she’s not the murderer. They schemed to take Sam down. That makes sense. An ex-cop tells a young girl to go snooping around a potential murderer’s house? I guess we needed to find a motive somewhere. Believability is HTGAWM’s specialty.

Fortunately, we open on a pretty powerhouse scene. Annalise kicks Sam out of the house, after discovering just one too many lies. Sam falls back on his boring defense (“this is the last lie, I swear,” sure thing, buddy), but Annalise is taking none of it. She finally gets to call him out for her years of self-doubt. How can a marriage that started with infidelity be anything but a sham? When Sam finally starts hurling insults back, Annalise pushes back her tears and drops the bomb. “I’ve been screwing another man.” Yes! Deception as a weapon, I love it!

It’s refreshing to see a woman use her infidelity as a battle-axe, swinging it around like someone unhinged. Too often we see female infidelity as a sickness, women confess their discretions through sobs, begging for forgiveness. Annalise doesn’t need forgiveness—she’ll fire right back at you. Sam turns violent, wrapping his hands around Annalise’s throat, but she’s still not giving up. “Kill me!” she screams. Sam backs down, but his words are just as violent as his actions. He makes a point of calling Annalise “a piece of ass,” knowing that she would “put out.” Without explicitly saying it, I think the show is taking a moment to talk about the exotification and sexualization of black women. Sam falls short of calling Annalise a jezebel, but the implications are there.

Annalise leaves, and Michaela shows up with her stolen trophy. She fails miserably at reading a room (if I met an angry man in his dark house at night, I’d get the hell out of dodge), and insists on staying to talk to Annalise. Rebecca tries to sneak up the stairs, and again, clueless Michaela spills the beans. Rebecca locks herself in the Keating’s bedroom, and Michaela calls Wes. A fight breaks out when the study group arrives, and Sam goes over the upstairs railing. Is that how he dies? He falls over a railing? Please rename the show How to Get Away with Second-Degree Manslaughter.

The study group discusses what to do next, but no one actually confirms that Sam is dead. No one calls an ambulance; no one takes a pulse. More bickering ensues, until finally—Sam’s not dead! And he’s strangling Rebecca! Wes strikes him on the back of the head with the trophy, and he’s down for the count. Ok, fine, you can have your title back.

Hooray! We finally know how the murder happened. The rest of the episode drags on, replaying scenes we’ve seen throughout the season. It feels predictable and forced, none of the additional information seems at all significant. I think the goal was to set up as many possible conflicts as they can for later in the season (Connor’s DNA in the sink after getting sick, the witness that beeps at Wes in the street, trackable cell phone calls), but the plot isn’t interesting enough for me to care. We know all of these things; stop being repetitious.

Our one big bombshell was that Annalise is in on the murder. It makes re-watching the episode that much more enjoyable. Every decision she makes is to manipulate her odds, to build the group’s trust in her. It’s impressive to watch her seduce Nate for her alibi, to lie to Bonnie the next morning, weeping into the phone, to have no remorse when she finds Sam’s body in her living room. This all means that Annalise is pulling the strings, which should prove interesting when we come back next year. Plus, witnessing Viola Davis’ performance is rather remarkable. The show needs more evil Annalise—she’s brilliant.

How to Get Away with Murder is on hiatus until late January, so I guess we’re supposed to stew in our excitement until then. I’ll keep watching it, but I can’t promise it won’t be a hate-watch. Let’s all be serious with ourselves, we’re only here for Viola Davis. And maybe Connor. But unless things heat up in the latter half of the season, this show might go up in flames just like Mr. Darcy’s body.

Favorite quote:

Connor to Michaela, after she loses her engagement ring: “Shut up about the ring, Frodo.”

Miles Behn is a writer and blogger living in Minneapolis. She currently runs the blog Staving Off Disaster. Follow her on Twitter, @milesbehn.

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