Friends, for the first time this season, How to Get Away With Murder is giving me shades of the problems I had with its freshman season. By the end of last night’s episode, “Skanks Get Shanked,†I was thoroughly confused, and although I know that all will be revealed in due time, that doesn’t change the fact that at 11 p.m., I was staring at my TV screen the way I do when I try to make one of Rachael Ray’s 30 Minutes or Less meals and it’s been two hours and I still haven’t boiled a pot of water properly. Seriously, I don’t know what the hell happened on HTGAWM, which characters know what, and one story line that had the potential to snatch my hair clear off my head and turn my follicles into a dust pad on a Swiffer Sweeper ended being kind of anticlimatic. Still, there (Frank in a tank top) was (Frank in a tank top) plenty (Frank in a tank top) in (Frank in a tank top) this (Frank in a tank top) episode (Frank in a tank top) to (Frank in a tank top) get (Frank in a tank top) me (Frank in a tank top) excited, so let’s talk about it all, shall we?
We open with Annalise being placed inside an ambulance. She’s losing lots of blood and is nonresponsive, but her wig looks so impeccable that it deserves its own Black History Month stamp, so I’m impressed. No way is she going to die, but I’m still scared because Viola Davis is so good at being motionless, as evidenced by the next scene, which is a flashback to four weeks prior to her being shot. She’s lying underneath the water in her bathtub until she’s startled by her ringing phone. It’s Nate. She answers and JK, it’s Nate wife, Nia (!!!), and she’s all like, “Heathen, reveal thyself.†So Annalise throws on a new wig, some makeup, and her freshest dress to go meet Nia for the first time at the hospital, which makes sense because if you are going to confront the wife of the husband you’re banging, you have to look cute. You can’t look like everyday is laundry day because that’s just disrespectful.
Annalise arrives at the hospital, and it seems like Nia is going to chew her out. She doesn’t. Instead, she asks Annalise to put her out of her cancer-stricken misery and kill her. See, I always avoided being a side piece not just for moral reasons, but also because of my biggest fear: the scorned woman and her friends videotaping themselves beating my ass like I’m one of those uncouth heauxs on Jerry Springer and that clip ending up on WorldStarHipHop.com. Life ain’t good if that WorldStar clip is the only credit on your IMDb page. Well, folks, it turns out that fear is small potatoes to what Nia just did. This is biggest cautionary tale against starting an affair. Message received, Universe! And it’s clear that Annalise received it as well, because she looks stunned and then she leaves.
She arrives to her office, and there is a teenager named Zoe telling a sob story about how she accidentally stabbed her best friend to death 50 times. My eyes done broke from giving so much side-eye. Clearly this child is a lunatic, but maybe there is an explanation to all this. I doubt it, but we’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime, Asher is not around because he’s too busy making a deal with Prosecutor Sinclair, who is continuing her quest to take down Annalise. AWK. WARD. But it’s not as awkward as Levi and Michaela talking dirty to each other on the phone. He gets her to say, “Spank me, Daddy.†Maybe it’s just me, but when people call their lovers Daddy, my vajeen dries up like an endangered lake that Morgan Freeman is going to provide narration about in a documentary. People, please don’t do this! There are so many other things to call the person who is blowing out your back on the regs. Baby. Boo. Honey. Big Man. And if you’re fooling around with a woman, no “Mama†shit. The same nicknames work, but if you’re feeling adventurous, you can call her by her full government name, including her maiden name. Leave that “Daddy/Mama†mess for some creepier version of Flowers in the Attic, please. Thank you!
Anyway, once Michaela is done with Levi, she meets with Caleb to practice for trial. Annalise is hoping that Michaela’s boobs will get Caleb to open up to her, but Michaela keeps those things covered like she’s trying to smuggle snacks from Walgreens into a Magic Johnson theater. Catherine interrupts them, and I’m pretty much certain that these siblings have done the deed despite Caleb’s instance that they have not. Ew. Speaking of ew, Wes shows up at the hospital to bother Nate. He wants to make sure that Nate is staying on top of the Rebecca death. Um, ding dong, Nate’s wife is dying of cancer in front of Nate’s face, so excuse him if he’s not Matlock-ing all over town to solve the case of the dead, low-budget version of the lead singer from Evanescence.
Back to Annalise. She is still haunted by her conversation with Nia. And who can blame her? Nia laid it on thick by saying that Annalise owes her this after all she’s done. Ouch. This guilt trip is throwing Annalise off her game when it comes to the Zoe case. Anna is zoning out in court, is not her ruthless self, and is overly melancholy. Anna’s not the only one who isn’t herself. Asher has straight-up been avoiding Bonnie and not coming into work. I hate that Asher and Bonnie are breaking up! The only person who seems to be worth a damn this episode is — SHOCKER! — Laurel. She was suspicious of Zoe, so she stole Zoe’s phone and found a video. Naturally, Laurel heads over to Frank, who is just wearing a tank top that I wish was made out of Fruit Roll-Ups so I could eat it off him. Turns out in the video, Zoe, her friend Molly, and two other girls are talking and laughing about killing their teacher, soooooooooo, Zoe did kill her bestie and is dumb enough to videotape her talking about the people she wants to kill. Damn.
Annalise is shown the tape, and she says, “Let’s just destroy it and make sure there are no other copies,†the way I say, “It’s 12:15 in the morning.†Zoe’s parents have the same reaction when Anna shows them the tape, so if it take a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to let a psycho killer live their best life, which is taking someone else’s life. O … kay. Understandably, this freaks Connor out because Zoe can and will kill someone else if she’s not put in jail. Annalise pretty much tells him to moveon.org and Laurel defends Anna. Quite frankly, I’m surprised it took this long for someone to be like, “Uh, maybe what Annalise has been having us do is messed up.†Again, the character transformation that Connor has been going through since the pilot is incredible. I’m #TeamConnor, and the rest of the interns need to get in line if they don’t want to be shot.
Next day at court, Molly is on the witness stand, and the prosecution is like:
That’s right, y’all! That video of Zoe that Annalise asked to destroy somehow got into the prosecution’s hands, and everyone is stunned. Annalise tries to salvage the case by badgering Molly on the witness stand until Molly calls out Zoe, which makes Zoe freak the hell out and tell Molly that she’s next. Zoe is carted off, her parents cuss Annalise out and not their daughter, and I’m kind of hoping Zoe kills them next because her parents are completely garbage humans. That evening, Annalise figures out that Connor made a copy of the vid and gave it to the prosecution. He owns up, and she threatens him that if he ever defies her again, she will pin Sam’s death on him. So, to recap, Annalise has pissed off Zoe, Zoe’s parents, Connor, and Caleb by sending her interns to repeatedly ask him if he banged his adopted sister. And to me, any of them could have been the one to shoot Annalise. This mystery is getting harder to solve. But one thing has been figured out.
Catherine has a medical exam and she is a virgin, which means she and Caleb aren’t boning. I stand corrected, but I still feel like they are unnaturally close to each other.
Annalise tells Nia that she’s not going to kill her, which is the right call. If Anna did that, she’d lose her soul forever, and she needs to keep it for when she and Eve reunite and adopt babies and open a bakery. A girl can dream! And I’ve been dreaming this whole episode for Bonnie and Asher to talk. Unfortunately, it’s too late. Asher has already testified against Annalise and says she killed Sam. Bonnie does, “No, she didn’t kill him. I did.†FUCK! Okay, Bonnie is too ride or die and lies way too much. This was not necessary! Covering for Annalise has ruined her life, and she keeps going back for more. She’s like me when I keep getting braids put onto my head that are tugging on my hair to the point that my hairline is going to start looking like Stevie Wonder’s. UGH.
We have reached the end of the episode, and this is where things get confusing. Wes and Nate are talking about a random person whom Frank called the night Lila died. I have no idea who this person is. Wes doesn’t trust Levi but believes everything he says about Annalise and Frank, which makes no sense. Annalise happens to see them talking, which is probably going to make her go to Frank and have him do something else to Nate. Then we end for real on a flashback of Nate and the interns in the car. They are driving somewhere and ask Michaela to handle a situation. She gets out the car and goes to a house, I think, and inside is Caleb, who asks, “How is she?†WHO THE EFF IS “SHE?†Catherine? Am I missing something? I don’t understand anything that happened in the last two minutes. All I know is Connor better not get hurt because he’s the only with any damn sense right now.
Alrighty, let me know what you think is going on at the end of this episode?