I wonder if How to Get Away with Murder knows what we really want. Because it doesn’t just give us what we want. All I want is Viola Davis in a series of responsible-looking wigs delivering passionate monologues. I’d listen to her explain if I should start an LLC for my freelance-writing business. I’d listen to her explain in detail how car insurance works. I’d listen to her explain the plot of the movie Entourage: The Movie. Just give me what I want and stop making me sit through anyone else’s nonsense. I knew this episode was about to be on some bullshit when the first thing we saw was a tiny baby and not Annalise applying eyeliner silently to a synth track.
While we watch the baby wriggle around, the coroner is reading off a series of injuries, and in How to Get Away with Murder land, if we don’t see the face of a murder victim, it’s never who we expect. We all thought it was Bonnie, but when she strolls up, I felt the wind deflate from my sails. So it’s just some other unimportant dead person? I mean, it was a very important dead person, but it wasn’t someone important to us. I literally wrote in my notes, “Oh, it was the DA, who cares?†We know that Laurel’s dad is evil. Do we need to prove it all the time?
Meanwhile, Nate is on the lookout for the hard drive, Asher is coming to get his things, and Michaela is begging him not to go. Michaela also thinks that explaining why she did it will make Asher feel better and she wants to tell him she’s not evil. She just did an evil thing. Asher finally tells her that he’s the only one who really knows her. He knows her better than she knows herself and she can’t stop herself from being herself. Asher tells her that she’s a backstabbing, social-climbing … and Michaela stops him before he can say bitch.
Matt McNamara from Nip/Tuck is taking over the DA’s office after Denver’s death and Annalise calls the whole gang to meet her at her house. They all rush over and have questions like, “Did Jorge hack the DA’s car?†That’s where we’re at. Did Laurel’s dad HACK. A. CAR. If the man can hack a car, what else can he do?
Laurel gets a call from her father and he’s asking where her mother is. Her mother has gone missing and if he finds out Laurel hurt her, Laurel will never see her son again. Laurel insists over and over and over and over this entire episode that she didn’t do anything to her mother. Frankly, I don’t care. Let that French lady disappear.
Annalise doesn’t have time to deal with this. They have to deal with Simon, who is demanding to know what’s going on with his whistle-blower deal. So Annalise sends Michaela and Oliver to calm him down and the FBI calls to interview Laurel. The new DA is also interested in Laurel because the last person to meet with Denver was … LAUREL! The name on every investigator’s lips is gonna be LAUREL! He tells Bonnie that maybe because Laurel just had a baby, she might have had some weird mama strength. He apologizes for his “frat boy†remark and they agree to be friends.
Nate is looking for anything he can in Denver’s files and finds a case that’s been closed for a decade that Denver kept updating. He heads down to the file room and finds a locked box with a bunch of files in it. Each file is labeled with one of the Keating Gang’s last names.
Laurel goes to see the FBI and lies like a champion. She gives them just enough to start looking into her father, but doesn’t arouse too much suspicion on herself. Nate stops by with Dominick’s phone and … THE HARD DRIVE! They need to rummage through all the files to find the illegal ones. Annalise takes Connor aside and he says they won’t be able to try all of their class-action cases if they’ve been locked up by the FBI. Annalise tells him that he needs to get back into the law school and she knows what really happened.
Michaela and Oliver try to calm Simon down, but he says he doesn’t want to talk to anyone but Annalise. Where is his deal? Where are the files? If they can’t answer those questions, he’s going to the police. Back at Annalise’s apartment, they don’t know if they’ll be able to find the illegal files fast enough because they’re well hidden and there are thousands of them. Annalise knows she has to go to the source. She heads to Tegan and tells her that she can either help them or go down with Jorge. Tegan throws her out of her office.
Michaela is tired of waiting around for Simon to relax, so she suggests that they just deport him. LIKE, WHAT. That is a LEAP. Honestly, smothering him in his sleep would be a more reasonable reaction.
While everyone waits around for something to happen or someone to be arrested, Connor finally reveals that he didn’t drop out of law school. He was kicked out for bad grades. It’s amazing that he’s the only one. Does anyone have any other classes? I’ve never seen these students do a paper. Asher is annoying everyone by trying to find a girl on some knockoff Tinder app and Oliver tells him to stop this faux-masculine routine to cover up his hurt feelings.
Annalise is frustrated and it’s time to start getting results. She calls Jorge on Laurel’s phone and tells him it’s time to meet. He can recant his testimony and let Laurel have custody, or Annalise will take the files to the FBI. Jorge tries to shut Annalise down by telling her that she’ll never understand what it’s like to be a parent. ANNALISE CALLS BULLSHIT. If he really loved Laurel, he wouldn’t have murdered the “love†of her “life†or taken her grandson away. Annalise also claims Wes as an example of another child she’s lost. Sign the papers, Jorge.
And he does.
Laurel gets her baby back and he is … very black and doesn’t look at all like her or Wes. Whose baby is that? Frank drives her home and as they’re taking li’l Christopher home, Jorge gets arrested by the FBI on the street. When Tegan was telling Annalise to get out of her office, she did that classic trick of writing down what she really meant on a piece of paper while monologuing. She’s in. She went to the FBI and she’ll be listed as Jane Doe the whistle-blower.
With the FBI already on Jorge’s tail, there’s still the issue of what to do with Simon, so Michaela handles it by GETTING HIM DEPORTED. MICHAELA! NO! No one wanted you to do that. She’s officially turned into a completely soulless person. Annalise scolds Michaela and says that she has finally become her and Michaela says she’s finally being herself. Michaela is Michaela’s ultimate form. Michaela also shrugs and says, “It’s not like I had him killed.†Because sending a gay man with a brain injury to Pakistan isn’t a death sentence.
Nate calls Annalise and tells her that she should turn on her TV.
The Supreme Court ruled in her favor! Victory! Annalise smiles for the first time and this is a genuinely good thing. So, when is the other shoe going to drop? The show really delays it, but of course it finally happens. Not yet, though.
After a montage of everyone feeling happy — Annalise is being interviewed by some sort of NPR affiliate, Bonnie and Frank are pitching in with Laurel’s baby, Asher is going to be Oliver’s best man, and Michaela is helping Connor with his law-school reapplication — there’s a little bit of Nate looking into the files Denver hid away about everyone. Apparently, Bonnie’s child might still be alive.
WAIT. WHAT. There’s another light-skinned brown boy that Annalise will have to deal with and treat as a surrogate child. I CANNOT. Just let Bonnie try to date the new DA in peace. Can’t we just end with Annalise singing country-ass songs to Laurel’s baby as Jorge rots in jail?
No?
See you next season, then!