Emotions can be dangerous.
by Andrea Braxton
In the Philadelphia of How To Get Away With Murder, emotions and trust make a person weak. Annalise is the prime example. In public, Annalise is polished and tough as she works to win her court case and teach her class. In private, she is slowly unraveling as her already horrible trust issues grow worse.
After her dramatic accusation at the end of the last episode, Annalise is understandably hurt and furious when Sam confesses to having had sex with Lila. Annalise runs to Nate for comfort, but Nate just got fired, and he’s not in a comforting mood. He thinks Annalise told the police about their affair. In actuality it was Bonnie in the last episode who screwed him over by blackmailing the police about Nate and Annalise so she could get Rebecca’s taped confession. Nate is angry enough to reveal that he lied about Sam’s alibi checking out, and later on Annalise says she is tired of men lying to her. It is certainly becoming an exhausting theme.
In public, Annalise tries to keep up appearances during the court case, but it hits a little too close to home. Ryan, a teenage boy, shoots his abusive father for hurting his mother. Annalise’s plan of attack is to manipulate the emotions of the jury. Her appeal to the jury presents the wife as the victim of an unhappy marriage, which she can definitely identify with. Ironically, she urges the jury to listen to their feelings, while she is trying to ignore hers.
Although Annalise’s work on the case gets Ryan’s sentence reduced, Laurel should get most of the credit. Despite her attempts to always do the right thing, Laurel illegally tampers with the jury, which results in a mistrial. Frank catches her in the act, but his confusing feelings for her keep him from telling Annalise.
Frank perplexes both in the present and future scenes. It seemed from the previous episodes that he just wants to have sex with Laurel. However, when he and Laurel fight and eventually kiss at the end of the episode, it seems that he sees more in her than just a pretty face. In the future, Laurel reveals that she slept with Frank while dating her current boyfriend, Kyle. Frank keeps calling her while the students are trying to bury the body, and when she finally answers, Frank acts as if he truly cares for her. However, “moral” Laurel plans to manipulate him into helping them cover up the murder.
As usual, trust, or lack thereof, is the dominant theme in the show. At the end of the episode, Annalise asks Sam to do a psychological evaluation on Rebecca for the trial. She uses the evaluation as a way to find out if Rebecca knows that Lila was sleeping with Sam. Rebecca didn’t know before the evaluation, but when she recognizes the wallpaper from the incriminating photo on Lila’s phone, she runs away because she thinks that Annalise and Sam are working together to cover something up. Annalise had been avoiding Wesley’s suggestion to turn the phone in as evidence, and now he knows why. He confronts Annalise now that he knows that it is Sam’s penis in the picture on Lila’s phone, and the show ends with Annalise wondering what to say next.
The theme of mistrust is good for drama, but I think a healthy relationship would help to balance out the show. I had hoped that Annalise would be close friends with either Bonnie or Frank, and I was waiting for at least two of Annalise’s chosen students to form a friendship. All relationships are complicated, but this show seems to suggest that all relationships are actually built on lies, which is a little disheartening. I’m hoping to figure out who killed Lila and who will eventually kill Sam, but I’m also hoping to see a genuine friendship develop.
Andrea Braxton graduated from the University of Missouri in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and an English writing minor. She lives in Baltimore, MD and works as an editorial assistant for an educational publishing company. Andrea wrote recaps for TV shows for the VoxTalk blog, and if she could, she would watch TV all day. She’s addicted to Netflix and any show with a good cast and tons of drama. She has a publishing blog at http://abraxtonwriter.wordpress.com.
