The third episode of ABC's How To Get Away With Murder marks the 20% point in the crime thriller's third season, but what we saw in last night's instalment makes it feel as if we haven't seen even 10% of the what this season has in store. "Always Bet Black" was written by Joe Fazzio and directed by Stephen Cragg.
I'm a little short on time this week so I'll be keeping things brief, starting with the week's case. It was Michaela's turn to shine, but she never said a word in court, with Annalise throwing all sorts of punches in the direction of the new ADA, and scoring a major win in a case concerning a man, best described as a pervert, who had a lot to answer for in the death of a young woman. Outsmarting her client and the ADA on numerous occasions, Annalise controlled everything with amazing precision, and was also able to unearth the whereabouts of a missing woman's remains thanks to her client's confession.
It's never as simple as that, however. Despite the major boost in good standing with her superiors at Middleton University, Annalise pulled a familiar trick, pinning the second crime on another convicted felon, with Nate's help of all people. She also kept a sizable sum of cash that her client had other intentions for. I think we'll be seeing that cash put to good use before the season is out.
Each of Annalise's students saw decent screen time despite the weekly case being considerably better than usual. Though Michaela took first chair, she did virtually all of her good - but mostly bad - deeds outside the courtroom chief among which was loaning $20,000 of the client's cash and gambling it away in a casino alongside Asher, Connor and Oliver. She pawned her very expensive engagement ring to recover the money she borrowed. That ring caused a lot of trouble back in the first season so in a way it's one less thing that can cause trouble again, unless her former fiancé decides he wants the ring back. We got a brief update on Aiden in this episode. He now appears to be happily married to an even prettier and more successful woman than Michaela, making parting ways with that ring a little easier.
You're chasing after a man who's not worthy of you.
I loved Laurel's moments in this episode. Annalise sent her to meet her father to see if he could locate Frank for her. Laurel obviously doesn't enjoy the closest of relationships with her father, who roundly criticized her for wanting to continue to be with Frank, despite what he had done. Though her father found Frank in the end, Laurel was forced to be party to her father's shady dealings, signing a contract to take ownership of a property. We learned she has a brother, Jorge, who isn't doing too well financially, but most importantly of all, we learned Laurel was a victim of a kidnapping at age 16, which was likely related to her father's interests, and that has probably been the catalyst for her to ensure she lives on the straight and narrow. In the end, Laurel was made aware of Frank's location, and even spoke to Frank briefly on the phone, but she passed none of this information onto Annalise.
Just tell her this, OK. We're even.
Asher's hour was largely uneventful, though he had to face up to Bonnie regarding his relationship with Michaela. He followed Michaela to the casino and was there when she pawned her ring, but nothing much else of note occurred. Wes's hour was also surprisingly quiet. The most we saw of him was when he was enjoying some intimate time with girlfriend Maggie. He was continuously concerned about Laurel, and Maggie rightly confronted Wes about that, but nothing much came from it - for now.
It was interesting watching Connor and Oliver go about their business. Though he was behaving remarkably well post-breakup last week, things took a dive this week, with the casino combined with another gay man hitting on Oliver causing him to spill over. With no lead role in the weekly case to channel his energy towards like last week, the turbulence had to go somewhere, and the end result wasn't a great surprise.
Also in last week's episode was the first big survivor reveal. Oliver turned up at the scene of the fire, and was given a phone by Annalise to wipe. Last night's episode saw him covertly wipe the phone right under the nose of the police, and return to the scene where he met the next survivor, Bonnie. Their interaction was fascinating. Bonnie masqueraded as Annalise's lawyer to get inside the police cordon, and allowed Oliver the time to drop the phone back at the crime scene, which matched the story Annalise gave the officers at the station while she was being processed. Bonnie was also aware of the plan, which suggests to me that Annalise may be deliberately acting in a way which draws attention to herself and gets herself arrested in order to divert and distract the authorities from something or someone else.
That wasn't all that was revealed in the flash forwards, however. The final seconds saw a radio message come through to one of the firefighters revealing that another body - this time with a pulse - had been located in Annalise's burning home. It will no doubt be at least next week until the identity of this survivor is known, and I daresay that will be the next person confirmed alive as the flash forwards count us down to the big reveal: who is under the sheet.
Before I close, a final theme I want to mention that was prevalent in this hour was the cracks appearing around multiple characters. We had Bonnie consider reporting the client's confession to the police instead of letting Annalise handle it, while also stirring up memories of her childhood and Rebecca, who she murdered. We had Michaela blow a lot of money at the casino, and we had Connor boil over at Oliver. To a lesser extent, but still serious enough to warrant a mention in next week's episode promo, is Annalise giving her client a solid slap in the face. All four had fresh wounds which were being poked and prodded in this episode, and they each have the potential to ruin everyone's day - or lives - if they lose the plot at the wrong time. The pressure is getting to them, and the cracks are beginning to appear.
Thanks as always for reading! I really enjoyed this episode of How To Get Away With Murder and I hope you did too. There was a lot of great stuff in this episode that I didn't mention or only touched on, so head down to the comments below to add your thoughts and theories. Check out next week's episode promo and press release here.
