Episode 4 of ABC's How To Get Away With Murder was yet another high quality hour of television. It did a fantastic job developing the season's major storylines, with some fascinating foreshadowing thrown in to boot. The flash forwards were also more revealing than usual, with two more characters scratched from the list of possible casualties. "Don’t Tell Annalise" was written by Erika Green Swafford and directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan.
Last week's episode featured a more detailed and interesting case, but first chair Michaela didn't say a word in court. Things were turned on their heads in last night's episode, however, with a surprisingly nervous and sweating Asher in first chair struggling to merely string a sentence together. Further, Annalise's license had been suspended following that slap she dealt to her client last week. That left Bonnie to supervise a case which was first chaired by her ex, and concerned a saddening child rape in which a female teacher became pregnant by a male student, who then went on a crime spree to provide for the impending birth.
Our client is young, dumb, and suffers from teenage brain disease.
This was Bonnie's episode more than it was Asher's, which was quite surprising. Bonnie has had a quiet season thus far, but that was never going to continue for much longer. With Annalise drunk and unable to practice, I got the sense that Bonnie was much more herself than she would otherwise have been. Her thirst for blood and revenge also shone through as Asher unsurprisingly connected the dots out loud when recalling Bonnie had been abused as a child. Had Annalise been there, the outcome in court would almost definitely have been the same, but Bonnie wouldn't have left anywhere near as satisfied.
I hope you're on your A game because my brain is steeped in vodka.
With that taken care of, other happenings shot to front and center. Rather annoyingly from my perspective, Connor's sex life came before pretty much anything else. He spent more time surfing through his hookup app than anything else in a rather lewd attempt to entice Oliver back. Oliver was the bigger and better man throughout, and had the wellbeing of others at heart due to his HIV positive status. Connor's attitude in this episode puts him as my favored candidate for the body under the sheet, despite the fact that Jack Falahee is one of How To Get Away With Murder's best actors, and the terrible negative press that occurs these days when a LGBT character is killed off.
That aside, thankfully the other students had something to offer, though Michaela was an exception because she contributed nothing much to the episode at all. That leaves Wes, who had a surprise birthday party thrown for him by his girlfriend Meggy, and was constantly checking up on a high-strung Laurel, who was by far the most interesting of the students last night.
Laurel continued calling Frank, and again it was to no avail, though since meeting with her father last week she called from a different number to avoid his tracking attempts. Caught out by Wes at one point, she explained away her secretive phone calls by dropping the surprise birthday party secret. She also squeezed in a visit to Frank's father, who was a weird chap to say the least. Honestly, Laurel's ability to think on her feet is at least on par with, if not beyond, Annalise's ability to do that as well. Karla Souza does an outstanding job playing a character who can lie convincingly. It's awesome to watch.
Go. Let yourself be loved.
Outside of Laurel, most of the action took place in the lives of the adult characters. Famke Janssen returned for what's most likely her final episode on How To Get Away With Murder for the foreseeable future thanks to her new role on NBC's The Blacklist: Redemption. Eve Rothlow and Annalise had some interesting moments together, but the chemistry the pair normally have wasn't anywhere to be seen. The excuse the creative team used to write Eve out of the series for now is that she's fallen for another woman who has convinced her to move across the country to San Francisco. Annalise handled this remarkably well in the moment, but it mightn't be the same further down the track, considering she also blew boyfriend Nate off at the same time.
Nate and Annalise got into quite a severe argument. Annalise was quite drunk and repeatedly asked Nate to hit her. Nate knew better and left, and was later seen sleeping with the prosecutor who Annalise thrashed in court last week. They're clearly ex-lovers and they seemed to pick up right where they left off.
Some good did come from this, however. Annalise finally admitted she's an alcoholic, but even that was a prime material to exploit for sympathy. After suffering a heavy defeat in an argument with her superior concerning her employment, Annalise went on the record confirming her alcoholism, and paving the way for the reinstatement of her license on the condition she seeks treatment. Booze is quite a big part of Annalise's existence, so I'm not hopeful that this will be smooth sailing.
Frank featured much more prominently than usual. He received a delivery from a woman while at a motel. It was a bottle of hydrogen sulfide gas. Somehow, and for reasons as yet unknown, Frank posed as a cleaner in prison in Coalport. He struck up a relationship with a nurse there to access her swipe card, then proceeded to kill Bonnie's aged paedophile father with the hydrogen sulfide gas.
Enjoy hell, Pop.
This was a fascinating turn of events. Upon receiving the news, Bonnie told Annalise that her father had died, but an eavesdropping Laurel put the pieces she had withheld together with Bonnie's news. Frank was in Coalport, and it was highly likely he had killed Bonnie's father. Bonnie was very clear with the following statement, which also served as the episode's title:
Don't tell Annalise.
At this point I'm assuming Frank is coming through on a promise he made Bonnie at some stage. Bonnie wasn't at all sad her father was dead, but she was definitely satisfied. It may be Frank's way of building bridges, and from Bonnie and Laurel's perspective, their respect for Frank is mutual. A partnership is likely, and I know Wes will be concerned about that. Next week's promo also shows Bonnie and Frank meeting. I'm curious to see what goes down.
Last but not least was the flash forward reveal. They were shorter than previous weeks, but this time neither scene showed the burning house. We see Bonnie arrive at the hospital and meet Oliver - who was already there. It appears Bonnie had diverted to the jail to tell Annalise another person was found in the house. In the hospital, Meggy was present, and ran lab results to the ICU doctors who were treating the mystery person who was pulled alive from the fire at the end of last week's hour. That person turned out to be Laurel, but Bonnie and Oliver don't yet know that. Even more surprising was those lab results revealed that Laurel is pregnant.
This was a brilliant turn of events. With Meggy also safe, she's likely going to try to contact Wes as soon as she leaves the ICU to tell him Laurel is in the hospital. If she doesn't do that, then that may be cause for concern about their relationship. Could Wes be the father of Laurel's baby? If not, my second candidate would be the newest student, Simon Drake.
The foreshadowing I mentioned at the start of this review mostly consisted of Annalise's conversation with Eve about selling her house, and the use of the insurance money from her husband Sam's death to find Frank. Also, in his argument with Annalise, Nate said she would die alone in the house. That's a rather bizarre statement to make in my opinion. It was definitely written for a reason.
In all, this was another really good episode of How To Get Away With Murder. The flash forwards blew things wide open, and it was good to see the adults get some more story development from their perspective. Aside from Laurel, the students had a pretty vanilla episode, but Connor's obsession with his sex life dragged things down a lot, and appeared to be included to kill time more than anything.
Thanks as always for reading. I'm keen to hear what you thought of the episode and what theories you see shaping up, so please head down to the comments below and share them. Click here to find out all you need to know about next week's episode, including its promo.
