Following last week's incredible final scene and shocking final seconds, How To Get Away With Murder had a lot riding on last night's episode. The pressure was on to follow up well, and the episode did a pretty good job of that.
Written by Tracey A. Bellomo and directed by Michael Listo, "We're Not Friends" weaved in more flashbacks than we've seen before, all heavily focused on Laurel, and with the procedural element also placing Karla Souza's character front and center.
Most other series would have leveraged the last nine words Annalise Keating uttered last week to really ramp things up, but this isn't what I wanted to see. That's something that made ABC's Scandal famous, but Murder's creative team know that consistently building the story is their best way to move forward and leverage last week's events. This episode was nothing spectacular, just rock solid and reliable.
That's not to say that the fallout from those last nine words wasn't explored. Sam and Annalise had a fight, with the former outlining his reasons for not revealing the affair he had with Lila Stangard earlier. But what interested me more is that Bonnie overheard said fight. What's happening here is Annalise's dirty secrets are being spread around her colleagues. Wes interrupting an intimate moment between Nate and Annalise in the series premiere is another such example. The foundation is clearly being laid for all this dirty laundry to suddenly end up in the same pile, where it gets mixed around, opening up the possibility of others hanging it out to dry.
Laurel's character development was well timed but it did border on excessive. The timeshifted scenes were good, but weaving them in with present day scenes made them tricky to follow at times. The news of the day was that it was confirmed she slept with Frank at some point, but I strongly suspect her decision to answer her phone at the body disposal site will backfire at some point. Karla Souza's character has been very much reserved, preferring to sit back and scheme rather than stand up and shout. Souza grew a lot on me with her performance, with the role well suited to her style.
I was critical in last week's review of the lack of classroom scenes in the weeks prior. I'm glad this resolved itself, with ample time being spent in the classroom as jury selection and bias was discussed. Hopefully we see more of these scenes in the remaining 10 episodes. However, I want to commend the writers for giving us a case that ended in a mistrial as opposed to a verdict, which is something you see less often in shows with a legal spin than cats being herded successfully.
Also worth commending were the scenes between Wes and Rebecca, and later Rebecca and Sam. Rebecca continues to be my favorite character, with her and Wes interacting the most since the the latter conned his way into the cells to warn Rebecca about her then impending trial. It was Rebecca's turn to end the episode with another bombshell, revealing that the photo of Sam Keating was taken at his house, adding to the complexity of the affair that is looking increasingly likely to be what gives his killer probable cause.
Thanks as always for reading! Share your thoughts and theories on last night's episode of Murder in the comments below. Don't forget to track How To Get Away With Murder's ratings on my website, www.seriesmonitor.com/howtogetawaywithmurder. Next week's episode looks to be a blinder, if the promo is of any indication.
Jimmy
