How To Get Away With Murder's third season drew to a close with a 2-hour season finale last night, and while things were pretty tidy and the hours were filled with outstanding acting performances, underwhelming would be the word I'd use to sum the two episodes up. Hour one, titled "He Made a Terrible Mistake" was written by Joe Fazzio and was directed by Jet Wilkinson, while showrunner Pete Nowalk wrote hour two, titled "Wes", which was directed by Bill D’Elia.
A two hour installment of any television show can be a bit overwhelming at times, so, in my experience, the best way to handle proceedings and keep track of what's happening is to strip things down to their simplest form and cast aside anything which doesn't add value to the story.
The first hour essentially focused on ensuring Annalise's trial would go ahead. A lot of the episode's content centered around lining up the evidence and putting pieces in place. We saw Connor come clean about being in Annalise's house seconds before it exploded, and the consistently excellent flashbacks detailed this with much more raw emotion than I thought possible. Connor revealed he gave a lifeless Wes CPR, cracking something in his ribcage in the process, and Annalise and his peers sort-of agreed it would be best for Laurel to testify to this given she was caught in the explosion to avoid implicating Connor. The highly prominent A.D.A. Todd Denver shut that down very quickly, so the trial was to proceed, sending everyone back to the drawing board.
Get in there, sit down, and pretend that you actually like Annalise.
The second hour revolved around that drawing board. Annalise, Bonnie and the students had to find a way to get the trial thrown out. They needed a suspect, and a plausible story, but with the legal system ruling against them, Denver was the new judge, jury and executioner. Connor's stint in confinement with Denver is largely redundant here, because it was agreed that the voicemail Annalise received from Wes on the night of the fire was used to pin the murders of Sam Keating and Rebecca Sutter on him. Wes was said to have committed suicide by way of the gas leak which resulted in the boom.
It's hard to condense the two episodes to a simpler format than that, but it shows you what aspects of the episode were largely irrelevant to wrapping the season's story arcs up. They do need addressing, though, but again, let's keep that nice and simple and leave out anything that didn't contribute to the overall story or wasn't spectacularly good.
Let's get the biggest plot point of all over and done with first: who killed Wes. For many of the 120 minutes, Todd Denver looked to have had some involvement, but in fact it was Laurel's own father, who hired family friend Dominic to do the deed. He was in the house when Nate and Wes met, and when Nate left, he drugged Wes and then suffocated him.
Firstly, the flashback that depicted Wes's death was harrowing. It captured the entire moment in brutal and callous fashion. It wouldn't surprise me if some more sensitive viewers may be having nightmares about a similar thing happening to them. What made Wes's death infinitely worse was that he was helpless as he suffocated due to the drug he had been injected with. The whole thing sends shivers up my spine, but it was fantastically acted and filmed, and is one of How To Get Away With Murder's finest moments.
Here's what annoys me, though. Dominic was simply not someone that could be picked as Wes's killer, so Pete Nowalk and his creative team have sold us a dummy throughout 2017. Yes, it opens up some avenues for expansion in Season 4, but it felt like a cheap cop-out, and all the tension and high stakes that were built up were quashed in an instant. If it was Denver or one of his associates, that would have been much more sellable because his involvement could have been an outside guess for some. It was ultimately an underwhelming conclusion to the series' biggest storyline so far. To top it off, none of the characters aside from Laurel's father and Dominic, know that Dominic was the killer. That's more than likely to change next season, but for now everyone is focused on pinning those two prior murders on Wes.
I love you, Michaela. A lot.
In less relevant but surprising news, Asher admitted he loved Michaela, and she reciprocated at a later date. Equally out of the blue was Oliver proposing that him and Connor get married. Laurel heard her baby's heartbeat - and she isn't certain either way concerning the future of her baby. Maybe now that Wes's name will forever be tarnished from two homicides pinned on him, Laurel might be swaying toward abortion. From a logical perspective, writing a baby into this series would be a big ask, so that will no doubt be a consideration.
The Mahoney family came back into the fray in a rather forced set of circumstances. Son Charles Mahoney found himself free after his conviction was overturned, and wife Sylvia Mahoney had a heated exchange with Annalise in what was essentially a race to the bottom of the "Who Has Been Victimized The Most" list. Annalise also intended to squash any future legal action against her by Sylvia, insisting she or her associates weren't involved in Wallace's death. Viola Davis was at her best here, and she was equally strong in Annalise's AA meetings, which served no real purpose other than a platform for Annalise to rant, and to describe how hard things have been for her. It's highly likely the Mahoney family will appear in Season 4 given Sylvia's intimate awareness and connection to Wes because she knew of her dead husband, Wallace's indiscretions. I'm not a huge fan of this prospect because the Mahoneys can be a bit tiring at times, but I'm willing to see what happens.
This is so illegal.
So is killing your professor's husband.
Todd Denver is also now a lot more prominent than what I expected. His bizarre and illegal behavior with Connor felt forced, and also went against what we've seen of the character so far in terms of moral standing. The showrunners need to be careful with how they continue to diminish the reputation of the legal system they've created - having by-the-book judges ruling against or in favor of a corrupt police force and questionable actions by lawyers will degrade the quality of the series. Having a bunch of crooked cops and D.A.'s everywhere is pretty boring because it's an easy cliché to find elsewhere in the world of television. Someone needs to hold Annalise and her students to account, and if everyone is corrupt, then that's out the window.
Despite the two hour finale, I can't find much else worth discussing. A variety of things happened, but much of them were surplus to requirements or just plain underwhelming. It brings to a close a season which has been consistently strong on an episodic level, but filled with lackluster moments on the story arc levels. Revealing who was dead in the first half of the season was drawn out and tough to persevere with, and the subsequent countdown to the reveal of Wes's killer ultimately fell flat in my eyes.
Nevertheless, this season has been filled with some outstanding, memorable moments, and the acting performances were better than ever. The famous flashbacks were very well put together despite the substandard material they had to work with. Frank's large period of absence and minimal screen time in the first half of the season rubbed me the wrong way, too. Overall, I don't rate this season as better than the previous two - a trend which happens surprisingly regularly to third season shows. The things that were tried didn't really work, and now we're one character down as a result. There's no substantial cliffhanger at the end of this season, but that's probably for the better to allow the showrunners to rebuild. Maybe as I reflect on the season some more my thoughts may change, but for now, underwhelming sums thing up well for me.
To you, the readers, thanks so much for reading my reviews and discussing your views throughout this season. I hope I've provided some food for thought and made the season more interesting for you. For the final time, I'd love to hear what your thoughts on the season finale were, so leave them in the comments below. See you all back here when (hopefully) Season 4 of How To Get Away With Murder arrives.
