You could easily feel the enormous amount of tension among the characters in last night's third episode of How To Get Away With Murder. "It's For the Greater Good", written by Erika Harrison and directed by Nicole Rubio, built strongly on last week's premiere-worthy installment, with excellent balance between the individual characters' storylines.
This episode picked up almost immediately after the events last week which saw Laurel plead with Michaela to use her position at Caplan & Gold to look into the involvement her father had in Wes's death. It did come to fruition to a degree, with Laurel's own digging in this episode confirming that her father's plane was in Philadelphia the day Wes died. Michaela's storyline in this hour consisted of her winning a highly competitive sudden death contest between the interns at Caplan & Gold. This outcome was always guaranteed, as was Michaela having to go up against Simon Drake in the final round. The win allowed Michaela to choose the partner she wanted to work under, and it's no surprise her top pick was the lawyer who oversaw the Antares Technologies portfolio.
It was good to see Connor rebelling some more in this hour. His screentime consisted of him announcing he pulled out of his law studies completely, and not even a cringeworthy intervention could change his mind. His shock moment came near the end of the hour, when his two fathers confronted him in a gay strip club. What he needs to do now is have a spell and go on vacation somewhere, but it's not likely that that's on the cards in the writers room.
Asher was sidelined, and Oliver made a cringeworthy attempt to garner a new client in the DA's office for his fledgling IT company. Why he chose Nate as the one to discuss the idea with is beyond me because he was rightly taken to pieces. He proved beggars can't be choosers later on, when Nate gave him some work that involved hacking Annalise's phone.
She didn't eve respect you enough to fire you to your face, Oliver.
Speaking of the devil herself, I was generally satisfied with what I saw from Annalise in this hour. The ex-cellmate she managed to get freed in her case last week backfired, and she was called to the medical examiner's office to identify the body. Interestingly, she opted to take up a case with the public defenders office, and managed to free a man charged with the death of his partner when an ATM camera (I yawned here because ATM cameras don't look skyward at the side of a building) saw the woman take a dive from one of the windows herself. While the case itself was open and shut, its wider effect is going to be significant in that it proved that the public defenders office wasn't able to fulfill the constitutional rights of its clients due to a lack of funding.
What we likely have now is a longer term storyline, for the next few episodes at least, in play from Annalise's perspective. The writers room wouldn't have left things so open-ended for no reason. Further support is given to this prospect came via Isaac Roa, Annalise's counselor, who Annalise had a heated debate with. He's less than keen to have Annalise sniffing around a class action lawsuit - and not just because he thinks it's a bad idea for Annalise's mental health. I'll add in here that Annalise would need some help with a class action lawsuit, so where this could come from is an interesting thing to think about.
It was good to see Frank and Nate take more of a part in proceedings in this hour. The pair have been essentially absent so far this season, but Frank helped with Connor's intervention, and convinced Bonnie - who he's suddenly living with - to take Laurel on as an intern. Nate was called to testify in Annalise's trial, and also broke up an imminent fight between her and Bonnie, who had a smaller role in this episode compared to previous ones.
Laurel continues to be difficult to get a read on. She toyed with Frank's emotions and convinced him to get Bonnie to give her a job, she had an interesting conversation with Annalise in the courtroom bathroom where she revealed the gender of her baby is male, and she may have an interesting case when it comes to the season's timeshifted storyline, which shows Isaac Roa moving down the hall in the hospital to find a badly beaten and bruised Michaela in tears in front of the neo-natal unit, apparently looking for Laurel's baby. Roa had mistaken Michaela for Annalise, but they both knew each other already. How this is the case isn't yet known, but we know Michaela was talking about a male being dead. It's possible she's referring to Laurel's baby, but it's also likely that Roa thought she was referring to someone else that may be dead, but he had to play along to avoid sharing other information.
Everyone around us dies.
This was a disappointingly short flash forward. It only confirmed that Michaela is alive, and had been badly beaten, but we saw nothing more of the crime scene we saw last week, though the editing implied that Michaela had something to do with the blood in the elevator.
In the end, from my perspective, the tension this episode created was its strongest asset. Annalise potentially pursuing a class action, Michaela and Laurel looking into Laurel's father's dealing, Connor bailing on his studies with Oliver struggling to find work, and Bonnie potentially impeding Annalise's court cases creates an environment where no one knows what's coming next (although that's nothing new). Next week's episode promo depicts an even bigger lift in intensity. This fourth season is shaping up really nicely, which is great to see.
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought of this episode in the comments below - it's always great spinning theories with you all, so make sure you share them! See you all back here next week!
