Catch Up On Last Week’s Recap: Literally Everything Is About Annalise
Welcome back to another week of How to Get Away with Murder, the show that has turned my Thursday nights into a competition of “how much wine can I drink before a character has a mental breakdown.” Spoiler alert: not a whole lot.
We start off with a glimpse into Wes’ last day alive. He hops out of Frank’s car, into a cab, and immediately calls his “In Case of Emergency” number. This alone would be suspicious because I don’t think anyone cares enough about Wes to be his emergency contact. But things get weirder when he answers “It’s Kristoff.”
Back in the present, the entire cast prepares for two very different mornings. Annalise, Frank and Bonnie prepare for an arraignment while the law students head to Wes’s memorial. Both events are a total disaster.
Laurel ruins my drinking game by having a full-blown meltdown in the middle of her eulogy. She accuses everyone in the room of being a fake friend and then storms out barefoot and crying. It was like a war flashback to my 23rd birthday party.
Laurel: Why are you crying.
Laurel: Stop crying.
Laurel: THERE’S NO CRYING IN FUNERALS
Bonne tries to pull an Annalise in court aka screaming out of turn about irrelevant matters. Shockingly enough, it doesn’t work out for her. Annalise is denied bail, her charges aren’t severed from Frank’s, and then just to add insult to injury, her mom and dad show up. You know, things weren’t stressful enough as is.
Nate suffers every ex’s worst nightmare at court when Annalise’s parents corner him and ask him how he’s going to fix all this.
Ophelia: Why won’t you help her?
Nate: Ma’am you will literally not live long enough to hear the entire answer to that question.
Back in jail, Annalise finally stands up for herself against her cell mate, who is shockingly self-righteous considering that she is also in jail. Side note: if I was in jail for something non-violent like drugs, I don’t think I’d spend all my time harassing the woman in there for cold hard murder. Idk, just a thought.
After the memorial, Simon comes up to the Keating crew to offer his condolences. Oh, and to accuse Annalise of murder.
Simon: Hey guys, so terribly sorry for your loss.
Simon:
Simon: Alright, pleasantries out of the way.
Simon: How are you coping with the fact that your mentor murdered your friend.
Simon: Also do you all have raging mommy issues or what.
Meanwhile, Laurel has gone on a leisurely, barefoot stroll to the morgue—as one does—where she’s hoping the clerk will abandon all legal and ethical standards and let her view Wes’ body. When that doesn’t work out, she casually tells the woman she’ll be going to hell some day and walks out, which is how I’m going to handle any minor inconvenience in my life from this moment forward.
Oliver gets a summons from the police department and everyone waits approximately .2 seconds before spiraling into a total panic. You would think this is the first time anything remotely like this had happened to them. To be fair, I believe I threatened actual bodily harm to Shonda Rhimes when we all thought Oliver got murdered in season two, so who am I to judge.
You know what this show doesn’t have enough of? Stress and heartbreak. Shonda must have known we all felt that way, because why else, on top of literally everything that’s happening, would she decide that now is the time to let Annalise know that her mom is suffering from dementia?
That’s right, during an already tense parental visit, Ophelia starts going off about how she’s going to confess to burning the house down. At first it’s like “damn, that’s some Mother of the Year level of commitment,” but then she continues on and it becomes clear that things aren’t quite right.
Annalise’s mom is under the impression that Annalise is on trial for the house that burned down in her childhood, with her pedophile uncle inside. Her useless dad is like “lol cute story dear,” because men are literally the most oblivious creatures on earth.
Annalise: Idk maybe don’t let your wife walk around and confess to arson and murder.
Mac: Wait what.
Despite concerns from literally everyone, Oliver sails right through his questioning. The fact that he’s a real life human puppy consistently fools people into thinking that Ollie can’t be just as manipulative as every other person on this show. He tells the cops that Annalise never asked him to do anything illegal on her behalf and that he definitely didn’t wipe her phone the night of the fire. So, you know, he lied.
Laurel corners Nate and guilts him into finally letting her see Wes’ body. I recognize that she needs closure, but looking at her dead boyfriend covered in no doubt rotting burns doesn’t seem like it would really do much for her mental state at this point. Only problem? The body inside the bag labeled “Wesley Gibbins” is most certainly not Wesley Gibbins.
In this next round of traumatizing family visits, Annalise’s parents come back to jail just so Annalise and her Dad can hash out their lifetime of issues.
Mac: You want to blame me for your sad childhood? Sure, maybe I deserve that.
Annalise: You are literally 100% to blame.
Annalise: I mean, other than that dude that molested me.
He goes on to call Annalise selfish (not wrong) because she isn’t doing anything to get herself out of jail so that she can help her mother (flawed logic at best). Idk if this man understands how jail works but, uh, there’s not a whole lot you can do from the inside. Unless you’re Annalise Keating, that is.
In another visitation room across town, Laurel finally gets to confront Frank. His lawyer being present makes things a little difficult, but Laurel leaves with the firm conviction that Frank did not kill Wes. The rest of the Keating crew isn’t so quick to believe her, which is ridiculous because they’ve all been on this show long enough to know that it’s never the first suspect. Like, what are they even learning in law school??
Speaking of incompetent lawyers, Bonnie has failed at her 300th attempt to get Annalise out on bail. All I can say is that Paris Gellar would never have let this happen. Rather than offer sage advice or any kind of reaction at all when Bonnie calls with the news, Annalise just hangs up on her. Like, kill me for agreeing with him but maybe your dad was right?
Hell nah. Mostly because the men on this show are never right. Annalise hangs up the phone, heads straight back to her cell, and taunts the woman who already hates her into beating the shit out of her. Bonnie goes back to the judge with photos of Annalise’s busted face and gets her out on conditional bail. Come at our girl again, Mac. See what happens.
As the episode winds down, we get a lot of glimpses into everyone reacting to Annalise’s release. Oliver tells Connor that he saved a copy of her phone and I’m pretty sure Connor immediately gets a boner. Frank calls Bonnie with the news that he is his own lawyer and therefore, as co-counsel, they can speak in private. Laurel heads to Wes’ apartment, only to find it has been completely ransacked. And Annalise herself? She heads home and lies to her mother, in the midst of another episode of dimentia, telling her that all charges have been dropped. All in all, no one is coping well.
The episode ends with a big reveal: Nate was in fact the one who got Wes’s body shipped away in secret. Why would he do that, only to cause a scene about it being missing? Maybe because he had something to do with Wes’s death. The last shot shows Nate and Wes running into each other at Annalise’s, just minutes before the explosion.
Do I actually think that Nate killed Wes? No. Is this somehow a convoluted step in the journey to saving Annalise? Probably. Will Nate suffer for it in the end? Without a shadow of a doubt.
