The episode could have ended here. It should have ended here. We shouldn’t have had to sit through another full hour of debauchery and flagrant disrespect for any and all legal processes. But that’s not how this show works.

Everyone is in high alert after the Denver discovery, in large part because Connor has gone missing. While Laurel is convinced that he just went ahead and took the deal to save himself, no one else is quite as sure. Michaela and Oliver go to the police, Asher and Bonnie go to Atwood, and Annalise goes to the source itself: Sylvia Mahoney.

Where is Connor exactly? In what looks like a subterranean bunker where Denver is taunting him with shitty breakfast sandwiches in the hopes that he’ll turn on Annalise. Does that perfect little twink look like he eats fast food eggs? Nice try.

The Annalise v. Sylvia showdown in a bougie Manhattan restaurant is everything. If I was sitting there eating a $30 salad and heard the woman at the table next to me tell her friend to shut up and listen, I would be full Rihanna. There would be no pretending that I wasn’t leaning out of my chair to listen.

Sylvia: Of course I defend Charles, he’s my son. It’s my job.
Annalise: No, you job was to raise a good man.
Me, completely ignoring my Nicoise: 

The best little nugget from that scathing conversation? Turns out Wes wasn’t Wallace’s son; he was actually Charles’. That means Sylvia was Wes’ grandmother, and idk if this makes things any less weird but it’s still weird.

Me sitting around trying to do the math on Charles and Wes’ ages like:

Annalise goes with her gut and decides that the Mahoneys are no longer involved in this case, because Sylvia probably wouldn’t murder her grandson. I’m not so sure. Rich white people do crazy things.

My new favorite bit on this show is “Asher keeps forgetting that Laurel is pregnant and repeatedly waves smelly food in front of her face.” He is truly one of the last rays of sunlight we have.

Speaking of, Asher sees that the world is burning down around them and decides there is no better time than the present to tell Michaela that he loves her. She responds by sprinting to the bathroom, where Laurel is puking. The most relatable reaction thus far.

Michaela: I had a bad childhood. I never learned how to love or be loved. It’s not my fault.
Me: Three strikes this episode you are OUT, drunk girl.

Not content to look suspicious enough as is, Annalise heads back to her burnt down house/active crime scene. You know, for the nostalgia. She finds a box in the floorboards that contains the photo of her, Sam, and her dead baby. Again, I get the sentiment, but fuck the nurse who suggested that photo be taken.

The conversation with Sylvia drug up a lot of old trauma for Annalise, which is rough considering she is still trying to figure out how to deal with Wes’ death. Don’t worry, this will come to fruition in a closing monologue that should honestly be awarded an Oscar. I know it’s a TV show. I know they don’t give out Oscars for single monologues. I don’t care.

Meanwhile, Connor is still being berated by shitty food and even shittier defenders of the goddamn Constitution.

Denver: Sign the deal by midnight or we frame you for Wes’ murder.
Connor: You are corrupt and also STUPID.
Denver: …. tight, previous statement still stands.

Connor finally cracks and tells Denver that Oliver has a copy of Annalise’s phone. They bust into his apartment with a warrant, making everyone slightly suspicious of what the fuck Connor is doing. Oliver swears that he told Connor there was nothing on the phone, and therefore Connor is just buying them time. But apparently there was something that not even Oliver’s expert hacking could find.

Annalise reveals that, moments before the fire, Wes had left her a voicemail in which he fully admitted guilt for both Sam and Rebecca’s deaths. Annalise deleted it because she didn’t want to implicate him when the police took her phone, but now that he’s dead Wes is the perfect scapegoat.

Laurel rides in, once again, as Wes’ White Knight and tells Annalise that she obviously didn’t know Wes because this isn’t what he would have wanted. Uh. Laurel. You knew him the exact amount of time as everyone else did. Also, you are clearly the one who didn’t know him, because circumventing the law with arbitrary loopholes was literally one of Wes’ favorite pastimes.

Annalise: Wes would want this.
Laurel: Wes would actually want all of you to burn, but sure.
Annalise: YOU. DATED. FOR. TWO. WEEKS.

Annalise goes to Denver and not-so-delicately lets him know that she knows exactly what he did, and unless he wants the Wrath of Annalise Keating to befall him, he’s going to do exactly what she says. This involves pedaling the story that Wes was a sociopath who killed himself once he found out that the police were onto the Sam and Rebecca trails. I hope that if I ever get murdered, my friends and loved ones completely destroy my reputation in order to save their own asses.

Actual depiction of Annalise outlining her terms:

Clearly everyone has been bluffing about how little clout Annalise still holds, because Denver folds almost immediately. Annalise gets her immunity. Connor is freed. All’s well that ends well.

Lol jk. That never happens.

While Annalise is literally saving the day, Laurel has decided to go on a rogue mission to New York with Asher and Michaela. Her plan is to use Michaela to seduce Charles Mahoney and then somehow get him to admit to murdering Wes, who is also his son. Nothing can go wrong here.

Back in Philadelphia, Frank has also been released. I guess this makes sense considering the charges were dropped, but seeing him crawl up to Annalise and vow loyalty at her feet for the hundredth time this season was honestly not something I needed to watch.

As per usual, the episode wraps up on a dizzying montage of loose ends coming together. Some wonderful. Most not.

First and foremost, Oliver proposes to Connor. I would actually kill for a wedding episode in this show, so please God let everyone stay alive long enough for it to happen.

After flirting with Charles and getting invited back to his place, Michaela realizes she loves Asher. She tells him in the bathroom of a hotel bar with an angry Laurel on the sidelines in the midst of a disastrous plan and, honestly, it’s the perfect reflection of their relationship.

Laurel refuses to let their moment ruin her one chance at closure and runs out after Charles on her own. with a gun. This is where shit truly hit the fan.

As Laurel is moving in on Charles, she’s intercepted by DJ, the unnamed hitman. Except he’s not unnamed, because she knows him. She knows him because he’s a family friend. He’s a family friend because he works with her dad. And unbeknownst to Laurel, he works with her dad as his hitman of choice. That’s right.

LAUREL’S DAD KILLED WES.

As if that news wasn’t devastating enough, the following scene shows us Wes’ death, moment by moment, until the very end. He fought. He struggled. It looked painful. All of America sobbed. But most importantly? We learned that he didn’t need to die. There was no legal reasoning or shady cover up behind it. Wes is dead solely because Laurel’s dad is an asshole.

If you thought Laurel was unbearable now, wait until she finds out that she is low-key the reason Wes was murdered.

Me watching Wes die after a full season of knowing he was definitely dead:

Not emotionally destroyed enough yet? Good, because the ending scene requires your utmost attention before it breaks you.

We’ve come full circle as the episode ends where it began: AA. Instead of berating everyone for baring their souls, Annalise decides to take a turn at being sincere. And when this woman commits, she fucking commits.

Annalise delves into the long sordid tale of how she spent the last twenty years trying to save Wes, only to end up destroying him. Viola Davis delivers the performance of a lifetime. I know that’s what people say anytime she breathes, but I mean it. Annalise finally comes to terms with Wes’ death and why it’s rocked her so substantially: because he’s her son. In blood? No. But in every other sense of the word Annalise considered Wes her son, and now she’s lost both of them. The credits roll as her shaky sobs fill the room, and it’s fine I totally don’t have to go on with my life as if my heart wasn’t just wrenched from my body. Really. I’m chill.

Me trying to collect my thoughts and process grief for fictional characters in time to get up for work Friday morning:

I don’t even know where this leaves us for season four. A deep dive into Laurel’s fucked up family? Definitely. A gay wedding? Only my heart’s deepest desire. Freedom for Nate? Probably never.

Until then my friends, maybe try and find a less traumatizing show to watch.

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.

We are just two episodes into the winter season of How to Get Away with Murder and Jesus Christ, things are looking bleak. Not that this show has ever been the happy-go-lucky sort, but honestly it was hard to switch to this hour-long suicide watch immediately after Riverdale (my new favorite show, don’t judge).

The only joke this week came from the episode title: “Not Everything is About Annalise.” False. Literally everything is about Annalise. You all live, sleep, breathe Annalise. That woman is a puppet master pulling the strings of every sad soul in Philadelphia, or at least she was. This week we saw Annalise at her most broken, trying to survive prison life while coping with the fact that her favorite student/adopted son/object of questionable affection is dead. And while Annalise may have not been the one to physically kill Wes, it was her actions ten years ago that set all this bullshit into motion.

While Annalise is trying to keep it together in jail, the rest of Keating Inc. is running rampant around town. Connor is one speeding ticket away from a psychotic break, Bonnie is in full Paris Gellar-during-college-application-season mode while trying to get Annalise out of jail, Oliver is coming to terms with the fact that all his friends are murderers, Laurel is lying to the police, Asher is incorporating German accents into his sex life and Frank, well, Frank is admitting to murder.

That’s right, always the martyr never the hero Frank Delfino has once again thrown himself at the mercy of Annalise and admitted to murdering Wes. To be fair, the evidence is working in his favor. He was the last person to see Wes alive, he has the vengeful boyfriend card to play, and he has that minor history of murdering his father in cold blood. Even Bonnie could close this case.

But it’s a testament to how fucking much the DA’s office hates Annalise that they decide to ignore literally all of this and avoid charging Frank until they absolutely have to. In the meantime, he’s been arrested and held for questioning, all of which consist of “why are you trying to cover up for Annalise for the love of God WHY?”

Frank claims that finding out Laurel was pregnant was the final straw, leading him to chloroform Wes and throw him in Annalise’s home before setting it on fire. Because, you know, this career criminal decides to throw subtlety out the window for his most high-profile murder yet.

The only issue there is that Frank didn’t know Laurel was pregnant. Laurel didn’t even know Laurel was pregnant until she found herself in the hospital. Nate, eager to dismantle Annalise and prove himself to the DA, figures this may be the case and heads to the hospital to talk to Laurel.

Now that she isn’t downing morphine like Pedialyte, Laurel has the sense to start keeping things to herself and kindly tells Nate to GTFO. A creeping Meggy in the hallway makes me think that she was more involved in this than she’s let on. Or she could just be naturally curious about the murder of her ex-boyfriend….sike. Not a single person on this show has moderately altruistic instincts.

Meanwhile, Michaela, Connor and Asher have been pulled into the dean’s office for a quick talk about grief counseling and maybe not suing the school for neglect and prolonged exposure to Annalise. Rather than take the quiet, brooding route that her friends have set themselves on, Michaela evolves into Annalise 2.0 and tears the school apart for abandoning one of their own, especially considering the fact that Annalise is a law school institution and the only reason people show up to this godforsaken campus. Connor is not impressed, and lets Michaela know as much before admitting to cluing Oliver into the Sam situation. Wow, remember season one? Lots of laughs.

Michaela has not come this far in life to be torn down by weak men with weaker wills, and makes this very clear by marching them all down to Oliver’s apartment for a friendly chat. Hint: not so friendly. In that creepy, calm way that only 8th grade English teachers and WASP-y moms have perfected, Michaela very assuredly lets Oliver know that, by no means, is this something that will ever be discussed again. Oh, and that they need him to hack into the DA server and see what’s being planned for Annalise. Everyone had chills, except for Asher who for sure got a boner.

Michaela:

At this point in time, so many people have died on this show that you kind of just forget about them. Well, hacking into the DA computers served as a nice refresher course, because let me tell you they have not forgotten about the body count that Keating & Co. has racked up over the last three years. Turns out it doesn’t really matter if they can’t pin Wes’ death on Annalise, because they are investigating her for all of them. Lila, Sam, Rebecca, that whiny DA, the Hapstalls. What do all these deaths have in common? Oh, you know, just the fact that Annalise wasn’t actually responsible for any of them.

This news sends the crew even further into a full-blown meltdown. Bonnie tries to fix everything by setting up an immunity deal for Annalise in return for information about all these unfortunate open cases, but the DA doesn’t bite. Which means it’s on Laurel to save the day from her hospital bed.

On the police’s next visit, Laurel breaks out the waterworks to tell them that, now free from her morphine-induced haze, she remembers some very important details that she may have left out during her original interview. The first being that she definitely told Frank she was pregnant with Wes’ child, and that she definitely saw him running out of the basement before Annalise’s home exploded and everything went black.

This leaves the very reluctant police and DA office with literally no choice but to charge Frank, meaning Annalise is home free. Just kidding. They charged him as a co-conspirator, leaving Annalise firmly stuck in jail and everyone else still in high alert mode.

The last flashback of the night shows Wes safely exiting Frank’s car. Still alive. Not dead. With all his not-burnt skin. Which confirms what we already knew: Frank is lying. But who gives him the orders to stay on Wes’ tail? Bonnie. No one believes for one second that Bonnie killed him, but this certainly raises a few questions. Thank God, things might have started to get calm around here otherwise.