The November 2015 midseason finale of How To Get Away With Murder ended with lead character Annalise Keating lying on the floor, shot in the stomach and bleeding out. But this episode (which I reviewed on December 5) was so underwhelming that I didn’t even watch the second half of the season when it initially aired in the winter and spring; there were too many other better legal shows to review, such as Better Call Saul, Billions, and The People v. O.J. Simpson. As the episodes started piling up on my DVR, I felt like I was in a modern version of The Tell-Tale Heart; every time I would fire up my DVR, the episodes would make me feel guilty for not watching. So now that we are in the middle of summer and I have more free time, I decided to slog through the second half of the second season of How To Get Away With Murder. To paraphrase former Arizona Cardinals coach Denny Green, the show is still what I thought it was (this column will contain spoilers through the Season 2 finale). (UPDATE (7/22/2016, 2:25 p.m.): Green passed away on Thursday night at the age of 67. The news of Green’s death broke after this column was posted, and the reference to Green on the day he passed away was completely coincidental.)
As I wrote about previously, the mid-season finale revealed that Annalise coerced her student Wes to shoot her as part of a complicated plan to mislead the authorities into thinking that Annalise’s client Catherine Hapstall had murdered dogged prosecutor Emily Sinclair instead of Emily’s actual killer, Annalise’s student Asher. Livid at Annalise, Wes shot her in the stomach, putting her life in danger. That was the big cliffhanger that concluded the mid-season finale. But raise your hand if you thought Annalise was going to die. Anyone? Anyone? A cliffhanger only works as a cliffhanger if there is any actual mystery about what is going to happen next. Here, the fact that Annalise was going to live was a foregone conclusion; the show could not exist without Viola Davis.
Indeed, once the second half of the season begins, the show barely makes any attempt to hint that Annalise is in real danger, immediately flashing a “three weeks later” chyron as Annalise is released from the hospital. Aside from Annalise struggling to testify after getting high on painkillers, there is barely any fallout to this seemingly devastating injury. The show thus undercuts what should have been an impactful emotional moment by treating it as a minor plot point.
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The second half of the season decreases its focus on the Hapstall murder case and instead tells a very prolonged story about the origin of Annalise’s relationship with Wes. This storyline is so overlong and ridiculous that I really began to miss those creepy Hapstall siblings.
In the neverending flashback, the year is 2005, “Hollaback Girl” is on top of the charts, and Annalise is defending the son of Charles Mahoney (Adam Arkin), the biggest hedge fund manager in all of Cleveland . . . because everyone knows that Cleveland is known for LeBron James, The Drew Carey Show, and hedge funds. Despite my New York snobbishness, I am sure that there are actually hedge funds in Cleveland. But dramatically, there is no real reason for Mahoney to be based in Cleveland instead of New York; in fact, in the present Annalise informs Wes that Mahoney has moved to New York sometime after 2005 (Mahoney has really bad timing to leave Cleveland right before the Cavaliers win the NBA title). So why does the show base him in Cleveland in the first place?
In 2005, Mahoney’s son Charles (Wilson Bethel) is accused of murdering his wife, but he has a seemingly airtight alibi: Wes’s mother Rose Edmond (Kelsey Scott) states that she spoke with Charles at the time of the murder. However, Rose’s alibi is a lie, only concocted in response to threats of deportation or worse made by Mahoney and even Annalise. After Rose fails to testify in support of Charles, she commits suicide rather than face Mahoney’s wrath.
Meanwhile, also in the flashback, a less confident and poorly coiffed Frank, fed up with working for Annalise, agrees to accept a duffel full of money from a woman working for Mahoney to bug Annalise’s hotel room. When Mahoney finds out via the bug that Annalise is going to the authorities to report his malfeasance, Mahoney’s female goon arranges for Annalise to get into a horrific car accident, which causes Annalise’s son to be stillborn.
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Aside from the fact that these flashbacks take forever and encompass several episodes, they still are dramatically unsatisfying. While the flashback effectively depicts the pressure Rose felt to testify for Charles, it does not establish that she is the kind of person who would suddenly commit suicide, in turn orphaning her young son. Further, while Annalise mistreats Frank, I did not believe that Frank would betray Annalise in such a dramatic way. Finally, Mahoney is portrayed as an all-powerful, one-note villain; it is one thing to be the hedge fund king of Cleveland, but it is another to bug an attorney’s apartment and to intentionally cause a car crash.
As the season concludes, the Hapstall storyline finally comes to an end, as it turns out that brother Caleb was the killer all along and sister Catherine is innocent. Given that the show spends so little time on the two in this half of the season (as opposed to their half-brother Philip), this revelation sort of comes out of left field. On the plus side, Catherine reveals that she and Caleb are indeed lovers, justifying the myriad Cruel Intentions jokes I made in my October 8 and October 29 columns.
One of the biggest problems with this half-season is that it further underscores how absurd it is that these five first-year law students are still working for Annalise. The show has basically dropped all pretense that these people ever go to school or study any other subjects. When Wes complains to his young and attractive therapist (hmm, I wonder if they will hook up next season) about how stressed he was about studying for exams, I laughed out loud. There is a subplot this half season in which Connor applies to transfer to Stanford, but his boyfriend Oliver torpedos his application. This is yet another example of a character (here, Oliver) engaging in an action solely in order to drive the plot, and not because it fits with his character.
At least Connor and Oliver have a real relationship; How To Get Away With Murder seems keen on mixing up the hookups between the characters. After Laurel breaks up with Frank, she makes out with Wes on a trip to (you guessed it) Cleveland to learn more about the Mahoney case (if you’re scoring at home, Cleveland is now the city of finance as well as love). And Asher, reeling from his breakup with Bonnie, has sex with Michaela. The latter hookup is especially egregious, as there was no previous romantic tension between the pair. The show really needs to figure out what to do with Michaela; this season, she is defined only by her relationship with Caleb and her later hookup with Asher.
I will probably watch the third season in the fall, if only to continue making fun of it. I cannot wait to see what late 1990s teen movie the show rips off next season.
Harry Graff is a litigation associate at a firm, but he spends days wishing that he was writing about film, television, literature, and pop culture instead of writing briefs. If there is a law-related movie, television show, book, or any other form of media that you would like Harry Graff to discuss, he can be reached at [email protected]. Be sure to follow Harry Graff on Twitter at @harrygraff19.