How To Get Away With Murder Season 1 Episode 8 recap
PUT SOME CLOTHES ON, ANNALISE.
Like seriously now. How many episodes where she’s in a peignoir? I thought that everyone on TV acknowledges that T-shirts and assorted pajama parts are the TV woman’s sleep outfit of choice? And does she not own a robe or some sort of other garment that might at least nod to the guise of professionalism? Or maybe she’s not successful, so therefore she’s got no money to rent offices where people don’t see that she favours magenta sateen nightgowns? Also, can you believe I had a professional obligation to use the word ‘nightgown’?
Also, no party sequence. BLISS. Possibly because this episode was directed by Debbie Allen, which is spectacular.
So – did you have fun? That was kind of fun. Quite demented, of course, but as I said, no party sequence already makes me happy, Asher was a tool in a toolish shirt, and everything is starting to move at breakneck pace now that we’re closer than ever to the murder.
So in order:
Connor – is a dick about where Wes lives. No mention of (SPOILER) how much he loves his ex-boyfriend.
Laurel – Sleeping with Frank. He has a girlfriend. NO MORE PEOPLE, please. We need less.
Frank – Lucky he has this storyline to not be boring.
Michaela – losing her sh*t over signing the prenup. Which is so ill-fated, because why can’t you just sign it and then get around it later? Yeah, yeah ‘you get nothing’. If you leave. Which you say you aren’t. So put up and shut up and all the rest of it. Honestly this isn’t a terrible relationship hurdle, as they go, but given that her relationship has been teetering since Episode 1, I wonder whether this could have gone a little earlier and found another reason for her to slap Ma In Law. I’m sure there must be many.
Who else? Wes, blindly liking Rebecca for some damn reason and getting himself in way too deep, since he’s too naïve to see that he’s being played from about five different directions. Did you see Annalise’s face when she told him he was too smart for her to keep secrets from? She basically says, deadpan, “I am jerking you off rght now, that’s how little this actually matters.” But since he still seems to be on a different show than the others, it seems to matter? Really, he’s not snarky, he’s not competitive. He’s not any of them and he’s so compelled by this girl who thinks it’s cool to be dismissive and boring?
Okay, lookit. Rebecca is not my favourite character, but I get that a volatile murder suspect is a great thing to have. And I can see, when I’m not rolling my eyes, that her ambiguity works for us in the audience, because you’re never sure who she’s playing, the fact that she’s been kissing Wes in the fastforwards all season notwithstanding. For all we know, that’s part of her con. Okay. I guess then make her not so showy about it? A little more reserved.
Like my poor Bonnie. Poor forsaken lamb who hasn’t been pining after Sam all this time, or so she wants us to believe. Bonnie just wanted to talk to him all these weeks, to warn him. You’d think she would have written him an email, but that’s not her way.
No, Bonnie’s way is to lurk, rending garments and squeezing anxious hands, always looking and watching and on the tip of tears at all times. But for that one well-timed ‘Bitch, please’ that time, we’d have no idea Bonnie was anything but a simpering helper.
So much so that she groveled on the floor in front of Annalise, begging her to see the way it was instead of the way it seemed. I think we’re supposed to understand by now that she has a blind spot where her husband is concerned – I think I would understand it more if, you know, she actually enjoyed him. If she took great pleasure in him, if he made her light up, then yeah, by all means have a blind spot where the husband is concerned. But she has that boyfriend…and he’s bound and determined to matter in the end, too.
So now I wonder, does Bonnie have enough moral fortitude to be a factor later in the game? Is she a woman scorned, now, or determined to help still, or what? And will Asher remain my favourite after next week? Signs all point to yes…
Lila Stangard was exactly who I thought she’d be. No difference whatsoever. I also think they could have found that same actress if they were casting in 1993 or 2025. Right? But that’s fine. We don’t need to think any more about Lila Stangard when we have all these other people to be concerned with. Right?
Oh, the case? What case? The old ‘murder the nanny in your sleep’? The double-trich diagnosis was a nice twist. Felt like a medical show. This show could use a little more of the ‘surprise procedural’ element, and a little less of pretending, one scene a week, that these characters go to class.
