How To Get Away With Murder Season 2 Episode 13 recap
Okay, look. The advent of technology has deeply screwed onscreen storytelling. I saw a movie at TIFF last year that isn’t even out yet that used an actual answering machine to reveal information. An answering machine. In 2015. People on TV make phone calls when they never would, because you need to hear them do it (and because those pop-up texts onscreen still never catch on). Believe me, I am the first one to say this is a gigantic problem. The phone rings when Annalise reaches for a doorknob, I can’t complain about that.
But can we not have Annalise waving around a laptop, all ‘When you see what’s on this’, when what’s ‘on this’ is email that can be accessed from everywhere? If it were what was on the laptop, wouldn’t Connor be Philip? I would love if the show were playing us that well, but I don’t think they are.
In fact, I saw the end of the episode coming a mile away and so did you. Philip hasn’t seemed that scary at all—and ‘serial killer’ has seemed like a deep, deep stretch. You have to end the episode with an ankle grab for sure, but all the rest of it—the yammer about them all being in danger, and camping together at Asher’s house…really? Also, is Philip smart enough to be a serial killer who’s stalking them all, but not smart enough to have clocked who Asher is and why he’s a ‘safehouse’? I am happy to feel scared for the characters, but, as in a creepy movie, I want to believe there’s a real worry, and anonymous videos aren’t doing it for me. Show, don’t tell, that someone is terrifying, and I’ll believe you.
This is why the Frank and Laurel story doesn’t work—we’ve only seen him be charming in every flashback, except for that pesky killing one, and we don’t really believe he’s a killer, so we’re not with Laurel. Go be with the nice boy, Laurel! Nobody’s perfect! Whereas Bonnie is regularly terrifying to be in the same room with, and still a legitimate suspect for everything we’ve seen up to and including the death of Wes’ mother.
About that—so Annalise is, you know, terrible-adjacent, and so Wes is generally getting played. We saw him shoot Annalise in the stomach over Rebecca (who has, of course, since been forgotten). But is he going to become an actual murderer over this? All these flashbacks and backstory have to be informing today, right? You can’t have all of this happen to you and become just a mild-mannered law student, can you?
So is Annalise actually growing killers? Is that the game? Charming, able-to-walk-among-people killers? Frank is a success, Bonnie is a failure, and that’s why Laurel irritates Annalise so much, she’s not bowing to the pressure to be this kind of person? How long before she decides to take Philip on staff? And given that this sudden ‘Stanford’ thread seems designed to cull the herd a little, is that suggestion so crazy?
