Even at its messiest, How To Get Away With Murder handles trauma with care, depth, and nuance. That can’t be said of a lot of thrillers that dabble so frequently in murder and violent crimes. “You don’t have a right to mess with anyone else’s trauma,” Annalise spits at Nate, who is convinced that they need to tell…
Amid all the chaos and drama and murder, How To Get Away With Murder consistently embeds compelling messages about trauma, violence, and morality. One of its strongest messages is its complete challenging of what it means to be a murderer. The show posits, sometimes with disturbing pointedness, that anyone is capable…
How To Get Away With Murder is taking its time setting up its central mysteries this season. The show often barrels through story very quickly, sometimes to its own detriment. So a measured pace isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just...different. Like the premiere, “Whose Blood Is That?” feels like mostly setup.
How To Get Away With Murder returned for its fifth season opening, as is tradition, with a violent crime. In its season premiere, the Shondaland crime drama leans on its most fundamental strengths, namely the dynamic presence of its star, Viola Davis compelling at every turn even without much of the intense emotional…
Shows like How To Get Away With Murder thrive on viewer manipulation. It’s their nature to fake us out. So it tracks that How To Get Away With Murder would totally pull the rug out from us after last week’s penultimate episode. The end of that episode suggests that Bonnie has gotten into a major car accident. And when…
Unsurprisingly, the penultimate episode of How To Get Away With Murder’s fourth season has a lot going on. “The Day Before He Died” tries to attack all of the long-term storylines at once. Isaac is in the hospital recovering from overdosing. Simon’s in the hospital, too, but now he’s awake and gradually remembering…
When I first heard about the How To Get Away With Murder/Scandal crossover event, I thought it was certainly a joke. It seemed like something Twitter had somehow breathed into existence, like the premise of fanfiction. But despite there was no real evidence all this time to suggest that Olivia Pope and Annalise…
Oh how I wish I could say that the final seconds of “Ask Him About Stella” were enough to carry the entire episode. After teasing a How To Get Away With Murder/Scandal crossover for a while now—something I thought was only possible in my wildest of dreams and fanfiction—we get our first brief glimpse at what a world…
“He’s A Bad Father” unravels plenty of thread for How To Get Away With Murder season four’s murder board, managing to connect Annalise’s class action, Wes’ death, Laurel’s fucked up family drama, and even Isaac’s once seemingly random backstory with more coherence than the show has exhibited in a while. Look, I get…
Despite many of its narrative flaws, How To Get Away With Murder remains one of the most piercing portrayals of toxic relationships on television. Erratic character dynamics are a strange thing to praise, and yet, How To Get Away With Murder makes its extreme character highs and lows a defining part of its fabric. The…
You know that feeling when you jolt awake after a nap you didn’t mean to take or a nap that lasted longer than intended? That’s exactly what a midseason premiere of How To Get Away With feels like. It’s a dizzying inhale. It knocks you out of time. It sends a powerful tension through your entire body. That’s all…
Good news for anybody who’s ever wanted to see what happens when Olivia Pope and Annalise Keating go head-to-head: Deadline reports that Shondaland stars Kerry Washington and Viola Davis have both been dropping hints about a possible crossover between their respective series, Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder.
How To Get Away With Murder dedicates its midseason finale to Laurel and company’s ill-devised plan to bring down her father and Antares. In typical How To Get Away With Murder fashion, it unspools the story in a nonlinear fashion, starting with a big tease and then jumping back 24 hours and then repeatedly jumping…
Though their central storylines have been mostly separate, Annalise and Laurel/Michaela/Oliver have more or less been on similar paths this season. They’ve all taken on a noble cause. In Annalise’s case, she’s helping a large group of poor people who received unfair trials. In Laurel/Michaela/Oliver’s case, they’re…
“I can’t be strong all the time,” Annalise Keating declares during another one of her terrible therapy sessions to her terrible therapist Isaac. Since the beginning, How To Get Away With Murder has challenged the concept of the “strong female character.” What, after all, does “strong female character” even mean? It’s…
Guilt and self-preservation are often at the surface of How To Get Away With Murder, and they often go hand in hand. “I Love Her” crucially delves into the background between Annalise and Bonnie, shedding light—and darkness—on their complex, often contradictory and boundaryless relationship. Bonnie, who is still lying…
Almost every relationship on How To Get Away With Murder is hard to define, has hazy boundaries, is unstable and unpredictable. In some ways, that makes the show thrilling. You never know who will betray who, who will murder who, who will fuck who. “Better people than you have betrayed me,” Annalise points out to her…
How To Get Away With Murder pedals some far-flung ideas—namely, the idea that anyone is capable of murder. But something much easier to get behind is the recurring sentiment on the show that the legal process is inextricable from human emotion. How To Get Away With Murder persistently challenges the idea that laws and…
How To Get Away With Murder is in a bit of a rebuilding phase. After Annalise fired everyone, the show has reorganized itself into two spheres: the world of the Keating Four and the world of Annalise. Frank and Bonnie exist somewhere in the liminal spaces of both. The show has previously drawn these lines before, but…
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Thursday, October 5. All times are Eastern.
