A glimpse into the past sets the stage for an epic finale.
by Andrea Braxton
For the first time in How To Get Away With Murder history, the episode does not start in the future. Instead of leaping forward to the night of Sam’s murder, we travel back to the beginning of his relationship with Lila.
Lila is unhappy with her virginity pact with Griffin; she sees Sam as a way to break that pact. We see Lila’s initial joy at hooking up with Sam and her life unraveling when she discovers she’s pregnant. Rebecca is there the entire time to provide moral support…and drugs.
The present scenes lead up to the night of Sam’s murder. After Bonnie tells Annalise and Sam that Lila was pregnant, Annalise demands to know if Sam knew about the baby, and Sam once again lies to her face.
Annalise reveals more of her insecurities when she blames her infertility on the fact that she slept with Sam while he was married to his first wife. “This is what happens when you screw someone else’s husband. You end up sad, barren. Even a dead girl is more of a woman than you,” she says. Clearly she feels that Lila was more of a woman than she is because she could have children. It was a heartbreaking scene to watch, especially because of Sam’s lies and unfaithfulness.
Annalise admits that she can’t focus on the current court case. In my opinion, the case about a wife accused of killing her nanny while under the influence of sleeping pills should not have been included at all. The “plot twists” surrounding this stereotypical suburban family, involving an unfaithful husband, a disapproving grandmother, and a weird teenager were a little too predictable.
After recovering from the shock of the autopsy results, Annalise tells Wesley about Lila’s pregnancy. She makes him promise that he won’t tell Rebecca, but he breaks that promise. It almost makes me wonder if Annalise expected this. She knows that Wesley’s loyalties lie with Rebecca more than anyone else.
What Wesley doesn’t know until the end is that Rebecca is working with Nate to get Sam arrested. Rebecca makes a pretty embarrassing attempt to collect some of Sam’s DNA and inevitably gets caught. At the end of the episode, she and Nate come up with the plan to get Sam’s text history with Lila from his phone.
As far as the other students are concerned, Michaela and Laurel receive the most attention. After discovering that her fiancé’s mother wants her to sign a pre-nup, Michaela is itching for validation from anyone. She helps Annalise win the case and asks for the trophy. Annalise shatters Michaela’s overachiever perspective when she says that the trophy doesn’t matter. After she almost slaps her future mother-in-law at a restaurant for threatening to call off the wedding, Michaela goes to Asher’s house and steals the trophy for herself.
Laurel and Frank’s relationship gets enough screen time to reveal that Frank has a girlfriend named Sasha, who walks in on Frank and Laurel messing around and tells Laurel that she’s just another “student of the month.” Laurel is heartbroken but refuses to talk about it when Connor and Wesley see her crying.
Bonnie finally gets some of the spotlight. She reveals that she sent Lila away when she came to Annalise’s office to tell her about her affair with Sam. Bonnie confesses this to Sam, who tries to use her obvious feelings for him to keep her quiet. But loyal Bonnie tells Annalise everything. Unfortunately, Annalise retaliates by firing her, as she continues to take her anger out on the wrong people.
So now the stage is set. Connor assembles the future body-burying team – a study group including Wesley and Laurel. Michaela is headed toward them with the murder weapon. Rebecca is headed over to Sam’s house, and Annalise just called the DA to ask for DNA samples of all of the men in Lila’s life, including teachers. Somehow, Sam is going to be killed, but we’ll have to wait until the finale next week to find out who did it and how it happens.
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Andrea Braxton graduated from the University of Missouri in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and an English writing minor. She lives in Baltimore, MD and works as an editorial assistant for an educational publishing company. Andrea wrote recaps for TV shows for the VoxTalk blog, and if she could, she would watch TV all day. She’s addicted to Netflix and any show with a good cast and tons of drama. She has a publishing blog at http://abraxtonwriter.wordpress.com.
