by Miles Behn
This week’s episode (optimistically titled “Best Christmas Ever”) was a real doozy for How to Get Away with Murder. We had plot and character development, legitimate tension, social issues, Spanish subtitles! It was actually (dare I utter words?) pretty good. (Gasp!)
Last week Annalise got in on the drama by deciding to help her pathetic law students get away with murdering her husband (I want a love like the Keating’s). Deception (read: bad acting) was around every corner, with Wes really making the effort by tightening his coat in every scene. Are you nervous? Cold? Hiding something? Feeling hormonal?
Frank and Laurel’s sordid love affair came to a head when he pulled some really low “nice guy” guilting, and Connor and Michaela filled out the extra time with a mediocre plotline about turning themselves in. Really, the only valuable scenes were those with Viola Davis, who got to explore some of the heavier sides of her character as she fought to defend her client by accusing her husband. I suggest the writers rewrite the show purely as a Davis monologue. It would be thirty times more compelling than watching their poor attempt at using current slang. (“Dope?” Really, Asher?)
Since sweeps are over, we’re back to our “case of the week” set up. This week, a woman (Jackie) admits to keeping two girls in her basement as sex slaves for her husband. Like I said: doozy.
Asher plays the “voice of reason” in this episode, arguing that the mentally unstable Jackie should be accused (along with her husband) for the kidnapping of the two women in her basement. This is all despite the fact that Jackie was 16 when she married her husband, and has dealt with his abuse (likely mental and physical) for her entire adult life. Initially, this was a great idea. Asher looked like an idiot and Rhimes got to write about how women in abusive relationships are often blamed for their decisions. But as the episode progresses, it becomes clear that we’re supposed to agree with Asher. The woman really is a terrible person; she has no redeeming qualities. She actually kidnaps the young daughter of one of her husband’s sex slaves. While there is clearly no positive outcome for this plotline, it is a bit disheartening to find another media storyline where a woman in an abusive relationship is blamed for her circumstances. Yes, she should have to answer for her decision to kidnap this young girl, but what does this add to the conversation about abusive relationships? It’s just a clusterfuck, and we’re left thinking of people like her as “the other,” outside the realm of our happy, sane, middle class lives.
The rest of the episode is sprinkled with scenes from each of the characters’ Christmas festivities. Annalise wallows in her holiday sadness by draining the contents of the hotel minibar (is she doing the milk the minibar challenge?). Our poorly-acted young-adult romance progresses as Wes and Rebecca celebrate “an orphan’s Christmas” together with ice cream for breakfast. How cute. They’re all guardian-less. So they eat ice cream whenever they want. Those crazy kids. (Is this a John Green novel?)
We discover that Laurel is hispanic (did you know? I didn’t know). She spends her holiday in Palm Springs with her shallow, yet completely loaded, family. It’s even got subtitles. And an untranslated “Feliz Navidad!” This is the real deal. Connor spends his holiday in Grand Rapids, in his whitebred, midwestern home. Refreshingly, his family is completely nonplussed by his homosexuality, his sister going so far as to bring him a boy to sleep with as his Christmas present. See, everyone can be sluts! Sexuality doesn’t discriminate. When Connor admits to having a boyfriend, he pleads with his sister to not tell their mother. “Ugh, God no. She’d probably start planning the wedding.”
I want to take a moment to appreciate Connor’s plotline for a second. Too many times in today’s media we see homosexuality portrayed as some sort of burden. Characters outside the realm of cisgender and straight tend to be viewed as pitiable and worse-off than the rest of us (bigoted families and churches, close-minded teachers and peers). They are token characters, written in like inspiration porn. If they can survive in this world, so can I. Connor, however, lives outside this realm of inspirational homosexual characters. His sexuality is not questioned, it does not betray him. I don’t expect his plot to ever even discuss his sexuality in the negative (unless we’re talking about the excessive amount of partners he’s had, which is still not portrayed as negative). It’s nice to have a gay character, like Connor, exist outside of his sexuality. He is fully realized, fully developed.
While this wasn’t exactly an all-star episode (that would require Frank to be written off), it did have a lot of shining moments. There was a decent amount of character development. The law students (while still terrible lawyers), are beginning to feel like real people. Their lives are developing outside the murder, which is making their decisions more unpredictable. The additional factors surrounding the murder, which I initially thought to be superfluous, are proving to take root.
Oh God, I’m starting to invest in the show again. How did that happen? How did Shonda pull me back into her disastrous worlds, her ludicrous plots, her loveable, ridiculous characters?
Dammit Shonda. This is why you own Thursday nights.
Favorite quotes:
Asher, after Bonnie threatens him: “Really, you’re going to fire me when I could file a sexual harassment suite?”
Asher, after Wes repeats the clip from Jackie’s interview four times: “Dude, this isn’t a remix I’m really down with.”
Miles Behn is a writer and blogger living in Minneapolis. She currently runs the blog Staving Off Disaster. Follow her on Twitter, @milesbehn.
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