How to Get Away with Murder: “It’s Called the Octopus”

This review contains some notes on last week’s episode, as we play catch-up on the new season.

Sometimes I am irritated by how the HTGAWM title hardly contributes to the premise of the episode (i.e. “Freakin Whack-a-Mole,”), but last week’s “She’s Dying” was spot on. Gripping her stomach trying to stop the bleeding, our anti-hero, Annalise lay seemingly dying on the floor. We are, once again, transported to the siblings’ (lovers?) mansion, where Connor is hovering over Annalise’s dead body while the others force him to leave the scene. Turns out, Wes wasn’t the only one running from the house, eliminating my proposed theory that Wes was on his own. Nope.

This week we have more dealings with the Hapstall case. I should explain the ‘lovers’ quip. Turns out, there is now a motive for this case. A photograph of the two siblings looking into each other’s eyes, going for the kiss, surfaces in the tabloids. SIBCEST! scream the headlines. Now Annalise is unsure of her clients’ innocence, as she should be. Previously, Caleb unluckily or conveniently went for a run during the murder of his aunt and his DNA was found at the crime scene. He lied about where he was and Katherine covered for him. Now, he has been exonerated from the murder charge of his aunt, but I am convinced he murdered their parents as some sort of act of love for Katherine. Perhaps they are star-crossed lovers, thwarted by their shared mother and father? I’m buying into the whole SIBCEST thing—might regret it later, but right now it seems accurate. Additionally, their housekeeper was the one who sent in the photograph of them. All very sketchy indeed. I would not put it past How to Get Away with Murder, which has turned all other ABC show plot lines upside down on their heads and shown that nothing is impossible, to throw incest into an already haphazard mix.

And the series continues to make interesting moves with the lead characters. Matt McGory is getting the part he deserves. It’s not that I’m rooting for Asher to be the bad guy, but I want him to have a little more screen time and a more developed character—both seem to be happening. I enjoyed Asher’s bon mots last season from time to time, but now, for me, they serve no real purpose. Him working with that unpleasant prosecutor, Ms. Sinclair, doesn’t seem to be a great idea, but I am excited to see where this goes. Although, in this episode, we saw Ms. Sinclair, dead on the downstairs mansion floor, eyes gouged out, so it may not go that far. The real question is: What is Trotter Lake? And who is Tiffany?