How To Get Away With Murder

As a fanatic of the crime drama genre, I was overwhelmingly excited to get my teeth into the highly praised legal drama, How To Get Away With Murder currently running on the American TV network ABC. It depicts the life of successful defense lawyer (attorney) Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) who teaches Law at the prestigious fictional Middleton University, Philadelphia.

Before watching the first episode, I was actually quite interested to see how Viola Davis portrayed the character of Annalise and I had high hopes. Unfortunately, I feel a little let down by her character's development. In the first episode, we learn that she has an unhappy marriage to the complete creep Psychology teacher Sam (Tom Verica), which is causing her to be unfaithful to him with the local detective Nate; which is such a predictable storyline - I'm literally gasping for originality here. She's basically an unappreciated wife who hides her insecurities about her marriage by being an absolute ball buster to everyone around her. I also have taken issue with her wardrobe which feels like it's been developed to reflect the stereotypical image of a powerful business woman, but instead just makes me cringe as some of it is... mutton dressed as lamb. If I am honest, I dislike Annalise. I find her whole attitude to the law kind of off-putting as she can have a like serial killer just sitting next to her who has confessed to these terrible crimes but instead of just making a deal with the prosecution for a shorter sentence, she sends her lackies out to illegally find some evidence that will just get the case thrown out. She's basically a corrupt criminal masquerading as a lawyer. However, what I really have a problem with is the fact she always seems to bloody win! She's got people being murdered and fingerprints on a murder weapon, even a bloody confession and she still wins the damn case every.single.time! I feel conflicted as it hurts the rational side of my mind whilst also making me feel relieved she's won. This show is fucking with me.

So anyways in the first episode Annalise decides that she needs five skivies to do her bidding for her and help her win her cases which she literally never loses. She cleverly labels it 'life experience' but in fact it's cruel, unpaid labour as she appears to be from the very first second of the first episode, a heartless bitch. Her students are the classic driven and ambitious type, there's pretty and preppy private school girl Michaela Pratt (Aja Naomi King) who has a secretly gay fiancee who had a one time fling in boarding school with equally gay Connor Walsh (Jack Falahee), a narcissistic and unforgiving individual with eyes that smolder like hot-fucking-coals and a body that you just want to grab at constantly through the telly. He's my favourite, in case you couldn't already tell. Connor provides comedic relief in pretty depressing situations but is in danger of becoming just a complete sex addict with no depth. There's also naive Wes Gibbons (Alfred Enoch) who would like the whole legal system to be fair, and who also only got accepted to Middleton from the waiting list at the last minute - he's a bit like a small fish in a sea of sharks. Wes also stupidly for some reason has a relationship with suspected murderer Rebecca Sutter (Katie Findlay), who is a drug dealer and wannabe emo with terrible make-up and almost offensively ripped jeans. These are the characters I mainly focus on as they are the most interesting, but there is also the reclusive Laurel Castillo (Karla Souza) who is the kind of girl you think is judging everybody so that she'll have something to hold against them later. She has an affair with Annalise's employee Frank Delfino (Charlie Webber) who somehow thinks he's god's gift to the ladies but is actually just a creep in a waistcoat. And there's Asher Millstone, who so far just pisses me off as he is a self-obsessed rich boy who's father is a judge, oh and there's Bonnie Winterbottom (Liza Weil), an associate lawyer of Annalise, whose silly name isn't the only thing that is irritating about her character. In fact she seems to spend half of her time just lurking around in the hallways of Annalise's home pretending not to be pleased when she hears Annalise and her husband Sam (Tom Verica) fighting. In short she's an utter weirdo with a constant drawn out look on her face which I assume is supposed to reflect innocence and concern, whereas it actually just makes her look gormless.

The whole show takes place in two time frames as in the beginning of the first episode we see all five law students trying to dispose of a body in the woods whilst there's a huge bonfire going on to celebrate some sort of sport event at the university. Then we switch back to about eight weeks before the murder, which is the beginning of term where Annalise decides the five student's who will be her slaves students for the year. This whole switching time frames is a good idea in theory but in practice it becomes a bit difficult to follow and we often spend a lot of time covering old ground in the flash forwards. The show has been described by many as full of suspense however, I don't agree with this as in the firsr episode we find out that it's Annalise's husband who has been murdered and we also discover she's been having an affair with a local detective - usually we have to wait a few episodes to find out this amount of detail. I'm just saying it all feels a little rushed. Back in the present day, the whole university is consumed with the case of Lila Stangard, a girl who is missing and who we later find out in episode two has been murdered. Shockingly, there aren't actually that many suspects apart from her old boyfriend, her best friend Rebecca and Sam! I pretty much figured out that Sam had something to do with Lila's death in the fist few minutes of the second episode so I was not feeling a lot of that suspense I was promised.  Anyways, what I'm getting at is that I just felt like the show was moving too quickly with revealing all these details in like the first two episodes which makes it feel desperate to be something it's not.

Having said all this, I would actually recommend How To Get Away With Murder because it's got a seriously good title, hot sex, reasonably witty writing and in some parts - suspense. Just be prepared for a headache when those flash forwards come on.