How to get away with murder / S2xEp15 / Anna Mae

Anna Mae went home to Memphis to get away from her life and could you really blame her? Annalise has been through hell and back lately (you can debate about how much of it was her own doing another time) and when you feel like you have nowhere else to go, you go home.

And it was wonderful to see Ophelia back, dishing out insults and advice at every turn. Annalise and her mother have a terribly complicated relationship, but when Analise needed to get away, there was only one person to turn to.

Viola Davis gives the best performance on television, week after week. In “Anna Mae,” she’s especially spectacular because of the subtlety in what she’s given. There is a lot of weight to the material, but it isn’t excessive, it isn’t melodramatic. How To Get Away With Murder almost always gets carried away, doing too much and then doing even more. But it’s telling that in that moment in her mother’s backyard, the show never once does too much. It does just enough—just enough to make us see Annalise’s pain, see her first steps toward healing.

The one person Annalise didn’t really need to see was her father. I have to assume that this storyline will make its way into next season, because there was no real closure here. It’s hard to be mad at either Annalise or Ophelia in this situation.

The Best Flashback was the one who got us some of the real answers when Frank calls up all his courage and tells Sam about his part in the loss of Annalise’s child. Considering all the secrets that are kept on this show, it was really refreshing to see Frank of the past taking responsibility for his actions. He may not have ordered the hit on Annalise, but he was instrumental in giving her opposition the tools to do the job. It was a great scene for Charlie Weber (who plays Frank), and a touching moment for an enforcer we’ve seen do many horrible things.

We now know why Frank killed Lila, why he owed Sam, why he kept it a secret all this time. We know the truth about Caleb and Catherine Hapstall, about Philip. But these twists, especially the non-Hapstall ones, are grounded in the emotional backbone of the episode. They’re not even necessarily the focus. So much of the episode unfolds in Annalise’s childhood home in Memphis, between Annalise, her mother, her sister, and the life she left behind, a life that still informs who she is no matter how hard she tries to make herself believe it doesn’t.

Caleb is a serial killer! Just when we thought that the Hapstall portion of this season was all but wrapped up, a major bombshell cracks the case wide open. Our suspicion may have jumped around all season, but something never sat right with us about Caleb. We learned that Caleb killed Philip Jessup’s mother when she could provide evidence against Caleb. He also killed his parents, and Catherine lied about his alibi because she had more than just sisterly love for her adopted brother.

Other than all of the stuff in Memphis, the scene that stood out the most to me was the once between Annalise and Bonnie at episode’s end, when Bonnie tries to have Frank’s back. “Why do you do that?” Annalise asks Bonnie. “What?” she replies, earnestly. “Believe what men tell you.” It’s a sad and striking statement, especially since we know so much more about Bonnie and her past than we did last season. The scene is written with a lot of ambiguity, which I assume was purposeful. Annalise tells Bonnie that Frank needs to be taken care of, and even though it’s generally safe to assume that everyone on this show is always talking about murder, nothing about the scene is too clearly defined. But that’s what makes it great.

I mean, obviously, it’s not funny that Wallace was murdered. But whoever shot him (Frank, probably) could have waited until Wes was not, like, three inches from his dad. Also, Wes probably should have kept his ass home. Maybe then Wallace would not have been killed in front of him. Either way, Wes’s life is trash. His mom killed herself, his girlfriend Rebecca got killed, and his father (who raped his mother) got killed in front of him. Pray for him, pray for Frank, and pray that Masher decides to bone again.