“How to Get Away With Murder” Premiere Recap
September 27, 2014 by admin
Filed under Choosing Lingerie
I hope some of you may remember me from Scandal recaps last season. As much as I love that show and will still watch it with religious devotion, I’m switching recapping hats this fall and instead doing How to Get Away With Murder.
I really wanted to watch this show because I thought it might be useful. I mean, who doesn’t want to know how to get away with murder? You know … just in case.
Also, anything with Shonda Rhimes behind it (she’s executive producer of this one) is bound to have a diverse, gorgeous cast of engaging characters getting it on with each other on a regular basis, mixed with a big dose of B.S.C. plot developments. In other words, T.V. heaven.
Does How to … Murder live up to that? Let’s look at the opening arguments and come to a verdict …
After some incomprehensible opening sequence dealing with something murdery on the night of a heinous college bonfire, with a group of students arguing in the woods over what to do about some dead body, we flashback three months.
It’s the first day of school at Middleton Law School, which is totally a real school (located right between Reidel High and Hogwarts). We’re in a huge lecture hall and from the way everyone’s acting, it quickly becomes clear that all law school students are brown-nosing, back-stabbing tools. Okay, got it. They’re all particularly atwitter about their famed, ball-buster professor, one Annalise Keating.
A hush falls as she strides in, and like all college professors, she’s sporting a form-fitting Italian leather jacket, dangly earrings, and a $500 haircut. You probably already know she’s played by Academy Award nominee Viola Davis, and I will say she’s absolutely mesmerizing to watch in this role and a reason to stick with this show.
Writing on the board as she speaks, she announces that the course is “Criminal Law 100. Or as I like to call it, ‘How to Get Away … with MURDER!!!!’” [Looks directly at the camera, smiles, and winks.]
I’m guessing she forgot to mention the prerequisite courses, “How to Get Away with Cheating at Scrabble” and “How to Get Away with White after Labor Day.”
She proceeds to randomly call on students, and although they all act terrified like this is the most arduous, difficult course they’ve ever had, as best I can tell it involves quoting sordid details from some tabloid article about an office assistant accused of using aspirin to poison her bigwig boss (a guy fatally allergic to aspirin), who she was also boinking. Or as Annalise calls it, a la Encyclopedia Brown, “The Case of the Aspirin Assassin.”
Then she calls on one Wes Gibbins (Alfred Enoch), who emerges in this first episode as our hero, and he’s all clueless because he never got the email about the assignment because – Gasp! — he was waitlisted at that school until two days ago. Oh the shame! She chews him out a bit and the students all snicker because law school.
Wow law school sure is mean! But fun too, because Professor Keating has a contest for them! Turns out this aspirin poisoning thing is a real case, and the accused office assistant is Annalise’s client for reals, and she wants the students to each come up with a potential defense. Prizes! The top four students get hired by her prestigious law firm.
So in other words, Annalise has figured out a clever way to get herself a bunch of free labor, like why not have a second contest involving scrubbing the toilets and ironing her lingerie for a chance at a gold star on your transcript?
Of course, Annalise could save us all a lot of trouble and skip this whole contest thing by simply hiring the four most attractive students, since this is television and that’s obviously what’s going to happen anyway.
But there’s a Bonus Prize! The TOP student gets a tacky statue that’s like their “immunity idol” and gets them out of any exam of their choosing. That’s got to be like crack for law school students. (Incidentally, the immunity idol statue also figures in that murdery opening sequence I told you about.)
