Rewind: “Why Is Your Penis On a Dead Girl’s Phone?” : How To Get Away With Murder

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There is one more day until the season premiere of our favorite juggernaut, ” How To Get Away With Murder”. This is a repost of one of the very best episodes of last season. Dead Girl (check), Penis Picture(check) and Viola Davis giving  a commanding and Emmy Award Winning performance as Annalise Keating (check, check and check again.)

Episode 4: ” Let’s Get To Scooping”

Those were the  highly marketed and anticipated last nine words Annalise Keating says in Thursday’s episode of ” How To Get Away With Murder”. I almost slid off the bed and hit the floor after those words were uttered by Annalise, after watching and being riveting by the scene of her removing her wig, her eyelashes and all of her makeup. The music was soft, achingly slow and drew me in intently. Her husband then walks in, the conversation is rather normal and he walks into the bathroom. Annalise calls him back, ever so politely and then drops the nine word hammer on him. This was fantastic television.

I began with the end of the ” Let’s Get To Scooping”, so let’s fill in the blanks. The episode begins as usual with the flash back of the students at the bonfire. However, it quickly moves to them inside of a home with the bleeding dead body of Mr. Keating. Someone is knocking on the door , yelling that they know everyone is in there. Micheala is freaking out, Connor is yelling at her and Puppy aka Wes is there as always, protecting Rebecca. Because the person knocking on the door can possibly see inside, everyone is order to get down. He lays next to Mr. Keating , practically being identical to the body position and dead look on his face. Yes, it was very creepy. A small indication of how troubled Connor really is. ( Keep watching for his break down later in the episode.)

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In court, Annalise is asking the judge to lower Rebecca’s bail. However, he sets it at one million dollars. Bonnie and Mrs. Keating met with Rebecca to ask her what really happened the night of the murder and also why she confessed. Rebecca reveals to them, she did not kill Lila and was harassed by the detectives with promises that she would get to go home. Rebecca also says that Puppy told her that Griffin was turning on her and placing all the blame on her. Considering at the time, Annalise was contemplating representing Griffith ( Lila’s football player boyfriend), Puppy was not supposed to say anything to anyone. Of course, she is pissed off and calls Puppy to her office, ” It’s your big mouth that got our client to confess…” Annalise asks him if there is anything else that he knew or needed to tell her. He lied and said “no”.

The lesson for this episode was the challenge of getting a supposed “witness” to confess to they are not witnesses after all. It is challenging to do. Nonetheless, very rewarding in the end. You start by throwing them softball questions…asking about their family, sports, or hobbies. Anything topic that may warm them up to you. At this point, you are no longer a lawyer, you are a detective. You do not ask for the truth from the, you pound it out of them and just like any other good detective…you lie.

Annalise Keating’s new case is to defend Marren Trudeau, the owner of a high producing stock brokering company, who is being charged with insider trading. The scene opens with the FBI walking throughout the office collecting everything, while Marren is in the middle completely unbothered and making jokes. She is grabbing the warrant and setting it fire when Annalise and her crew walks in. The head investigator from the FBI plays a hidden camera sex video of Marren and the owner of the company she is accused of getting the inside information from. Throughout the episode we see Keating and Company interviewing employees ( Marren finds this offensive and does not believe the person who made the trade under her name works for her.) and gathering info. Connor gets a feeling about Marren’s assistant, Paxton and goes to see him after hours at the company. Sometime during them engaging in sex, he plants a recording device in the room and catches Paxton telling someone on the phone that they still think it was Marren and he just had sex with Connor to solidify a black-mail opportunity. After asking Oliver, his almost boyfriend to trace Paxton’s call, they find out the phone call to him was made inside of the company.

Marren Trudeau ( Elizabeth Perkins) and Annalise Keating ( Viola Davis)

Officer Nate breaks into Mr Keating”s car just as Bonnie is driving up and spying at the street corner. Nate sees a date and location on Mr. Keating”s tablet which does not coincide with where he was supposed to be. Keating is walking out of his home and towards his car, so Officer Nate has to think fast and says he was jogging, saw the light on in the car and was trying to keep the car battery from dying. He states he was not trying to steal the car and jogs off, all while Bonnie is watching. Later in the episode, Bonnie goes to try to get the confession tape from the police department. She ask the Sargeant nicely. However, he balks at her.She then goes for the jugular , stating that she knows the police nd are still looking for Lila’s killer, even though they have arrested Rebecca and got her to confess. The thing about that little bit of information is Officer Nate was supposedly doing the investigating of Mr Keating for Annalise and not on official assignment by the department due to his suspension. What I found interesting about that exchange, is that the Sargeant  did not let on that he was surprised by Bonnie’s words. Which means he does know about Nate doing the side work because he gave him all the information he did not give to Annalise. If ya’ll remember he lied to her about the hubby being exactly where he said he was. The plot continues to twist and almost snaps in two.

Annalise, her crew, and Marren go to confront Paxton about the phone call. She yells at him stating that she thought of him as her son and had done anything for him. She does not understand why he would do something to make her lose everything she had built. He gets emotional, replying that for eight years he has done everything for her and she still treated him as a throw away. Marren informs him, she is looking forward to seeing him sent to jail and his family will definitely disown him even further after she tells them everything she knowns. They all turn to walk away…Paxton cries that he is sorry, sits on the open window sill and pushes himself backwards to his death. After his death, the crew still need to discover who Paxton was talking to on the phone. After deducing all over employees down to just two, they get them to turn on each other by “playing: detective. Case solved.

Annalise and the prosecutor are meeting in front of the judge, where the confession video is played. It is obvious in the tape that Rebecca is being coached on her confession,. You can plainly see her moving her eyes to an unseen person getting the correct answers. The judge is outrages, reduces Rebecca’s bail to 100k and let’s the police department they are in notice. Rebecca is released. Later, she is walking up the stairs to her apartment and Puppy is standing by the door. She still seems to not trust him…he tells her she should and gives him the pass code for the phone he found. In the next scene he is standing with Annalise telling her what he found out from Rebecca. She ask him who all knows , he lets her know only Rebecca,

him and her know all of the information. There is another teacher/student love tension in the air. Annalise tells Puppy, that he has done a good job and Rebecca needs someone to trust.

Flash back to Connor showing up at Oliver’s ( the almost boyfriend) door clearly losing his mind. He is wet, crying and not really making any coherent statements beside him repeatedly saying, ” I screwed up really badly.”

Scene flashes back to present time. Connor is pouring wine for him and Oliver, when he hears the recording of Paxton being played. Oliver is obviously hurt. Connor tries to reason with him, saying that they were not in an official relationship and it should not matter. Oliver is not hearing that excuses and puts him out of his apartment in his underwear, clothes in hand.

The final scene was really the all out show stopper, which is precisely why I STARTED with it. There is no way you will want to miss next week’s episode. The previews were enough to make you not want this episode to end.