Source: How To Get Away With Murder ABC
As the title suggests, this week’s episode was mostly about Frank. We start back in the ER, with Laurel and her unborn child clinging to life and Meggy giving Bonnie and Oliver more information than she’s probably allowed too. This includes the news that Laurel is pregnant. Bonnie gets on the phone and tells a mystery caller about Laurel’s pregnancy.
THREE WEEKS EARLIER. Bonnie is at the funeral home to make arrangements for her scumbag dad. She’s really only there to take a look at his body, not to pick out coffins or make burial plans. She’s having him cremated and it’s highly unlikely she’s going to collect those ashes. Laurel calls her on the way out, asking after Frank, who just so happens to be standing in the parking lot of the funeral home. Bonnie lies to Laurel and gets off the phone. She gives Frank a huge hug and thanks him for killing her dad. <3
Source: How To Get Away With Murder ABC
There’s no clinic case this week, which makes sense since Annalise isn’t currently employed by the university—a fact in which the always douchey Simon Drake seems to take a great deal of pleasure in. Also, exams are coming up and although the Keating 5 are supposed to be studying, they end up debating whether or not any of them can successfully date outside the murder circle. Wes is about to meet Meggy’s dad and Connor thinks it’s a huge mistake. Laurel is acting weird as usual.
In one of my favorite HTGAWM scenes ever, Annalise gets her weave sewn in by Mary J. Blige and everything about the ladies’ conversation in the salon is fantastic and real.
Source: How To Get Away With Murder
Bonnie is still sneaking around with Frank behind Laurel and Annalise’s backs. She asks him why he shot Wallace Mahoney in front of Wes (Franks admits he did it, as if there was really any doubt) and tells him that making Wes a suspect was why Annalise went after him. Of course, that’s not really true; it was more about the whole dead baby thing, but whatever.
11 YEARS EARLIER. We see a young Frank in prison and he has a visitor: Sam Keating. Apparently Sam’s sister, Hannah, knows Frank’s family and asked Sam to contact with him. Frank is up for parole soon but he’s been isolating himself from his family. We learn that Frank has been in jail since he was 13, and Sam offers Annalise’s services to get him out.
Source: How To Get Away With Murder
Annalise doesn’t want to take the case but she does it for Sam, who compares it to Annalise asking Sam to help Bonnie. Annalise goes to see Frank and tells him he has to admit guilt in order to get out. Later, after she meets with him, Annalise tells Sam that Frank doesn’t want to make parole and is committing infractions to sabotage himself. Annalise and Sam are already having major issues in their marriage regarding their issues with having children.
Annalise calls Bonnie and she pretends that she’s with her sister making arrangements for their father but really she’s with Frank in some motel room, trying to convince him to come back home. Bonnie tells Frank that if he admits to Annalise that Sam forced him to keep secrets from her—that he got into Frank’s head like he did with Bonnie. She truly believes that if Frank goes to Annalise and takes responsibility for what happened to her baby, she will forgive him. Personally I think that may be a bit too optimistic of her but they all do have a lot of history (and a lot of secrets) so maybe she’s right.
Source: How To Get Away With Murder
Annalise goes to AA meeting where she just happens to run into President Hargrove. AWKWARD.
Source: How To Get Away With Murder
After the meeting, Annalise is half-assing self-improvement by throwing away all her booze. We get a series of flashbacks in Annalise’s life, from her first drink with Sam in their house in 1999, to her miscarriage in 2001, and getting her job at the university in 2002. All the memories of the things she’s lost in her life are too much for Annalise to handle and she digs the vodka out of the trash and goes on a serious bender. She dances and sings alone with vodka and later drunk dials Nate and leaves a voicemail. If I’m being honest, the whole thing is #relatable.
GIF Source: TGON
Annoying Simon’s computer has gone missing and he immediately assumes one of the Keating 5 has taken it. They have all had more than enough of him but it’s Michaela who ends up going off on him. When she gets angry, her Louisiana comes out, much to the amusement of the 5 (and the horror of Simon).
GIF Source: itsahalest0rm.tumblr.com
Meggy and Wes have dinner with her dad, who keeps asking questions about Wes’s parents. Meggy is embarrassed but Wes answers. We learn that Wes has lied to Meggy about his parents; he said his mom died of stomach cancer and that he never met his father. Maybe Connor wasn’t so far off about dating outside the murder circle after all.
It’s bedtime back in the motel, and Frank asks Bonnie to run away with him, settle down as a family in some small town somewhere, and have his babies. Bonnie is sad but she doesn’t seem surprised and now I want to know EVERYTHING about the Bonnie/Frank backstory because there is definitely some history here that the show has not explored yet.
Flashback to prison Frank: Sam is trying to get him to admit that he wants out. We learn that Frank is guilty of the attempted murder of his own father when he was 13, that it was most definitely not an accident. Whatever Frank’s first murder plot was, it ended up with his dad underneath his car (but not dead), so it would stand to reason that Frank is the reason his dad is in a wheelchair. Frank thinks he’s a sociopath but Sam believes there’s some good in him. Alternately, Sam already sees how easily he will be able to manipulate Frank if Annalise can get him out.
Frank is having a nasty-sounding nightmare on the floor of the motel room. Bonnie wakes him up and takes care of him, and it’s clearly not the first time this has happened. Bonnie lies next to him and talks about their possible future together, going to the Oregon Coast and trying to forget all the bad stuff in their lives. Then they get it on and, sorry Laurel, but I ship Frank and Bonnie now. All my favorite ships are always the two broken people helping each other to heal so I am a complete sucker for this Bonnie x Frank thing. Of course, it’s Frank, so he abandons her in the morning when she goes out to get coffee. Bonnie is heartbroken AND SO AM I.
Source: How To Get Away With Murder
Wes drops in on Annalise and she’s BEYOND wasted, slurring her words and stumbling. Annalise ends up puking and Wes takes care of her. She brings up the fact that Wes shot her and she thinks he hates her and wants her dead but Wes says that she is his protector and he wants to do the same for her. Annalise hates that Wes is seeing her this way but he refuses to leave her in this state. She asks if Meggy is too good for him like Nate was for her, and Wes puts her into bed with a trashcan to puke in.
Source: How To Get Away With Murder
It turns out that Michaela is the one who stole Simon’s computer. She had Oliver hack it to get the arbitration outline for their exams but instead he found that Simon was the one responsible for the KILLER flyers. I have to say, it was a pretty boring reveal, but it’s certainly good for Annalise and the Keating 5 because (as Annalise points out when they bring her the evidence) that means the flyers weren’t put up anyone who knows anything about anything; it was just pathetic Simon so they are all safe. Annalise tells them she’s going to handle it herself and goes to Simon guns blazing. She’s got him by the balls for all her future blackmail needs.
Meanwhile, still not actually studying (no wonder they all have crap GPAs), Asher and Connor are making fun of Michaela’s accent. They want to know whether it comes from her birth parents or adoptive parents, she goes off on how she was raised by trash. Simon comes in and, in his first act of atonement, gives them the arbitration outline.
Wes and Laurel have a little chat in the stairwell. It would seem that Annalise’s words really got to Wes because he’s thinking about breaking up with Meggy. He is sick of having to lie in his relationship, and Laurel’s like “do what you want,” and the whole thing still seems weird and forced. Apparently now Wes is all about Laurel again and wants to be with her but she tells him that Frank isn’t actually gone so things are still complicated.
Source: How To Get Away With Murder
Annalise is back to her usual self and marches into Hargrove’s office with a copy of her lawsuit. Now that she knows who is actually behind the flyers she is ready to go at them, but she’s really using the threat of the lawsuit as leverage to get them to reinstate her. Hargrove seems legitimately concerned about her but I think it’s best for everyone if she just minds her own business.
Wes and Laurel go to Annalise’s house and Wes makes Laurel tell Annalise what she knows about Frank. It honestly surprises me that Laurel lets Wes talk her into that, but nothing about Wes x Laurel makes sense to me so I’ll just ignore it. Of course, because it’s HTGAWM, Bonnie walks in just in time to hear Laurel question Annalise about whether she tried to kill Frank. Yikes.
In the ER on the night of the fire, Oliver calls Connor once and he doesn’t pick up. He calls back again and Michaela’s adoptive mom Trishelle picks up (Connor’s phone had been stuck in the couch). Michaela (who thankfully is not the one #underthesheet) gets on the phone and Bonnie tells her about Laurel’s pregnancy.
Source: How To Get Away With Murder
News coverage of the fire says that an unidentified male was found in the house, which we sort of know by process of elimination already. Of the major characters, those still unaccounted for are Asher, Connor, Wes, Nate, and Frank.
