HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER (S5E7) “I Got Played”: Strong Penultimate Episode

How To Get Away With Murder’s penultimate mid-season finale episode is a decidedly melancholy affair. Following last week’s shocking cliffhanger, we regroup a month later to learn of the cause and effect that Nate Sr’s devastating death has had, an event that brings about an existential crisis that reverberates throughout the group in a number of ways. While effectively setting the scene for the fatal, deadly wedding that has been endlessly teased, “I Got Played” heightens both the drama and emotion in this solid, crucial episode.

In the cold open, it is revealed that Nate Sr was shot and killed by a cop after he became agitated, and supposedly violent, during his transition out of the prison – or, rather, that’s the story that’s being presented by the medical officer. A clearly fabricated narrative that deflects blame away from a public servant, heavily implying a cover-up, Annalise (Viola Davis) sets about working to convince those in charge that an inquest is vital. First up is the governor-cum-law-partner and in the least surprising news of the season, she’s crooked. Imagine that, a crooked Republican in office.

“I put a target on his back and she took the first shot”

There’s time for both urgency and reflection in the direction of this storyline, and episode writer Maya Goldsmith ensures that both are of equal importance. Viola Davis is given a tremendous monologue (one that she supposedly influenced and pitched herself) that matches the intensity, passion and power of “It Was the Worst Day of My Life”‘s – nay, season five’s – defining moment.

Exploring the systematic bias and racism interwoven in the fabric of our society, Davis conveys so much anguish and torment in her courtroom performance that she may have given the show its best sequence in years. It’s most extraordinary that this show always feels so sharp; cutting through the more pulpy, sensationalistic elements of How To Get Away With Murder, it so intellectually articulates the most pressing issues of our time, leaving an indelible mark with its rousing thematic explorations. They’ve never felt so urgent as they do here.

Elsewhere, the Keating Five want to take their minds off the genuinely awful world in which they (and because the show has its finger on the zeitgeist so intuitively, we) live in and throw a no-moms-allowed Bachelorette party for Connor and Oliver. It takes on the rather recognisable dilemma of wanting to have a good time in a world with so much sorrow and it’s not something I’ve seen explored before in any format; we must cling on to that which offers us happiness, no matter how temporary, in order to step back from reality.

Again, it’s such a deft consideration and one development – which explains Connor’s wedding shiner – reminds us that we never really can fully escape the bigotries and injustices that plague our world. Rather than a fractured group dynamic, it is refreshing to see the group band together, a celebration sure to be shattered with next week’s conclusion.

“I’ll take a thousand bullets to make you pay for what you did to him”

While two of the three main plot points in this episode work, the third and final – the continued, exhausting mystery surrounding Gabriel – is still something of a labour to endure. We know that there is a secret but seven episodes into the season and we’re still none the wiser; sure, words like ‘adoption’ and ‘son’ and ‘worst nightmare’ have been thrown around endlessly but the figure of Gabriel is so hollow, and we are so used to the series misleading us, that we struggle to find anything to anchor ourselves to. Everything is so vague. He’s a floating ship on a stormy sea I don’t really care to go treading in – but we have got this far that we may as well wade into the water.

And so, just for fun, shall we make our predictions for next week’s finale? With all but the confirmation that the victim is a male – not a female, as I had suspected in the season’s earlier days – it narrows the field down considerably. Connor, Asher and Frank are also supposedly ‘safe’, if the flashback’s chronology hasn’t been tampered with (as I may suspect it is), leaving the unlucky soul as either: Nate, Oliver, Miller, Gabriel or Emmett.

My heart tells me that my favourite, Connor, is the one turning the white snow red, with his discovery of his mother and Asher’s rendezvous perhaps leading to a deathly altercation; the show has tricked us before with their timing – let’s not forget when we had ruled Wes out of the season three ‘under the sheet’ death – and quite often characters have had their world shatter around them when it finally appears that a happy ending is on the horizon. It’s exactly the sort of gut wrenching twist How To Get Away With Murder would pull.

Or, maybe, it’s Miller, Bonnie’s new beau. It would seem that she has the worst luck of any character on any series at any time, so it would make sense that just when she’s beginning to trust a man, he is viciously snatched away from her – possibly even at her hands. I complained earlier this season that Nate was becoming deadwood, so maybe the writer’s have sent him up the river; or would Emmett’s death signal Annalise’s return to Caplan & Gold? I can’t decide whether Gabriel ending his first-half season in the morgue would be the best or worse thing to happen to this series moving forward.

In Conclusion: I Got Played

How To Get Away With Murder’s penultimate chapters always seem to hit it out of the park and thankfully, after a few ropey episodes this season, “I Got Played” is no different. Because there’s an ending in sight – albeit an ever-moving one – the writers have something to work towards and even this busy hour manages to balance and streamline the narrative threads cohesively. It packs in all the drama and all the emotion, with an obvious energy as we head into this mid-season finale; let’s hope they send the first half out with a bang.

How To Get Away With Murder airs on Thursdays on ABC. 

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