I was going to quit How To Get Away With Murder with this fourth episode but I may have to keep watching from the sheer ridiculousness as well as the fascinating case study of Anything Goes in contemporary television. If you replace all the female characters on this show with gay men (as you could well do with only 1% of your imagination since all the characters are so broadly drawn) this would be the gayest show that ever existed. Sorry Queer as Folk, Sex & The City and Looking.
ABC had promised jaw-dropping with their promos for last night's episode once you heard 'Viola Davis's last nine words'. Those last nine words included the word "penis". Hey, they're the ones who said "jaw-dropping" not me! Naughty naughty. (For the record my jaw did not drop but it did open wide for a long chortle. It's either really terrible writing or A+ lurid paperback but either way it amounts to the same thing) Viola's quotable send-off turned out to be so gay and so trashy that it exemplifies the young series better than I could ever hope to.
The last nine-words were...
Why is your penis on a dead girl's phone?
The most important word in that sentence is penis because How To Get Away With Murder is obsessed with them. Let's recap their communal cock collection after the jump...
HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER CHARACTERS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO DICK
A handy guide
- ANNALISE KEATING (Viola Davis) has had two of them in-show.
- MR ANNALISE (Tom Verica) & FRANK (Charlie Weber) her husband and assistant use theirs inappropriately and frequently on young students.
- PARIS GELLER (Liza Weil as Bonnie) definitely wants one of the two that Viola already has.
- GAY GUY (Jack Falahee as Connor) has had thousands of them, including the one belonging to the fiance of...
- PROM QUEEN (Aja Naomi King as Michaela) who now fears that her fiance will want more of them, too!
- DOUCHEBAG (Matt McGorry as Asher) is obsessed with them on principle as a bro and we know this because he's always talking about balls.
- SHY GIRL (Karla Souza as Laurel) is suddenly enjoying a hot Indian one (Arjun Gupta's to be precise) and fearful of what Frank's might do to her.
- The only member of the principle cast who is either not a) enjoying or attempting to enjoy cock or b) using his own is the show's lead* WAIT LIST (Alfred Enoch as Wes)! Nevertheless it is strongly implied that Annalise would like to add this theoretical and unused penis to her collection.
To further underline the phallocentricism, the episode opens with HACKER (Conrad Ricamora as Oliver) asking his new boyfriend Connor if he's a sex addict. Your Honor, objection. Rhetorical Question! They have a quickie before work, sex addiction concerns be damned.
The Case of the Week, there's always a case of the week since this is a procedural, involves the ever-watchable Elizabeth Perkins in larger than life Samantha Jones drag queen mode as a DIVA BOSS accused of Insider Trading. The proof that she has insider knowledge is in a video of another CEO inside her for a little carnal knowledge. Later she tells Viola that if she were married to Mr. Annalise, she'd never walk straight again. More dick jokes just to make sure we've noticed that everyone on this show loves cock / can't get enough.
Anyway, Diva Boss has a GAY UNDERLING (actor/model Niko Pepaj, previously of Bunheads) she adores. He is a total looker who, the show strongly implies in this particulary crude shot/reverse shot exchange below, has a ridiculously large and beautiful schlong.
The Case of the Week is cracked ("he said crack" hehheh) by Connor's penis which.... I ...
I can't... oh fine. We're quoting Gay Underling. He actually says:
And he did things to my ass that made my eyes water."
The line is repeated for emphasis a couple of times during the show as it's been surreptitously recorded.
Let us take a brief pause to let this sink in.
This show is on NETWORK TELEVISION, dear reader.
And, I repeat from last week: fully clothed gay movies without sex scenes that are safe for the whole family, like Pride and Love is Strange still get "R" ratings simply because they have homosexual tendencies. The world is topsy-turvy. People used to go to the movies to see things they couldn't show on television but now television can show way more than the movies. TV shows which do are punished with large ratings while movies are punished by not allowing teenagers to see for money what they can see for free at home. No wonder moviegoing is down!
Anyway. Blah blah blah**. Case of the Week is solved after that hyper edited fuckfest between the gays. By episode's end Gay Guy is dumped by Gay Hacker after Gay Underling commits suicide (I'm not making any of this up) and everyone lives happily ever after. Okay, I made that last part up. In the flash forward future's tremendously incoherent and desperately boring storyline all the characters seem sweatily unhappy and complicit in the murder of Viola's Spousal Dick. Speaking of that dick, his is pictured on the telephone in Viola's hand for the final scene and that "jaw-dropping" line.
For a show that was supposed to feature a strong lead female character this show sure is happy to be down on its knees for the man.
No further questions.
* The biggest and most surprising disappointment of the show is that Viola Davis is not the actual lead. Viola regularly has about the same amount of screentime as Gay Guy but the storyline is essentially built around Wait List. She pops in from time to time to slam down some acting notes and then it's back to her students.
** This review may sound glib and snarky but I mean every word in earnest.