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Anna Mae
Original Air Date: Mar 17, 2016
Caitlin- Senior Staff Writer
caitlin@thetwocentscorp.com
We have, for the second time, reached the climax of the madness. The second season finale of How to Get Away with Murder. We were promised two bodies. We will get them. We were promised drama. We will get it. But this installment is actually a lot slowed-paced than you might expect.
Coming into this week, a heck of a lot has been exposed. Annalise learned, via a drunk Laurel, that Frank killed Lila, and the realization drove her to her mother in Memphis. The aftermath leaves everyone reeling- except Annalise herself, who is rather separated from it all.
She wakes to find her sister next to her and her mother advising her to take a shower, because basically every member of her family she has ever known is about to show up for a party. That list includes her father, who Annalise is not at all on good terms with. Back at the ranch- er, her home, Laurel realizes it was her actions that drove Annalise away. And we learn a bit more through flashbacks. Remember that random woman Frank slept with? Turns out she wasn’t so random at all.
Who she was, exactly, is hard to figure out. But it’s what she did that matters- find Frank when he was feeling his most beaten down by his boss and convince him to leave a simple tracking bug behind in her room. And that little move changed the course of everything, but we won’t find out why yet. Now, Nate shows up with announcement that a warrant has been made for Annalise’s arrest on unknown charges. Immediately, the gang debates having Oliver hack out what they are.
Over in Memphis, Annalise learns that her mother and father are dating again, and the news only serves to piss her off. Laurel and Wes are commiserating over what he has learned (which gets surprisingly little screen time until- spoiler alert!- the very last seconds of the episode.) When Frank shows up, Laurel, for some reason, decides it’s a good idea to reveal the news to him, too. And Nate takes off to tell Annalise in person just what is waiting for her back home.
He winds up getting pulled into a long (and oh so awkward) dinner with the whole Keating clan. As they sit and talk in some subdued but wonderful scenes, everything else just gets more complicated. In flashback, we learn Frank’s date paid him a huge sum for his deed- money he never spent. In the present, Michaela and Asher almost have more sex- and then don’t, leaving the later in very awkward position. But he’ll just have to get over it, because there’s a rat in our midst.
Yes, someone was spilling information about Annalise to the police, setting up her arrest. We get one of those “The killer is IN THIS ROOM” moments, but it passes quickly. Nobody in Annalise’s house is the rat. And thank goodness. She’s been betrayed enough tonight. Things only get worse when her mother, grumbling about Sam, inadvertently stumbles on the subject of children she never had. That night, Annalise tells her about losing her baby.
Frank and Bonnie spend the night passing a bottle of booze between them. With a dire future ahead of him, he promises not to do anything stupid- meaning he absolutely will. And here, Annalise’s dead son comes to the forefront again. We learn, as we already must have known, that the car accident wasn’t an accident at all. And Annalise’s revelation to her mother leads to several scenes between them- leading a brutal and incredibly acted breakdown in the middle of the night.
The next morning, an exhausted Annalise confronts her father face to face. He leaves her with her phone, which her mother took from her earlier. She has missed something like a gazillion calls, and gets one more from Michaela. They found out who the rat was- Caleb. Who, it turns out, really did kill her parents. And really was in an intimate relationship with his sister. And basically everything you thought at the beginning of the season was true after all.
So Annalise goes home and, in a technical sense, turns herself in. But she’s only doing so to tell all this to the DA. And she has Phillip with her. He may have attacked her that night in the apartment, but when he realized who she was, he begged for her to listen. He had the evidence proving all of Caleb’s crimes and his own innocence. By this point, we know Caleb is a dead man, and are rewarded in minutes. His death appears to be a suicide as his name is made public. But how can we know this for sure?
With minutes left, everything falls it on itself. Bonnie kicks the students out. Frank flees on his own. Because that little thing he did ten years ago led to Annalise’s accident and the death of her child. He was racked with guilt and wanted to tell her, but Sam wouldn’t let him. That secret allowed Sam to demand Frank kill Lila. And now Annalise knows all of this. She tells a tearful Bonnie that this means the end for Frank. Which means he’s our next body right?
Wrong. Laurel shows up at Frank’s home, an entire viewing audience holding its breath as we wait for her to find his body. But she doesn’t. And before I say who does die, there’s one last thing- Oliver finding out Connor was accepted to Stanford, but acting as him to turn down the offer and hide the truth from his boyfriend. Damn. He was the last good person on this show. And we don’t even have time to think about this betrayal. Because we finally get more of Wes. He goes to confront his biological father. But the moment he says “I think I’m your son”, Mahoney is shot dead in front of him by a sniper.