HTGAWM - S5, Ep. 3

The courtroom is supposed to be about clarity, right and wrong. But wow, did this episode fill that in with a bunch of grey.

An Executive Order apparently was issued by the governor: Student non-lawyers must pass an ethics test in front of board; otherwise, the entire clinic Annalise is running with the students gets shut down, which also means the 64 grand given to the winning student to pay for one year of college goes bye-bye, as well.

The student pass the ethic class with flying colors. Wow, what a session, though! Those were incredibly difficult questions in extremely extenuating circumstances. Connor gets a moment to shine when he realizes the "innocent" line of questioning directly puts Annalise's past actions in question, proving that the governor's entire set-up with this ethics class was a farce. No surprise, the clinic survives. Still, there were some great questions that show how difficult it can be to give informative answers without providing the proper context. Life can be as easy as black and white, right and wrong, but sometimes proving that can be difficult. The clever coincidence here is that the students knew how to answer these shady questions rather easily because, well, they go through those shady situations with Annalise on a routine basis.

Annalise is faced with an interesting dilemma in regards to her court case of the week that involves a murder charge. After a switcheroo with a testimony throws her client's case out the window, Annalise is motivated to put this client on the stand as a witness. This new strategy is risky, but that's not what's important. Annalise's superiors at her new firm mainly just want to make this guy happy because of his wallet, whether putting him on the stand will lead to a victory or not.

Suddenly Annalise is at a crossroad. She seems like she can be bought. It's now more important to keep their client happy and their wallets full than get to the truth or operate normally and ethically. Her predicament is made worse when her client attacks her character multiple times and claims she doesn't know what's best. This goes completely against everything Annalise stands for. Normally, she'd rather work on her own than take orders from an egomaniac. Even Bonnie's boyfriend at the DA's office later tries to make a deal with her to drop the charge from murder to manslaughter just to guarantee a conviction. She tells Bonnie "I'm not taking his deal. I'm a company man now." What?!? She normally can't be bargained with. She usually doesn't compromise; she's too confident in herself for that, and why shouldn't be that way now? She won a case against the freakin Supreme Court!

But she began walking down that path in this week's episode. Who knows how much further she'll be convinced to go. She also found out her superiors were involved in something scandalous in London. Yeah, there's no way she sits on that information, so will she eventually be willing to expose the very hand that feeds her? Man, that would be fun to watch.

Annalise later finds out it was her client's wife who committed the murder, and he's simply trying to protect her from going to jail. What a lovely gesture! Despite some great tricks up her sleeve, Annalise's client is found to be guilty, but all is okay with her superiors at her firm. For now, anyway.

Bonnie's interoffice relationship obviously got complicated because her boyfriend found out about one of her past relationships. As if that's some revolutionary situation for two people who work together. Ugh, it's annoying that Bonnie's arcing story has begun with such juvenile issues. Hopefully this doesn't last.

Bonnie's other story got far more interesting, but complicated, so hang with me here. Nate tells Annalise he found out that Bonnie stole the baby she had after getting raped when she was a teenager (we found out about the raping last season). Nate knows this because he found an old photo of a woman leaving a hospital with a baby. He then got a long-forgotten witness to confirm who was in the photo (it was taken at night, and the face is hard to see). When Nate shows this to Annalise, though, she says it wasn't Bonnie who did this....

It was her sister!! Dun dun dun! The surprise twist of Bonnie having a sister opens up a ton of new angles for all of this mystery to go down. Now, usually I hate when writers do this. The surprise sibling, especially when it's a twin , is a cheap trick (I'm looking right at you, BBC Sherlock Holmes). I found myself rolling my eyes when Annalise made the big reveal. But honestly, if anyone would know about Bonnie's past like that, it would be Annalise. Makes total sense. Maybe this is part of the reason Bonnie always comes back to Annalise and why their relationship is so tenuous and tumultuous. It definitely fits, though I doubt the writers knew they were going to forge this past from the beginning, or even during last season. I've felt this way about a couple of cliffhanger reveals at least once each of the last couple seasons, but honestly, the writers are good enough to make it fit seamlessly and not feel shoehorned in. I hope they can do that again.

NOTES:

-It was nice to see Nate and Annalise share a moment that suggested they might finally be done with their on-again, off-again personal misconduct.

-I'll end where it began. Annalise opens the episode with an eerie voice-over about what makes a psychopath: parasitic lifestyle, cunning lifestyle, criminal versatility, a grandiose sense a self, etc., and there was a shot of other characters doing everyday tasks. Does that mean we all have a little bit of a psychopath in us?

Of course not....mostly not.

#HowToGetAwayWithMurder #HTGAWM