Shonda Rhimes has done it again. She has created yet another beautifully nuanced show with a strong female protagonist that draws you in, keeps you on the edge, and leaves you wanting more.
How To Get Away With Murder stars Viola Davis as Annalise Keating, a lawyer who picks five promising students from her class to work on her cases and learn on the job. The students vie for the top spot and a trophy that is passed on from one student to another depending on who tops in a certain case. The central storyline has two murders and how everyone in the team is linked to either one or the other. Just as The X-Files gave us the monster-of-the-week concept, here we have the case-of-the-day — subplots within the main story arc.
As we wait for season two to hit next month, t2 lists why the show stands out...
WOMAN ON TOP
Meet Annalise Keating — super attorney, powerful manipulator, loving wife, sexy adulteress. She is a career woman but she is depressed about being childless; she champions some people and breaks others; she is noble but she can be scheming — in short, a deliciously complex character to lead the show on primetime television. She is also a woman of colour
What makes her so real? The woman who strikes fear in the hearts of men and women at the workplace becomes putty when it comes to her philandering husband, Sam (a white man). She gets needy, pleading with him, threatening him and then finding solace in the arms of another man. Till she decides enough is enough.
BREAKING THE MOULD
The show steers clear of gender stereotyping. The men cheat, so do the women. The women manipulate, so do the men. The men lie, so do the women. When Annalise’s mother tells her that men are aggressive and women nurturing and caring, the lawyer is quick to point out that she hasn’t done any nurturing or caring. The scene where the chic Annalise takes off her wig and wipes off her make-up left us stunned.
The LGBT community is not just a token presence, and the gay characters are not there for comic relief. Connor Walsh (Jack Falahee), one of Annalise’s students, is not about paying gay lip service. He feels like a real person with real ups and downs, and real relationship problems. A gay person who’s allowed to be both good and bad.
50 SHADES OF GREY
No character on the show is entirely good or bad, be it the victim or the perpetrator. Each is a different shade of grey, and you hate them and like them in turns.
If you are rooting for Annalise one minute, you can’t help but hate her for pulling the rug from under somebody’s feet the next minute. You don’t know whether to be charmed by Connor — because man, he is charming! — when he tries to get into the pants of a guy, or be repelled because he’s using sex to get his way. You don’t know whether to like Michaela for being ambitious and better than the (white) boys and girls in class, or dislike her for being so focused that she becomes extremely selfish. Asher is rude, arrogant and mean but he is also the only one not involved in a murder. And Wes? He seems to be the only one who is good but then he is not above using situations to his advantage.
SEX IS MATTER-OF-FACT
There is no gratuitous nudity or titillating sex like in Game of Thrones, but How To Get Away With Murder makes no bones about showing a woman getting oral pleasure or making the first move. Nor does it shy away from showing two men having sex, unlike shows with gay characters where cameras either pan away or zoom into the couple in post-coital bliss. Here, Connor has sexy sex and also dialogues that are frank about gay sex. Case in point: Connor telling Oliver, “This time I will do you”; or the office assistant Paxton saying, “He did this thing to my ass that made my eyes water.”
THE BONUS
For Harry Potter fans, this is your chance to see Dean Thomas (Alfred Enoch) all grown up, and curse yourself for having sexy thoughts about the boy you practically saw growing up.
I am hooked to How To Get Away With Murder because...
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IT’S HOLLYWOOD TV OVER HOLLYWOOD CINEMA FOR FILMMAKER MAINAK BHAUMIK, A FAN OF HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER
I’ve always been a closet fan of movies like Erin Brockovich, The Jury, The Firm, Primal Fear, basically the likes of John Grisham novels-turned-movies which aren’t just about the legal system but are thrillers/dramas within the legal system. I like to call them ‘legal thrillers/dramas’. But then Hollywood stopped making them and I felt — well, there goes another thing I like. I knew about Law & Order and Boston Legal but I figured they were the usual ‘TV-TV’ kind of stuff. But then I discovered How To Get Away With Murder, and suddenly I was watching the best of cinema which goes on much longer! As of last night, I’ve almost finished watching Season 1 of this ‘legal thriller/drama’, which is part of a new trend of television series that’s giving Hollywood a run for its money.
Before, I used to be one of those typical annoying bores who’d say “I don’t watch TV”, as pissing off as that sounded to my TV watching friends. But then, like a TV virgin, I had my first Breaking Bad binge. If Hollywood’s history can be dated as ‘BG’ and ‘AG’ — ‘Before Godfather’, and ‘After Godfather’, American TV’s history is ‘BBB’ and ‘ABB’ —‘Before Breaking Bad’ and ‘After Breaking Bad’.
When I turned the TV off after the last episode of Breaking Bad, I was an emotional wreck suffering from withdrawal symptoms. Like an idiot-box crack-head, I searched IMDb for something to fill that void. And so my love affair with television began, with True Detective, Homeland and now, How To Get Away With Murder (HTGAWM).
I never thought I’d live to see the day where I, Mr Self-proclaimed Movie-buff, on my precious nights off, would rather watch a Hollywood TV show than a movie. I guess this is what Steven Spielberg meant when he told Amitabh Bachchan during his India visit that “The best writing in the US currently is being done for TV”.
With HTGAWM, I was intrigued by the filmmaking that was oozing off the screen, while the camera work and editing added that touch of independent art-house cinema. But it was the casting that made the show a must-see for me. Oscar-nominated Viola Davis plays Annalise Keating, a ballsy law professor with shades of grey, and that too while the actress is at the peak of her Hollywood movie career with movies like The Help.
The plot grips you while the narrative jumps back and forth in time, so effortlessly not once underestimating the IQ of the audience. Honestly, initially I did find the flashbacks a bit confusing, but stick with it and it gets better than good. What makes it so addictive are all the questions raised, the answers to which are only further questions, compelling you to keep watching episode after episode, because you just have to find out how Annalise and her team of law students solve each new case.
I love the competitiveness within the raring-to-go students who are not the ordinary kind of boring “likeable” characters. They all have an odd edge. And then there is the parallel running mysterious plot of how the law students are literally trying to get away with a murder. Some might feel that the narrative isn’t realistic, but who cares when you are being entertained so much!
Sex scenes are not unusual in cinema, but while watching HTGAWM I was amazed how chilled out TV has become with showing such graphic heterosexual and gay sex scenes. In a way, the biggest American taboo is being challenged by this show with the casting of an older black lady as the lead, whose sexuality is very much a part of her character. I guess, in Dylan-ishtyle one can say, The times they are a-changin’…
Godard said the only difference between cinema and TV is that “when you go to the cinema you look up; when you watch television you look down.” His words hold ground today more than ever before. And if anything, TV shows like How To Get Away With Murder have upped the game so much, it’s time cinema starts making changes before it dissipates like video tapes.
Is there better content on television than in cinema today? Tell t2@abp.in
