How to Get Away With Murder Review: Two Birds, One Millstone (Season 2 Episode 6)

Trotter Lake is exposed on this episode of How to Get Away with Murder.

In “Two Birds, One Millstone,” the Trotter’s Lake incident comes to light, and a transgender professor gets accused of killing her husband.

This episode is a refreshing break from the ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ plotlines we’ve been encountering recently.  Instead, we are given isolated scenes between all of the main characters and a delightfully refreshing case of the week. More on this later. Now to the good stuff.

Asher & Bonnie & Annalise & ADA Sinclair

Asher, presented with Bonnie’s tragic childhood, gets convinced not to testify against her. But he still fears blackmail from ADA Emily Sinclair due to his involvement at Trotter Lake and his father’s corruption within the Pennsylvania higher courts. Annalise assures Asher that she can protect him from any fallout.

Asher: Sinclair knows about this thing I did. It’s bad.
Annalise: Tell me everything. I’ll fix it.

Asher tells Annalise all of his past transgressions, though he is still very naive when it comes to dealing with Annalise. After all, he doesn’t have the experience that telling Annalise anything about your private life can and will be used against you. I understand that this season has set out to flesh out Asher’s character, but I don’t find his storyline to be as compelling as Michaela’s admission that she was adopted.

We know so little about these characters, it’s not that we need more background information, it’s that what we do know is usually specific to the episode. Asher’s off camera revelation tells us nothing as viewers, but it arms Annalise with enough knowledge to go to ADA Sinclair effectively stopping her witch hunt against Annalise and company.

Annalise: I admire your ambition. You see an opportunity, grab headlines to make the big boys upstairs notice you. But you’re making a rookie mistake.

ADA Sinclair reminds me of how Pennsylvania is currently embattled in the impeachment of their AG Kathleen Kane, who is charged with conspiracy, official oppression, perjury and other crimes for allegedly leaking confidential information in a bid to embarrass a critic.  ADA Sinclair uses confidential information to blackmail Annalise.  Whether the writers intended for fiction to reflect real-life events remains unseen but the comparisons are eerily similar.

Asher and Bonnie make up, mostly because Bonnie thinks Asher decided not to testify on his own. They share a very awkward but cute exchange that shows that while they aren’t a perfect couple, they balance each other out well. Asher is, perhaps, the only man that treats Bonnie with complete respect while Bonnie sees that Asher is more than his frat boy persona. However, Asher blurts out that he knows what happened to Bonnie as a child, leaving her confidence and trust in Annalise broken.

It will be interesting to see where Bonnie and Annalise go from here.  Since Bonnie relies on her so much since Annalise presumably saved her from her father.

Case of the week

Alexandra Billing’s guest stars this week as a fellow professor who kills her husband in self-defense or so she says. In truth, she killed her husband to prevent him from abusing her, but the cops believe she killed him because he found out she is transgendered.

Jill Hartford: I killed him because he was going to kill me first. Don’t you dare use who am I against me or you will be next.

Annalise demands to know if Jill’s husband knew she was transgendered. She says that yes, he’d known since their third date and that she staged the crime scene because she knew no one would believe that he was beating her.

Jill Hartford: Cece McDonald. She killed a man… for attacking her because she was trans. It was self defense but she had to take the deal and she ended up in a men’s prison. Because she knew no one would believe her. I needed them to believe me.
Annalise: Okay. Let’s teach these bastards a lesson.

How to Get Away With Murder excels at tackling complex issues such as racism, homophobia, and trans-phobia. Jill’s story is unique because it is commentary, on actual trans issues- namely that the police are unlikely to believe a crime was committed in self-defense of abuse. Given that as of August 2015, 21 transgender women have been killed (most of them women of color) this hard look at systematic trans-phobia couldn’t have happened sooner. Jill could have been the person dead instead of her husband and I think Annalise wants to help free her because she understands how abuse works and relates to Jill’s struggle. She also knows the injustice she will face within the judicial system. Because of this comradery Annalise breaks Asher’s confidentiality regarding his father’s corruption and uses the information to free Jill.

Jill is overwhelmed when she finds out that she will be freed, yet she feels no remorse for her actions. Mainly because her husband convinced her that he would be the only person who would ever love her. She became so stuck in the circle of violence that she saw no other way out but to react.

Victims get pulled into the circle, they experience the calm before the tension starts again, the tension building, the actual abuse, and the honeymoon phase in which the abuser will do anything, including lie, to keep that person with them.  Jill in many ways became the woman she is today because it’s what her husband wanted, instead of the person she saw herself being before transitioning. Jill is finally free to live her life.

Jill: I’m so glad he’s dead, Annalise.
Annalise: It’s okay. You’re free. You finally get to be the woman you really are.

It’s refreshing to see a show acknowledge that abuse comes in many forms and that people deal with it in very different ways.  This marks the closest Annalise has come to telling an outsider what happened to Sam, and it shows that Jill is someone she trusts. She understands that we sometimes have to do awful things to get out of equally awful situations. Even if that thing is murder.

Trotter Lake exposed.

In the fallout of Annalise freeing her friend, Asher’s father is disgraced and cuts off Asher, and Sinclair decides to tell Bonnie the truth about her boyfriend and Trotter Lake.

ADA Emily Sinclair:  Girl to girl, I thought you should know the real about your boyfriend.

The big reveal? Tiffany Howard was gang raped. The extent of Asher’s involvement is unknown but will most likely be exposed in a future episode. The fallout between Asher and Bonnie should also be intense. If they’ll ever figure out that Annalise set this entire thing up remains to be seen.

Other thoughts:

• Nate’s wife Nina dies and Nate rejects Annalise and her peach cobbler. Is his rejection fueled by grief or the pain that Annalise has caused him over the past several months?
• Frank introduces Laurel to his family. Are we supposed to think that he comes from a working class background or is his family involved in the crime business? After all, Frank does know how to dispose of bodies fairly well.
• Quote of the night “Your heads would literally implode if you knew all the crap that was happening in this house.” Asher, not knowing that an actual murder occurred in the very spot his standing in. 
• The Hapstall’s have a mystery cousin that racist Aunt Helena gave away 26 years ago, and who conveniently only lives two miles away from the mansion. Does he have something to do with Annalise’s attack or even the Hapstall murder?
• Catherine Hapstall appeared to be dead the entire episode but has a fantastic rise from the dead moment that had me jumping off my chair.
• Famka Janssen returns next week, and I can’t wait to see what happens!

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