How To Get Away With Murder Review: I’m Going Away (Season 4 Episode 1)
On How To Get Away With Murder Season 4 Episode 1, “I’m Going Away,” Annalise gets closure regarding everything that happened last season and graces the Keating 4 with the same opportunity.
This episode takes a while to start the action rolling, but once it does, it becomes everything I’ve come to love about this show.
The acting is absolutely amazing. The narrative seamlessly unfolds in 43 minutes, and the audience gets the exciting last-minute twist we’ve come to anticipate.
This How To Get Away With Murder season 4 premiere is wonderful.
Viola Davis and Cicely Tyson’s scenes put my heart through the ringer.
Can we take a moment and really meditate on how well Cicely can portray the complexity of emotion? In just one haunting look, you can see her resolve, her resignation, her fear, and her regret shining through in her glistening eyes.
Similarly, Viola Davis gives us a memorable performance as the one and only Annalise Keating. She has the same emotions rolling through her throughout the episode as Annalise tries to keep her life firmly on track.
She finally starts on the road to forgiveness with her absentee father. She successfully avoids using sex or alcohol as a crutch to numb herself from her stresses. And most importantly, she takes full responsibility for everything that happens last season.
Although you have to make a lot of logical jumps to tie Wes’ murder to her, she still takes responsibility for the environment that leads to Wes’ death, and I absolutely love it.
Her acceptance of her role in everything, shown in the courtroom and at dinner with the Keating 4, highlights just how much she’s grown as a character in 3 seasons.
We get to see similar growth in Connor, Frank, and Bonnie. All 3 showed similar resolve to Annalise in their desire to get better at accepting their reality and trying their best to move forward.
Asher has always been pretty positive and flexible. So, it’s not like I have any issues with his valid complaint to Annalise about how not to break-up with people. However, Michaela and Laurel continue to frustrate me.
My frustration with Michaela stems from her way of expressing her fears and pain through anger and attacks. Just hours before Annalise releases the Keating 4 from her mentorship, she blatantly says:
She’s dead inside; she misses no one. Why does she have to ruin everything?
Then Annalise frees her, so Michaela no longer has to deal with the walking “dead” woman, who “ruins” everything, and Michaela throws a fit.
She does this because she actively resists any form of what she deems rejection, and when she feels people are in a place to cause her to feel dejected, she pushes them away. She does this with Asher for the longest.
And now, she constantly fights against the reality that Annalise is not just an idol but a human with human-like faults.
Michaela wants to get to a point where she’s perfect. So when someone like Annalise, who she initially believes is perfect, turns out to be human — it scares and angers her. And as a way to deny that she not only still idolizes the imperfect Annalise but sees her as a maternal figure, she constantly feels the need to tear her down and talk trash about her.
However, just because I know why she does it doesn’t mean it makes it less exhausting.
And Laurel, lord. Where do I start with her? She spends the entirety of season 3 blaming Annalise for everything, especially Wes’ death. She even goes as far as to pin it directly on her with Connor (who we found out was simply projecting).
And we get to the closure episode, and she never even apologizes for projecting her heartache and insecurities on Annalise.
What’s more? She doesn’t even redeem herself this episode when she finally realizes her father is the man who put out a hit out on Wes. She is the indirect reason Wes gets murdered and yet…where are her dogged attacks to her father?
She can’t even send the text asking him why he did it, but last season she had absolutely no issue popping up at Annalise’s house, calling her all kinds of horrible things, etc. etc.
Where is that same energy, Laurel?
The only thing that hints that Laurel is somewhat growing is her decision to keep the baby. And sadly, she won’t even be able to do that.
Now that we’re on it, let’s meditate on that end scene, shall we?
Just when Laurel finds a semblance of hope and love in her life, How To Get Away With Murder takes it away from her. That crushing scene in the hostpital rips open all new wounds after we just recieved closure from the last time-jump surprise.
The twist is heartbreakingly good and intriguing, but I’m going to need Rhimes to start putting in on my therapist bills.
Speaking of therapists, Annalise’s new therapist shows up at Laurel’s hospital bedside, where we find out that Laurel not only had drugs in her system but she has also lost the baby.
First, why is Laurel taking drugs when she’s pregnant? This leads the audience to point toward foul play. So the real question is: who drugged her?
Second, the scene alludes to something bad happening to Annalise.
I say this because I don’t think anything would keep Annalise from Laurel’s bedside after she lost a baby unless it was jail (like last season) or something else happened that is physically keeping her from being there.
This suspiciously makes us think of Laurel’s father because the end scene comes shortly after Laurel hesitates to confront him about Wes.
And lastly, how does the therapist know both Frank and Laurel well enough to be in the hospital room?
This could allude to the fact that Annalise doesn’t completely free the Keating 4 like she initially intends at dinner. I can’t wait to see how this unfolds.
The Keating 4 are a family. We see their familial dynamic a bit at dinner when they first find out that Annalise retained her license, and it is such a sweet, fleeting moment. I want more.
So, everyone needs to stop trying to resist their bonds together and just embrace it.
Last Thoughts:
- I still want Wes back! Calling the crew the the Keating 4 is killing me. I don’t care if they have to bring in the supernatural and he comes back as the walking dead. I just need him back.
- Aja Naomi King never fails to look absolutely gorgeous in every episode. She even looks amazing mocking Asher and screaming “beast mode!” as she’s clearly on the verge of a mental break down. I love it.
- There is no new actor for Connor, guys. It’s the same handsome Jack Falahee we’ve all come to know and love. His shaved beard just makes him a whole new man, seemingly literally!
What are some of your theories for that last scene? What did you think of the How To Get Away With Murder premiere? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
Reviewer Rating:
User Rating:
How To Get Away With Murder airs Thursdays at 10/9c on ABC.
Follow us on Twitter @telltaleTV_
Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!
Candice Horde
An English enthusiast that watches a couple of shows from time to time. Candice is an honors graduate of Texas Tech University with an English double major in Creative Writing and Technical Communication. She loves the colors turquoise and pearl pink, and binges all 7 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at least once a year. She’s also a huge fan of anime, basketball, and Japanese and Chinese action movies.
One thought on “How To Get Away With Murder Review: I’m Going Away (Season 4 Episode 1)”
I think people are reading Laurel wrong. Hers and Annalise’s reactions and decisions makes more sense.
1.) Her season 3 actions are rooted from her grief. (I’m tired of hearing people say that she doesn’t have the right to act that way cause she and Wes was only together for 4 episodes, blah blah, and it’s all just hormones, blah blah.) Remove the love story and the baby from the equation, watch her and Wes from season 1 (specially starting the second half of season 1). She had been protecting Wes from the beginning. I believed her when she said she did felt something with Wes from the beginning. True, her first instinct was to “protect the vulnerable” but hell if you never noticed their connection after they killed Sam. The love story and the baby are just fuels. The fire is there. If you don’t get it, you’ve never met grief as real grief.
2.) Laurel’s Season 4 premiere acts are so totally her plus everything she’d learned from the past 3 seasons. One she knows that she must not talk about evething that she already know or might know. Especially if her father is involved. She knows her father more than we do, so we don’t really know where she’s coming from.
3.) Laurel’s reaction to AK’s rejection is her attempting not to show how hurtful it is. The look she had when she told AK that she’s having the baby (hopeful) slowly faded when Annalise tried not to meet her eyes and said nothing. She is basically AK at that moment. They both tried not to show the effect of each other’s news to them. It’s pride. But her giving a soft “good night” gave me a flashback of Season 3, when AK promised her to help find out what happened to Wes and that they both owe him that. It is filled with pain and feeling of abandonment. Which actually makes me sad for Laurel.
4.) Laurel not sending her father that message is genius! Like I said, she knows him enough that she actually figured out that he killed Wes, so running around and screaming at him curse words is neither smart nor good TV.
Pete Nowalk and his team created a pretty amazing storyline and materials for Laurel that Annalise’s words from season 2 resonates all over the screen. “Ms.Castillo could be me someday.” They’ve done the same thing with Bonnie.
Bonnie from Season 2 “You said you want me to be you, but won’t let me. You want me to stay the same.” (Or something like that. I can’t remember her exact words.)
I say this season’s premiere lands well on different grounds. Cause they all have different battles.