If you’ve never seen How to Get Away with Murder, now is the perfect time to start watching. The show follows a brilliant defense attorney and a group of her law students as they take cases and get caught up in a mysterious murder of their own. It just started its second season last week, and the first season is now up on Netflix.
There are so many things to like about the show. The premise is a really good one, especially if you like procedurals and crime shows but are tired of the traditional set up. In How to Get Away with Murder you get all the mystery of a crime being introduced and a group of people trying to uncover what happened, but from an interesting perspective; the facts aren’t being used to bring the perpetrator to justice, but to most effectively dodge the law. The main lawyer, Annalise, often says she doesn’t care at all whether her clients are innocent or guilty, as long as she can get them off.
The writing is also a major draw. This show is impressively intricate. The first episode starts with two murders, one committed in the past and one, revealed gradually through flash-forwards, that will be committed in the future. The way these mysteries unravel, the hints, the twists, the uncertainty with which the details are gradually revealed to the audience, is completely captivating. Everything is seeded and foreshadowed—often they even flash forward to give the watcher glimpses of what’s coming—but you still can’t possibly imagine how things could get to where they get to. At the same time, when you do get there, everyone’s actions are surprising so in character and so heavily foreshadowed that it makes perfect sense.
And that’s another great thing about the show, how much sense even the most bizarre and surprising elements make. Every plot point is a result of who the characters are and the decisions they make. When there’s a new obstacle, it’s almost never just some new enemy who showed up or some disaster that just happened. One murder is committed at the beginning, and it spirals out into this twisted whirlwind of consequences that keeps touching more and more people. I love ‘monster of the week’ type shows, but a format where every awful thing that happens is the result of who the characters are as people and the choices they make can be really satisfying.
But the absolute best thing about the show for me is the characters. I mentioned before that they always stay in character and how great that is. And that’s true; the characters in How to Get Away with Murder have a very clearly written sense of self, always. But that sense of self is incredibly complicated and even contradictory, and that’s the best thing about it. In a strange, fascinating way, everyone on the show is also their own complete opposite. Without giving too much away, the four law students’ reactions to a certain crime come off as entirely in character even though they initially seem like total contradictions: quiet underdog Wes taking charge as a leader, proactive perfectionist Michaela retreating into silence and inaction, shy, idealistic Laurel becoming a voice for ruthless pragmatism and cool, charming Connor having a breakdown. And Annalise herself is an even bigger mess of contradictions.
The show spends a lot of its time drawing these characters in surprising detail, revealing key traits and background details in a very measured way so all the characters are still shrouded in mystery a full season in, and crazy revelations are still coming. But because the characters are written with these secrets in mind, finding out feels less like a weird twist and more like, “oh that’s why they were acting that way, that’s what that odd comment meant, that’s why they had a funny expression in that one shot six episodes ago. The focus on how background, social status and introversion or extroversion intersect to affect how a person acts in different situations is as compelling as the cases and the mysteries, which are super compelling. Both elements make How to Get Away with Murder is great as a procedural and as a crime and punishment story and as a character drama. If you like any of those things, you should watch it.
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