How to Get Away with Murder – Vivian’s Here

By: Dustin Bradley

We open the episode in the classroom with Annalise (Viola Davis) optioning another case for her law clinic, except this time the students will receive no help from her seeing us how they are soon to graduate. She presents that this case is about immigration and deportation and gives the case to Connor (Jack Falahee) while also adding Asher (Matt McGorry) to her C & G clinic since Laurel is officially MIA.

It seems though that Michaela (Aja Naomi King) thinks that it’s appropriate to skip Annalise’s class after finding out the truth about Annalise knowing her father. She has Oliver (Conrad Ricamora) help her find her birth father in the jail system since he is supposedly there. As this is happening Annalise calls her and explains to her missing class isn’t the best option right now for her academically. She is in her final semester at Middleton and skipping class does not bode well for that. At this point, though, Michaela is fed up with all of the lies and secrets. Annalise swears that she was never close with Michaela’s birth father because back when the case was originally tried Annalise was just simply an intern on the case. After the phone call with Annalise we see Michaela set off on a journey to make sure she has time to see her birth father. 

Meanwhile, Annalise also has to deal with Gabriel‘s (Rome Flynn) mother and Sam‘s ex-wife Vivian (Marsha Stephanie Blake) who first enters the scene this episode on campus and decides to be read Annalise in public. Annalise is not having it and decides to try and come up with a plan to get Vivian out of all of their hair and away from talking to the FBI. As it turns out, towards the middle of the episode Vivian may have a connection to the FBI after all, but we won’t know until future episodes. Vivian also takes it upon herself to visit Gabriel and confront him on lying to her about going to Middleton in the first place. It is then that Gabriel finally reveals to Vivian that he met Sam as a young child. Gabriel is holding onto a secret himself and that secret is that he was the one who murdered Vivian‘s ex-boyfriend Paul. She learns this information after having a very powerful conversation with Annalise about Sam that was very telling. And in this conversation Annalise tells Vivian that all of the hate that Vivian has towards hers is  because in the end it was Sam who came onto Annalise while she was a client of his and completely took the power in their dynamic. Towards the end of that conversation is when it is revealed to Vivian that Gabriel is not as innocent as she believes and may have, in fact, had a lot to do with Paul’s overdose. Vivian, being the person that she is, decides to confront Gabriel at the end of our episode.

This episode also returned to form with a case of the week and this week the case was about a child separated from his parents facing deportation and it’s up to Connor and Asher to get the kid asylum and figure out a way to not deport him. The two of them and their fellow classmates argue over the best strategy to win with the majority of them voting to say that the kid and his family are escaping gang violence. And it seems they are, in a way, skipping gang violence because ICE is involved. In the end, they sort of win because the judge does rule to keep the kid in the country yet he’s placed in foster care with an extended stay.

Over in Frank’s (Charlie Weber) world, he is still trying to figure out what is in the safety deposit box that is located in the bank and whose key he found as the FBI was reading Laurel‘s room. He’s able to learn that the account has another shareholder and assumes that it is Jorge‘s. So, he goes to see him in prison to ask him a few questions about what is in the box and about Laurel in general. Jorge (Esai Morales) insists that he had nothing to do with Laurel’s disappearance and that Laura is the smart and resourceful girl who is very manipulative. He says if she wanted to leave she would’ve left. The audience gets to see in the very end that the last person to access her safety deposit box a few days earlier and it’s possible that she did leave on her own accord. Let’s hope that this character returns at least once or twice before the series end. As I mentioned, Frank does eventually gain access to the box but not until after Annalise reveals that its contents contain a letter to Wes that shows at the tail end of season three he was cooperating with the FBI. Frank, of course, does what he can to try and destroy the evidence; however, as I mentioned he is too late.

Next, we have to talk about Bonnie (Liza Weil) who is as reckless as ever and falsifies information or a report about Vivian in order to gain access to her sealed federal records. Little does she know that the FBI is actually conducting an investigation into the DA’s office as well into corruption and finds out about this misdeeds and miraculously lets her off the hook criminally but not before permanently firing her from the DAs office. Let’s see if the FBI truly forgets or if they come to collect for information later on in the season.

Then, we go to our ticking time bomb of the season Michaela who is on the search for her birth father in the prison system. She tracks his name down to the jail in Philly but then is redirected to a jail in New York. Eventually, she finds out that he has died the year prior. In her fury and complete emotional turmoil she goes to Annalise‘s apartment to confront her about this fact and ends up falling in Annalise’s arms. Within flash forward to our ending, Michaela is being interrogated by the FBI with the dead informant on their hands and Michaela’s fingerprints on the weapon, which is indeed the fire poker from the last episode. We end with Annalise saying, “I want my lawyer,” which leads me to believe that somehow Annalise is alive. Add that to the scene that we saw last week and the flash forward and maybe Annalise truly is dead. We shall see.