‘How to Get Away With Murder’ Recap: Itchin’ for a Snitchin’

Warning: This recap of the “Is Someone Really Dead?” episode of How to Get Away With Murder contains spoilers.

It takes a lot to shock me, especially in 2016, and especially as a viewer of How to Get Away With Murder. This is a show that airs in primetime on a Disney-owned network and features brutal murders, rampant debauchery, disrespect for the legal system, and enough nihilism to make the ghost of Walt Disney backflip into a hellmouth. But one thing in this week’s episode truly shocked me to my core in a way I may never recover from: Annalise flushed a bag of potato chips down the toilet!

I’m honestly still processing. Yes, we know she has traded her debilitating thirst for vodka for a slightly healthier potato chip addiction … but flushing an entire bag down a public toilet? Have you ever heard of anything so depraved? Again, we’ve seen Annalise do some truly reprehensible things on this show, but this was a toughie. Can we possibly still root for this character after witnessing such an atrocity? That remains to be seen.

Fortunately, “Is Someone Really Dead?” was a pretty good episode! Let’s talk about it.

We began in the near future, with Michaela shouting at her alleged swamp trash mother to not steal anything from her apartment when she’s gone.

In any other episode, shouting at Brett Butler about ANYTHING would be an unforgivable crime, so Michaela was lucky this episode had the potato chip incident later on. Otherwise … man. Show Brett Butler some respect!

Bonnie had been back from her backwoods sexcursion for mere minutes, and everyone already knew she had done sex with Frank. Perhaps it was her scent, perhaps it was the “My work here is done” look in her eye, but everyone was onto her and they were NOT happy. Bonnie had been hanging out with a known fugitive, and the haters were now coming out of the woodwork.

That’s when the gang realized that Wes was suddenly in MAJOR trouble with the law. Remember that time Frank introduced Wes to his biological father and then shot him in the head? Well, months had passed and the cops had only JUST NOW come to suspect Wes’s involvement in the murder. Next thing we knew, Meggie was at Wes’s apartment tipping him off that he couldn’t go home anymore because the cops were a-callin’. But what was he supposed to do? Turn himself in and risk Frank getting captured and then squealing about the gang’s myriad murder cover-ups? Absolutely not. So Annalise forced Wes to camp out in her house for the time being. It was like house arrest but with more mother-son sexual tension.

It was at this point that Asher put on Rednex’s “Cotton-Eye Joe” and began a dance of seduction beyond compare. Unfortunately, Michaela did not get very horny and in fact just wanted him to go home so that she could study for a test, and he got his feelings hurt and it felt like they were breaking up? But they were interrupted when Connor made a grand entrance.

He looked sensational in Michaela’s best kimono, but it didn’t save the situation … Michaela and Asher were dunzo! (For now.)

The next day in class the gang began firing shade at each other like it was a paintball match. Everyone was currently mad at Laurel for secretly attempting to reach Frank, not to mention the Michaela-Asher tension and Connor’s overall romantic misery. But it certainly didn’t help when that new jerk walked up and tried to school them on their homework. Even though they went full Mean Girls clique on him, it was probably for the best. That was not a circle of friends anybody needed right now. (They were honestly so mean to each other in this episode! Like, more than usual.)

Probably my favorite element of this episode was Annalise’s burgeoning addiction to potato chips. Who among us hasn’t emptied an entire bag of chips into a punch bowl and proceeded to eat it for dinner? We all do this, sometimes every Wednesday. But it’s really something to see this very classy woman go full-blast into an all-potato-chip diet. I guess if you can’t drink vodka, you’ll go for a potato’s second best use? What I’m saying is, Annalise’s lifelong devotion to potatoes continues apace.

The case of the week involved a female soldier slitting a man’s throat on a dance floor and then claiming she did it due to PTSD. As we’d later find out, she lied about being in combat and therefore got PTSD from reading clipboards of other soldiers’ injuries. I think we were supposed to sympathize, except LOCK HER UP. Sorry, but don’t go around slitting people’s throats, in my opinion. Anyway, the notable aspect to this case was that Annalise was struggling to regain her status within the BAR association, which meant she had to prosecute cleanly and without finding herself in contempt of court. (Which is always a challenge for her.) PLUS her rival, the assistant D.A., had personally elected to try this case just to annoy Annalise. It worked!

At one point Annalise was so ticked about the case that she had no choice but to find her happy place, which was in a bathroom stall with a bag of potato chips. Unfortunately, her reverie was interrupted when Michaela barged in with some new theory about whatever. But instead of simply tucking the bag of chips in her purse to finish during her next bathroom break, Annalise did THIS:

WHY? Why why why? That was a perfectly good bag of Let’s! Also, the poor janitors when they have to clean up the flooded bathroom floor later! Like I said, in a show where we’re asked to sympathize with unrepentant murderers, this was extremely tough to accept. Oh, you’re “good people” now, Annalise? Tell it to that bag of potato chips!

In an especially uncute moment, Connor paid a still-in-hiding Wes a visit and openly threatened to murder him should he go to the police. Cool friendship!

And this was also when Nate decided it was a good time to let Annalise know he was currently boning her enemy, the assistant D.A. I loved that her reaction was a combination of dizzy/exhausted. That honestly made a lot of sense to me. Sometimes you just don’t have the time for heartache, you know?

It had hurt Meggie’s feelings that Wes had never mentioned to her the fact that he’d recently seen his biological father’s head explode right before his eyes, and Wes reacted to her hurt the best way he knew how: BY DUMPING HER. Sorry, Meggie, you don’t need this drama, and Wes don’t need YOU.

Meanwhile, Oliver was enjoying his new life as a single person by dating everybody (which, what kind of crazy person would allow Michaela to hop on his dating apps and set up dates FOR HIM?) and even had a steamy interaction with this masseur who doesn’t put out on first dates. I honestly am not sure why we’re following Oliver’s love life more than Connor’s, but fine. Good for him? Meanwhile, Connor spent the evening eating ice cream with Michaela on her couch, and it looked way more appealing.

Eventually Asher’s big talk about going out and doing sex with strangers was revealed to be a big lie intended to make Michaela jealous. So he resorted to Plan B: admitting that he really, really liked her. And do you know something? She admitted it right back to him! It was easily the most romantic utterance of “I like you’s” in recent memory. They might be a bizarre matchup with next to no future together, but suddenly Asher and Michaela are the show’s most reliable romance. Imagine that!

Because honestly, the less said about Laurel and Wes, the better. Sorry shippers, but this is HTGAWM‘s George and Izzy moment. Sorry, I said! Anyway, they did sex.

Everybody was doing sex! But they were interrupted by a news broadcast in which it was reported that Wes’s father’s murder now had a prime suspect … the son! And because at the moment nobody knew where Wes was, everyone assumed he’d snuck off and turned himself in. But it turned out it was the dude’s OTHER son, the one from Hart of Dixie. And he’d been fingered after GUESS WHO planted evidence in his car?

That’s right. Frank had created this problem (problem being A MURDER) and now that Laurel and Annalise had accused him of trying to pin it on Wes, he went and selflessly solved the problem by framing an innocent person. Phew! Total hero. But yes, Wes was now off the hook.

Finally, our last flash-forward revealed that Asher had also survived the deadly house fire that would claim a male character’s life in a few weeks. Which left us with whom, exactly? Nate, Connor, Frank, and, uh, that jerk classmate? I’m not sure who it’ll be, but in my opinion we should probably all appreciate Nate a little more these next few weeks. What a guy he’s been these past few seasons!

“Is Someone Really Dead?” was not quite as amazing as last week’s episode, mostly due to Annalise’s sobriety, a notably un-fun mean-spiritedness, and also a frustrating case of the week. But it did keep us moving incrementally forward toward the season’s big reveal, and the show remains as immaculately acted and edited as usual. I may not ever get over the sight of that bag of potato chips getting flushed down the toilet, but like the chips themselves, sometimes I’ll just always be a little salty.

What did YOU think of “Is Someone Really Dead?”

How to Get Away With Murder airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on ABC. Watch clips and full episodes of HTGAWM for free on Yahoo View.