In the pilot of “How To Get Away With Murder,” an intense criminal law professor, Annalise Keating (Viola Davis), selects five of her first-year students to work at her law firm, because it’s so realistic for first year students to get thrown into murder trials instead of working on their appellate briefs. The episode begins in a 3 month flash-forward involving only four out of those five students, debating what to do in a horrific situation. They’re stuck with a dead body to get rid of and a murder weapon which they decide to clean and hide in plain sight. All of this occurs in the first minute of the show. We’re left wondering where the fifth student, Asher Millstone (Matt McGorry) AKA doucheface, is for the murderous flash-forward.
We’re clearly not supposed to be privy to the entire scenario yet. To quote another one of the students, Laurel Castillo (Karla Souza), “This is murder… None of us know what we’re talking about!” This becomes abundantly clear when Wes Gibbons (Alfred Enoch) flips a coin to decide what the group will do with the mysterious dead body. What we do know so far is that the other two students, Connor Walsh (Jack Falahee) and Michaela Pratt (Aja Naomi King), are clearly butting heads about how to handle this butchering of the law.
**IMPORTANT NOTE: Clearly there has been a murder here, and these students are involved in some way, whether they’re perpetrators or accessories, but I only explore crimes when we know the exact circumstances surrounding them. I will cover this when we find out more. Please do not take this to mean that murder is okay.
Broken Law # 1 Alert!
Later in the episode, we learn that the students went back to their professor’s house, during an especially wild night on campus, to get the dead body which they wind up setting on fire.
18 PA Cons. Stat. § 5510. Abuse of corpse.
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“Except as authorized by law, a person who treats a corpse in a way that he knows would outrage ordinary family sensibilities commits a misdemeanor of the second degree.”
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Broken Law # 2 Alert!
Regarding both, the body and the murder weapon:
18 PA Cons. Stat. § 4910. Tampering with or fabricating physical evidence (in relevant part).
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“A person commits a misdemeanor of the second degree if, believing that an official proceeding or investigation is pending or about to be instituted, he:
alters, destroys, conceals or removes any record, document or thing with intent to impair its verity or availability in such proceeding or investigation;…”
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Broken Law # 3 Alert!
18 PA Cons. Stat. § 903. Criminal conspiracy (In Relevant Part).
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“(a) Definition of conspiracy.–A person is guilty of conspiracy with another person or persons to commit a crime if with the intent of promoting or facilitating its commission he:(1) agrees with such other person or persons that they or one or more of them will engage in conduct which constitutes such crime or an attempt or solicitation to commit such crime; or(2) agrees to aid such other person or persons in the planning or commission of such crime or of an attempt or solicitation to commit such crime…”
“18 PA Cons. Stat. § 905. Grading of criminal attempt, solicitation and conspiracy. Grading.–Except as otherwise provided in this title, attempt, solicitation and conspiracy are crimes of the same grade and degree as the most serious offense which is attempted or solicited or is an object of the conspiracy.” Here this would be a misdemeanor.
The audience is drawn in, dying (pun intended) to know more details, when the show slams back to three months earlier. For the purpose of this blog, I’ll refer to this period of time (the flashback) as present day. This part takes place at Middleton Law School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Professor Annalise Keating starts off her class by teaching her students about the “Aspirin Assassin,” Gina Sadowski, who it turns out is the defendant in one of Annalise’s current, ongoing cases. She has been accused of attempting to kill her boss, with whom she was also having an affair, by giving him Aspirin when she knew that he was allergic to it. Annalise takes her students to meet Gina, as well as her two associates, Bonnie (Liza Weil) and Frank (Charlie Weber). Some of us might recognize Bonnie as Paris Gellar from Gilmore Girls. Annalise offers a prize to the student who can present the best defense for Gina’s case. The prize is a trophy, which happens to be the murder weapon from the flash-forward at the beginning of the episode.
Wes got into Middleton Law school only two days before class started; he was on the wait list. As he slaves over coming up with a decent defense, we meet his neighbor, Rebecca (Katie Findlay), who blasts music and has no patience for law students and their loud rabbit sex and nervous breakdowns, as she eloquently puts it. We later see Rebecca loudly fighting with a football player whose girlfriend, Lila Standgard recently went missing and is found dead later in the episode. Lila’s story intertwines with the main story throughout the episode, and she was also a student in a psychology class taught by Annalise’s husband, Sam (Tom Verica). In addition to a loud and rude neighbor, Wes’s apartment comes equipped with creepy scratches on the walls, which seem like they might end up important to the story — unless of course the show’s camera man simply enjoys zooming in on them and Wes just enjoys caressing them.
Later in the episode, Wes goes to his professor’s house at night in another instance of completely standard law school protocol. He intends to present an idea about the case to Annalise but winds up interrupting her having sex instead, and all for nothing because Annalise doesn’t like his idea. This scenario becomes even more awkward later on in the episode when the students attend a cocktail party with Annalise and meet her husband, who is a completely different man from the person Wes saw getting intimate with Annalise. Wes promises Annalise to keep her secret.
Michaela Pratt is an overachiever who adamantly disagrees with the decision ultimately made by the coin toss in the flash-forward to go back and get the dead body. Michaela can certainly think on her feet, though; when a police officer confronts them at Annalise’s house in the flash-forward, she concocts a story that they’re helping Annalise burn a rug at the bonfire, rather than using the rug to haul a dead body out of their professor’s house. Her fabrication skills bring us to the next broken law!
Broken Law # 4 Alert!
18 PA Cons. Stat. § 4906. False reports to law enforcement authorities (In Relevant Part).
“… (b) Fictitious reports….a person commits a misdemeanor of the third degree if he: (1) reports to law enforcement authorities an offense or other incident within their concern knowing that it did not occur; or (2) pretends to furnish such authorities with information relating to an offense or incident when he knows he has no information relating to such offense or incident.”
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Michaela also helps discredit a witness in Annalise’s murder case, which happens to be the first step out of three in getting away with murder. Step two is presenting another suspect, and step three is burying the evidence, according to Annalise. Michaela discredits the witness who allegedly saw the yellow Aspirin pill in question, by proving that the witness is color blind; what looks yellow to the average person looks blue to the witness. Michaela almost wins the deadly trophy for this achievement, but not quite.
In a flash-forward, we see Connor changing the words to “Jingle Bells” to make the song about murder instead of Christmas. We then transition to present day, where he flirts with an I.T. guy who works in the same building as Annalise’s defendant. Connor ends up sleeping with him to get evidence for the case; he convinces him to give him emails which make one of the victim’s co-workers look incredibly guilty. The I.T. guy protests that the legal department said not to discuss this incident before caving in approximately two seconds later. Step two, present a new suspect! These emails were not in the discovery files for the case, but Bonnie lies to the judge and claims that she obtained them from the defendant’s previous attorney.
Broken Law #5 and 6 Alert!
Connor and the I.T. Guy’s conduct:
18 Pa Cons. stat. § 4108. Commercial bribery and breach of duty to act disinterestedly (in relevant part).
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“(a) Corrupt employee, agent or fiduciary.–An employee, agent or fiduciary commits a misdemeanor of the second degree when, without the consent of his employer or principal, he solicits, accepts, or agrees to accept any benefit from another person upon agreement or understanding that such benefit will influence his conduct in relation to the affairs of his employer or principal….
…(c) Solicitation.–A person commits a misdemeanor of the second degree if he confers, or offers or agrees to confer, any benefit the acceptance of which would be criminal under subsections (a) or (b) of this section.”
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Broken Law #7 Alert!
Bonnie, under Annalise’s direction, lying to the judge:
204 Pa Code Rule 3.3. Candor Toward the Tribunal.
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“(a) A lawyer shall not knowingly:
(1) make a false statement of material fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer;
(2) fail to disclose to the tribunal legal authority in the controlling jurisdiction known to the lawyer to be directly adverse to the position of the client and not disclosed by opposing counsel; or
(3) offer evidence that the lawyer knows to be false. If a lawyer, the lawyer’s client, or a witness called by the lawyer, has offered material evidence before a tribunal or in an ancillary proceeding conducted pursuant to a tribunal’s adjudicative authority, such as a deposition, and the lawyer comes to know of its falsity, the lawyer shall take reasonable remedial measures, including, if necessary, disclosure to the tribunal. A lawyer may refuse to offer evidence, other than the testimony of a defendant in a criminal matter, that the lawyer reasonably believes is false.”
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Laurel becomes suspicious when she encounters the defendant and the victim’s wife together acting as if they might have planned this whole incident together. In a flash-forward, we see Laurel receive a phone call from Frank, and he is noticeably lacking a shirt in the picture that Laurel has chosen for him on her phone. In present day, she approaches Frank about her suspicions, but he behaves in a dismissive manner. When Laurel questions his morality, he lumps her in with his generalization about women who come to law school with intentions of protecting the innocent… Because that’s obviously an atrocious concept. When Laurel leaves, Bonnie scolds Frank, “stop screwing the students.”
In court the following day, a detective comes onto the stand with footage of the defendant purchasing aspirin the night before the alleged accident. Annalise fires back by calling a different detective to the stand, Nate Leahy (Billy Brown), the man with whom she’s having an affair. She questions him in a menacing manner until he reluctantly testifies that he knows of prior incidents with doctored surveillance footage in his department. The court finds the defendant not guilty.
In class — yes the students do still attend school occasionally — Annalise presents the murder weapon/ trophy to Connor and announces that he, Laurel, Michaela, Asher, and Wes will be working at her firm. Wes confronts Annalise about forcing Nate to lie under oath, which will be further explored in my entry on episode two.
Towards the end of the episode, a dead body, presumably that of Lila Standgard is found. When Sam informs Annalise, she comments that she bets the boyfriend is behind her murder. The episode concludes in a flash-forward during which Wes, Laurel, Michaela and Connor burn the dead body to get rid of DNA evidence. Before the body is incinerated, we see the dead man’s face; it’s Annalise’s husband!
