If Grey’s Anatomy is a workplace drama and Scandal is a prime time soap, then How to Get Away with Murder is the Rhimesian take on the procedural.
The show, which premieres on Thursday at 10pm ET on ABC, concerns itself with Annalise Keating (Viola Davis), a hard-ass and badass defense attorney who takes on murder cases and also teaches law school at a university outside Philadelphia.
In the premiere, Annalise is defending a woman accused of murdering her boss with an aspirin. She uses her law students to help her win the case and awards the best ones jobs at her firm during the semester. We find out those four go on to commit a murder (that’s not a spoiler, it is literally the first thing that happens on the episode) and have to cover it up. Also, a cheerleader on campus who has been missing for weeks is found dead.
The episode starts off with the four students – earnest Wes (Alfred Enoch), ambitious Michaela (Aja Naomi King), scheming Connor (Jack Falahee), and mysterious Laurel (Karla Souza) – committing the murder and then jumps back and forth between their dealings with Annalise and the cover-up. Naturally there are little sprinkles of the missing cheerleader here and there for flavor. Each week it seems like we won’t only be dealing with the “case of the week” but also how these very earnest students ended up with a corpse in the woods.
The structure means that the pace of the episode is unrelenting, shifting from one murder to the next as characters give each other sidelong glances that could be interpreted a million ways and raising just as many questions as it bothers to answer. We see the murder weapon, but just who is it rolled up in that carpet they’re trying to bury? And where is their cohort Asher (Orange Is the New Black’s Matt McGorry)?
The answers all seem to lie with Annalise, the charismatic, if difficult, engine that drives the season. Davis is magnificent in the role, playing it broad and turning from growling to glowering from scene to scene. Just like her students we want her to like us, we want to impress her by solving the mystery in our own living rooms, and we want to know everything about her, even though her impenetrability makes it impossible. She seems to have a bit of a gooey center, but is that really her or is she just acting? Is her vulnerability another one of her manipulations to win a case?
One thing Annalise is not, however, is angry. Much has been made about this show in a New York Times essay about angry black women and Shonda Rhimes specifically. To call Annalise angry is to totally miss the point of her character. Annalise is tough and determined, but she’s the kind of teacher that rides her students hard so she can get results. When she yells it’s not always to express her displeasure, but also as a motivational too, like a personal trainer for these students’ minds. And in moments like a tough confrontation with her husband, there is a tampered passivity that is far more complicated and exciting to watch than simple anger.
While Annalise and her crew are fun to watch, all the mysteries and suspense that the show is ginning up are what will have people tuning in. Of course the students’ murder and this missing cheerleader are connected somehow and trying to string these events together is going to keep plenty of minds (and Twitter speculators) busy for months to come. Like the rest of ABC’s Thursday night lineup the solutions will probably be even more gonzo and outlandish than we can possibly imagine. Like Grey’s and Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder promises to be a beautiful disaster, whether that turns into a delightful train wreck or a tortuous inferno remains to be seen.
