How to Get Away with Murder (Season 5 – Episode 2)

Image: ABC

(Original Air Date: October 4th, 2018)

We pick up shortly after Bonnie killed the unidentified individual through asphyxiation. Everyone else is dancing the night away considering the new murder took place outside of Connor and Oliver’s wedding reception. Around the exact same time Annalise slaps Frank in the coat room, Bonnie is hurrying baby Christopher through the snow so she could get him to a warm area.

The timeline now flashes back into 2 1/2 months earlier. Bonnie is packing up Christopher’s nursery since he and his mom will be living in a new “village”. Frank enters the room and admits that he’s sad and lonely now that Christopher will be raised by the Keating Four and at convenient times, Oliver in the new living space. So to fix that he heads out to play some basketball to makes some friends a smidge close to his age. Along with Christopher’s moving day, it’s also Annalise’s moving day. Seeing as how she has her finances back on track she can now live in a nicer apartment. Something that she has earned after her house blew up in season 3. Meanwhile, although Laurel & Baby Christopher live in a “village” now, she needs to enroll Christopher in a trusted and affordable day care.

Elsewhere, Theresa comes to see Nate after running a few more tests on the DNA sample he gave to her. The blood sample used to run that DNA test came from the Infant Abductions portion of the U.S. Organization for Missing Children. In order to get more files legally from the organization, Nate needs a signature from the acting district attorney. Which is Ronald Miller. The same Ronald that is in a private relationship with Bonnie. Nate decides to bury the file request form in a stack of other paperwork that he needs Ronald to sign. He distracts the interim D.A. with conversation about how much Bonnie likes him. The plan is completed perfectly. Ronald signs the request form without even glancing at it. Nate gets the file he needs, and he learns that the baby boy was abandoned at St. Lincoln Hospital more than 20 years ago. Apparently a Bonnie LOOKALIKE is at the heart of the kidnapping case because she took him.

Speaking of Ronald, he asks Bonnie if he can take her on a proper date now that they are really into each other. She declines the offer fearing that Annalise would see them together. Instead, while they’re talking in his office , Ronald decides to tell Bonnie how he really feels about her. Not only has he noticed all of her little quirks and habits during the last three months, but and here’s the sweetener kicker, he likes her face. Wow, men like that still exist. They end up sleeping together in his office, which Bonnie later tells Annalise. Even though her own relationship track record has been out of balance, Annalise tells it like it is in her own words. She comes down on Bonnie for being careless and always going for men she can’t have. After all, what if Ronald peeped the files that Denver was keeping on everybody? He could’ve been just faking it the entire time.

Bonnie isn’t thinking like that because she knows what’s in her heart.

“He’s falling for me! That is why I trust him, because if he saw what was in my file, he’d want nothing to do with me.”

Annalise, finally understanding Bonnie’s outlook, she grabs Bonnie’s hand in apology.

In more Gabriel based news, Frank tried to clone Gabriel’s phone considering he was conveniently hanging with him to play some basketball. Now what would Frank do with a cloned phone? He would’ve basically been able to access Gabriel’s information onto his own phone without suspecting a thing. Except the gag is that Gabriel owned a flip phone. So of course Frank always coming up with multiple plans to sole the main plan, his new plan falls into place as he ends up seducing and sleeping with Gabriel’s roommate. He then offers her stacks of cash if she’ll agree to randomly kick Gabriel from their apartment. The girl agrees with the plan, and Gabriel ends up moving in across the hall from Asher at Wes old apartment building. Everything always leads back to that apartment. As Frank watches Gabriel via cameras he’s set up in the new digs, he dials the mystery person once again. This person who definitely isn’t Annalise or Bonnie is suspiciously named “The One” in Frank’s phone contacts and then he says, “Hey, it’s me. I finally found a way into the kid’s head.”

Crawford is at Annalise’s class to keep an eye on the firm’s investment. She reveals who their enemies are for the lawsuit, including the Governor and each other, as they fight for the top prize of the class; pointing out Crawford. The students each take turns revealing who their clients are, and the reason they are prison. She wants them to know what their strategies would be, trying to see which one has the best one that would work in the long run. Michaela feels that Annalise picked her because of what she did to Simon. Annalise says this is actually a death penalty case. That is an example of a guilty conscience theory gone wrong.

Tegan is furious to find that both Michaela and Laurel will both be working in the Caplan & Gold offices as part of Annalise’s clinic. Yet, she’s more mad at Laurel to the point of where she says she’ll never speak to her again. In order to get back on Tegan’s good side, Laurel lies to Crawford that her mother was the one to rat out her father to the authorities regarding the Antares situation. Keep in mind, Tegan is Jane Doe. Clearly picking up what Laurel’s getting at, Tegan thanks her by letting baby Christopher attend the daycare that Caplan & Gold provides for its employees so Laurel’s daycare search comes to an end.

Asher, having been rejected from Annalise’s clinic, pesters Ronald and Bonnie about getting an internship at the D.A.’s office. They initially brush him off, but when Asher sneaks a peek at Ronald’s speech for the D.A. job, he informs Ronald that the speech makes him look like “Denver’s little bitch boy.” Impressed by Asher’s candor, Ronald hires him on the spot, on a trial basis. “You annoy me, you’re out,” he tells Asher — but knowing Asher’s general Asher-ness, he’s pretty much guaranteed to annoy Ronald immediately.

In an attempt to put her new legal clinic to good use, Annalise takes on her class-action lawsuit’s first client. She and her students are in charge of defending Nanda Hashim, a Muslim immigrant who was accused of murdering her wife in the form of vehicular manslaughter. And yes, she took a plea deal much to Annalise’s chagrin, Michaela then comes up with the best defense strategy for Nanda:

Since Nanda clearly wrote her appeal from prison, her public defender must not have informed her that a plea deal is permanent. There is no way of reversing it.

Despite Michaela’s bad cop questioning mode of Nanda’s public defender, the first hearing is a disaster. The public defender blows up at Annalise, telling her she’s thinking outside of the box, when she shouldn’t be if she thinks she can fix a one-sided legal system. He then reveals that Nanda is actually a heterosexual woman. Her marriage to Ali was faker than a bowl of press on nails. Nanda was a widow who only married Ali because she needed a Green Card in order to stay in the United States. Nanda later admits to both Annalise and Michaela that she did marry Ali for immigration purposes. However over time, they genuinely fell in love with each other. Ali even converted to Islam for Nanda. If that isn’t a sign of true love in today’s America, then there is still more work that needs to be done. Still, Annalise decides to change up her defense strategy in order to win the case. Instead of going after Nanda’s inept public defender, she and her students will investigate Nanda’s stepchildren, who are white.

The goal with this new strategy is:

If Annalise can prove that the stepchildren coerced Nanda into taking the plea deal, perhaps she’ll still have a chance at getting the trial to which she’s entitled to have.

Later, Oliver is given a new task when it came to hacking Nanda’s stepchildren and finding information on them. His finding most certainly lived up to the task. Upon hacking into Nanda’s stepson’s credit card statements, he discovered that the stepson was making payments to an underground website for alt-right racists. Now, taking a wild guess, its pretty fair to assume, Nanda’s stepson REALLY did not like her.

At the next hearing for Nanda’s case, Annalise gets the stepson to take the stand. Low and behold, he ultimately admits to writing racist forum posts on the alt-right website. Then again that does not necessarily prove he actually killed anyone. As past courtroom victories have shown in her favor, Annalise continues to get under his skin.

What is her Theory?

The stepson intended to kill Nanda on her way to the mosque one night. However, he ended up killing his own mother. Far-fetched or the whole truth? Well, let us check back in with the stepson.

The man gets increasingly furious as Annalise talks. To make matters worse FOR HIMSELF, he finally says to her through clenched teeth, “You are a stain on this country. Just like her.” And he points directly at Nanda. Which is enough to get her stepson charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder as a result of admitting to the crime. Nanda, on the other hand is free of the legal system in terms of not being sent to jail.

After winning her first class-action case, Annalise is presented with her first pro bono case for Caplan & Gold. It involves a rich businessman who abused his power. She initially refuses to take the case, insisting that she needs to focus on helping her class-action defendants. Crawford reminds her that she needs to make the firm some money, so she’ll be taking the case.

Though Oliver is still upset with Michaela for what she did to Simon, Connor convinces him that he’s already spent too much time being vindictive. Life is too short to hold a grudge. Oliver apologizes to her and extends an olive branch by asking Michaela to be his and Connor’s second best man at their wedding.

 Flash-forward to the rest of the opening scene outside of Connor and Oliver’s reception, Bonnie is bringing baby Christopher into the bathroom. Just as she’s cleaning him up and making sure there is no blood on him, Michaela bursts in, asking if Bonnie has spoken to Nate. Before Bonnie can answer, Laurel also walks in and, blissfully unaware of a crucial detail on Bonnie, she takes Christopher and leaves the bathroom. Michaela, spotted the crucial detail. After spying some blood on Bonnie’s foot and shoe, she begs Bonnie to tell her whose blood it is. Now, if she told her, where would the “fun” be for the rest of the season? Bonnie did not answer.

Until the next blog post!

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