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'How To Get Away With Murder' Season 1, Episode 7: He Deserved To Die

Kelly O'Mara |
November 7, 2014 | 11:41 a.m. PST

Staff Reporter

Oh the dark night of the sinister bonfire, we meet again. This time we see Rebecca covered in blood spatters. Why does blood always spatter so artfully on TV? Wes takes her upstairs and cleans her off. So, naturally, she makes out with him.

Two weeks earlier, the group is at the office while Rebecca tells them about the night of Lila Stangaurd’s murder. Apparently, tonight's episode is Rebecca’s. We’re pretty much running out of people’s versions of the story to tell. Maybe next we’ll get the dead husband’s story of being dead.

Rebecca's story: That night she sold some drugs to Griffin the football player and then they went up to his room for some pot. They started making out and that’s when Lila walked in — apparently, Rebecca has no memory of texting Lila that night. And, Rebecca jokes that is when she killed Lila.

But, Professor Keating does not find that funny. Keating starts yelling about her being a trashy slut, because that’s what everyone’s going to say, so get serious.

READ MORE: 'How To Get Away With Murder' Season 1, Episode 5: We're Not Friends

Frank comes in to tell them to turn on the TV — since of course the only thing the news covers here is the Lila Stangaurd murder. That’s all anyone in this town ever watches on TV. And, sure enough, there’s the news saying that Rebecca has a sexual relationship with the football player, giving her a reason to want to kill Lila. So, you ready to take this seriously now?

In the courtroom, Keating argues for a gag order since the district attorney clearly leaked this story. The district attorney, for one, is shocked, shocked by these allegations. There’s a bunch of yelling from Keating and the DA and the football player’s lawyer, but eventually the judge grants the gag order.

Oh, and since we’re already in the courtroom, let’s do some more court-y stuff. Griffin the football player’s lawyer argues that marks on Lila’s neck were missed in the autopsy and, obviously, appear to be fingernail puncture marks from a girl. He wants to exhume the body. *gasp*

More excitement happens in the hallway with Connor running in to some guy he hooked up with whose name he can’t remember. And, the football player confronts Rebecca for planting the secret cell phone in his car.

Keating storms in and stops Rebecca from fighting the football player. She, then, rails a bunch at the house about how Rebecca is a terror, running wild. Her husband tries to rub up on her, but Keating is not having it.

There’s the usual office antics — Frank is passive-aggressive about Laurel having turned him down and Michaela is headed off to an interview for summer associate at a fancy law firm — but then the DA shows up. She walks right into Keating’s office and gives her a sealed file. Neither of them want the autopsy to move forward; it could make things more complicated for the DA and/or make Rebecca look guilty. This super secret sealed file will help Keating discredit the football player attorney’s expert witness.

READ MORE: 'How To Get Away With Murder' Season 1, Episode 4: Let's Get To Scooping

Looks like what we’re going to learn about this week is expert witnesses. Want to learn everything Keating has to teach us about expert witnesses? OK, here it is: They get paid.

The team jumps into case-solving mode. They discredit the expert witness using the sealed file, come up with another theory for the marks on Lila’s neck, and get a different expert witness to back up that theory (post-mortem bug bites, fyi). The real kicker would be if Lila’s parents made a statement against a second autopsy. The only problem is her parents aren’t so inclined to help out her alleged killer. It’s a shame, really.

Laurel visits her boyfriend at Legal Aid, who’s freaking out because it’s just so hard being so good all the time. He lost some co-workers and has a big caseload of poor people facing wrongful eviction, etc. You know what would solve that problem? If Laurel came to work for him! She also likes to think of herself as a do-gooder. The only problem is she secretly wants to stay at Keating’s office and have the sex with Frank, who is definitely not doing good.

Rebecca and Wes are at her house, also dealing with relationship-y issues. She wants to know more about him and why does he care so much about her; she’s not a big shot like him. He says he came from nothing too, went to community college, and now here. She could do it too. Rebecca makes fun of him for that, but then she says, ‘No, don’t stop trying to help.’ They almost make out, but it’s all just so fraught with emotion.

Evidently, two weeks later, that’s totally different. Wes is dropping Rebecca off at the motel, to stay hidden after the husband’s murder. She tells him that the husband wanted to kill her and she had to kill him. Her trials coming up and she’s going to jail anyway, but if Wes goes to jail she’d kill herself. Let her help him.

READ MORE: 'How To Get Away With Murder' Season 1, Episode 3: Smile Or Go To Jail

Michaela goes to her interview at her fancy law firm, only — oops — it turns out that it’s not an interview for a summer associate position. It’s for her to sign a pre-nup from her fiance’s family. Back at Keating's office, Connor’s looking up his former not-quite-a-boyfriend online and being sad. And, Rebecca makes snide side comments to Keating’s husband. Aw, everyone’s got romance problems.

The husband has a suggestion about how to get Lila’s parents on board re: stopping the exhumation. It turns out her parents were not fans of Griffin the football player, because he was trying to force Lila to become more religious.

Keating sends Frank and Laurel out to win Lila’s parents over (and, you know, make eyes at each other). The mom, though, doesn’t want anything to do with them, since she thinks their client, Rebecca, killed her daughter. But, Laurel wins her over by explaining that only Griffin the football player will benefit from the exhumation. Problem solved.

The mom then makes a big speech in court, hating on Griffin and Rebecca, which makes Rebecca get all teary-eyed in the hallway. She’s not a hardcore killer and Lila was sort of her friend. 

Connor is dealing with his own issues in the hallway, when he tries to approach the guy whose name he doesn’t remember and ask the guy out on a date. Maybe Connor’s trying to do more than hook-up with people randomly. Only too bad! The guy has a boyfriend, so Connor proposes hooking-up in the bathroom instead. That’s basically the same thing.

At Keating’s office/house, the husband is trying to be nice to make up for sleeping with a girl who turned up dead. (I watched the episode this week with a friend who hadn’t seen any of the show. Her take was that it's pretty much all about murdering and romantic problems — sometimes at the same time.)

In the courtroom, the DA surprises Keating by reversing her position on exhuming the body. Suddenly, she says, she has another expert who agrees the marks appear to be fingernail marks. What is this about??

Annalise Keating meets up with Detective Nate in her car, since they only ever meet in the car or street. She wants his help, but he’s all ‘hah, no way.’ He says he gave her an out when he told her about the husband and she didn’t want to take it, so now she’s back to her old tricks.

Two weeks later, the night of the murder, Rebecca’s sitting in the motel and waiting, waiting, waiting. She’s going crazy. She calls 9-1-1 and then hangs up. The phone rings and it’s Wes. Whew.

READ MORE: 'How To Get Away With Murder' Premier Recap

To find out why the DA flipped on them, Keating sends her law students to talk up the district attorney’s assistant. The boys head out to flirt their way to information, while the girls stay back at the house/office. Laurel takes a phone call from her Legal Aid boyfriend. She says she can’t decide yet. Rebecca overhears the call and figures out what is up. Rebecca also knows what is going on with Michaela’s prenup. Rebecca knows everything. They all talk and sort of bond/gossip.

At the bar, the boys are trying to win over the assistants, except for Connor. He’s busy getting drunk and talking about his ex. The assistant suggests he gets his ex flowers and apologizes. Fortunately, someone (Wes) is sober enough to get some information. It turns out that the DA made a plea deal with Griffin the football player. He’ll testify against Rebecca in exchange for the DA supporting exhumation.

How is the team going to deal with this? They need to make it no longer appealing to have a plea deal with the football player. Rebecca suggests that she could leak something, since she just isn’t smart enough to understand what a gag order is…

The next day there’s a front page story: “The Night Griffin Raped Me.” Everyone’s outraged, but it sort of works out. The plea deal is taken off the table and no one gets sanctioned for breaking the gag order. The only problem is the judge does grant the exhumation order. 

Wes, though, is all mad at Rebecca for the fake rape story. He’s giving her the silent treatment, so Rebecca gets mad. ‘Who messed you up so bad?’ she asks, ‘Stop trying to fix me.’ Wes says he’s not trying to fix her, just trying to help. So they start making out.

They get it on. The sexy scene is inter-cut with the new autopsy of Lila, which is weird. I’m not sure why they decided to do that flashing back and forth. It's sort of creepy and, perhaps, indictive of the show overall.

Now it’s time for everyone to sort out their love lifes. In their post-sexy talk, Rebecca and Wes get to know each other. We learn that Wes was born in Haiti, is allergic to peanuts, loves mint chocolate-chip ice cream, and his mom killed herself when he was 12. Poor Connor is sad romantic moping. He shows up at the ex-not-quite-a-boyfriend’s door with flowers, but guess who answers? Some other guy, who suggests Connor not come back. And, Frank tries to convince Laurel that she shouldn’t leave for another job. He’s into her, but he’ll get over it. Don’t leave, he says, I’ll get over it. “What if I don’t want you to get over it?” Laurel says. Then they start making out too.

Rebecca goes to the store for mint chocolate-chip ice cream for Wes — soo romantic. At the store, Detective Nate comes up to her. You don’t know me, he says, but we both know who really killed Lila. (The husband, fyi, is who he’s implying.) He wants Rebecca to help him catch the guy.

The husband and Keating are in their bedroom when Bonnie knocks. The autopsy found that the marks were post-mortem ant bites. But, they found something else: Lila was six weeks pregnant. Everyone looks meaningfully at the husband!

(Next week we'll get the story of the pregnant murdered sorority girl. So, that answers that question of whose point-of-view is left.)



 

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