How to Get Away with Murder season 4 winter finale review: Just missing a banana peel

How to Get Away with Murder’s strong first half of the winter finale petered out by the last few minutes, and not even the acting talent could save it.

How to Get Away with Murder almost looked like a particularly strange episode of Grey’s Anatomy — or perhaps ER — by the time we got to the end of last night’s winter finale, and frankly, this writer did not end up enjoying it, not even in the sense of throwing up her hands and just rolling with what’s happening.

Everything in that final scene, with Annalise Keating performing CPR with only two fingers on Laurel’s premature baby, was meant to be an emotional moment for Annalise and the viewers. After all, she’s struggling to save a baby coming too early because of something Frank did. Can you say “parallels”? (Yes, the episode pointed it out too, in a line from Annalise earlier in the episode. Points for foreshadowing, How to Get Away with Murder. I’ll give you that much.)

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t … work. Yes, that’s apparently what you’re supposed to do for an infant, according to the Red Cross, but everything, from Annalise’s hair pulled back to her repeated pleas for the baby to live, just comes off as too much in the moment.

Perhaps it was because it came after a scene that had this viewer actually saying “No” aloud, repeatedly. Laurel being in an elevator didn’t seem like a surprising twist; it seemed completely and totally contrived. Now, every show is, in fact, contrived. Here, we’re using the word in the sense that it was so nakedly a play for drama that it’s almost boring. Did the show earn its content warning? It certainly did, as I predicted. Did it earn it in a way that felt justified?

Absolutely not. Put it this way: I’m with Buckie Wells on this one. “Torturous” is the word here.

Otherwise, when it came to predicting who was on the table and how they got involved (down to it not actually being part of the plan), yours truly was right, although tripping over a chair and shooting himself … in the head? At this point, Buckie and I did the text equivalent of exchanging eyerolls (she calls it “stupid” in the above link; I say the only way it might have been vaguely funny is if there were a banana peel involved, because then it would have been a complete farce). So long, Simon Drake (er, probably).

And yet, despite picking out most of what’s going on, this writer doesn’t feel any satisfaction. Instead, the show put out a mid-season finale that frankly … doesn’t inspire much hope for the rest of the season.

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Other thoughts:

• Michaela holding it together enough to use tissues clearly was not enough to prevent Asher getting arrested.
• Dominic’s back. The show thought it necessary to put in a flashback to remind us who he is.

Seriously, How to Get Away with Murder: banana peels. I’m sure you can find a way to fit those in somewhere and have it make something resembling sense.