How To Get Away With Murder Season 2 Ep 4 Recap: Skanks Get Shanked

Since a straight retelling of How to Get Away With Murder would never do it justice, why not splatter this new weekly writeup with the show’s most valuable currency: truth bombs? Below, check out the most striking revelations from Season 2, Episode 4: “Skanks Get Shanked.” IN FLASH-FORWARD LAND (FOUR WEEKS LATER): Annalise is still alive! Last week’s glimpse of Murder Mansion showed the most powerful shadow-boxer in Philadelphia trembling in a pool of her own blood, unable to answer Nate’s call. Now we know for sure that Lady Keating didn’t die in that parlor. After fleeing the mansion, getaway gang Wes, Laurel, Michaela, and Connor hear of Annalise’s safe hospital arrival on the freakiest podcast ever: Nate’s police radio. Laurel admits they did kill someone. That chipper, annoying D.A. Sinclair still lies in the garden with her eyes gouged out. Could there be yet another murder victim in the over-30,000 square-foot expanse? Michaela and Caleb are a thing. This could be a sex thing, or a conspiracy thing, but on the night Annalise is shot, Caleb waits alone in Michaela’s apartment with one question: “Is she okay?” We’re not sure if he’s referring to Annalise, his sister Catherine, or someone else. Clearly Michaela — also adopted, we learn, and raised by “people I don’t really relate to” — has major chemistry with the smart aleck jogger who claims to have been framed for his adoptive parents’ murders. Is that a Hypercolor sweater he’s wearing or is he just happy to see her?

Pretty sure it’s the creepy lighting’s fault. Or blood. No, lighting. IN THE LAND OF REAL TIME: Annalise refuses to kill Nate’s wife herself. Normally she’d do anything for love, but she won’t do that. The ailing Nia thought that she would hit the sweet spot of Annalise’s dark and twisty core, by begging her to “just be a good person for once” and help free their mutual love interest from his pain. Annalise came close — she has considered killing herself since childhood, so it’s not like this is a new mental landscape — but she thought about it (and the possible legal issues) and let Nia down gently: “You’re a better woman than me, and if I don’t deserve to die, then you definitely don’t.” Our anti-hero did, however, have her henchman Frank secure the pills that would put her lover’s wife out of her misery. Just for the hell of it and because this show loves twists, I have to wonder if Annalise slipped the pills to Nate during the lingering handshake they shared in the courthouse. “She wants the best for you,” Annalise whispered as she drifted away. Wes has Levi convinced he wants to kill Annalise. Maybe he really does; he probably doesn’t, but either way Wes considers Rebecca’s foster brother his personal Frank now, and this cannot bode well. I guess since Nate is a cop and Wes is a real law student who has to study for Torts (LOL yeah right), they have no choice but to rely on a real-life street rat for even shadier intel. Rebecca, the trio learns, has presumably been laid to rest in an actual cemetery, the one where Sabrina Mancini’s brother works. Who dat? Who cares?

Connor’s car is still in play. The murder case of the week has the man — in the coziest sweater —more convinced than ever that Annalise has been brainwashing them this whole time. He’s not wrong. Now the moral compass of the group, Connor admits to Annalise that he shared a video of their client giddily reenacting her best friend’s vicious stabbing with the prosecution because he’s sick of having so much blood on his hands. May Annalise remind him that the real blood — her husband Sam’s blood — is all over his car? That’s right: The car Connor thought he lost forever is just sittin’ somewhere, probably in one of the junkyards of evidence and other oddities I imagine Frank has scattered around the city. It’s a brutal reminder that Annalise has all of her loyal subjects/cult followers on lockdown for the rest of their lives… until they team up and decide to stop her… Teenage girls make the best TV sociopaths. Harsh but true. I was on the fence about client Zoe’s proclaimed innocence until she sent shivers down my spine and throughout my iPhone with this rant-cum-confession: “You were nothing until I made you interesting,” she screamed at her “friend” on the stand. “Just a basic little bitch whore. Watch your back. YOU’RE NEXT.”

Aw. I miss high school. The embellished Wednesday Addams collar was a nice touch. Speaking of which… Michaela likes to be spanked. And “Daddy” Levi loves making her scream it. While she’s working. Asher nearly strikes a deal with the devil. In exchange for immunity (bitch please, this isn’t Survivor), he tells D.A. Sinclair he’ll testify against his colleagues in Sam’s murder trial. Uh, not so fast, ex-plaything: Bonnie tracks Asher to the parking lot via Frank’s phone-tapper guy and says she’s the one who killed Sam. We know she’s lying, but Asher doesn’t, so he’ll have to stay quiet and risk arrest for whatever the hell he did years ago at Lake Trotter. Huzzah! Bonnie has protected Annalise yet again. Or if we wanna be all classy and French about it…

Bonnie is listed in Asher’s phone as “BONBON”!!! What the hell is that boring phone background, though, and why isn’t it a plate of bonbons or a stealth pic of drunk Bonnie? There’s an actual, medical virginity test?! I had no idea. Against all odds, childhood horseback rider Catherine tested positive for lifelong chasteness, so she couldn’t possibly have screwed her adoptive brother.

Go ahead and let Annalise’s smug “Honey, that’s adorable but there’s more than one way to have sex” face brainwash you until next Thursday.