How to Fix How To Get Away With Murder

[Chicago Redshirt]

I thought to start this thread after people in the 1.08 thread were talking about the dead weight they would drop or keep. Because even though I'm mostly enjoying the show, it could definitely be improved by cutting some characters (among other things).

 

Here's what I would do:

 

The main cast:

Annalise (obviously)

Connor (because he brings the snark, the sexy if you're into that thing)

Michaela (because she's also snarky and getting stuff done on cases)

Asher (in small doses, he's pretty hilarious)

Nate (because I think he's a fun character, and he can be an investigator/love interest for Annie)

 

New/recurring guest characters

Elizabeth Perkins' character because she's hilarious and could form a friendship/sounding board for Annie

A main prosecutor to be Annie's nemesis

A judge or other attorney to be her mentor

 

Characters I would fix or minimize

Bonnie - I don't really get her character. 

Wes - I'm not sure if I like the Puppy persona or the Puppy-with-a-secret persona less. 

Frank/Laurel - dull with no real personality other than their arbitrary, chemistry-free interest in one another

[jhlipton]

Is Nate's last name Tragg? Please let it be so!   And if there is a recurring prosecutor, he should be named Burr... (I would prefer a set of 3 or 4 alternating DAs.)

 

I'm not sure how a mentor would fit in, other than to "tut tut" at Anna's latest scheme.

[Chicago Redshirt]

Basically, I want to have more insight into what Annalise is thinking and more scenes for Viola Davis, preferably with another established actor/actress. Having a mentor would help in both these regards.

 

I'd be fine with multiple DAs too...I just would prefer it to not be that they play the Washington Generals to Annie's Harlem Globetrotters. At least give them the illusion of being competent, layered, and ethical rather than the whining, beat-down, paper-thin excuses we've had so far. It probably would be easiest to accomplish that with a single person than a team. 

[RedheadZombie]

My comment isn't really how to fix the show, but rather a comment on season one in general.  This is just the closest thread.

 

Overall, I really liked this show.  I barely made it through the first half, but I think the last few episodes made it worth it.  My comment is about black stereotypes.  I think the show has gotten away with it because people forget the show was created by a white man, and Shonda Rhimes' connection provides some protection.

 

I'm particularly bothered by the characterization and background of Annalise.  The fact that she's a powerful and educated woman married to a white man reinforces the notion that there are no educated black men out there.  It's minor and it didn't bother me until Annalise's mama came to town. 

 

Cicely Tyson is great and her scenes were powerful, but I feel like it was loaded with stereotype.  First, Annalise's real name is Tina Turner's real name.  Mama talks in a very uneducated manner, and isn't much different than the character Sipsey in Fried Green Tomatoes - which was a depression era black southern woman.  Then she shares Oprah Winfrey's history of being molested by male relatives.  Do these writers have any original thoughts?  Do they actually know black people? 

 

Now they made up for it a little by having the hair grooming scene between mother and daughter, and having mama talk about Annalise's kitchen (which being a white woman, I appreciate the posters here explaining what that is).

 

I guess I'm spoiled by the blind casting that happens in Grey's.  Those characters are truly characters first, and race/ethnicity second.  I appreciate that we have two black law students, but do they both have to be poor?  And one of them has to be the grasping social climber?  Why couldn't the backgrounds of Michaela and Laurel be switched, and the white girl be from humble origins?

 

Maybe I'm just spoiled because I grew up watching shows like Good Times - a poor black family living in the projects in Chicago, but an intact family with good kids, high expectations, and the same morals and values as any other family.   But then all Norman Lear shows were unique and cutting edge.

[helenamonster]

I don't necessarily agree or disagree with your opinion on the show's portrayal of black people, as I haven't quite decided yet for myself how I feel about it. But I think the molestation might have more to do with gender in television, not race. Let's face it, TV in general has a serious rape fetish. It's inescapable. And what's worse is that most shows like to use it for shock value/ratings or as part of a character's backstory to make them more sympathetic (I recently wrote a paper on this topic so all these arguments are fresh in my mind lol). I didn't mind the inclusion of rape as part of Annalise's backstory too much, because that hair-combing scene was so powerful and took what could have been something really hokey and made something meaningful of it. But I will admit, when Annalise first brought it up, I rolled my eyes. Is there any show on television that doesn't have a female character that has been sexually assaulted, either onscreen or off (and I use female because very few shows seem to have male victims of sexual assault)? I'm just really fucking tired of it, especially because 99% of the time it's handled all wrong. Again, I think HTGAWM did a good job with it, but still. Enough is enough.

 

Also, I just want to point out that Laurel is Hispanic. The character was originally going to be white with a more WASPy last name, and they hired Karla Souza with the intention of her playing Laurel as white, but KS asked if they could make her Hispanic (she's Mexican; I don't think they've nailed down Laurel's specific ethnicity). Although it does get confusing because Hispanic people can range anywhere from very white to very dark. Some people consider lighter-skinned Hispanic people, like KS, to be both white and Hispanic. I think it just depends on perception and how people have internalized race.

[jhlipton]

Also, I just want to point out that Laurel is Hispanic. The character was originally going to be white with a more WASPy last name, and they hired Karla Souza with the intention of her playing Laurel as white, but KS asked if they could make her Hispanic (she's Mexican; I don't think they've nailed down Laurel's specific ethnicity). 

 

I think (but could be mistaken) that her family was identified as Cuban during the Christmas-to-New-Year's episode.

[discoprincess]

I thought to start this thread after people in the 1.08 thread were talking about the dead weight they would drop or keep. Because even though I'm mostly enjoying the show, it could definitely be improved by cutting some characters (among other things).

 

 

 

New/recurring guest characters

Elizabeth Perkins' character because she's hilarious and could form a friendship/sounding board for Annie

 

I noticed that Annalise doesn't really have any friends. She doesn't really TRUST anyone - except maybe Nate, but she keeps throwing him under the bus which complicates things obviously. As seen in the episode with her mother, Annalise had to reinvent herself, and keeps her former life (her childhood, her birth name) hidden. She even keeps her natural hair hidden except when she's about to go to bed at home. LOL. It must be a lonely life.

Edited March 11, 2015 by discoprincess

[kikaha]

 

As seen in the episode with her mother, Annalise had to reinvent herself, and keeps her former life (her childhood, her birth name) hidden. She even keeps her natural hair hidden except when she's about to go to bed at home. LOL. It must be a lonely life.

 

I'm not sure loneliness is an issue for her.  She has created a life where she controls everything.  Her students idolize and adore her.  She wins so often in court, her clients view her like a god.  The world widely respects her, both for her accomplishments and her station (which she achieved on her own merits: no nepotism). She gets regular sex, which appears more than just a little fulfilling, from a man who pretty well loves her.  She has two associates who do her bidding no matter what... and is always three steps ahead of just about everyone she encounters. 

 

Seems to me not like a lonely life, but an incredibly full life, in terms of people, work and accomplishment. 

 

I also thought her mother's visit only added to that.  Annalise learned that her mother stood behind her, in the ultimate way, against her own blood.  Must have been very uplifting and freeing. 

[krimimimi]

Echoing RedheadedZombie's "closest thread" sentiment...

I disagree about the desirability of a mentor for Anna, although those who posed that suggestion may have changed their minds 8 months on? I really like Anna in pole position (yes, it might help that she's a rarely (never) seen black, bisexual, female badass LEAD on network primetime, but still), and I don't want to see her needing a mentor. Pfui. (That doesn't mean she shouldn't be allowed to show any weakness ever. Her moments of doubt are incredibly compelling, and then she picks herself up, dusts herself off, maybe collects an "attagirl" from Frank or Bonnie and then takes no prisoners. Marvelous! More, please!)

Instead of a mentor to provide insight into the inner workings of her mind, I would like to see a bit more openess with Frank and Bonnie, especially more discussion of plans/tactics, without going overboard and making this HTGAWM for Dummies. Their scheming is captivating, and I love that the writers haven't dumbed things down, but that doesn't mean all statements always should be as ambiguous as possible. That just seems absurd and lazy. ("It's him."(Anna to Eve re Wes. Him who now?) or "You told him?"(Bonnie to Anna re Asher about possibly anything, but maybe her past sexual abuse) These statements meaning anything and nothing. The Cobbler Effectpossibilities means you need to spell stuff out once in a while to not make everything an uncertainty.)

I'd like more any explanation of their relationships. Why are Bonnie and Frank this loyal to Anna? Story, please.

I would love to see the characters as a whole better developed, fleshed out and more consistently portrayed. That's writing and not the poor actors. Give them meatier stuff; they can handle it. Elementary regularly gives me a better feel for characters with a handful of minutes of screentime than HTGAWM has after a season and a half. Do better, show.

Criticisms about characterization aside, plot is something they do surprisingly well. (Although they should feel free to tighten up the COTWs a bit.)

Given that the show has pleasantly surprised me till now, I'm not going to get my knickers in a twist whatever they do, but trust enough to see it play out. So far it's been rewarding.

I wanted to expand on that. First off, I sincerely meant it. Secondly, I think it's often far too easy to piss and moan and overlook the good, and I wanted to praise the show runners explicitly for a couple of things:

1) Last season, the Wes & Rebecca drama had me watching the show around them. They were awful. I wanted them gone. And lo! Death happened!

The removal of Rebecca improved Wes by an order or two of magnitude. I like to think the writers saw what wasn't working and course corrected, and it wasn't just about the drah-mah of yet another murder. (Again, nothing against the actress, just hated their storyline.)

Sadly, Wes is an ungrateful, entitled asshat of the first order, and any ground he gained has been lost once again. (That's plot, of course, but also partly down to AE, although it may be because he has no idea where things are going yet. Still. Not liking a lot of his choices.) So again I am baying for his blood. That he seems to have brought a gun to whatever happenings at the Hapstalls' like some kind of low rent gangsta does not make me like him more.

But I have faith. In part because of

2) the handling of Sinclaire. In any other format, she would have long since become unwatchable for me, what with the veritable mustache twirling. As it is, thanks to the flash forwards, I know her days are numbered, and the more evil or just annoying she is simply helps pave the way to her inevitable doom. To which I've been looking increasingly forward, I might add. It has converted what might otherwise be an intolerable mess (any and all scenes with DA Smugface) into something worth combing for details, and has made a device of which I am less than fond (pretty much all time jumps back and forth) into something really rather well done. Kudos!

That's two improbables right there, combined to an even far less likely good result. Now that is compelling writing I would have bet against. Glad to have been proven wrong.

[DeeDee79]

krimimimi your entire post is gold. I too love badass Annalise flaws and all & I'm hoping for a Frank & Bonnie meet Annalise ep soon. We've been given info on the reason for Bonnie's loyalty but I really want to know what brought Frank into the fold. And Wes is a tool & I want him to go away. Promptly.

[dirtypop90]

Every single member of the K5 needs serious improvement. The only two people seem to like this season is Connor and Michaela (not me), and I'm betting that's only because Connor is with Oliver, and Michaela props Connor and Oliver. We need to know more about the younger cast so that we can actually care about them. Because we're almost at the end of the season, and if any one of them died, I would care less. That is not a good thing. I will say that I love how they used Laurel last ep, and her convo with Anna where Anna stated she ignored her because she knows she doesn't need to worry about her. More of that please. Laurel needs to be explored outside of her relationship. And that is true for all of the K5. For example, I do not care about Michaela finding another prince to marry, at all. Aja Naomi King has said it's like her character is stuck in a rom com this season. IA and I'm not a fan. And while I like Connor and Oliver, I would like to get to know Connor more outside of his relationship.

 

I'm also not really into the long drawn out case this season. It's just not interesting. And the actor who plays Caleb, while pretty, is very bad and should get very few lines. I wish they focused more on Catherine as that actress seems more capable.

 

Frank is meh and so is Bonnie but Bonnie must stay because she easily has the best scenes with Annalise. The actress is light years above everyone on this cast except Viola of course. 

 

It seems we will be learning more about Wes now and his connection to Annalise which is good.

 

 

 

I appreciate that we have two black law students, but do they both have to be poor?  And one of them has to be the grasping social climber?  Why couldn't the backgrounds of Michaela and Laurel be switched, and the white girl be from humble origins?

 

I believe they do color blind casting on shonda's shows so I'm not sure if Michaela and Wes were supposed to be black or they just liked Aja and Alfred for those roles so the characters ended up being black. Still, yea, I was meh when we found out michaela grew up poor through her mother in law and did not love finding out she also was adopted.  And I noticed that of the K5 they are the only two we have not seen with their families (or whoever raised Wes after his mom committed suicide). Wes spent christmas with rebecca and michaela spent it with Aiden and his family.

Edited November 8, 2015 by dirtypop90

[krimimimi]

It's even worse than that, dirtypop90, because Anna also comes from a poor background. Three for three, way to go guys! So I wasn't a fan either when it turned out both black students were poor, and it annoyed me at first. But I've come around to a more optimistic way of looking at things. (Life's too short to be grumpy...)

Our Reality Check:

the 2014 US Census counted the following:

White alone, not Hispanic or Latino 62.1%

Hispanic or Latino 17.4%

Black or African American alone 13.2% (but a small percent of these may also count as hispanic)

Two or More Races 2.5%

So in a country with a maximum of 15.7% black and partially black identifying population (it's less than that, because not all mixed race people are part black), they've given us a cast of 40% black law students. That's huge. Even today. And while I don't think it's something we need to bow and scrape before, I do think it's something we ought to acknowledge.

Then there's their Profession-Specific Reality Check:

In a profession where nearly 90% (seriously? holy cow! just looked it up and couldn't believe it.) of the practitioners are non-hispanic whites, only 40% of the interns are white. That's an impressive deviation from the norm. Less than 5% of American Bar Assoc. members are black, less than 4% are hispanic, so 40 and 20 percent of the K5 respectively isn't bad at all. And instead of the 30% ABA female membership, we've got 40% of the interns. (Ok, they were hardly going to cut students in half, but consider that Anna and Bonnie and even DA Smugface are the other lawyers we regularly see. We are so far above reality's averages it's stunning.)

So maybe we can forgive them for making Wes, Michaela and Anna from poor families.

And the fanwank that may make those impoverished backgrounds more palatable: the K5 isn't necessarily representative of her classroom, beyond them also being some of the most qualified. Maybe Anna is providing talented youngsters, particularly those she can identify with from personal experience, with her own form of affirmative action/ equal opportunity mentorship program? So while she'll still accept an Asher if he's bright enough and puts in the work, all things being equal, she'd tend to pick a Michaela or Wes. I think that isn't improbable, and could also be viewed as a good thing, without detracting from their respective skills.

But I think it would also help the characterization, if that's the case, if there was some acknowledgment of that fact.

Or who knows, maybe it's a familiarity bias, where like subconsciously recognizes and is drawn to like. That's a thing, too.

[dirtypop90]

^ My only problem with that theory is Anna also chose Asher, Connor, and Laurel, so does she only choose black kids she relates too, and therefore only looked for black kids from poor households but didn't care where the white kids came from? I kinda have a problem with that too. (I understand laurel is hispanic but her race is white)

 

I am on tumblr and I remember reading some disappointment when it turned out Michaela was also from a poor household and trying to hide it. A number of people stated it actually would've been something new (for tv) if they would have kept michaela as a young black student from a higher income household with two parents. 

 

I will say that I attended a top law school and most of my AA classmates came from two parent upper middle class households. I did not but I was in the minority. So yea...if (w/e the name of the school is) is supposed to be a top law school (top 10), Michaela and Wes are not representative of its AA population. I've always assumed the school was supposed to be Penn, which is in the top 10, but they can't use the name.

 

It's funny to me because when we were first introduced to Wes and Michaela I really liked them both. They reminded me of some of my classmates, as Asher and Connor did (and still do). Michaela, as she was, was a pretty good representation of AA women in top law schools IMO, and also in the AA population there was always a Wes, who was sort of bright eyed and very nervous, but happy to be there and wanted to use his law degree to help people. But now their backgrounds are so...wacky. And I'm just not happy with where they have taken their characters. It really does feel that they are playing into stereotypes, i.e. successful black woman engaged to a DL man and now has trouble finding a decent one despite how attractive and intelligent she is, and black male with severe mommy (or daddy) issues and screwing up his life because of it. Additionally, they grew up poor and have no family. I'm just like...woah! Plus, as you said, we have Anna who is the way she is because she was raped by an uncle etc.

 

I do wish this would be addressed in some way. I thought a convo addressing some of this could come up between Michaela and Wes by this point in the show, like some bonding over their backgrounds and how hard they've worked to get here, and then maybe we could find out Anna knew about Michaela's background, as well. But I don't see that ever happening now because Michaela despises Wes and they don't get any scenes alone together, and Anna seems pretty indifferent towards Michaela.

Edited November 9, 2015 by dirtypop90

[FormerMod-a1]

This is more a wish than speculation or anything so I'm putting it here.  However, after last night's events I could maybe see this happening so I'm finally typing it "out loud". :-P

 

I've been wanting next season's (assuming there is one) flashforward murder to be of Wes.  The actor would still be on the show for that season, but then that would be it.  It would keep all the others involved, too, given all the events of the first two seasons.  This, of course, started with me thinking how I'd like to fix the show and coming up with wanting him off the show for finding him the most insufferable (well, tied with Rebecca) of all the characters.  Not morally or ethically, just in how much watching the character annoys me, and not in a "supposed to annoy me" way.

[jhlipton]

Not morally or ethically, just in how much watching the character annoys me, and not in a "supposed to annoy me" way.

 

He annoys me morally and ethically as well.

[rubinia]

 

(I understand laurel is hispanic but her race is white)

I'm not sure I understand this. If she is Mexican, is her race not "Mexican" or hispanic or latina? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm genuinely interested. My husband is Mexican but has very light skin and is often "confused" for a white person, but he's never identified racially as white.

[secnarf]

I'm not sure I understand this. If she is Mexican, is her race not "Mexican" or hispanic or latina? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm genuinely interested. My husband is Mexican but has very light skin and is often "confused" for a white person, but he's never identified racially as white.

Often on official forms and whatnot, there is a differentiation for "White Hispanic" and "Non-Hispanic White" and "Black Hispanic". The idea being that Hispanic is not a "race" but is a culture or something that requires differentiation from other white or black people.

 

The whole construct of race is rather complicated and the deeper you look into it, the less sense it makes.

[rubinia]

I agree it doesn't make much sense, but I always thought that Hispanic individuals count themselves as minorities (i.e., not white). At least where I'm from?

[FormerMod-a1]

Ethnicity is different than Race.  Hispanic is considered a separate ethnicity, but not a different race.  

[Dowel Jones]

There is an excellent documentary called "A Class Apart", usually available through PBS, that addresses the legal distinctions that plagued Latino/ Mexican-American citizens in the South during the 1950's.  They weren't considered black or white, and thus were not always afforded the rights fought for through court decisions and legislation.  Seems hard to believe now.