Member Since: 11/20/2010
Posts: 29,258
|
#37 - How To Get Away With Murder
Quote:
Sorry, not sorry. 'How To Get Away With Murder' is not good. No amount of demonstrative ratings or Viola praise is going to change how very basic this show is and how awfully it sulks in all kinds of character and plot clichés I can think of.
Oh, look a white frat boy with a rich and powerful daddy who has some clear narcissistic issues because he keeps humping every furniture possible inside of his apartment. And oh, look over there! There's a gay who keeps hooking up with random people at every possible occasion. Beds got boring for him real fast. But a courthouse has bathrooms, right? You can lock the door to the print room, no problem for Connor. At this point the question we should be asking ourselves is 'How To Get Away Without STD's'. Exciting stuff - don't forget to tune in!
The ambitious, emancipated female adolescent who has her entire life already planned out on some kind of geeky timetable and, thus, rightfully has a complex about her fiancée's pubertal experiments. Then there's our innocent puppy - the perfect student who does no wrong by his teacher and solely (!!!) acts out of pure & honest motivations. He has no dark side or bad qualities because that would introduce the kind of realism this show seems to want to avoid almost maniacally for some reason that is beyond my comprehension. He's the kind of guy every soccer mom's dreams are made of. Really cute.
Anyway, I won't deny that amidst all the lazy writing, the unoriginal 'whodunit' premise and all the nightmares I keep having about Michaela's face at the bonfire there are things that make this show worth watching. Every now and then a scene stands out and in each and every one of them there's the same person present: Viola Davis.
Yes, her performance is great. It's a little similar to what we've already seen her doing but do I mind? No, she gladly deserves the recognition she gets even though she's not this year's or even this tv season's best female actress. Her character provides the show with the only mulit-layered ark it has so far and those are the moments in which I do catch myself enjoying the show at times.
Overall, this show does have a few moments which I thought to be brilliant or at least had flashes of brilliance, such as the much-talked about episode 4 cliffhanger or Keating's courthouse scene. Sadly, it kind of speaks volumes (not good ones) when a show's only redeeming qualities (if you can call them that) are all attached to the talent of one actress.
I realize I sounded a bit harsh but this show is still better than almost all other network dramas out there, though that has more to do with the current state of poor quality the network landscape generally suffers from rather than the show's own quality. And well, at least it's not pretentiously trying to be more than what it is like other shows *cough*scandal*cough*.
Best Episodes: "Smile, Or Go To Jail”; "Freakin' Whack-a-Mole"
|
|
|
|