As I watched this episode, I found myself rolling my eyes every time the Keating Gang was onscreen. I grow weary of their convenient life developments and quickly growing pregnancy bellies and endless close-ups of their weepy faces. We don’t have to spend time with them anymore. Jimmy Smits is an option now! All I want is Jimmy Smits and Viola Davis, sitting across from each other, caught in a battle of wits. So why am I being forced to sit through some heavily edited job interviews? I get it. Laurel is sad and Michaela is suppressing her feelings in order to succeed. Blah blah blah. MORE JIMMY SMITS.
Annalise is going to her therapy session and she stayed up all night the night before studying Jimmy Smits. He asks her about the liquor in the mini-bar and all she wants to talk about is her new case. I hope this is a return to cases of week because this one is a DOOZY. She’s defending her former cellmate, Jasmine. She was arrested with a firearm when a cop stopped her for soliciting. Annalise is defending her for free and she’s not just going to accept a plea bargain. This is one of those episodes where we see one session of therapy intercut with all of the events of the week before. The BIG-ASS TEXT tells us what time it is during the session.
Meanwhile, Laurel is obsessively researching any crime she can think of with the name of her father’s company. Tax evasion? Anti-trust? Shrimp theft? Something!? She’s all caught up in her Googling when Michaela texts her to get ready for the job fair. Connor is getting dressed while Oliver quizzes him. Apparently, neither of them has any real money coming in so how are they affording that beautiful one-bedroom with lots of natural light? They all show up and Laurel is a hot mess. They have the four lowest GPAs in the class and that li’l weaselly guy, Simon, says that the only question they are going to be asked in interviews is, “What was working with Annalise like?”
In court, Annalise is asking for the gun discovery to be thrown out because there was no probable cause for the stop. She hasn’t filed some important paperwork to get an extension. Damn, she is rusty. On her way out of the courtroom, she sees Bonnie and OH SHIT BONNIE IS AN ADA NOW! Annalise is not pleased. Annalise asks the ADA for some leeway in the case, but he just tells her to watch the body-cam footage. Nate doesn’t want to help Bonnie out because he’s convinced it’s some long con between her and Annalise. In literally any other situation, he would probably be right but not today.
Then we get to see the Keating Gang’s interviews and I no longer care about them.
Annalise is showing Jasmine the body-cam footage and it reveals that Jasmine tried to solicit the cop to let her go. Annalise lays into her for making a stupid decision and Jasmine says that Annalise is just getting discouraged because this isn’t an easy case. Because Annalise was just trying to feel good about herself by “saving” someone else. Jasmine says that she started sex work when she was 13; a group of men assaulted her in order to break her and she’s been living in a cycle of drugs and jail ever since. It’s an amazing monologue.
After their job interviews, Connor realizes that maybe he doesn’t want to be a lawyer anymore and Oliver calls him out for being super white and feeling sorry for himself. Literally every single person on this show should be in jail but they’re not and now Connor wants to run away? Nah, dude. Everyone’s phones start ringing with second interviews. Michaela got five, Asher got three … and that’s it.
Annalise realizes that Jasmine has a juvenile criminal record and tries to get Bonnie to unseal the record for her. Bonnie slams the door in her face. Frank somehow manages to get the file for Annalise and slips it to her. Conor goes to Laurel’s apartment to give Wes’s death way more importance. Um … I mean … try to apologize. When did Laurel FALL IN LOVE WITH WES LIKE THIS? Or is this one of those “treating the dead person like they’re perfect” things? Either way, Connor is beholden to Laurel because reasons.
Annalise finally has her day in court for Jasmine and boy, does this bitch work. She found the DA who presided over Jasmine’s first arrest when she was 13. Then she shows him a few other women who were arrested at the same age for prostitution. They were all given a chance for rehabilitation. Jasmine was given prison time. What do you think the difference was? (Jasmine is black. They were white.) Annalise argues that all of the sentence increases that doomed Jasmine to a life of poverty and a cycle of prison started with that one moment. She asks for all Jasmine’s convictions to be expunged. The judge says he can’t expunge them, but because the system failed Jasmine, they can seal her record so she can apply for public assistance and a job.
Jimmy Smits keeps asserting that Annalise is defending Jasmine because she sees herself in her. He is just like, “Oh, you’re a victim too, right?” He doesn’t exactly have tact. When Annalise is cynical about Jasmine committing another crime, Jimmy Smits tells her that he was an addict and he turned his life around. Now I’m shipping them.
Michaela got the internship at a fancy law firm along with weaselly Simon and Laurel corners her. She says that the law firm represents her father and she wants Michaela to help her take her father down. *EYE ROLL*
Then we flash to two-and-a-half months in the future and Jimmy Smits is in Laurel’s hospital room and he calls Annalise. “Where the hell are you? She’s awake. Answer the damn phone.”
Bonnie walks into the crime scene and it’s in Annalise’s hotel room. There’s blood everywhere in the elevator and the hallway.
Okay, so Annalise stole a baby? That’s what we’re being set up for, right?
