My Review of How To Get Away With Murder's 6x08: "I Want To Be Free"

Written by Hadi Nicholas Deeb
Directed by Alrick Riley

Mystery Caller (to Annalise): "Once you arrive, we'll call you with further instructions."

And we have it or do we? Going by the flash forward, it actually did look like Annalise was finally done with everything and was about to fake her death and get the hell out of there. However going by the trailer for the mid season finale, something else could be happening as well.

As for present day stuff, we got the whole Nate vs. Birkhead trial with Bonnie quickly being taken out of the mix as the former's lawyer and Tegan stepping in with some shadowing from Annalise on the snarky front. Then the case resulted in Jorge being publicly outed as a murderer and Birkhead having to do some damage control.

Of course this happened after Bonnie had to suffer from making herself rather known and ended up in a car accident, resulting her in being rather mad with Frank and Annalise once she was aware that her boyfriend really was an innocent man after all. Bonnie certainly didn't catch a break in this episode.

Speaking of breaks, Asher thankfully did get one this week. Sure, things with him and Michaela are still on shaky-ish ground thanks to Gabriel being a dick but at least he was able to solve the Snow White case and bag himself a nice cheque to boot. By the way, I thought the use of that particular thought experiment was pretty clever and worked well in the overall episode.

As for the rest of the gang - the sooner both Nate and Gabriel are gone, the better. Why any of the others bother with them at this point beggars belief. Michaela certainly let Gabriel cloud her judgement a bit too much this episode but Tegan was on fine form yet again.

Then there was Connor and Oliver. Even though we didn't get follow up on last week's flash forward with the latter, I did like that the elephant in the room was addressed with Connor's confession. Both Connor and Oliver made some fair points about the situation at hand as well.

- Just realised that the Snow White case was a bit of a metaphor for what Annalise is clearly planning to do.
- Oliver with the puppy party. The obvious highlight of the episode of course.
- The first episode this season not to address Laurel in any way at all. I guess we've finally moved on from her.
- Chronology: A week before the events of the mid season finale.

I Want To Be Free is a solid if not spectacular lead in to the mid series finale. I did like the use of the Snow White case, more backstory for Tegan and it was nice to see Asher get a win as well this week. I just hope they pull off this final mystery satisfyingly though.

Rating: 7 out of 10