Last week, Shonda Rhimes’ How to Get Away With Murder compared ICE agents to criminal gangs. This week’s episode, “Do You Think I’m a Bad Man?,” on October 10, turned law enforcement into the villains again with a story of a police officer killing an unarmed black man.
Troy and Brandi, a young black couple, rob a cash lender of $5,000 after banks refuse to give them a loan to start a business. During the subsequent car chase a police officer shoots the young man. His widow, Brandi, is charged with numerous felonies, including resisting arrest. “Brandi was literally clutching her dead husband's head at the time of her arrest. That's not resisting. That's grieving,” one law student says. In a preposterous twist during a plea hearing, the prosecution then tries to charge Brandi with felony murder for Troy’s death.
Producer Shonda Rhimes’ shows are not so much dramas as left-wing lectures with dramatic exposition thrown-in. Rhimes also has the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Therefore, the rest of the episode revolves around court room scenes and law office dialogue in which characters keep repeating how a police officer killed a young black man.
“Troy died because some cop shot him in the head,” Brandi cries. “The police shot her unarmed black husband,” says another character. On and on it goes. The writers cut and paste some variation of that line repeatedly throughout the episode. The case wins in court when it is argued that the state is only prosecuting Brandi, a woman who just “wanted a better life,” in order to avoid a wrongful death suit.
Major cities like Chicago and Baltimore are facing spikes in violent crime. Regularly pushing the narrative that police officers are just racist villains out to kill innocent black Americans helps no one, least of all minority communities. Also of note, a commercial for the anti-cop, vigilante film Queen and Slim ran during a break.
The episode also continues the previous week’s plot line about an illegal immigrant and her traumatized son. Law student Connor (Jack Falahee) illegally takes the boy across state lines so he can have an emotional reunion with his sobbing mother. Connor and his clients soon get caught by Border Patrol. Mother and son get asylum in a crazy deus ex machina in which Connor’s law firm boss makes a call to her secret lesbian wife at Homeland Security. (I did not make that up.)
This is the sixth and final season of How to Get Away With Murder. With its ridiculous plot lines and constant left-wing hectoring, the show should have been killed off long ago.
