Waka Pass Diaries (After Watching ‘How To Get Away With Murder’)
October 29
I just recently watched the last episode of the current season of How To Get Away With Murder. And set apart from the (frankly boring) intrigue of Laurel Castillo’s disappearance and Michaela Pratt’s questions about the father she never knew, were two incidences that were noteworthy for me in the episode titled We’re All Gonna Die.
First was the startling revelation that Annalise was a victim of internalised homophobia.
Sure, Annalise Keating is a very flawed woman. But juxtaposed with all her vulnerabilities is a strength that tends to make you forget her weaknesses and focus on her as the answer to all our troubles. That is why all the others gravitate toward and around her. That is why her badassery is often touted in the show.
To see her express a vulnerability linked to her sexuality was something I never expected I’d witness with her.
Okay, a quick background (spoiler alert!). So, remember Annalise’s dead therapist husband, Sam Keating… Turns out that years ago, when Annalise was his patient, he (of course) taped their sessions. Recordings which were in the possession of Vivian, Sam’s wife from his first marriage, before he married Annalise. Vivian in turn hands the tapes over to her son, Gabriel. Gabriel, who had come looking to Annalise for answers regarding his deceased father, had started grudgingly admiring her, and Vivian was hoping to torpedo this admiration. The tapes thus reveal to Gabriel that Annalise, who’d always maintained that Sam manipulated her affections, had in fact wormed her way into his. When he confronts her with what he’s learned, even Annalise is startled to realize that she’d had it wrong all this time.
And this must have led to some introspection during which she realizes that she must have pursued Sam to escape the “abnormality” of her same-sex attraction for her then-girlfriend, Eve.
“I was afraid to be gay,” she tells Bonnie. “Should’ve stayed with Eve, loved her. But I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be accepted. So, I threw myself at him…”
Throughout the run of the series, Annalise has been portrayed as a stalwart bisexual, having an equal mix of male and female love interests. But this revelation made me start thinking about how perhaps she tilts more toward the same-sex section of the sexuality spectrum. After all, all the lovers that Annalise has ever gotten overtly passionate about have been the women. Eve. Bonnie. With Sam, she was cold to the point, she protected the students who killed him. Let’s not even talk about how she basically only needs Nate when she wants to scratch an itch.
The ultimate lesson here is for one afflicted with internalised homophobia to become aware of how damaging their self-loathing can be to them-self and to those around them. To realise this and somehow learn to heal.
“Forgive yourself,” Bonnie sagely responds to Annalise.
The second noteworthy incidence was the scene where Tegan and her estranged wife, Cora, officially broke up. Tegan’s marriage was a detail that was introduced this season, and it quickly becomes apparent that whoever this wife is, Tegan isn’t over her.
It will seem as though the reason for their separation is that Cora had fallen for a man named Patrick. And so, she moves out of their matrimonial home to be with him. Except Patrick eventually leaves her as well.
When Cora tells Tegan this, suddenly, Tegan takes this as an opening to get emphatic about her feelings for Cora, to let her know that she can’t let go, can’t move on.
“I wish I could say I’m over you,” Tegan confesses to Cora, the expression on her face a window into the desperation in her heart. “I wish I could just let go and move on. But I still miss you.”
But boy, was this a big mistake.
In the following minute, Cora proceeds to precisely and absolutely crush that heart. Her words become a gust of cold wind that snuffs out Tegan’s hope, the scalpel that slices her heart into irreparable pieces of blood and tissue.
“God’s honest is, I wasn’t in love with you anymore,” Cora speaks with a directness that doesn’t cushion the blow of her rejection. “I’m not in love with you now. It’s over, Tea. We’re over.”
This scene is so lethal, that I flinched as I watched. I was looking at the stark pain on Tegan’s face and feeling all the things she was feeling. The hurts of past breakups resurfaced. The lovers that didn’t last. The possibilities that were expired. I especially remembered the greatest heartbreak I suffered a few years ago. As though it just happened yesterday, I felt the chill that iced over my veins when I had to face the inconceivable truth that love can die, that you can wake up one day to the realization that the person who once brought you such indescribable joy could be responsible for the gnawing despair dragging you down.
I knew Tegan’s pain. In that moment, I was Tegan. The longest running joke the Universe is playing on mankind is the reality that we will always find ourselves loving people who won’t love us back.
Written by Pink Panther
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14 Comments
Omiete
October 31, 07:54The sad reality. Loving someone who won’t love you back
BRYAN PETERS
October 31, 08:32Wow Pinky. I can totally relate. Both points made are sooooo valid.
Last last, self love is still the most important. Others are secondary cos they can come and go.
We are stuck with ourselves from our birth to our death. Just love up on yourself.
Pink Panther
October 31, 09:03True. Very true.
But mehn, self love won’t keep the child of God warm in the coming Harmattan weather. 😀
BRYAN PETERS
October 31, 17:24?????
And to think that I deliberately did not add this part so as not to run the risk of invalidating my own point.
Wo, love yourself and buy a big teddy bear or dildo or vibrator or any other self pleasuring aid until Mr Absolutely Right comes along ?
Malik
November 01, 10:05Hmmmm! Word!
Mitch
October 31, 09:38You make me want to resume watching this show just to see this. But I think of the hours of boredom I’d have to survive, on my hard-earned data, to get here. And I don’t know if I can do it.??
Pink Panther
October 31, 10:45LOL! When you come around for next month’s wedding, I’ll give the episodes to you.
julian_woodhouse
October 31, 10:56okay guysssss….. I know the season 3,4 and 5 may have left some of us with mixed feelings. (1 and 2) were perfect butttt 6 is pulling its own weight. tots watchable. That said, as painful as that Teigen- Cora scene was, I think I actually admired the fact that Cora came out and told her in the most brutal way possible that shit was over. The way I see it, it’s easier for Teigen to move on with her life and finally close that chapter albeit rather sadly. It made me think, and this happens quite a few, how in relationships one person is done with the other but doesn’t have the balls to end it or the person likes the perks they get from being attached to the other person so they keep on stringing them along. This brutal I don’t love you anymore ..e dey enter body, but it’s necessary. Fast method of getting over somebody…that or fucking a few of the people that were toasting you when you were bood up.
Pink Panther
October 31, 11:49Yes, being very forthright about not loving a person is the best way. It’s for the good of the person on the receiving end, however tough it may be to hear, to enable them move on and not cling to something that doesn’t exist.
Yes to all this.
But mehn, the pain of having to hear this is almost unbearable.
Mandy
October 31, 13:07Rejection is not an easy thing to deal with. Gosh. I’m the kind of person who, if I chyke you and you tell me to my face no, mehn, it stings to the high heavens. And that’s just for hooking up. Never been in love, but I’m sure I’d die, just drop dead, if I fell in love with someone who either wouldn’t love me back or did and then fell out of love with me.
Olutayo
October 31, 13:09I have often wondered. Why is the universe not designed in a way that people who will find love will simply find that Mr. Right or Ms. Right when it’s time, instead of having to go through heartbreaks before finding that love of their life?
Black Dynasty
November 01, 08:02Hmm, i think each heartache has a life lesson somewhere beneath the pain.
Black Coffee
October 31, 14:42With this kind of pain,one gets too careful not to be a victim again.
I’ve been there, it wasn’t a sweet experience one bit.
Temi
November 03, 17:29As a staunch supporter and viewer of the series I quite agree with you, that particular episode I watched it thrice and I could relate with your analysis. Well done Pinky but that it’s boring I disagree (To be honest ,HTGAWM is a series so far I’ve stayed true to I always anticipate what’s next)