**Just so many spoilers ahead**
The HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER finale aired a few weeks ago and it was pretty darn good. There have been many articles about that fact as well as many about where the show is going with the cliffhanger it left us with. Fortunately for you, TVAddicts, I will not be writing such a piece. Instead I’m going to write about what HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER can do to fix itself in order to be as good as everyone says it is.
I’m not saying that the show isn’t good because it is but it’s also not the greatest show on television that many other outlets make it to be. In fact, there are many areas where the show could improve. Viola Davis is so perfect on this show but I find myself asking if Prof. Keating was played by anyone else, would anyone care about this show? Sure, you would have probably given it a watch because it’s from the production company Shondaland but it wasn’t created by Shonda Rhimes. And that can be clearly seen because HTGAWM is missing what makes Grey’s and Scandal great.
So what can HTGAWM do to be better (in this TV watcher’s opinion)? To put it simply, there needs to be at least one character that the viewer can root for or really care about. Viola Davis is great but her character is pretty horrible and sometimes I want bad things to happen to her. And the Keating Five, well I think I could only guess 3 out of 5 of their names correct. None of the Keating Five appear to have any substance. Yes, we got some insight into their backstories but not enough to truly know where any of them come from or to care if this whole murder thing sends them to jail or not. Plus, I’m sorry but Wes and Rebecca (had to look up her name, btw) may deserve to go to jail.
Who am I as a viewer suppose to root for or care about? You may be thinking does a show really need it’s viewers to care about any character to succeed and based on the ratings for HTGAWM, maybe viewers don’t. But would the deaths of Lexie, Mark or any tv character death hit you as hard as it does if you didn’t care about them? Did anyone of you shed a tear when Rebecca was revealed as murdered? Would you cry if any of the characters of this show were to leave or be killed? No, you wouldn’t (the character I care about the most is Oliver, Conner’s kind of boyfriend, and he isn’t even a main character) and it’s because these characters have no redeeming qualities.
I watched every episode of this show and I will probably watch the start of season 2 but if HTGAWM doesn’t make some changes then I won’t watch the whole season. I’m not very interested in who killed Rebeccas because she was awful and a liar the whole season. However, I think if the writers can make these main characters more interesting (except for Wes, there is no hope for that character, he is just super annoying and I don’t get why Annalise cares so much for him) the show will be as good as everyone thinks it is. This show does so many things great and I just want them to take the element that makes every Shondaland show epic: quality characters.