‘How To Get Away With Murder,’ Season 2, Episode 8 Recap: “Hi, I’m Philip”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXz7CaqbpxQ

Frank (Charlie Weber) drives Connor (Jack Falahee), Michaela (Aja Naomi King), and Laurel (Karla Souza) back from the Hapstall mansion (where Bonnie (Liza Weil) was also present) after Annalise (Viola Davis) and another woman are shot, and Frank scolds Laurel for always tattling to Annalise and ruining everything. Connor returns home to find that Oliver (Conrad Ricamora) is missing, after seeing the door of their apartment and fridge door both open, and milk spilled on the floor.

Connor goes to see Annalise to ask for help, and Nate (Billy Brown), who is still drunkenly visiting her late at night despite her betrayal of him, is about to call his police precinct to report a missing persons case but Oliver shows up right at Annalise’s house with the Hapstall twins’ cousin Philip (Jefferson White), who says he knows they stalked and hacked him online and the he is not a murderer. Nate decides to tail Philip to observe his movements. Annalise asks Laurel to replace Bonnie as her personal assistant after Bonnie refuses to return her or anyone else’s calls.

The Prosecutor on the Hapstall case, Emily Sinclair (Sarah Burns) offers to give the twins a plea deal of 15 years in prison (a reduced sentence) for each if they plead guilty. After Asher (Matt McGorry) and Frank go to the police department to pick up Philip’s DNA sample that is being tested, Asher realizes that Sinclair has probably bugged Annalise’s house since she offered the twins the plea deal. Annalise decides to take Wes (Alfred Enoch) off the case after he convinces Catherine (Amy Okuda) to take the deal, despite Annalise’s order to do the exact opposite. Michaela talks to Caleb (Kendrick Samspson) about the same thing with the same intention but obeys Annalise, although it appears that she has some feelings for Caleb.

The team find the bug in one of the pens they have been using. It is revealed Caleb snapped and killed his adoptive parents after they found out that he and Catherine had been sleeping together for many years and threatened to cut them out of the will and even abandon them. Caleb decides to take the plea deal and serve 30 years in prison so that Catherine does not get any time, since she is innocent. Sinclair’s team searches the Hapstall mansion for the gun that Caleb used, but find nothing. Nate calls Annalise to tell her that Philip is at the police precinct giving a statement.

Frank steals the suitcase full of money from the Hapstall mansion and bribes one of the women from the police station he is close with to speed up the DNA sample identification in exchange for the thousands in cash. Catherine approaches Sinclair to turn herself in. Just as Catherine is about to take the fall for both her and Caleb by taking ten years even though she’s supposedly innocent, Frank walks into the courtroom during the hearing and hands Annalise the proof that Philip’s DNA matches that found at the crime scene, and that he is the product of incest between the Hapstall twins’ adoptive uncle and his sister.

Annalise brings this evidence to Sinclair, and the twins are acquitted. Frank and Laurel rekindle their relationship, and Caleb and Michaela declare their love for each other. Caleb shows Michaela a gun he found hidden in one of the air vents in Catherine’s painting studio room, and Wes runs over to Annalise’s house and shows her presumably what looks like a gun in the background of one of Catherine’s paintings that she gave to him as a gift after they won the case.

Catherine is shown getting into a car with Philip (probably that same night), who simply tells her: “Don’t worry, I’m going to fix this.”