TV Review: HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER: Season 4, Episode 11: He’s A Bad Father [ABC]

How To Get Away With Murder He’s A Bad Father Review

How to Get Away with Murder: Season 4, Episode 11: He’s A Bad Father. This How to Get Away with Murder He’s A Bad Father review finds that the episode works due to its deep dives into the characters’ parental issues and an especially slimy guest performance.

As Laurel’s mother Sandrine, Lolita Davidovich is strangely aloof, with her French-accented English and fragile cadence betraying the broken soul lying beneath. So it comes as a shock when she demonstrates an acute level of awareness and owns up to not being a good mother to Laurel, speaking clearly and intently as she testifies to her daughter’s ability to be a mother herself. It’s not the emotional high point of the program, but it’s interesting to see how Davidovich was able to pull off this level of character development in such a short span of time.

But Davidovich isn’t the only one to get in some dramatic tension as a parent of one of the characters. Glynn Turman practically steals the show as Nate Lahey’s (Billy Brown) father, erupting into a vengeful tirade against his son for becoming a “pig”. His reds and his words dripping with vitriol, Turman holds little back in his outburst, with Viola Davis‘ Annalise (no pushover herself) beside herself with shock at the intensity of his rage.

We’ve met the other characters’ parents before: we all remember Asher’s (Matt McGorry) corrupt father and Connor’s (Jack Falahee) tone-deaf dad, and Jorge (Esai Morales) hardly needs an introduction. But Sandrine and Nate Sr. are in a league of their own with Annalise’s mother Ophelia (Cicely Tyson), compelling in the depth of their hurt and hard to not pay attention when they’re onscreen.

Another character on the episode similarly holds viewers’ attention, albeit for severely less pleasant reasons. Annalise and the Keating Five have faced off against some noxious individuals in their time, but Mr. Dean (Jack Coleman) surely stands out as one of the slimiest, most contemptible people they’ve had the misfortune of crossing paths with. Prone to barely-relevant insinuation and projecting an aura of self-importance, he casts aspersions on both Laurel and Isaac’s (Jimmy Smits) characters in court in such a way that the judge is compelled to halt his line of questioning. It’s unclear if we’ll be seeing the likes of him again, but he’s bound to stick in the memory of How to Get Away with Murder fans for a long time.

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