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Why I (And Many Others) Just Really Love Connor Walsh
I remember when we got that one recap for the first season of HTGAWM where Katie Findlay narrated it and she called Connor the bad boy of the group. I remember my brain just saying, "?" at that statement. Mostly because I felt like the trope of the bad boy was largely reserved for straight boys.
You know that common television trope. We've all seen it. There is a boy. He is bad. He drinks, perhaps does drugs, and usually has sex. And he breaks everyone's hearts.
Then some bright-eyed, cheerful girl comes along and changes him and makes him a good person. Story ends happily. We all rejoice in the rainbow-over-the-sun ending where they all sing the Barney Theme Song.
Connor Walsh effectively broke my thoughts on that trope in half.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that he was the bad boy. The mental list I had set up for the stereotypical bad boy traits were being crossed off the more I thought about Connor's actions and traits.
I think one of the most beautiful things in all of How To Get Away With Murder is that they have these really interesting characters that get revealed in very small lines of dialogue or action. There is no pointless filler flashbacks on the show. When there are flashbacks, they feed into the larger plot. And the flashbacks and small lines of dialogue are most of the reason to rewatch, because it tells you so much more about the characters. I read an interview Pete Nowalk (the creator of the show) had, and it kind of made me realize why I do like the show so much.
http://www.accesshollywood.com/articles/how-to-get-away-with-murder-ep-pete-nowalk-on-new-characters-more-drama-166079/#JOlmWSzBByGshRUR.99
Out of all of the characters that we've seen, I'd say we know very little about Connor. Which makes him mysterious. Which helps feed into the bad boy image.
I'd say out of all the characters I'm rooting for, he, Laurel, Annalise, Oliver, and Michaela are definitely on my Top 5 I Want To Make It Out Alive. Notable mention: Eve.
In season 2, the show has gotten a lot darker. The reputation of Annalise to the law students has gone down notably. By the midseason finale, everyone has turned on her. Even Asher isn't the lovable dork we could laugh at his stupid lines and the other characters' reactions. We have to rely on Frank the hitman for our comic relief, and I really doubt that Frank was even meant to turn out that way.
So what helps when the show gets so incredibly dark and morbid even the comic relief characters aren't even comic relief anymore? A lovable fictional couple. Now, I'll do a post about Oliver later, but I think we, as the audience, can find him the most relatable character. Sure, Oliver has been involved in the crossfire in the fuckery that is Annalise Keating and Co., but he has still largely been uninvolved in the big picture. So we view him as the innocent one (even though there was only one person who murdered Sam Keating, and that same person shot Annalise Keating) and we want Oliver to stay that way. We just want to take a big blanket and wrap him up and keep him far away from everyone's house. So we like Connor enough that we want him to do that on the show.
Yeah, I get that Connor isn't everyone's cup of tea. Some Tumblr people hate him for being so popular (lol h8rs), and others hate him for not wanting to be involved in the mess anymore. My snarky replies aside (don't worry I'll just save my bitchy replies to tell my BFF Nikole later on- I'm rather harsh), I don't really care much about what other people think of him. I think he's fucking awesome.
I'm a lesbian and I love Connor to death. Whenever I start watching a series that has a gay character, I hold my breath. Now, I'm not saying characters can't be into celebrating their sexuality, but I will say I do find it incredibly annoying that most characters have some tragic coming out story or are in the closet when the series begins.
At the time the pilot starts, Connor is out of the closet and hooks up with a guy in the first episode. There's no shits given, either. It's portrayed as a normal experience that anyone else could have.
We never have gotten some tragic coming out scene with Connor. He's just there, and he's gay. We may assume that that's the reason his dad left, but we never really got told that. He never had to tell anyone in the group that he's a gay man, but it's not because he falls into some gay stereotype. It's because all the people around him are very attentive and bright, like Michaela. I know some people in my life who I've actually given all the purposeful hints to see if they pick up that I'm not straight, and they still ask me if I'm dating any boys. The scene where Michaela asks if Connor is having boy problems was very refreshing for me and it gave me hope.
Season 1 Connor was very interesting to first watch. He's a guy who doesn't have a large group of supporters in his life, because he was, well, how do you put it- an asshole. He never made attempts to become friends with anyone, and openly mocked anyone who tried to speak to him. He thought he was better than Wes because he was never on the waitlist and he thought he could easily become the professor's favorite. He thought he was better than Michaela because he had his love life under control.
And what happens to him? He got hit by the metaphorical trophy in the head. Connor lost the trophy and fell from grace. Then, a guy turned him down because he did a shitty thing and wouldn't let him back into his life just that easily.
The fact that Connor became an accomplice the night that Sam was killed made him an entirely different person. He no longer fits into that phrase Frank uttered at the beginning of season 1, "Hair Gel's got ice in his veins." Everything that's happened to him has helped him change into a different person. He has someone he wants to protect from the ridiculousness of the rest of his life's fuckery. Some loser typing on Tumblr may say that makes him a weak person who needs to drop dead, but I say fuck you! That makes him one of the characters that has had the best character development so far. He is not a weakly written character by any means. He is finally feeling like he has someone to feel responsible for, and as we see in the midseason finale, he'd do anything for that person.
He's no longer the 'bad boy'. Sure, he still likes having sex, but it's a Shonda Rhimes show, so pretty much everyone likes to have sex from time to time. I think we can assume he's never had the luxury of having a person he could come home to, and now that he's feeling that for the first time, it hurts him to think that he could ever hurt that person. He has become an entirely different kind of person in such a short amount of time because of something bad that happened to him.
There's a gifset on Tumblr that showcases the similarities of Annalise Keating and Connor Walsh. I found it! I never really mentally made the connection between the two, but it's actually kind of interesting to think about. What if Connor makes it out of this alive and becomes a professor? After all, I bet Oliver would be into it after the desk scene...
Yeah, he's been an asshole at times, but the writers and Jack Falahee made him incredibly interesting. And that's why I like him! He's the light at the end of a tunnel. In the light, we find more gay fictional characters that turn around what we thought about certain tropes and certain stereotypes.
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