In Celebration of Chaotic Black Characters of Pop Culture Day 1: Annalise Keating
You celebrate Black History Month your way, I'll celebrate it mine
Viola Davis created one of the most gloriously off-kilter ladies in television history. You wouldn’t want her on your bad side, although those on her good side don’t always live through the episode either. (Kathy Hutchins/Shutterstock)
There are many ways to cover Black History Month, which, many have noted, is designated to take place each year in the shortest month of the year (WE SEE YOU, HOLIDAY MONTH PICKING PEOPLE). Obviously, Black History is American history and it’s relevant 365 days a year. However, this is what we have officially, and I’m an old pop culture diva who thrives on the entertainment brouhaha and whatnot, so I’m going to highlight a different fictional Black character who puts the “Que?” in chaos. Some of them are villains. Some are heroes. Some come bathed in delicious shades of gray. Today’s pick is perhaps the most delicious and gray. And maybe cray. We love her so.
CHAOTIC CHARACTER 1: ANNALISE KEATING, “HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER”
Over the 6 seasons and 90 episodes that we were blessed with the gift of Viola Davis on our TV screens, a gift we could never deserve, I always thought people should have treated lawyer/professor/destabilizer of worlds Annalise Keating like the people of Cabot Cove should have treated “Murder She Wrote”’s sweet lady novelist Jessica Fletcher when they saw her walk into an event: Run. Because somebody gonna die.
I mean, it’s right there in both titles.
These women show up, you whisper to your date to get the coats and bug the Hell out of there, because somebody ain’t making it past the passed shrimp appetizers. In Annalise’s case, though, it went beyond cocktail parties. Are you in her class? In her law firm? Ever date her? Are you related to anyone who ever dated her? Have you, like, walked past her on the sidewalk? Don’t make any plans. To live.
The thing is that Annalise, born Anna Mae Harkness, is an hectic, unpredictable force in the universe, and so many details about her would seem to make her a human caution sign: An alcoholic control freak with a spotty relationship history and a penchant for using people who are dumber than her. Which is pretty much everyone, including those dumbass children she taught. Sure, she introduced them into a deadly web of her own mysterious making. But they kept on killing people. Plus they’re all dumb about it while blaming her for everything. That ain’t on her, MICHAELA.
Davis made her such a badass because Annalise is so magnetic in her complications, in a complex way that Black women aren’t usually seen on TV. She was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, a vulnerable patient manipulated into an affair with her married therapist (Eww), a survivor of miscarriage, a maligned wife and more. Did she create a lot of the madness around her? Yeah. Did she love Eve or Tegan in the way they most deserved? She did not. Again, I’m reading the first three lines of her relationship history and it’s like “Do y’all not see this?”
Still, people kept coming back like a drunk moth to a red-wine slamming flame. Not for nothing that (SPOILER ALERT) most of the people whose deaths she hadn’t been implicated in come to her funeral. She came in like a wrecking ball. AND YOU LIKED IT.