YMMV / Inventing Anna

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Is Anna a narcissist, The Sociopath, or a normal young woman who got in over her head due to the success of her Bavarian Fire Drill antics? Does she have some sort of undiagnosed personality disorder or is she simply suffering from a mixture of Pride and Greed? Did she care for any of her friends or were they all just props?
  • An in-universe case with Rachel but averted in the show itself. Rachel is treated as a mooch and a Gold Digger by a number of other characters who betrayed Anna. However, her episode illustrates how traumatizing and awful her experience of being cheated by Anna was.
  • Is Kacy mad at Rachel because she "betrayed" Anna or because she made a half-million dollars from her experience while Kacy was paid nothing? Is she kicking herself for only being known as "The Trainer"?
• Crosses the Line Twice: Vivian Kent's not-so-subtle racism that Anna's father must be in the Russian mob, which he points out is something he's dealt with from Germans just because he's an immigrant. It only becomes funny when she imagines Anna in school and she's wearing a tracksuit.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Anna is a strange Real Life case. The show makes it clear that she's not a morally upright person and shamelessly manipulated multiple people to con her way into becoming a member of the Manhattan upper crust, but the fact that her victims are a bunch of rich snobs and the way she manipulated her way into their social circles make her, at the very least, an interesting figure to viewers.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Anna is guilty of some truly awful things but Vivian Kent probably speaks for most of the audience when she says no one should have to hear their parents have given up on them.
  • Val is an asshole, but he really did consider Anna to be one of his best friends, and, despite being the first to describe her as a self-centered bitch, sincerely enjoyed her company. When he first discovered her lies about her name and nationality, his instinct was not to assume she was a scammer, but to think something awful must've happened to her and she needs his help and support. In spite of his condescending, elitist attitude, it's hard not to pity him a little when Anna cuts him out of her life when he gets too close to discovering her secret. Even when talking to Vivian, he still seems shaken up by everything.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Comparing Anna's accent to Tommy Wiseau's.
  • "I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS! I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR YOU!"
• Moral Event Horizon: Anna's actions seem to be largely victimless crimes or the people who can afford it until Episode 6, when she charges her modestly means friend Rachel $62,000 in credit card fraud.
• Tearjerker:
  • Anna being forced to eat fast food she found on the subway because she's homeless now thanks to all of her schemes falling apart.
  • When Rachel tells Anna she's leaving, Anna immediately starts rambling about getting her a helicopter to the airport, and when she realises Rachel isn't listening, softly pleads for her friend not to go.
  • Rachel confronting a hotel employee who informs her that not only did Anna not leave her a check to pay for her $62,000 bill but that she had skipped out on all of her bills.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The series had some controversy due to the fact Sorokin was paid $320,000 for the story that she primarily used to pay off her creditors.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The show has been criticized for making Rachel Williams look like a gold digger and fame-hungry attention hound, including by the real-life Rachel Williams. If audiences are to be believed, it did nothing of the sort and everyone who treated her poorly were wrong.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Vivian Kent is the actual star of Inventing Anna, having most of the story from her perspective. However, many viewers have trouble sympathizing with her due to a number of behaviors and actions on her part. To whit:
    • Vivian sabotages Anna taking a plea deal and is primarily motivated by her belief the story is important but is actually just about a semi-successful con artist.
    • Her lack of interest in preparing for the incoming birth of her baby and dumping it all on her husband in favor of working the story (she skips out on a doctor's visit in the first episode to go to Riker's to see Anna, as an example) makes her seem selfish to many viewers. Her freakout at finding out her baby's sex because of how it reminds her she's got a ticking clock to finish the story being the moment many viewers jumped ship on liking her.
    • Her statement that she's not interested in #MeToo also comes across as grossly insensitive. While there may be some merit to her claim Paul is using the movement for the print version of clickbait, the way the script is written and acted makes it sound like Vivian is just using that claim to take a personal stab at Paul instead of being her genuine thoughts that it's too late for the story to do any good.
  • All of Rachel's critics, especially Kacy, who think she betrayed Anna by helping the police catch her. Given she'd been robbed of the cost of a modest house, almost seventy thousand dollars, this is insane.
  • It can take a while for viewers to come around on Neff. While her loyalty to a friend is admirable, her refusal for the first few episodes to even consider that Anna isn't a person worth trusting, when multiple people that Anna scammed tell her so, and then lashing out at said victims, just makes her look like an asshole.
• The Woobie: Poor, poor Rachel.