YMMV / The Haves and the Have Nots

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Hanna is very hard to figure out. Some wonder if she's flawed but otherwise good or if she's hypocritical. There's also her interactions with Candace: Is a reason she's so mean and nasty to Candace because the two were not so different, because she's projecting her regrets, or if she just really hates her?
• Base-Breaking Character: Hanna. To one faction of the fandom, she's a patron saint and the perfect picture of a Christian woman; to the other, she's an abusive, bible-thumping hypocrite.
• Complete Monster: Veronica Harrington is the matriarch of the Harrington family. She regularly antagonizes her son, Jeffrey, for being gay. Just a couple of her methods of abuse are cutting him off financially; and blackmailing him into dating—and later impregnating—Melissa by threatening to have him incriminated for Wyatt's hit-and-run crime. Releasing Quincy from jail, she keeps him under her thumb by threatening to have his family killed, and orders Quincy to lay a brutal beatdown on Jeffrey. Discovering that her husband has been having an affair, she lights his mansion on fire while he is asleep in an attempt to kill him. When Wyatt goes to jail, Veronica arranges for an inmate to brutally rape him. She also had Justin arrested and arranged for his beating and rape in prison just because he slapped her; and had a hitman fatally shoot Maggie for sleeping with David. A true narcissist, Veronica was obsessed with making people live the life she wants them to live and won't hesitate to harm anyone who doesn't, including her own family.
• Moral Event Horizon: Veronica commits many deeds that qualify:
  • Forcing Jeffrey to date women by threatening to have him arrested as an accomplice in Wyatt's vehicular manslaughter.
  • At the end of "In Crisis," when she gives Quincy permission to beat Jeffrey up if he doesn't reveal Candace's location.
  • Arranging for Jeffrey to get Melissa pregnant so he'd be forced to marry her.
  • Attempting to kill David by burning down their mansion while David's still inside asleep.
  • Arranging for Wyatt to be raped in prison.
  • Having a hitman rig David's car to explode, injuring David and incinerating Erica.
• Strawman Has a Point: Why Jim never told Katheryn that Veronica has Wyatt raped in prison? Because he was protecting her from the truth, knowing it can cause her to go ape shit.
• The Woobie:
  • Jeffrey, Jeffrey, Jeffrey, oh sweet lord, Jeffrey. The guy spends most of the first season in the closet because he's afraid of how his controlling, abusive mother, Veronica, will react and because she had him believing that both she and his father, David, would disown him. When he finally does come out to someone, it's to his crush/rehab patient/childhood friend Wyatt, who had actually manipulated him into coming out by pretending to have feelings for him as well, only to reject him in the rudest, most humiliating way possible. He then comes out to his parents, only to be given an extremely hurtful, disparaging speech from Veronica, who then fires him and cuts him off financially. Not long afterwards, he finds out that his car, which was stolen by Wyatt, was the one that hit and killed a young girl, and put Benny in a coma, gets blackmailed by his own mother, who threatens to turn him in as accessory to murder, into dating and having sex with a woman that he isn't the least bit interested in, and, not to mention, getting caught in his parents' tug-o-war over what's best for him. Seriously, somebody give this poor guy a hug!
  • Amanda qualifies as well. She's forced by her parents (mostly her mother) to attend law school, raped by her law professor, attempts suicide, denied her inheritance, descends into madness (and it's stated this isn't the first time she's gone off the deep end), and finally ends up successfully committing suicide. Poor Amanda.

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