“DID YOU KNOW?” she demands - and we’re taken back to last week deeply uncomfortable moment when Annalise’s client insisted Annalise didn’t know what it was like to be raped. But when Ophelia glosses over the subtext, we finally see the frenzy in Annalise’s eyes. “What have I ever nurtured? What have I ever protected, cared for or loved? What have you?” Annalise asks calmly. Somehow the talk turns to the firm’s rape case - a female nurse is the accused - and Annalise’s mom posits that sexual crimes are a man’s territory: They’re the takers, women are the givers. “ Annalise drinks,” growls her daughter, indicating there’s a woman in the room Ophelia hasn’t even met. “You didn’t used to drink,” notes Ophelia. When Annalise flinches, Ophelia’s response - “Somebody’s always the student, somebody’s always the teacher - that’s how sex works best” - lands painfully, and we know the older woman’s very specific choice of words will come back to haunt her.Īnnalise finally makes it downstairs despite grief over her husband’s passing and the unjust arrest of her boyfriend, then grabs a chicken leg and a bottle of vodka. There’s a quarrel over something as established Annalise’s name - turns out that was a moniker she gave to her reinvented self - while “Anna Mae” is just “something else your mama gave you from the poor box.” But Ophelia’s no simpleton: Later, when she finds Wes sitting at the edge of Annalise’s bed, she acknowledges the inherent sexuality pulsing through this April-October interaction.
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This is a scene in which nothing is spoken overtly - it’s all surface talk and barbs hinting at deeper wounds, but the light has been released, and it’s reaching into the dark corners of this house of secrets. Ophelia bursts onto the scene, pays no mind to her daughter’s guilt-ridden, bed-bound state, and throws open the blinds. In a handful of scenes, the octogenarian actress and Viola Davis transcend the boundaries of television and turn our couches into front-row seats for what feels like live, electrifying theater (simultaneously gripping 12 million folks). Most of all, though, it’s guest star Tyson who connects the V to the I to the P. Ophelia is also important from a plot standpoint, too, as her presence fills in so many of the missing puzzle pieces in Sam and Annalise’s romance, in Annalise’s protective maternal instincts, and in our protagonist’s relentless drive to win at any cost. works on so many levels in “Mama’s Here Now.”Ĭertainly, Ophelia is of utmost importance in Annalise’s life - not only because of the DNA that binds them, but because she’s one of the few folks who knows the ugly origin story of this legal superhero.
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“Your boss came out of my V and her daddy’s P, so show a little respect for her mama,” replies Ophelia, a woman whose casual, sometimes disdainful crudeness doesn’t just hint at her hardscrabble origins, but also raises a middle finger at the upper-class trappings that have put so much distance between herself and her wealthy defense-attorney daughter.īut that acronym - Very.