The Haves and the Have Nots

***The Haves and the Have Nots*** (sometimes referred to as ***Haves and Have Nots*** and abbreviated as ***HAHN***) is an American crime drama and soap opera created, executive produced, written, and directed by Tyler Perry, based on his 2011 play of the same name. It is the first scripted and fictionalized television series to air on the Oprah Winfrey Network and considered the network's rise to fame. It aired for eight seasons from May 28, 2013 to July 20, 2021.

## Synopsis

The series follows three families and their lifestyles as they struggle to coexist among one another in Savannah, Georgia: the rich, powerful, and locally very public Cryer and Harrington families (originally regarded as "The Haves") and the poor and destitute Young family (originally regarded as "The Have Nots"). Cryer family patriarch Jim Cryer is a powerful judge whose double life, including tawdry affairs with high-prices escorts, puts his family and political ambitions at risk. His wife, Katheryn Cryer, is the ultimate matriarch, portraying a young and dutiful wife, but she is willing to do anything to protect her family's status. Their son, Wyatt, is a troubled, angry jock who cares little for his own image and finds himself in and out of rehab, while his sister, Amanda, a struggling law student, tries harder to live up to their parents' expectations but unknowingly has befriended Candace Young, a scurrilous young woman with the power to ruin the entire family. Head of the Young family is Hanna, a single mother who works as the Cryer family's maid and also serves as Kathryn's best friend and confidante. Included is Celine Gonzales, another family maid who initially works for the Cryer family and later for the local hospital.

The series centers on the toxicity, conflicts, corruption, hardships and dysfunctional family relations similarly experienced between the unprivileged Young family and their well-to-do counterparts, who only ostensibly live the life of Riley. Flawed character traits, both drastically and destructively, abound from both rich and poor, perpetually creating for multidimensional chaos, tension and calamity. Various criminal acts are used to resolve circumstances.

Each of the three families, despite leading polar opposite lives in terms of social class, economics, and surroundings, are each similar in that they lead exceedingly toxic, dysfunctional lifestyles with broken family units. Deeply wounded and complex backstories preceding the events of the show reside at the root of the turmoil, as does habitual fraudulence in which mass amounts of wealth are regularly misappropriated back and forth between the main characters. As a result, there are repeated shifts in which characters are regarded as "the haves" and "the have nots", extended throughout the course of the series.

## Characters

### The Youngs

* Tika Sumpter as Candace Young - Hanna's estranged daughter, Benny's older half-sister, and of Jim's multitude of mistresses turned ex-mistress and archenemy who's less than half his age. Candace is nowhere near as subjugated as the rest of Jim's ex-mistresses, and is portrayed as a roguish, crafty jezebel; mischievous, flippant, saucy, presumptuous, and extremely nervy. Much to Jim's shock, it is Candace who subjugates others, central throughout much of the program, through her many forms of manipulation: extortion, low blows, and dirt she's able to obtain on individuals.
* Crystal Fox as Hanna Young - Benny and Candace's mother and the Cryer's maid. She raised her children as a single mother. Hanna is very deep, soulful, religious, nurturing and compassionate, though she has taken to obscenities and an especially harsh, overreactive, rancorous, and even violent nature towards those who have done wrong by her. Haggard and long-suffering, she often displays the effects of overwhelming stress, overwork, and worry in her behavior. Still, she displays a strong work ethic that makes her trustworthy and reliable and can be confided in anything, which has earned her the respect of her superiors, especially Kathryn.
* Tyler Leplay as Benjamin "Benny" Young - Hanna's son and Candace's half-brother, who operates a tow truck company. He has a tough demeanor and is overprotective. He is personable, dutiful, and hard-working, and, in comparison to his sister, less likely to cause trouble for his mother, though he has on occasion landed himself into troubling circumstances. He has unconditional love for his mother and sister and is often caught in the middle of their relationship, or lack thereof.
* Jordan Preston Carter as Quincy Delon "Q" Young Jr. - Candace and Quincy's mild-mannered son, Hanna's grandson and Benny's nephew.

### The Harringtons

* Peter Parros as David Harrington - The level-headed, grim, and gravelly-voiced husband of Veronica and father of Jeffrey, who often acts as a voice of reason. He is a judge and also Jim's business partner and loyal friend, sometimes going along with Jim's misdeeds at the ire of others and at his own peril.
* Angela Robinson as Veronica Harrington - The wife turned ex-wife of David and mother of Jeffrey. Although appearing to be refined, composed, and classy, she is actually an extremely no holds barred, vicious, cold, calculating, manipulative, and catty snob who customarily delivers stinging barbs to receiving parties and orchestrating barbarically retaliatory measures against those she thinks have wronged her. She has come to be described as the "Ice Queen" of the series.
* Gavin Houston as Jeffrey Harrington - David and Veronica's beleaguered, conflicted, ill-at-ease, dismissive and aloof son. He started out as Wyatt Cryer's substance abuse counselor in the Harrington family's drug rehabilitation program. Jeffrey spent much of his time closeted during the first season, was harassed by a conflicted, closeted and predatory officer named Justin and persecuted by his anti-gay mother Veronica.

### The Cryers

* Jon Schneider as James "Jim" Cryer - The take charge, self-assured, demeaning, crooked, unethical and thoughtlessly destructive patriarch of the Cryer family, and a Savannah court judge who has his eyes set on becoming Governor of Georgia.
* Reneé Lawless as Katheryn Cryer (nee Hargrave) - Jim's deeply warm, sensitive, caring but passive-aggressive wife. Kathryn often displays her anger, hatred, bitterness, and stress in a supervised but still very detectable fashion.
* Aaron O'Connell as Wyatt Cryer - The deeply troubled, one-track-mind, drug-addicted, unfeeling and brazen son of Jim and Katheryn. The first episode reveals that he is so incorrigible in his vices that he's on his third stint in rehab for drug abuse and alcoholism. Despite his parents' repeated efforts to get him help and rescue him from disaster, he shows no love for either of them nor anyone else but his addictions.
* Jaclyn Betham as Amanda Cryer (Season 1) - Jim and Kathryn's naive college-aged daughter who has friends with her father's mistress, Candace. Amanda has had issues with self-harm and suicide in the past, which is hinted to be from a traumatic sex abuse incident involving Wyatt and a priest.

### The Malones

* Brett Davis as Mitchell "Mitch" Malone - A friend of Benny recruited to work at his tow truck business. Mitch is later revealed to be related to the Malone crime family but chooses to live a straight and narrow life, though seen as the family outcast as a result. After suspecting War as bad news and witnessing him sexually assault Candace at the tow yard, he protects her and Benny by throwing War in jail by placing drugs in his car.
* Oscar Torre as Vincent "Vinny" Malone (Seasons 5-8) - Mitch's dour, tough-talking, negrophobic, murderous and authoritative uncle.
* Michael Galante as Sandy Malone (Seasons 5-8) - Mitch's petulant, negrophobic brother, who has difficulty living up to his uncle's cruel expectations of him. He is also a domestically abusive stalker of his biracial ex-girlfriend and later love interest of Benny.
* Sandy Martin (Season 1) and Rachel Winfree (Seasons 4, 7) as Rosa "Mama Rose" Malone - Mitch's dark-natured, hard-boiled mob boss grandmother who is big on favors and had a pact with Jim and David early in the show. This pact saw her directing her large gang family and thug friends to carry out dirty deeds for them in exchange for Jim and David letting some of their members off as far as criminal charges and sentences.

## Episodes

Main article: *List of The Haves and the Have Nots episodes*

## Reception

### Ratings

The two-hour series premiere of *The Haves and the Have Nots*, airing both its first and second episodes back-to-back, set a record for OWN when it overtook *Life with La Toya* (1.18 million) in scoring the highest ratings for a series premiere on the network, with the first episode attracting 1.77 million viewers and growing up to 1.8 million for the second, and held up the record for three years, until was surpassed by *Greenleaf* in 2016. The season one finale drew in 2.6 million viewers. The episode "Why Didn't You Tell Me?", aired on March 11, 2014, as the mid-season 2 finale, brought in 3.6 million viewers, surpassing the 3.5 million that tuned in for Oprah Winfrey's interview with Bobbi Kristina, setting a record for all OWN programming as the highest-rated program on the network at the time. Additionally, it also came in at the #1 spot among all of cable television and #4 on television for its airing night. In May 2015, the third season was reported to be primetime's #1 original cable series among African American women and total viewers, regularly attracting more than three million viewers. In 2014 and 2017, its two highest rated years, the show was reported to have averaged more than 3.1 million viewers each year. In June 2021, it was reported as the most watched scripted cable series among African-American women and households.

### Critical

*The Haves and the Have Nots* was recognized as being OWN's most popular series to date during its first season by *Variety*, and was critically acclaimed as one of OWN's biggest successes. Amid struggles to keep the network afloat before debuting the show, Oprah Winfrey was quoted in a 2012 interview as saying, "Had I known it was this difficult, I would have done something else."

Being the network's first scripted television series has led to *The Haves and the Have Nots* being listed as OWN's rise to fame, and its success has been credited with opening the door to a myriad of other popular scripted dramas, including but not limited to *Greenleaf* and *Queen Sugar*, to appear on the network.