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Hi! I hope you’re doing well! If you’re caught up on For Life, would you mind sharing your opinions about Safiya and Anya?

Hey! I am, how about you? 

Um, frankly, I’m puzzled, heh. I literally was thinking to myself after yesterday’s ep, I don’t get what they’re doing with these two. I want to gif and post about them, they’re a gorgeous married couple older than 40 with plot-relevant professional lives but after the admittedly bland introductory eps, I don’t know what to make of them.

The last time I talked at any length about them, I was unhappy how Anya was treating Safiya and I don’t think they really addressed that on screen? The issue is that Anya can seem a decent human and wife, concerned about both what Safiya wants to do and Safiya herself, and then sometimes she seems super cold and ruthless and it’s not really done in a way that makes it two of many layers of a complex person but two different characters entirely, whatever the plot needs. 

Some eps back, the one with the townhall, it was pretty soon after the big fight, possibly the next ep, and they seemed to at least address the friction through other characters and imply that even if we didn’t see it, they talked it over and came to terms with whatever, and I was like, okay, I can work with this. But that last scene on the sofa, where Anya was essentially saying, oh, this thing I was holding you back from is now politically expedient for me so go ahead, totally not reading how Safiya didn’t like that, it just seemed like they were back where they started but now with it not even being an issue on screen anymore.

In yesterday’s ep, again, that weird contrast, Anya going against her advisers to talk to Marie, but not really with any consequence, so did it matter? And later on she seemed very nice and supportive of Safiya, but I just…I’m fine with her being pragmatic, ambitious, I understand her point of view where, even if it sucks to not do this small good thing now, if you strengthen your position, you can get more done later, just as much as I understand the opposite point, like, when is it time to actually use your influence, what if you just always wait for a later, what’s the use of good later when people are suffering now, sure, these are interesting, realistic conflicts. But they just make her like cartoonishly bad to Safiya at times and then go back to normal. It’s hard to get any real picture of them. 

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They definitely should have developed Anya more before this episode.

Right? I mean, what they’d shown before this was fine, if a bit self-centered, needing Safiya to smooth things over for her career, but she’s in the middle of a hotly contested and dirty election, it’s understandable she’d be stressed. Presumably they’d both agreed to her running and Safiya knew she might have to make some allowances. 

But damn, what we saw last night wasn’t pretty. And the thing is, she does have a point, both with the school and Safiya, but the way she approached it showed how wrong she was, because she has the same privilege as her son and treats it as cavalierly. And if we’d seen more of her before, maybe we’d understand her better, but as it is, the audience would surely be on Safiya’s side. 

Not only is Safiya one of the moral centers of the show, we spend time with her. Like when it comes to Aaron and Marie, we see Marie’s side of things quite a bit, so we sympathize with both and see her point of view too (although actually, she has been quite lovely and supportive in general). But Anya doesn’t get the benefit of that and her stance yesterday honestly came across like an antagonist’s. I really would not like to see them split up, for a variety of reasons, so I hope she apologizes or realizes she can’t be so imperious and dismissive.