What I learned about... the probably evil complex female character trope

Don't get me wrong, I love a strong female character in a film or tv show and I really want there to be more shown. But there's one kind of character trope I keep seeing that basically I think is writers trying too hard. A woman who is intelligent and often a leader in her field: a doctor, a lawyer, a detective, a professor... but as the plot unfolds we find out some things about her that we don't like. Is this an interesting story, her motivation, or is she actually a bad person?


Here's Annalise Keating, played by Viola Davis. In How to Get Away With Murder, she plays a brilliant defence lawyer who despite her "hard" exterior wants to push and protect her students. We see her with several lovers during the series and we could forgive her some indiscretions. Then, maybe because this is how such tv shows are written, we start to find out more about her past, and the present isn't looking good either - but why? She was a good enough character to start with, there was plenty going on with the actual plot, since she appears to get a new murder case every month, so why make her character so flawed?

Carrie-Anne Moss, my motivation for writing this post, has managed to play 2 of these.

In Jessica Jones, she plays Jeri Hogarth, also a defence lawyer, in the process of getting a divorce. Again, we have to assume that defence lawyers possibly aren't always motivated by the best of intentions, and again she's a fantastic character. I just can't find anything to like about her. The divorce plot makes sense, I just think she needed another side to her if we are to believe Pam wanted to marry her in the first place.

Meanwhile in the UK, she appears in Humans as a possibly suspect software guru... avoiding spoilers (because I started writing this post some weeks ago) she again comes across as cold and unapproachable. Could we have a character who is touched by grief and yet isn't portrayed as less human than the robots in this show? I have hopes...