FYI

[Content Note: Misogynoir; lookism.]

In case you didn't already know, Viola Davis is awesome.

[Davis' new show, How to Get Away with Murder,] premiered September 25 to 14 million viewers, following an essay by New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley in which she called [creator Shonda Rhimes] an "angry black woman" whose grand achievement is flooding network television with characters wrought in her own image. (Though Stanley, who claimed that her argument was misunderstood, does seem to like the show.) The Times' public editor declared the piece "astonishingly tone deaf and out of touch," while Rhimes and cast members from her other hit shows, Grey's Anatomy and Scandal, blasted it on Twitter.

Davis says she finds the term "angry" as a descriptor for African-­American women to be "very offensive, as is 'sassy,' as is 'soulful.' We've used them enough. It's time to bury them in the racial-history graveyard," she says, chuckling. "My feeling about the article is it's a reflection of how we view women of color, what adjectives we use to describe them—as scary, as angry, as unattractive. I think that people are tired of it."

As for the part of the article that praised Rhimes for casting Davis, despite her being "older, darker-skinned and less ­classically beautiful" than Scandal star Kerry Washington, Davis says, "there is no one who would compare Glenn Close to Julianna Margulies, Zooey Deschanel to Lena Dunham. They just wouldn't. They do that with me and Kerry because we're both African-Americans and we're both in Shonda Rhimes shows. But they wouldn't compare me to [Grey's ­Anatomy's] Ellen Pompeo," she says, laughing again. "Because Ellen Pompeo is white."

Brilliant and brave the end.

I watched the premiere episode of How to Get Away with Murder, although I haven't had a chance to watch last night's episode yet, and I quite liked it. Viola Davis is terrific in it, and I already can't wait to see what happens next!

Also: [minor spoilers] A scene of oral sex being performed on a woman and gay men having sex in the first episode of a primetime network television series? Rock the fuck on.