I watched the full series and thought it was very well written and captivating. The cast was excellent in portraying the characters, too ...all except for Kerry Washington.
I came here to the reviews after finishing the series and am reading that many other people thought the same.
She has this tendency toward facial over-acting that really distracts from her scenes.
It has nothing to do with Kerry's features... she is objectively a very beautiful woman.
But she has absolutely NO RANGE in her acting. She has like two emotions in the entire series.
Somehow in her career, she must have begun to rely on this tic of emoting through her face in the same twitchy/lip quivering/ 'about to cry wobbly chin face' way every time (not specific to the scene/the character). I've seen her do it throughout her work.
(It must be like when you learn to play the guitar with bad habits, and it's even harder to 'unlearn' those habits and relearn to play without those bad habits, than it would have been to just learn to play correctly from the beginning. Those habits somehow become second nature and you rely on it, even though it's not helping you be a better guitar player. It limits you. Hope that analogy makes sense here!)
In this series - Kerry's acting ability is in stark contrast to Reese, who is actually a phenomenal actor in this, and you can clearly see the arc of her character as the episodes progress. She took the Elena character all the way through. She changed from beginning to end. She behaved differently in different scenes, with different characters. That's acting. With Kerry, it's as though she's 'acting' like she's acting. When the scenes call for her to show emotion, here come the overly done facial expressions and twitches! Same, every time.
When you watch Kerry in interviews, she doesn't do it. It's part of her acting persona.
She leans on it SO much in her work (probably unconsciously). So much so, that she delivers an unnecessary display of useless emotions that don't track with the moment in the scene.
And why does she need to be teary eyed in every other scene? Her expressions many times are just not making sense.
She just has no range in her acting and relies on this 'facial expression' tic with the twitchiness over and over again, no matter what.
Seems like my experience was the same as many here who have already commented....
the series was excellent but Kerry Washington's scenes became absolutely cringe worthy and distracting, which took away from the quality of the show.
