The Big Surprise is the first episode of the OWN series, The Haves and the Have Nots. It was written and directed by Tyler Perry, and it introduces the main characters of the show.
Plot[]
The scene opens at a large mansion located in Savannah, Georgia. This is the home of the Cryer family. James Cryer, a federal Criminal Courts judge; his wife, Katheryn and their two grown children, Wyatt and Amanda. Katheryn has prepared a large birthday party for her husband, but he is out with a prostitute named Candy.
Jim had a disturbing propensity for cheating on his wife, although the two of them project the image of a loving and stable marriage. In private, however, the two snipe and yell at one another mercilessly.
Enter one Hanna Young, an applicant for a job as a housekeeper. At first she doesn't know what to make of the family, but she was hired by Katheryn, because she saw something in her. Despite her stand-offishness, Katheryn has a feeling about Hanna and decides that she likes her.
During the party, Amanda, a college student, studying law, introduces a new friend of hers, a classmate named Candace, Jim is stunned to see that it was Candy, the woman he had just had an affair with. Equally stunned is Hanna, who is Candace's mother, and has no liking for her.
Wyatt, having returned home from his third stint in rehab due to his alcoholism and drugs, is assigned a life coach. His last stint in Rehab was due to the help of his mother's friend, Veronica Harrington, the wife of his father's colleague, David Harrington. Their son, Jeffrey Harrington is the life coach, and he seems to gain a huge crush on his old friend.
Hanna runs into her old friend, Celine Gonzales, who is also a housekeeper in the Cryer household. She and Hanna rekindle their friendship and they begin their jobs.