You know Andrea Davenport's intense hatred of her name being mispronounced? It's a particular, notable quirk of her character. This small error brings out the absolute worst in her; in her introductory episode she's much crueller and more of an active bully, enforcing the total social exclusion of Molly, instead of simply self-absorbed and insensitive but ultimately good at heart as she has been since, all because Molly accidentally says her name wrong more than once in their first meeting.

Why? The correct pronunciation of Andrea in her case is the less common one (and therefore seems posher), and less intuitive based on the spelling. It's quite reasonable that someone would say the other pronunciation more than once out of instinct. She can surely intellectually understand that. So why is this such a big issue for her?

Well, a lot of her bad behaviour can be explained by her parents' behaviour. Her father can be selfish and greedy in regards to his business, and while Andrea is spoiled materially and financially, both her parents routinely ignore and emotionally neglect her to pay more attention to their work, social media and image. When she focuses excessively on herself and her reputation, she's directly imitating her two first and most influential role models. Maybe if she makes the family and their brand look good enough, she'll be good enough for them to give her their time. Maybe if she's exactly like them, they'll be more interested in her. They're always interested in themselves, after all.

What if her parents are so neglectful that they can, at least on occasion, accidentally get their own daughter's name wrong?

Imagine an episode about Andrea where Molly is either observing her without her knowledge like in "The Don't-Gooder", or hanging out with her in a normal way, since she is her "best friend" now in Andrea's own words. Andrea is talking to her parents, who are looking at their phones and only half-listening.

Then her mother or father distractedly mispronounces her name, or even calls her a different name like Annie or something. Molly gasps, bracing for how badly Andrea will react. Her parent doing it is far more insulting than a stranger doing it!

But Andrea barely reacts at all. She's stung, dejected, but not angry. Resigned. She doesn't even bring it up. Like this is frequent enough that she doesn't think that her literal parents remembering how to say the name they chose for her or even the name itself would be a guarantee.

She doesn't have much power over her parents. Not the kind that will sway them to meet her basic emotional needs. But as she learned early on in life, thanks to her wealth, beauty and charisma she can exert power over her peers, and later the general public and her fanbase. So she is going to make damn well sure that everyone else refers to her correctly. And if they don't, she'll subject them to the most painful, degrading treatment she can conceive of: being ignored.

Her name thing set the whole plot of the second episode into motion. Can you imagine, after how firmly it was established, the impact on Molly and the audience of Maxwell Davenport saying, "That's nice, Angela" and Andrea's only response being reserved, familiar hurt?

@fallen-gravity