Felt bad for Earl, disliked Jenna
As with all films, there was a clear protagonist and antagonist in "Waitress", however I found that during my viewing Earl was the person my sympathy went towards.
I realize that Earl did not treat Jenna like a princess, but I think in the same regard she showed no love to a man who, in his eyes, was loving her the only way he knew how to. Earl seems quite childish at points; he is jealous, overprotective, and needy. Underneath all of that is a person who is desperate for the love of the one person he thought would be with him forever. I can completely understand his motivation for being so difficult with her, he was trying to get her to just reciprocate the feelings he had for her which she clearly lost for him long ago.
The poor guy is so desperate for affection that his emotions control how he reacts to certain situations, making him get angry over things he can't make sense of in his head. Why would Jenna be hiding money from him? I think he trusted his wife and to see that she would lie to him like that devestated him.
Jenna, instead of trying to work things out with her husband, seemed to take a "poor me" stance and gave up even trying to fix her life for a period of time. I understand that these characters are quite possibly not intelligent enough to properly handle this situation, but there are many things she could have tried to improve her life. Earl loved her despite being a bit over-protective, and if she could try to work out the thing she found wrong in the relationship she might not be so miserable.
On to why I disliked Jenna, she made herself into a victim. Her life didn't have to be as bad as it was in her eyes. Watching this movie, I kept thinking how overwhelmingly terrible the writer did in making her a character the audience can sympathize with. She cheats a man who loves her in his own way. She doesn't want her baby, almost making it sound like she despises it and yet is planning to keep it. She interrupts another person's marriage. It does take two to tango, but Jenna was the person that initiated it.
I felt sorry for Earl, having his life crash around him at the end of the movie. The woman he was in love with tells him that she hasn't loved him for years, his child appears to have been taken away from him, and he never recieved the love he was searching for in the one person who owed it to him, as his wife. I cannot see how Earl can be so hated for being so very human and yet people are glad for Jenna when she is happily cheating on him.
That was my take on the movie. I didn't enjoy it too much because I prefer to like the main character, and 99/100 times I do, just not this time.