so is Olive bad or good?

There is too much of Olive's background story left unexplored to really determine if she is good or bad. As another poster already said, generally speaking, no one person is quite that black and white. While I was watching the program, a line from Stephen King's Doloris Claiborne kept popping into my head..."sometimes you have to be a high-riding bitch to survive. Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hang onto." After Olive's father suicide, how much did she have to stiffen up her backbone and upper lip to survive such a crushing tragedy? And how much of her heart, her own happiness, did she have to set aside in order to do the proper thing and see her marriage through because that was how things were done in her day. Did she make Henry and Chris suffer for her inability to leave? Absolutely. But heck, Henry brought his "crush" home, and was openly flirting with her (enough to make Olive and Denise's husband uncomfortable). And Chris moped about wearing his sullen attitude on his sleeve but was never willing to speak his mind until the end. Not meaning to imply that these are good reasons for Olive's sharp tongue and unwillingness to show an ounce of warmth toward her family. I simply mean that Olive is like all people....shades of gray but seldom simply good or bad.

I think Olive is a just a person...not all good or bad. But I found myself relating to her in a lot of ways. It's not easy for me to show my emotions. I love my husband and kids more than anything, but I'm not very demonstrative. The way I speak is constantly mistaken for being "rude" when I don't mean it that way at all. I don't think I'm as extreme as Olive though...I would never hit someone's child, for instance.
I'm actually really surprised that so many people see her as a mean or bad person! She cared about people as we see when she checks on her student's suicidal mother and when she talks to the boy himself as an adult. When Henry is in the nursing home she could've just left him there, but she made sure he was taken care of.
She's just very non-nonsense and blunt. I liked her.

She has a good heart. She's also mean to the people closest to her. She's flawed and won't admit she is.

Didnt find anything "bad" about her. she's just blunt.

Nobody is that simple. You shouldn't pigeonhole anyone into any kind of category, let alone label one as being good or bad. Behaviour is a complex spectrum, and black and white thinking is not good for anyone. Treating someone unjustly by unfairly judging them will most likely just lead to more injustice.

"There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance." -Socrates

the ambiguity of her character is what makes it compelling

Is Olive good or bad? She is both, like so many of us.