(no subject)
Let's pretend that doing a character sketch is totally the same thing as writing your goddamn synopsis.
I should do one for Mike and Carrie too, since one's the sidekick and the other... well, I just love her, and Beverly, since she's the evil bitch.
Dr. James Matthew Sinclair, PhD
56 and tall, but not overly so - he stands about 5’11” or 6’0”. His height was much more impressive back before people started injecting steroids and his wife, Angela Crane, ran off with a 6’6” underwear model named Ricky. Not that James didn’t have his own hand in their breakup, but getting him to admit to that will always be followed by, “But it was mostly her fault, the whore.” The fact of the matter is that he had the biggest part in causing her infidelity, though he firmly blames her for everything: “If she hadn’t shut me out, I wouldn’t have gone so far into work and I wouldn’t have gotten so concerned about money.”
He also, without fail, ignores that she shut him out after their daughter, Liz, was born and she was forced to be a mother, father, and the editor of Andrea, the magazine for today’s multitasking professionalite woman. By all means, he should have taken this as an indication to cut down on work and be a father, but he took it as a signal to spend more and more time at the office.
James is undeniably a very flawed man. Most obvious of his rap sheet of failings is his greed, which leads to all manner of fun things… fun for him: one hundred twenty dollar forty-five minute psychiatry sessions, one hundred forty-five dollar one-hour sessions, and a 900 number phone psychic line that costs 99 cents a minute. He’s also quite fond of doing things that he knows are illicit or otherwise frowned upon. It’s something he never really bothered outgrowing, but he learned as a child that he could subvert powerful things (in one case, his strict, over-bearing father; in the other, society and/or superstitious rich people) by playing their game and sneaking around behind their backs while they remain unaware that he’s doing anything at all. Creative bullshit spinning, you see. Ways in which he does this: purposefully giving questionable advice, just to make sure that his 900 number and practice have a steady stream of clients; hiding his copies of Barely Legal in between Psychology Today and The New England Journal of Psychiatry; coming up with creative euphemisms for anything and everything; outright lying.
Unfortunately, he’s a charismatic asshole, so people have a tendency to go along with his bullshit. He’s incredibly used to this and, in fact, expects it. When his bullshit is not taken well, that is the only circumstance under which he will become flustered or visibly upset in any detectable fashion. Eventually, though, his tricks do run out, he becomes intolerable, and you have to have unshakable faith to actually believe that, deep down inside, he’s a good person. Basically, you have to be really desperate or Mike. Also, James tends to believe that everyone thinks along the same lines that he does, which leads to beliefs like, “The dominant color is neither black nor white; it’s green,” and, “Trust no one unless you’re paying them and, sometimes, not even then.”
He doesn’t really mean to take advantage of people, even though he invariably winds up doing so; he just has a superiority complex and a half and believes in systems. For example, with Mike, there is a clear-cut hierarchy - he is the boss; Mike is the underling - and, with it, there come certain expectations: Mike cleans up after him, handles the phone psychic line when he can’t and the regular phone nigh on 24/7, follows his commands no matter how strange they are, runs his errands, doesn’t complain about overtime, doesn’t rat him out, and expects only health insurance, dental insurance, and a nice Christmas bonus of $1,250 and Cadbury’s Dairy Milk to make up for this.
Truth be told, James is not a happy person, though he has mastered acting like it. Due in part to how no one bothered to reprimand him for much as a kid, taking consequences for his actions is still a rather new concept to him. Cause and effect happens, just not to him, except in the form of easy to grasp societal things like paying bills and how it has to get done. On some level, he understands why Angela left him, but he remains firm in his denial that he had nothing to do with it at all; he doesn’t want to understand it. He wants it to be completely irrational, so that he’s entirely a victim of circumstance, but such is not the case at all. Deeper than that is a repressed fear that he might be in psychiatry simply because he is crazy, more in the personality disorder sense than in the “completely raving mad,” which stems from an even more unaddressed fear that he doesn’t ever appreciate people, which could indicate sociopathy. But any time he thinks about this doesn’t last long; he promptly reassures himself that he appreciates everyone just fine; it’s them that don’t appreciate him.
So, basically? He’s a jerk. And incredibly self-deluded jerk who is out to make a quick buck and prove that he’s not a good person.
I should do one for Mike and Carrie too, since one's the sidekick and the other... well, I just love her, and Beverly, since she's the evil bitch.
Dr. James Matthew Sinclair, PhD
56 and tall, but not overly so - he stands about 5’11” or 6’0”. His height was much more impressive back before people started injecting steroids and his wife, Angela Crane, ran off with a 6’6” underwear model named Ricky. Not that James didn’t have his own hand in their breakup, but getting him to admit to that will always be followed by, “But it was mostly her fault, the whore.” The fact of the matter is that he had the biggest part in causing her infidelity, though he firmly blames her for everything: “If she hadn’t shut me out, I wouldn’t have gone so far into work and I wouldn’t have gotten so concerned about money.”
He also, without fail, ignores that she shut him out after their daughter, Liz, was born and she was forced to be a mother, father, and the editor of Andrea, the magazine for today’s multitasking professionalite woman. By all means, he should have taken this as an indication to cut down on work and be a father, but he took it as a signal to spend more and more time at the office.
James is undeniably a very flawed man. Most obvious of his rap sheet of failings is his greed, which leads to all manner of fun things… fun for him: one hundred twenty dollar forty-five minute psychiatry sessions, one hundred forty-five dollar one-hour sessions, and a 900 number phone psychic line that costs 99 cents a minute. He’s also quite fond of doing things that he knows are illicit or otherwise frowned upon. It’s something he never really bothered outgrowing, but he learned as a child that he could subvert powerful things (in one case, his strict, over-bearing father; in the other, society and/or superstitious rich people) by playing their game and sneaking around behind their backs while they remain unaware that he’s doing anything at all. Creative bullshit spinning, you see. Ways in which he does this: purposefully giving questionable advice, just to make sure that his 900 number and practice have a steady stream of clients; hiding his copies of Barely Legal in between Psychology Today and The New England Journal of Psychiatry; coming up with creative euphemisms for anything and everything; outright lying.
Unfortunately, he’s a charismatic asshole, so people have a tendency to go along with his bullshit. He’s incredibly used to this and, in fact, expects it. When his bullshit is not taken well, that is the only circumstance under which he will become flustered or visibly upset in any detectable fashion. Eventually, though, his tricks do run out, he becomes intolerable, and you have to have unshakable faith to actually believe that, deep down inside, he’s a good person. Basically, you have to be really desperate or Mike. Also, James tends to believe that everyone thinks along the same lines that he does, which leads to beliefs like, “The dominant color is neither black nor white; it’s green,” and, “Trust no one unless you’re paying them and, sometimes, not even then.”
He doesn’t really mean to take advantage of people, even though he invariably winds up doing so; he just has a superiority complex and a half and believes in systems. For example, with Mike, there is a clear-cut hierarchy - he is the boss; Mike is the underling - and, with it, there come certain expectations: Mike cleans up after him, handles the phone psychic line when he can’t and the regular phone nigh on 24/7, follows his commands no matter how strange they are, runs his errands, doesn’t complain about overtime, doesn’t rat him out, and expects only health insurance, dental insurance, and a nice Christmas bonus of $1,250 and Cadbury’s Dairy Milk to make up for this.
Truth be told, James is not a happy person, though he has mastered acting like it. Due in part to how no one bothered to reprimand him for much as a kid, taking consequences for his actions is still a rather new concept to him. Cause and effect happens, just not to him, except in the form of easy to grasp societal things like paying bills and how it has to get done. On some level, he understands why Angela left him, but he remains firm in his denial that he had nothing to do with it at all; he doesn’t want to understand it. He wants it to be completely irrational, so that he’s entirely a victim of circumstance, but such is not the case at all. Deeper than that is a repressed fear that he might be in psychiatry simply because he is crazy, more in the personality disorder sense than in the “completely raving mad,” which stems from an even more unaddressed fear that he doesn’t ever appreciate people, which could indicate sociopathy. But any time he thinks about this doesn’t last long; he promptly reassures himself that he appreciates everyone just fine; it’s them that don’t appreciate him.
So, basically? He’s a jerk. And incredibly self-deluded jerk who is out to make a quick buck and prove that he’s not a good person.