Writing project: UNDERGROUND
So. I discovered isurrendered in...February. Never actually got prompted, just really enjoyed reading the things people posted.
Then my brain decided to throw an entire tv show idea at me. So. I wrote a show. Only took me 9 months (oh god, please no jokes about this show being my "baby," really), but I finally managed to finish the blasted thing!
(We'll not talk about the second one, that I have tons of casting for but no real plot to speak of, that came to me in September or so.)
Many, many thanks go to
language_escapes, for listening to me complain about how the characters wouldn't talk to me, critiquing ideas and suggesting some of her own, and generally being awesome in the ways of creativity.
So, without further ado.
The Meme:
1. Comment to this post with "I surrender!" and I'll assign you the basis of some TV show idea. (Science fiction show, medical drama, criminal procedure, etc...)
2. Create a cast of characters, including the actors who'd play them
3. Add in any actor photos, character bios and show synopsis that you want.
4. Post to your own journal (and/or to isurrendered)
The Show:
Title: Underground
Type: hour-long ensemble drama/comedy/spy show. Short first season 1 of 13 episodes; 22 episodes in season 2. The jury is still out as to whether it will be renewed for a third season.
Synopsis: When ex-MI-5-operative-turned-English-professor David Murphy (Stephen Fry) finds out that Christine de Winter (Christina Hendricks), a brilliant, young, successful CEO, has dreams of world domination, what’s he to do? He can’t stop her on his own, so with the help of rich fellow Brit Andrew Langston (Hugh Laurie), he assembles a team of top students from his university to try to stop her. The students, all from different walks of life as well as different disciplines, must put aside their differences to prevent what looks like it could be a hostile takeover.
Opening theme: Instrumental remix-type thing of Within Temptation "Dark Wings"
Closing theme: Instrumental track from Counting Crows "A Murder of One"
THE GOOD GUYS
Dr. David Murphy, English professor emeritus (played by Stephen Fry)
"Your presence is requested in room 113 of Langston Hall tonight at 7PM. It will be to your advantage to attend this meeting; however, I must request you tell no one that this invitation has been extended to you."
David Murphy earned his Ph.D. in English literature, but then took a sharp left turn in his career, being recruited by MI-5 immediately after earning his doctorate. He worked as an operative for the agency for ten years, after which he quit and moved to the States to become a professor under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Speculation abounds as to what caused him to leave MI-5 so abruptly; none of the members of the team know, and he isn’t telling. Now, 12 years later, he’s been retired for two years, still teaching the occasional British literature course, but primarily spending his time working with the team of students he’s assembled, mentoring them to become an elite team of not-quite-spies.
SPOILER: In a flashback in season 2, it is revealed that David left MI-5 after an assignment went horribly awry, resulting in the deaths of one of the perps, two civilians, and his partner. So David went through a really rough patch, couldn’t handle working at MI-5 anymore, and left both the job and the country, choosing to work at the university as a professor instead.
Andrew Langston, the rich benefactor (played by Hugh Laurie)
"Why is it that I’ve been living in this country for nearly 30 years and I STILL can’t find staff who can make a decent cup of tea?
Andrew Langston is a brilliant businessman. He’s also one of the richest men on the East Coast, though he doesn’t really know how to act like a rich guy. He has a garage full of classic cars, sure, but he restored and/or rebuilt them all completely on his own; to top it all off, he also buys off-brand peanut butter, much to the chagrin of his staff. He funded the building of Langston Hall on campus, so the university really can’t refuse when he requests renovations to be done on the building. These renovations just happen to include a Secret Underground Lab of Awesome, equipped with everything the team could possibly need. In the first season, Andrew is a recurring guest star, appearing in four episodes during the season.
SPOILER: At the end of the season 1 finale, we find out that Andrew has been kidnapped. We also find out that David has a key to Andrew’s house, to the extreme delight of Stephen/Hugh shippers everywhere. The first two episodes of season 2 focus on the team’s attempts to rescue him.
Alisa McCormack, chemistry major (played by Ellen Page)
"Hey, just because I can’t move my legs doesn’t mean I can’t kick your ass. En garde!"
Alisa is a sophomore, majoring in chemistry and minoring in biology. The easiest way to describe Alisa in one word? Bold. She has great fashion sense, including a dramatic ability to totally rock a lab coat, as well as a tendency to treat her wheelchair as just another accessory. Oh, and she decorates her chair for the holidays (no, really. Strings of lights at Christmas time). Her personality is as bold as her style, she doesn’t let things get her down, and she has absolutely no qualms about letting you know if you’re driving her up the wall. Her boldness extends to her choice of sport, too: using a wheelchair doesn’t prevent her in the slightest from being very good at fencing. She made friends with almost everybody on the team fairly quickly, especially bonding with Charity.
SPOILER: We find out midway through season 1 that Alisa uses a wheelchair because a car accident while she was in high school (hit by a drunk driver while learning to drive) paralyzed her from the waist down. During season 2, it is further revealed that at the time of the accident, she’d been the resident track star at her high school, with the potential to end up with a track scholarship for college. The accident was a deeply emotionally traumatizing event for her, sending her into a deep depression for a while. With support from friends and family, she overcame her depression, and it was at this point that she became very interested in the sciences, having more time to focus on her studies because she wasn’t at track practice all the time.
Charity Hynes, math major (played by Dana Davis)
"The next person to call me a cutie pi gets bitch-slapped."
Charity grew up in Chicago, and moved out east to go to college, where she’s majoring in math and minoring in physics. Though she’s a math major, she doesn’t really consider herself to be a math nerd - it’s just something she’s good at. And to be honest, she doesn’t really enjoy spending a lot of time with her fellow math majors. She’s also a semi-closeted lesbian: she’s been dating Dee Purcell (an art major) for almost a year, which her family knows about and fully supports, but she’s not really out at school.
SPOILER: Near the end of season 1, Charity and Dee have a massive blowout of an argument, mainly revolving around the fact that Charity is never around anymore (because, of course, she’s working with the team, but she can’t tell Dee that). This argument results in Charity and Dee breaking up; it takes Charity a while to come back to full form again after that, as tends to occur when one’s heart has been broken.
Marisol “Mari” Vargas, psychology major (played by Karen Olivo)
"You scared yet? No? You should be. I know what’s in your head."
Mari is a psychology major, women’s studies minor who grew up in LA. She is one of the least even-tempered members of the team. She and Navalan were at each other’s throats practically the moment the team first met, and continue to have arguments throughout season 1; when Navalan starts cursing in Spanish, Mari can give it right back to him. Mari and Evvy become pretty good friends, and sometimes Evvy steps in to break things up if a spat between Mari and Navalan gets too heated. As a psych major, she’s considering a career as an FBI profiler after graduation. However, she hasn’t quite mastered the art of keeping her psychological observations to herself; she’s usually right, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the object of her observations wants to hear what she has to say.
SPOILER: In the season 2 premiere episode, while the team is busy trying to rescue Andrew, everyone is super stressed, and Mari kind of loses it. Worse than usual. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except for the part where they were currently in the middle of a rescue attempt. Besides drawing a lot of unneeded attention to herself, Mari manages to insult everyone in the room. Li takes it really hard and runs off, ending up getting not-too-seriously injured and almost captured in the process. Mari feels guilty about it for ages, but also realizes it’s a wake-up call, that “physician, heal thyself” applies to psychologists too.
Navalan Malik, linguistics major (played by Dev Patel)
"Yeah, I can do that. What language do you want it in?"
Navalan’s first name means “orator,” so it was really no surprise when he started developing a talent for languages at a young age. An American-born child of Indian parents, he grew up speaking Hindi and English equally, and picked up Spanish in elementary school, as well as French in high school and Arabic upon starting college. Officially, Navalan is majoring in linguistics and communications, with minors in Arabic and Spanish. Navalan is one of the more hot-tempered members of the team, and when he gets really riled up, he can curse you out in any one of the five languages he’s fluent in (and usually, he’ll make it two or three languages just for effect, instead of sticking to just one). He eventually hopes to work as a translator, but for the time being, he works as the team’s code-breaker (and sometime code-maker too).
SPOILER: After spending the entirety of the first season being told to get a room (by fans as well as characters on the show) every time he and Mari have one of their famous fights, the two of them get together for a few episodes. Everybody involved realizes it’s a Very Bad Idea very quickly, however, so they break it off pretty soon. Their fights are less scary after their breakup, to everyone’s relief.
Evangeline “Evvy” Spencer, the techie (played by Kate Micucci)
"Look, I may not be Penelope Garcia, but I CAN get you past that firewall in under 30 seconds."
Evvy is a little older than your typical college student, due to having dropped out of high school at age 16. She worked for a few years, first as a barista, then at a computer store. Working at the computer store got her interested in the technological end of things, so at age 20 she got her GED and went back to school, and is now majoring in computer science. She’s taken just about every computer science course the university has to offer, as well as having taken a couple guest courses at other universities. Her closest friends in the team are Mari and Navalan, so she’s most often the one who has to break up their frequent fights.
SPOILER: Midway through season 1, Evvy starts flirting with her biology lab instructor, Mike Taggart. Their relationship gets pretty serious during season 2 (after she’s not his student anymore), and everything seems to be going great, except that he gets curious about where she disappears off to all the time. He follows her one day, with the unfortunate result that he discovers the team, so they have to take him into their confidence. He’s useful, but Evvy is pissed that he followed her. They have a gigantic fight, and it’s a really long time before he shows back up again.
Oliver Davies, the jock (played by Jim Sturgess)
"You’ll never be as smooth as me. Don’t bother trying."
Oliver is nominally a communications major, but he’s at university on an athletic scholarship. He’s good at pretty much any sport he tries, having taken and excelled at pretty much ever PE course offered by the university. Even fencing. On top of being a jock, Oliver is also a smooth talker: he has a glib way with words that can allow him to be fairly disarming, but among the team, this habit is just considered irritating. When he’s first introduced, Oliver is really your typical jock asshole. During season 1, Oliver develops a relationship with Li, which nobody else really understands, but they’re willing to put up with him for her sake.
SPOILER: During season 2, in a conversation with Alisa, it is revealed that Oliver’s asshole tendencies are really just a defense mechanism. Turns out that when he was a little kid, his parents went through an extremely nasty divorce, and he developed this glib jock personality as a defense mechanism. When Alisa finds this out, she’s a bit friendlier towards Oliver, though they both know that they’ll never be best friends or anything.
Makoto Kobayashi, the nurse (played by Masi Oka)
"If I can’t keep you from getting hurt in the first place, at least I can put you back together again."
Makoto is one of the quieter members of the team. A native of Japan, he’s here to study nursing, and is almost finished with his degree. He’s currently waiting to do his clinical trials, and in the meantime he’s been working as an EMT. He lives with his boyfriend of 3 years, Cam Jacobs. Makoto often feels a little left out when the team works together, because his main role in the team is to patch everyone up if they get hurt. At the same time, though, he feels very protective of the team.
SPOILER: There really aren’t any spoilers for Makoto. Fans suspect the writers got lazy and forgot to write any backstory for him, and hope this will be resolved during season 3. If there is a season 3.
Li Teng, the theatre major (played by Julia Ling)
"In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than…Oh, hell. Line!"
Li is third-generation Chinese-American and was raised in New York City. She is generally considered to be the sweetest person ever. She’s also the quietest member of the team in everyday life, but if you give her lines to learn or put her on a stage, she totally comes to life in such a compelling way that it’s hard to pay attention to anything around her when she’s performing.
SPOILER: Turns out, Li is a better actress than anybody ever thought. At the end of the penultimate episode of season 2, it is revealed that Li has been working for Christine for almost a year. She’d been approached with a lucrative offer, and the pay was just too good. Nobody even suspected a thing, unless David did and was controlling what information made its way through Li to Christine without anybody being the wiser. You don’t out-spy MI-5.
THE BAD GUYS
Christine de Winter, CEO (played by Christina Hendricks)
"I don’t care how you do it, but do it NOW. Unless you’d rather go home tonight to find your family has disappeared, your bank account is empty, and someone else has moved into your house."
Christine is a high-powered CEO of a major company. After leaving college, she climbed the corporate ladder very quickly, becoming the company’s youngest ever CEO. And the kind of mind it takes to reach such heights in a relatively short period of time, combined with the money at her disposal, makes for a nasty combination when thoughts of world domination start to creep in.
SPOILER: At first, David won’t tell the team how he found out about Christine in the first place. After a few episodes of prodding, it comes out that Christine is actually one of David’s former students, and one of his best and brightest at that. Turns out he kept track of what she was doing with her life after she graduated, and when she got so powerful so quickly, David started getting suspicious and investigating her a little more closely.
Drew Tilton, the henchman (played by Alan Tudyk)
"I can do that. You won’t like how it turns out, but I can do it."
Drew isn’t your average henchman. Sure, he does Christine’s dirty work for her…mostly. He’s part of her company as a front, and is a shrewd businessman in his own right. He’s also smart enough to know that if Christine’s plans do work out the way she intends them to, there’s no guarantee that he’ll still be part of the organization afterwards. This leads to his frequent second-guessing of her plans; sometimes, his way is better than what she wanted him to do. Sometimes, it isn’t.
SPOILER: At the end of season two, the team finally catches Christine. Drew, however, manages to outsmart everyone and escape. Drew’s escape is the cliffhanger ending to season two, and there haven’t been any reports yet as to whether there’s going to be a third season or not.
RECURRING CHARACTERS
Mike Taggart, biology professor (played by TJ Thyne)
Mike teaches lower-level biology labs, the ones that non-science majors take to get their lab science gen ed requirement out of the way. He’s reputed to be as easy on the grades as he is on the eyes, so his classes are quite popular.
Deanna “Dee” Purcell, Charity’s girlfriend (played by Blake Lively)
Cameron “Cam” Jacobs, Makoto’s boyfriend (played by Michael Cera)
Dr. Hannah Kirk, English professor (played by Jane Lynch)
Dr. Penny Bowman, history professor (played by Lisa Bonet)
Then my brain decided to throw an entire tv show idea at me. So. I wrote a show. Only took me 9 months (oh god, please no jokes about this show being my "baby," really), but I finally managed to finish the blasted thing!
(We'll not talk about the second one, that I have tons of casting for but no real plot to speak of, that came to me in September or so.)
Many, many thanks go to
language_escapes, for listening to me complain about how the characters wouldn't talk to me, critiquing ideas and suggesting some of her own, and generally being awesome in the ways of creativity.
So, without further ado.
The Meme:
1. Comment to this post with "I surrender!" and I'll assign you the basis of some TV show idea. (Science fiction show, medical drama, criminal procedure, etc...)
2. Create a cast of characters, including the actors who'd play them
3. Add in any actor photos, character bios and show synopsis that you want.
4. Post to your own journal (and/or to isurrendered)
The Show:
Title: Underground
Type: hour-long ensemble drama/comedy/spy show. Short first season 1 of 13 episodes; 22 episodes in season 2. The jury is still out as to whether it will be renewed for a third season.
Synopsis: When ex-MI-5-operative-turned-English-professor David Murphy (Stephen Fry) finds out that Christine de Winter (Christina Hendricks), a brilliant, young, successful CEO, has dreams of world domination, what’s he to do? He can’t stop her on his own, so with the help of rich fellow Brit Andrew Langston (Hugh Laurie), he assembles a team of top students from his university to try to stop her. The students, all from different walks of life as well as different disciplines, must put aside their differences to prevent what looks like it could be a hostile takeover.
Opening theme: Instrumental remix-type thing of Within Temptation "Dark Wings"
Closing theme: Instrumental track from Counting Crows "A Murder of One"
THE GOOD GUYS
Dr. David Murphy, English professor emeritus (played by Stephen Fry)
"Your presence is requested in room 113 of Langston Hall tonight at 7PM. It will be to your advantage to attend this meeting; however, I must request you tell no one that this invitation has been extended to you."
David Murphy earned his Ph.D. in English literature, but then took a sharp left turn in his career, being recruited by MI-5 immediately after earning his doctorate. He worked as an operative for the agency for ten years, after which he quit and moved to the States to become a professor under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Speculation abounds as to what caused him to leave MI-5 so abruptly; none of the members of the team know, and he isn’t telling. Now, 12 years later, he’s been retired for two years, still teaching the occasional British literature course, but primarily spending his time working with the team of students he’s assembled, mentoring them to become an elite team of not-quite-spies.
SPOILER: In a flashback in season 2, it is revealed that David left MI-5 after an assignment went horribly awry, resulting in the deaths of one of the perps, two civilians, and his partner. So David went through a really rough patch, couldn’t handle working at MI-5 anymore, and left both the job and the country, choosing to work at the university as a professor instead.
Andrew Langston, the rich benefactor (played by Hugh Laurie)
"Why is it that I’ve been living in this country for nearly 30 years and I STILL can’t find staff who can make a decent cup of tea?
Andrew Langston is a brilliant businessman. He’s also one of the richest men on the East Coast, though he doesn’t really know how to act like a rich guy. He has a garage full of classic cars, sure, but he restored and/or rebuilt them all completely on his own; to top it all off, he also buys off-brand peanut butter, much to the chagrin of his staff. He funded the building of Langston Hall on campus, so the university really can’t refuse when he requests renovations to be done on the building. These renovations just happen to include a Secret Underground Lab of Awesome, equipped with everything the team could possibly need. In the first season, Andrew is a recurring guest star, appearing in four episodes during the season.
SPOILER: At the end of the season 1 finale, we find out that Andrew has been kidnapped. We also find out that David has a key to Andrew’s house, to the extreme delight of Stephen/Hugh shippers everywhere. The first two episodes of season 2 focus on the team’s attempts to rescue him.
Alisa McCormack, chemistry major (played by Ellen Page)
"Hey, just because I can’t move my legs doesn’t mean I can’t kick your ass. En garde!"
Alisa is a sophomore, majoring in chemistry and minoring in biology. The easiest way to describe Alisa in one word? Bold. She has great fashion sense, including a dramatic ability to totally rock a lab coat, as well as a tendency to treat her wheelchair as just another accessory. Oh, and she decorates her chair for the holidays (no, really. Strings of lights at Christmas time). Her personality is as bold as her style, she doesn’t let things get her down, and she has absolutely no qualms about letting you know if you’re driving her up the wall. Her boldness extends to her choice of sport, too: using a wheelchair doesn’t prevent her in the slightest from being very good at fencing. She made friends with almost everybody on the team fairly quickly, especially bonding with Charity.
SPOILER: We find out midway through season 1 that Alisa uses a wheelchair because a car accident while she was in high school (hit by a drunk driver while learning to drive) paralyzed her from the waist down. During season 2, it is further revealed that at the time of the accident, she’d been the resident track star at her high school, with the potential to end up with a track scholarship for college. The accident was a deeply emotionally traumatizing event for her, sending her into a deep depression for a while. With support from friends and family, she overcame her depression, and it was at this point that she became very interested in the sciences, having more time to focus on her studies because she wasn’t at track practice all the time.
Charity Hynes, math major (played by Dana Davis)
"The next person to call me a cutie pi gets bitch-slapped."
Charity grew up in Chicago, and moved out east to go to college, where she’s majoring in math and minoring in physics. Though she’s a math major, she doesn’t really consider herself to be a math nerd - it’s just something she’s good at. And to be honest, she doesn’t really enjoy spending a lot of time with her fellow math majors. She’s also a semi-closeted lesbian: she’s been dating Dee Purcell (an art major) for almost a year, which her family knows about and fully supports, but she’s not really out at school.
SPOILER: Near the end of season 1, Charity and Dee have a massive blowout of an argument, mainly revolving around the fact that Charity is never around anymore (because, of course, she’s working with the team, but she can’t tell Dee that). This argument results in Charity and Dee breaking up; it takes Charity a while to come back to full form again after that, as tends to occur when one’s heart has been broken.
Marisol “Mari” Vargas, psychology major (played by Karen Olivo)
"You scared yet? No? You should be. I know what’s in your head."
Mari is a psychology major, women’s studies minor who grew up in LA. She is one of the least even-tempered members of the team. She and Navalan were at each other’s throats practically the moment the team first met, and continue to have arguments throughout season 1; when Navalan starts cursing in Spanish, Mari can give it right back to him. Mari and Evvy become pretty good friends, and sometimes Evvy steps in to break things up if a spat between Mari and Navalan gets too heated. As a psych major, she’s considering a career as an FBI profiler after graduation. However, she hasn’t quite mastered the art of keeping her psychological observations to herself; she’s usually right, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the object of her observations wants to hear what she has to say.
SPOILER: In the season 2 premiere episode, while the team is busy trying to rescue Andrew, everyone is super stressed, and Mari kind of loses it. Worse than usual. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except for the part where they were currently in the middle of a rescue attempt. Besides drawing a lot of unneeded attention to herself, Mari manages to insult everyone in the room. Li takes it really hard and runs off, ending up getting not-too-seriously injured and almost captured in the process. Mari feels guilty about it for ages, but also realizes it’s a wake-up call, that “physician, heal thyself” applies to psychologists too.
Navalan Malik, linguistics major (played by Dev Patel)
"Yeah, I can do that. What language do you want it in?"
Navalan’s first name means “orator,” so it was really no surprise when he started developing a talent for languages at a young age. An American-born child of Indian parents, he grew up speaking Hindi and English equally, and picked up Spanish in elementary school, as well as French in high school and Arabic upon starting college. Officially, Navalan is majoring in linguistics and communications, with minors in Arabic and Spanish. Navalan is one of the more hot-tempered members of the team, and when he gets really riled up, he can curse you out in any one of the five languages he’s fluent in (and usually, he’ll make it two or three languages just for effect, instead of sticking to just one). He eventually hopes to work as a translator, but for the time being, he works as the team’s code-breaker (and sometime code-maker too).
SPOILER: After spending the entirety of the first season being told to get a room (by fans as well as characters on the show) every time he and Mari have one of their famous fights, the two of them get together for a few episodes. Everybody involved realizes it’s a Very Bad Idea very quickly, however, so they break it off pretty soon. Their fights are less scary after their breakup, to everyone’s relief.
Evangeline “Evvy” Spencer, the techie (played by Kate Micucci)
"Look, I may not be Penelope Garcia, but I CAN get you past that firewall in under 30 seconds."
Evvy is a little older than your typical college student, due to having dropped out of high school at age 16. She worked for a few years, first as a barista, then at a computer store. Working at the computer store got her interested in the technological end of things, so at age 20 she got her GED and went back to school, and is now majoring in computer science. She’s taken just about every computer science course the university has to offer, as well as having taken a couple guest courses at other universities. Her closest friends in the team are Mari and Navalan, so she’s most often the one who has to break up their frequent fights.
SPOILER: Midway through season 1, Evvy starts flirting with her biology lab instructor, Mike Taggart. Their relationship gets pretty serious during season 2 (after she’s not his student anymore), and everything seems to be going great, except that he gets curious about where she disappears off to all the time. He follows her one day, with the unfortunate result that he discovers the team, so they have to take him into their confidence. He’s useful, but Evvy is pissed that he followed her. They have a gigantic fight, and it’s a really long time before he shows back up again.
Oliver Davies, the jock (played by Jim Sturgess)
"You’ll never be as smooth as me. Don’t bother trying."
Oliver is nominally a communications major, but he’s at university on an athletic scholarship. He’s good at pretty much any sport he tries, having taken and excelled at pretty much ever PE course offered by the university. Even fencing. On top of being a jock, Oliver is also a smooth talker: he has a glib way with words that can allow him to be fairly disarming, but among the team, this habit is just considered irritating. When he’s first introduced, Oliver is really your typical jock asshole. During season 1, Oliver develops a relationship with Li, which nobody else really understands, but they’re willing to put up with him for her sake.
SPOILER: During season 2, in a conversation with Alisa, it is revealed that Oliver’s asshole tendencies are really just a defense mechanism. Turns out that when he was a little kid, his parents went through an extremely nasty divorce, and he developed this glib jock personality as a defense mechanism. When Alisa finds this out, she’s a bit friendlier towards Oliver, though they both know that they’ll never be best friends or anything.
Makoto Kobayashi, the nurse (played by Masi Oka)
"If I can’t keep you from getting hurt in the first place, at least I can put you back together again."
Makoto is one of the quieter members of the team. A native of Japan, he’s here to study nursing, and is almost finished with his degree. He’s currently waiting to do his clinical trials, and in the meantime he’s been working as an EMT. He lives with his boyfriend of 3 years, Cam Jacobs. Makoto often feels a little left out when the team works together, because his main role in the team is to patch everyone up if they get hurt. At the same time, though, he feels very protective of the team.
SPOILER: There really aren’t any spoilers for Makoto. Fans suspect the writers got lazy and forgot to write any backstory for him, and hope this will be resolved during season 3. If there is a season 3.
Li Teng, the theatre major (played by Julia Ling)
"In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than…Oh, hell. Line!"
Li is third-generation Chinese-American and was raised in New York City. She is generally considered to be the sweetest person ever. She’s also the quietest member of the team in everyday life, but if you give her lines to learn or put her on a stage, she totally comes to life in such a compelling way that it’s hard to pay attention to anything around her when she’s performing.
SPOILER: Turns out, Li is a better actress than anybody ever thought. At the end of the penultimate episode of season 2, it is revealed that Li has been working for Christine for almost a year. She’d been approached with a lucrative offer, and the pay was just too good. Nobody even suspected a thing, unless David did and was controlling what information made its way through Li to Christine without anybody being the wiser. You don’t out-spy MI-5.
THE BAD GUYS
Christine de Winter, CEO (played by Christina Hendricks)
"I don’t care how you do it, but do it NOW. Unless you’d rather go home tonight to find your family has disappeared, your bank account is empty, and someone else has moved into your house."
Christine is a high-powered CEO of a major company. After leaving college, she climbed the corporate ladder very quickly, becoming the company’s youngest ever CEO. And the kind of mind it takes to reach such heights in a relatively short period of time, combined with the money at her disposal, makes for a nasty combination when thoughts of world domination start to creep in.
SPOILER: At first, David won’t tell the team how he found out about Christine in the first place. After a few episodes of prodding, it comes out that Christine is actually one of David’s former students, and one of his best and brightest at that. Turns out he kept track of what she was doing with her life after she graduated, and when she got so powerful so quickly, David started getting suspicious and investigating her a little more closely.
Drew Tilton, the henchman (played by Alan Tudyk)
"I can do that. You won’t like how it turns out, but I can do it."
Drew isn’t your average henchman. Sure, he does Christine’s dirty work for her…mostly. He’s part of her company as a front, and is a shrewd businessman in his own right. He’s also smart enough to know that if Christine’s plans do work out the way she intends them to, there’s no guarantee that he’ll still be part of the organization afterwards. This leads to his frequent second-guessing of her plans; sometimes, his way is better than what she wanted him to do. Sometimes, it isn’t.
SPOILER: At the end of season two, the team finally catches Christine. Drew, however, manages to outsmart everyone and escape. Drew’s escape is the cliffhanger ending to season two, and there haven’t been any reports yet as to whether there’s going to be a third season or not.
RECURRING CHARACTERS
Mike Taggart, biology professor (played by TJ Thyne)
Mike teaches lower-level biology labs, the ones that non-science majors take to get their lab science gen ed requirement out of the way. He’s reputed to be as easy on the grades as he is on the eyes, so his classes are quite popular.
Deanna “Dee” Purcell, Charity’s girlfriend (played by Blake Lively)
Cameron “Cam” Jacobs, Makoto’s boyfriend (played by Michael Cera)
Dr. Hannah Kirk, English professor (played by Jane Lynch)
Dr. Penny Bowman, history professor (played by Lisa Bonet)