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New York
Peach Salinger
Peach Salinger
Played by: Shay Mitchell
A wealthy and influential socialite and Beck's best friend. Joe quickly comes to pick up on the fact that she has some psychotic traits of her own, such as her extreme possessiveness towards Beck.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Maybe. Joe described Peach as being unnatural, harsh-looking, anorexic, and quite ugly. However, it's possible that she was always intended to be as beautiful as Shay Mitchell, and this was always meant to be a sign of Joe's Unreliable Narrator.
- Adaptational Sexuality: Possibly. In the book, Peach was unambiguously a lesbian and in fact seemed to lie about dating men rather than go on dates. Peach has sex with a guy, even though it's pretty clear she'd rather have Beck. It's possible that she is gay or bi.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: Compared with Joe. Peach does keep nude photos of Beck without her knowledge or consent, but as far as the show went, didn't ever try to kidnap or kill her.
- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: With everyone; she can even be pretty aloof and snobby to Beck, she's very rude to Annika, and she hates Joe.
- Alpha Bitch: Despite being in her mid-twenties, she still acts like one for their group of friend.
- Ambiguously Bi: Peach has noisy sex with a guy, though the real object of her affections is Beck. It's left unclear if Peach likes men too, is lesbian though still pretending otherwise, or just likes Beck specifically.
- Asshole Victim: She — like Joe — wants to own and control Beck completely out of a twisted "love".
- Attention Whore: Blows up Beck's phone, and even fakes a suicide attempt to keep Beck near.
- The Beautiful Elite: She's beautiful, rich and fashionable and looks down on Joe for being a poor bookstore clerk.
- Berserk Button: When Joe tells her that Beck will never return her romantic feelings, she absolutely loses it and tries to shoot him.
- Control Freak: From her fitness regimen to her need to dominate her social circle, Peach needs to be alpha.
- Crying Wolf: Peach is such an Attention Whore that nobody believes her when she actually has a point, like with Joe being a stalker.
- Depraved Bisexual: Peach may be bi, since she's quite obsessed with Beck and stalks her often (having taken a huge amount of photos she keeps archived) while also sleeping with a guy.
- Driven to Suicide: Averted, but invoked. Joe fakes a suicide note to cover up his murder of her. The Salinger family ends up hiring a private investigator, believing Peach wasn't suicidal.
- Even Evil Can Be Loved: Despite her horrible behavior, her friend group is genuinely saddened at her passing, with Beck in particular being noticeably depressed afterwards.
- Freudian Excuse: Curiously, she never provides one for her behavior, but Joe does, guessing that her conservative parents and their controlling parenting probably made her feel ashamed of her sexuality, and her crush on Beck. Said crush, which probably started off as perfectly healthy and normal, gradually grew to an obsession and a need to possess the object of her affection.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Peach's attitude makes her very hard to get along with. Even after her death, Annika acknowledges this, though they all do genuinely mourn her.Joe: You didn't even like Peach.
Annika: None of us liked Peach. But we loved her. - Gayngst: Implied she can't come out due to a rough relationship with her parents and her social status.
- Historical Character's Fictional Relative: Peach Salinger is a relative of J. D. Salinger, which gives her a fabulous lifestyle, a house full of valuable books, and some publishing connections.
- Incompatible Orientation: With Beck, which borders on Single-Target Sexuality because there's no reason why she couldn't hook up with another woman. She just loves Beck.
- It's All About Me: She cares about herself and Beck. Everyone else is expendable. And it still doesn't stop her from hurting Beck in an attempt to make her more dependent on Peach.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Her own ulterior motives aside, she is entirely correct in being suspicious of Joe and his interest in Beck, and also correct to suspect that he was the one stole her book and laptop.
- Malicious Misnaming: Repeatedly calls Joe, whom she looks down on and comes to despise, "Joseph," despite him clarifying that it's just Joe.
- Manipulative Bitch: Peach will backstab, manipulate, and gaslight just about everyone, even her close friend and hopeless crush Beck, just so she can control them and feel superior to them.
- Narcissist: Oh, Hell yeah. She's self-absorbed, controlling, has an extremely high view of herself and low view of everyone else and has an insatiable desire for adoration and feels entitled to love from others despite her own poor treatment of them and she has no empathy even for the people she claims to care about.
- Non-Indicative Name: She's named Peach but she definitely isn't one in terms of personality.
- Old Money: She comes from an old-moneyed family.
- One-Hour Work Week: Unlike her friends who are students or freelance, Peach works a conventional 9-5 job. Like her friends, she seemingly has endless time and money for random cocktail parties and shopping trips.
- Rich Bitch: Most definitely. A snooty, Upper East Side princess.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: She's quite right to be suspicious of Joe but it's mostly because she's worried he'll take Beck away from her and interfere with her own desire to control Beck.
- Sacrificial Lion: Joe's main "obstacle" to win Beck's love, and is killed off by him halfway through the first season.
- Stalker with a Crush: Revealed to be one to Beck, even keeping an archive of photos of her on her computer.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Especially to Annika, whose life she more or less ruins, but also more subtly to Beck, trying to turn her against everybody close to her.
- With Friends Like These...: Frequently makes catty comments towards her friends, and sabotages their attempts at success for petty reasons.
Paco
Paco
Played by: Luca Padovan
Joe's somewhat troubled young neighbor, whom he strikes up an Intergenerational Friendship with.
- Break the Cutie: Ron beats up his mother, and Paco is powerless against this. He gets mad at Joe because Joe couldn't help him and in the end, he tries to get back at Ron and is nearly killed for his troubles.
- Corrupt the Cutie: Joe is one of the few people who genuinely cares for Paco, but Paco lets Joe kill Beck due to his divided loyalties.
- Harmful to Minors: Paco witnesses the murder of Ron, and leaves Beck screaming in the basement of Mooney's bookstore.
- Morality Pet: Paco is the only indication that there is at least a sliver of good in Joe's heart.
- Put on a Bus: Although Joe also later moves to California, we don't see Paco and Claudia again after they leave in the final episode of Season 1.
- Secret-Keeper: At the end of the first season, he protects Joe's secret that Joe captured and killed Beck.
- Troubling Unchild Like Behaviour: Later on in the series, he attempts to steal a gun and kill Ron with it.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He inadvertently reveals to Beck that Joe told him that the best place to hide things is in the tiles above the toilet, due to how the building is laid out. This ignites Beck's curiosity, which leads to her finding the evidence of Joe's murders and obsessive behavior while Joe is in the apartment with her. Ultimately, this leads to her imprisonment and murder.
- You Remind Me of X: It's clear that he reminds Joe of himself, as both have abusive pasts.
Annika Attwater
Annika Attwater
Played by: Kathryn Gallagher
One of Beck's friends, a social media influencer.
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Especially because she's an original character in the TV series.
- Bad Influencer: Downplayed and played with. She's a plus-size influencer and a genuinely sweet person, but she made some drunken comments about how only black men are attracted to her curvy figure, which Peach leaks in a deliberate attempt to make her look like this trope and causes her to get a lot of online hate.
- Big Beautiful Woman: A body-positive social media influencer.
- Big Ol' Eyebrows: Has noticeably thick eyebrows. Her actress being Peter Gallagher's daughter kind of makes this inevitable.
- Childhood Friends: With Peach.
- Fallen Princess: After a questionable video from college is leaked, her reputation is in shambles and her business partners want nothing to do with her.
- Fat Best Friend: Was Peach's "fat friend from prep school", and is dying to shed that reputation.
-
Hollywood Pudgy: Peach and some other characters consider her overweight, despite her just being slightly more curvaceous than the other girls in her friend group. Subverted in that the show portrays this attitude as being absurd. - Never My Fault: While whether she deserved to have her career ruined over something she said while drunk several years ago is up for debate, she never actually acknowledges that what she said was racist or apologizes for it.
- Put on a Bus: Doesn't appear after Season 1.
- Shipper on Deck: A downplayed version to Joe and Beck, generally involving Joe in Beck's struggles with her group of friends, another way in which she is a foil to Peach.
- Those Two Girls: With Lynn.
- Where da White Women At??: Gender and race flipped. Peach leaks a video of her at college where Annika complains that only black men are into her body. It goes down extremely badly and she's humiliated across the Internet.
Ethan
Ethan
Played by: Zach Cherry
Joe's employee at the bookstore.
- Beta Couple: With Blythe.
- Commonality Connection: He and Blythe both appreciate good writing.
- Fat Best Friend: Best friend may be a stretch, but it's clear that Joe at least tolerates him. He even helps him move.
- Nice Guy: Despite his attitude occasionally getting on Joe's nerves, Ethan turns out to be a pretty supportive friend (for instance, being greatly supportive of Joe and Beck because of how happy she seems to make Joe and warning Beck not to bring up Candace because he believes Joe was heartbroken by her leaving) as well as a responsible coworker (gently taking Joe aside to tell him how Beck isn't working out as an employee.) He's also a doting boyfriend to Blythe, showing how excited he becomes to move in together with her.
- Shipper on Deck: For Joe and Beck.
- What Does He See in Her?: Less so than in the book, where Blythe is a rude, aggressive Control Freak, while Ethan is the nicest guy in the world, but they are still an odd couple.
Lynn Lieser
Lynn Lieser
Played by: Nicole Kang
Another one of Beck's friends.
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Like Annika.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: A more Downplayed example, and something of an Informed Flaw considering the show's narrator.
- Nice Girl: Probably the nicest of Beck's friends.
- Satellite Character: Gets the least characterization out of Beck's friends. Lampshaded by Joe, who points out her lack of complexity and claims she only grows a personality when inebriated.
- Those Two Girls: With Annika.
Claudia
Claudia
Played by: Victoria Cartagena
Paco's mother.
- Extreme Doormat: She allows Ron back into her and Paco's lives, despite the fact that he's an alcoholic and an abuser. After he hospitalizes her, she tells them it was an accident despite it clearly not being one. Subverted in that she knows that his connections will probably mean she'll lose custody of Paco, so she chooses to continue letting him beat her.
- The Junkie: One of the reasons Karen stays with her is to get her clean.
- Parents as People: Dealing with an abusive boyfriend, a son and what's implied to be low-income have left her an emotional wreck, reliant on drugs to cope with her lot in life.
- Useless Bystander Parent: Justified by her drug use, but Claudia is incapable of looking after or protecting Paco due to her addiction and Ron's abuse.
Ron
Ron
Played by: Daniel Cosgrove
Claudia's abusive boyfriend.
- Asshole Victim: Joe kills Ron in episode 10, right before the man can assault Paco for standing up to him. Absolutely nobody notices he's gone, and nobody cares.
- Dirty Cop: A parole officer who abuses Claudia and threatens to use his connections to take her son away from her if she stands up to him.
- Domestic Abuse: He beats his wife, and later in the season even sends Claudia to the hospital in an ambulance with a neckbrace.
- Hate Sink: Unlike Joe, who is given a modicum of audience sympathy by the virtue of being the POV character, Ron has zero redeeming qualities.
- "Hey, You!" Haymaker: Falls victim to a lethal version of this trope.
- Gut Feeling/Jerkass Has a Point: About JoeRon: I'm a parole officer, ok? We see guys like this all the time. He's a sicko. I feel it in my gut.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Attacks Joe after the latter saves his life in episode 5 of season 1.
- Wicked Stepfather: He beats Claudia and Paco.
- Would Hurt a Child: It's implied that he beats Paco as well and even threatens to kill Paco after the latter attacks him with a baseball bat.
Benji
Benjamin "Benji" J. Ashby III
Played by: Lou Taylor Pucci
Beck's occasional hookup.
- Adaptational Villainy: Benji is an unbearable, manipulative jerk in the book who has clearly made everyone's lives much worse, but this version of Benji, on top of all that, also killed a pledge during a botched fraternity ritual, and videotaped it.
- Asshole Victim: He's coldly killed by Joe. But given how much of an pretentious, slimy jerk he is, it's hard to really care.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Benji thinks he's a caring, good-hearted guy, and presents himself on social media as an upright, progressive thinker... he's really not.
- Blackmail: An unusual example, in that he essentially offers to blackmail himself. He offers Joe a video recording of his involvement in a frat brother's death in college, in exchange for his freedom.
- Domestic Abuser: Benji is emotionally manipulative of Beck, frequently putting her down as well as cheating.
- Hipster: From his fashion choices, Soapbox Sadie tendencies, and interest in being cool he's a typical New York hipster.
- Imaginary Love Triangle: Is shocked that Joe considers him a romantic rival, considering he sees Beck as a hookup at most.
- It's All About Me: Joe's plan to kidnap Benji hinged entirely on Benji being a glory hound and not letting his partner accompany him to make a huge business deal that Joe fabricated.
- The Junkie: Uses heroin and a number of other drugs, and goes through an uwilling detox while kidnapped by Joe.
- Lousy Lovers Are Losers: Benji is a reasonably terrible person and when he and Beck have sex, it ends in a Speed Sex and him leaving her shortly after. Beck is so unsatisfied that she has to finish the job herself.
- Millionaire Playboy: Beck isn't the only girl on his radar.
- Sacrificial Lamb: Joe's first onscreen kill, demonstrating how far he'll go for Beck.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: A go-to strategy for him.
- Snake Oil Salesman: That brand of soda he's been pitching as superior to all other sodas is revealed to be nothing new.
Karen Minty
Karen Minty
Played by: Natalie Paul
A friend of Claudia's, and a babysitter for Paco.
- Neat Freak: Joe notes that she's at least equal parts neat and freak.
- Nice Girl: Snark aside, she's an even-tempered, friendly woman and kind babysitter to Paco.
- Satellite Love Interest: Although she and Joe date for at least a while, we learn very little about her as a person.
- Temporary Love Interest: Dates Joe while he and Beck temporarily break up.
Dr. Nicky
Dr. Nicky
Played by: John Stamos
Beck and Joe's therapist, not that he realizes that.
- Broken Bird: By the time he reappears in Season 2, he's completely cracked from being framed for the death of his mistress, having his marriage destroyed and being stuck in prison.
- Exhausted Eye Bags: Sports these in Season 2 due to having his life ruined.
- Heel–Faith Turn: When Forty visits him in prison, he reveals he's a born-again christian and not interested in life outside.
- Laser-Guided Karma: When Joe frames him for Beck's murder, he leaves clues that Nicky had been seducing her, upending his marriage.
- Only One Name: Even in news articles, his surname is never given or said.
- Put on a Bus to Hell: To prison, after being framed for killing Beck.
- The Shrink: Is Beck's AND Joe's therapist.
- The Stoner: Even lights up joints in front of his clients.
- Totally Radical: Uses an insufferable amount of slang in an attempt to connect with his patients.
Blythe
Blythe
Played by: Hari Nef
A classmate of Beck's.
- Always Someone Better: Beck considers her to be her rival in graduate school.
- Beta Couple: With Ethan.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's snobby and sometimes downright rude, but she always means well, and she's a surprisingly sweet girlfriend to Ethan. She also compliments Beck on her submission once she finally gets to read it, whereas before her behavior had led the viewer to believe she was going to be unfairly critical, and she does genuinely try to help Beck's writing career in contrast to how Peach constantly stifled it.
- Meaningful Name: She is, indeed, very much a Blithe Spirit, especially when comparing her relatively untroubled life to what Beck has going on.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Her success as a creative writer at a very young age and the tell-all nature of her writing — particularly about her eating disorders — makes it seem like she's named after Real Life teen poet Blythe Baird.
- Statuesque Stunner: She's tall and attractive.
- Weight Woe: The fact that she won an award for an essay about her mom and herself developing bulimia at the same time is played for Black Comedy.
Sandy
Sandy
Played by: Magda Apanowicz
Joe's mom.
- Gold Digger: It's strongly implied that her plan for getting away from Joe's dad involves sleeping with wealthy men she meets for their money — and that she's neglecting Joe and teaching him to lie to his dad in the process. All of this plays into present-day Joe's paranoia about infidelity and his madonna-whore complex about women.
- Mommy Issues: All of her appearances have her dealing with difficulties that affect Joe to some degree. Telling is that all of Joe's love interest have gone through similar problems with him.
- Parents as People: She loved Joe very much, but she wasn't always the most present or competent parent. Still a damn sight better than his father, though.
- Single Mom Stripper: She was sleeping with men because they had money, though it's ambiguous if she was literally a sex worker or not.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: After Joe killed a man that was attacking her, she covered up everything and told Joe he did nothing wrong. This event is implied to be the start of Joe's issues, from his lack of remorse when he kills and maims people who wrong him to his deluded sense of gallantry towards women.
Mr. Mooney
Ivan Mooney
Played by: Mark Blum
The owner of Joe's bookstore and Joe's father figure.
- Abusive Parents: He disciplined a teenage Joe by locking him in the glass cage, imparting his twisted sense of love onto him. It's even implied that he sexually abused Joe.
- Evil Cripple: When we see him in the present day, he is barely functional due to a debilitating stroke—and let's be honest, Joe probably had something to do with that too.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: A very dark example: he does love Joe and protects him after his first murder but has a very harsh and twisted sense of Tough Love.
