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Dr. Bright And Her Patients
Dr. Joan Katherine Bright
Portrayed By: Julia Morizawa
A therapist for atypical people.
- Affectionate Nickname: Called "Joanie" by her little brother.
- The Atoner: She is not proud of the things she did with the AM. Or the things they force her to do in the present.
- Badass Normal: She deals with a variety of powerful patients, defies a hugely powerful secret agency, and a bored mind manipulator stalking her.
- Big Sister Instinct: To Caleb and her actual brother.
- Cool Big Sis: To Mark, as implied by their shared journal.
- Crazy-Prepared: She records everything in case something happens to her.
- Given Name Reveal: It's really Joan BRYANT; Bright is an alias given to her by the AM.
- The One That Got Away: To Agent Green, that is.
- The Shrink: She is a therapist, and is mostly Awesome but definitely has her Harmful moments ( however not always under her own volition).
- The Stoic: Many characters note on her cold, calculating exterior.
- The Friend No One Likes: Gets shades of this in the second and third season. While everyone still gets along with her well enough, her secretive, stoic nature causing problems and the fact that she works, partially, with the AM causes a lot of mistrust and resentment between her and the others. Seems to be getting better as of season four, as she opens up and speaks openly with the group and has completely severed ties with the AM.
Samantha "Sam" Eleanor Barnes
Portrayed By: Lauren Shippen
A time traveler with anxiety, whose trips are triggered by panic attacks.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Punches Damien so hard that she breaks his nose.
- Cursed with Awesome: Sam initially sees her time traveling in this way, mostly because she can't control it.
- Death by Origin Story: Sam's parents, that is. They left her money for therapy though!
- Defense Mechanism Superpower: Sam's time traveling begins like this, although it's a hindrance rather than a help because it's triggered by her anxiety.
- Dimensional Traveler: How her power is theorized to work - when she time travels, she goes to a dimension where all time happens simultaneously.
- Friendless Background: Put succinctly in the first episodeSam: Um, I just tend to avoid… um. People.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: For years her only companion was her cat, Darwin.
- Intangible Time Travel: The nature of her time travel. She does physically travel back but she can't be detected by anyone else or interact with objects. Luckily, she doesn't need food even when staying in the past for weeks at a time. She can, however, drink water by catching precipitation in her mouth.
- My Parents Are Dead: Comes out in a session. Turns out, she disappeared while driving the car that crashed and killed them. Ouch.
- Nervous Wreck: Sam dips into this trope occasionally, often preceding disappearing from the present time.
- Playful Hacker: Had a lot of time to herself over the years to pick up some skills.
- Shrinking Violet: She secluded herself from people for years because she worries about vanishing in front of people.
- You Can't Fight Fate: The intangible nature of her time travel means she cannot alter anything, only observe.
Caleb William Michaels
Portrayed By: Briggon Snow
A teenage, football playing empath with some anger problems.
- Berserk Button: Do not mess with Adam.
- Also, being in a room full of angry people really sets him off.
- Can't Hold His Liquor: Finds his power a lot more difficult to deal with after only one can of beer.
- As well as this, he discovers in Episode 41 that he gets drunk through sheer empathy if enough people around him are tipsy.
- The Empath: Caleb feels what others feel, and, boy, is that annoying.
- Lovable Jock: Caleb does play football and seems to have some popularity among his teammates and people in school. Too bad strong emotions, such as anger and fear, can make him lash out and punch people.
- Phoneaholic Teenager: Caleb seems much more comfortable texting Adam than just talking to him, even when a real-time conversation would lead to a lot less miscommunication.
- Single-Target Sexuality: He says he hasn't felt anything for girls or other guys, just Adam.
- Superpowerful Genetics: In episode 56, he tells Dr. Bright that he's certain his fourteen year old sister, Alice, is developing super strength.
Chloe Persephone Turner
Portrayed By: Anna Lore
An idealistic artist who can read minds.
- A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Subverted. Chloe is inconvenienced by her power (it makes it difficult for her to have conversations or be in large groups) but she never seems emotionally traumatized by it.
- Celibate Hero: Is very open about her asexuality.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Comes off as one in her first episode, talking about the angels speaking to her.
- Cold Reading: To someone not aware of her Atypical abilities, her mind reading can come off like this. To those in the know? It could look like an active psychic hot reading.
- Disappeared Dad: Only found out about her father's identity by reading her mother's thoughts. He was a musician who died of a heroin overdose when she was two years old. He never knew he had a daughter.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: How she takes breaks from hearing thoughts all the time.
- Immune to Mind Control: Damien can't control her because their powers are opposites. (She knows what other people are thinking, he can make people think what he is thinking.)
- Lie Detector: It comes with being a mind-reader
- Saving the World With Art: Downplayed. Just saving Frank.
- Superpowerful Genetics: Her mother is telekinetic.
Damien
Portrayed By: Charlie Ian
A lonely, hypocritical mind manipulator.
- Brought Down to Normal: After his head injury from Caleb, he no longer can access his ability.
- Charm Person: Basically how his powers work, with the added condition that he has to want the person to do the thing he wills them to do.
- Given Name Reveal: It's Robert.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Is a very lonely person as his powers make it hard for him to have a genuine relationship with others. He forces Dr Bright to have sessions with him, makes Caleb want to like him when he had just met him, and kidnapped Mark in the hopes of finding someone who would understand what his life was like.
- Manipulative Bastard: Easy to be one with powers like his.
- Never My Fault: He frequently blames his behavior on his past or his power.
- Parental Abandonment: His parents left because he accidentally forced them too but even after it wore off, they didn't come back.
- Psychic Block Defense: Chloe can't read his mind. Even after he loses his ability. This leads them to suspect that he may still have his ability somewhere in his brain
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: Has a very smooth and eerily gentle voice.
- The Unapologetic: Refuses to apologize until Mark leaves him, at which point he attempts to say sorry as a last resort.
- Villainous Crush: He falls in love with Mark. Strongly implied on several occasions and confirmed in episode 53.
Francis "Frank" Reese Sawyer
Portrayed By: Phillip Jordan
A homeless former marine who catches the attention of both Chloe and Caleb.
- The Empath: His ability, as a result of military experimentation.
- Famous Ancestor: His great-grandfather was a Harlem Hellfighter
in World War One. - Shell-Shocked Veteran: Suffers from PTSD.
- Super-Soldier: Along with some other marines, he was given an empathic ability by the AM.
- Survivor Guilt: The only one of his unit to survive.
- Verbal Tic: Finds it hard not to call Dr Bright, "ma'am."
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: A large motivation for him joining the Marines was his dad pressuring him.
Rose Atkinson
Portrayed By: Alanna Fox
A new patient of Dr Bright's from a family of atypicals.
- Dream Walker: Her ability.
- Informed Judaism: Word of God states this in this tumblr post.
- She briefly mentions her mother inviting her girlfriend to Shabbat.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Not that we ever see Rose, but she sounds and acts very feminine and seems to be exclusively interested in women.
- Sleepy Head: An unfortunate side effect of her ability.
- Superpowerful Genetics: Ooh boy. Her father is telekinetic, her mother is clairvoyant and her brother is telepathic.
- Supreme Chef: Works in a kitchen and attends culinary school.
Family And Friends
Adam Whitney Hayes
Portrayed By: Alex Gallner
An "emo" high school student.
- All of the Other Reindeer: He is constantly harassed by most of the football team and spends his days alone before Caleb befriends him.
- Bookworm: Typically found taking refuge in the school library.
- Closet Key: Arguably is this to Caleb.
- Emo Teen: This is a given thanks to Adam’s style of dress and fondness for emo as a musical genre.
- Gay Guy Seeks Popular Jock: Surprise.
- Ivy League for Everyone: Accepted into Yale, his aunt's alma mater.
- Nom de Mom: Played with. Adam’s middle name is his moms maiden name.
- Self-Harm: Adam has a history of this.
- The Smart Guy: Adam takes his fair share of AP classes.
- Straight Gay: Adam is gay but doesn’t have any of the stereotypes.
Byron Mark Bryant
Portrayed By: Andrew Nowak
Dr. Bright's little brother.
- Big Man on Campus: Seems to have been this way when he was younger as he was elected student body president twice. Without running. He never took the position though.
- Camera Fiend: An aspiring photographer.
- Distressed Dude: First he was kidnapped by an evil organisation, experimented on, accidentally trapped in the past for years, and then kidnapped by the guy who was supposed to be rescuing him.
- Embarrassing First Name: Byron. Try saying Byron Bryant three times fast.
- Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Sam, Damien, Charlie, Oliver to start with. And the first 3 were either canon or hinted to be almost canon.
- Middle Name Basis: Goes by his middle name, Mark.
- Power Copying: Only if he's closer than 31.2ft note to another atypical.
- Trapped in the Past: By a mental time traveller that died and left him in a coma while being held by the A.M.
Members Of The A.M.
Agent Owen Green
Portrayed By: Ian McQuown
A public relations bureaucrat for the A.M. and Dr. Bright's ex.
- Code Name: His real name is Owen Archibald Thompson.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Displays shades of this towards Dr. Bright.
- Heel–Face Turn: He eventually realizes that the AM is doing too much harm to do any good, and decides to help Joan and co. with their plan to take down Wadsworth.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: The in-universe opinion of Dr. Bright about him, though it seems to be backed up by the old official character page which describes him as "just a bureaucratic pencil-pusher" who is "drinking the company kool-aid."
- Working with the Ex: He keeps tabs on Dr. Bright, and clearly still has feelings for her, if Chloe reading his mind was anything to go by.
Director Annabelle "Ellie" Wadsworth
Portrayed By: Alex Marshall-Brown
A director of the A.M. Previously Dr. Bright's former boss.
- Code Name: Her real name is Annabelle Margaret Whitney.
- Evil Former Friend: To Dr Bright
- Evil Aunt: To Adam. Caleb does not take this well.
- Immune to Mind Control: Has developed a way to be immune to atypicals. She used Mark's DNA.
- I Shall Taunt You: Constantly addresses characters by their full first name when either they don't use it (Mark or Damien) or they go by a shortened version (Sam.) This is very much on purpose.Sam: Why do it?Wadsworth: What?Sam: Call people by names they hate?Wadsworth: Basic human psychology, Samantha.
- Sibling Rivalry: With her sister, Dr Hayes, according to Frank.
Patients from The Bright Sides
Myra
Portrayed By: Jasika Nicole
The focus of the first bonus episode: Patient #10-E-2.
- Abusive Parents: Quickly brushes past this in her session with Dr. Bright. This just goes to show how much is on her mind.
- Astral Projection: Her ability. She can explore other locations in the world during the present, but not any kind of astral plane - although this is possible for some atypicals according to Dr. Bright.
- Brought Down to Normal: The medication she was taking for (misdiagnosed) Epilepsy, BPD, and anxiety caused her power to disappear at the age of 12. But twenty years later, when she lost her health insurance, she went off her meds and her power resurfaced.note
Melanie Trent
Portrayed By: Shelby Young
The focus of the bonus episode: Patient #3-C-2.
- Hiding in a Hijab: Downplayed but Melanie has mentioned wearing an abaya to fit in where she's living.
- Power of the Storm: She can manipulate weather. She does not have a good handle on her ability. She causes days of rain and hail in the Middle Eastern country she is living in.
