Lauren Rothman

About
A friend to Reenah. Lauren is very much a classic “girlfriend” to Reenah; sharing gossip and stories, laughing, inside jokes, the whole works. Lauren has a short fuse and is quick to take things personally, making her very easy to offend. That being said, she is also very quick to forgive. This, along with very over-the-top emotions towards most things, can make her seem very lovable but volatile. This volatility means she doesn’t deal well with change, and really appreciates relative stability in her life.

Because of all this, along with the fact that that she has been friends with Reenah since high school, she has a very difficult time relating to and staying friends with Reenah as she slips into her PTSD-fueled psychosis. Reenah, who was by all accounts an excellent friend and very optimistic person in general, was one of the stabilizing forces that Lauren so badly needed and craved before the death of CJ. Without this, Lauren is very lost, which comes out as even more emotional volatility, including fits of rage and moments of far too blissful happiness.

A member of a trio of close friends including Reenah and Sheridan Lebowitz, Lauren serves as a statue of what the friend group once was. She tries to keep the three together and to maintain the personalities they shared at the beginning, but to no avail. This is unbelievably troubling to Lauren, who eventually starts to embrace the failure she believes herself to be.

Throughout the season, Lauren is one of the many devils on Reenah’s shoulder. The way she plays this role does significantly shift. She starts by trying to get Reenah to ignore the pain and to jump back into her life before CJ’s death. As Lauren’s own outlook darkens, however, she increasingly encourages Reenah to be impulsive and cruel, to do the things that satisfy her in the present, regardless of the future. By the end, Lauren is as darkly nihilistic as Reenah is crazed.