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Player
Name: Alex
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alexclusive
E-mail: gloriousrikkaidai (at) hotmail (dot) com
AIM/MSN: MSN: same as above!
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route:
Yagyuu Hiroshi | Prince of Tennis |usedlaserbeam
Carmen Sandiego | Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? |doitrockapella
Character
Name: Albert Rosenfield
Series: Twin Peaks
Timeline: From during or immediately after his last canon appearance in Episode 23.
Canon Resource Links:
Albert at the Twin Peaks Wiki
Albert at the official Wikipedia
Albert's official bio card
A selection of quotes from Albert
ADDITIONAL HISTORY (as per request)
[9:49:03 PM] Alex Spartacus: BASICALLY TWIN PEAKS IS LIKE
[9:49:04 PM] Alex Spartacus: OH SHIT
[9:49:09 PM] Alex Spartacus: HOMECOMING QUEEN IS DEAD
[9:49:11 PM] Alex Spartacus: THIS SUCKS
[9:49:14 PM] Alex Spartacus: WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO
[9:49:16 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND THEN COOP SHOWS UP
[9:49:18 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND HE'S ALL LIKE
[9:49:23 PM] Alex Spartacus: HELLO I AM HERE AND ALSO MY BUSINESS HAIR IS ON???
[9:49:29 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND TWIN PEAKS IS LIKE OH SHIT
[9:49:32 PM] Alex Spartacus: LET'S LISTEN TO THIS GUY
[9:49:34 PM] Alex Spartacus: HIS HAIR MEANS BUSINESS
[9:49:36 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND ALSO INTRIGUE
[9:49:37 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND DRAMA
[9:49:41 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND HARRY IS LIKE HELLO
[9:49:49 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND COOP IS LIKE I PROPHESIED THAT I WOULD LOVE YOU A YEAR AGO
[9:49:54 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND HARRY IS LIKE ...OKAY THEN
[9:49:56 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND THEN THERE IS BROMANCE
[9:50:00 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND THEN
[9:50:04 PM] Alex Spartacus: THEY INVESTIGATE SOME SHIT
[9:50:08 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND LEO JOHNSON IS AN ASSHOLE
[9:50:11 PM] Alex Spartacus: BUT THEN
[9:50:12 PM] Alex Spartacus: MAGICALLY
[9:50:16 PM] Alex Spartacus: ALONG COMES EPISODE THREE
[9:50:22 PM] Alex Spartacus: EPI-FUCKING-SODE THREE
[9:50:32 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND ALBERT ROSENFIELD WALKS IN LIKE I'M HERE THE DAY IS SAVED
[9:50:36 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND IT FUCKING IS
[9:51:09 PM] Alex Spartacus: and then the whole rest of the show is basically albert is badass and there is a brotp
[9:51:11 PM] Alex Spartacus: oh right and they find the murderer
Personality:
Pete Martell: (referring to Albert) I don't like you.
Dale Cooper: (gently) No one does, Pete.
On the surface, Albert Rosenfield appears to be a callous, brilliant, sarcastic bastard with the social grace of a parasitic insect and roughly the same number of redeeming qualities. Unfortunately for everyone he encounters, that also remains true for him well beneath the surface. Literally within minutes of setting foot in the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department in his first canon appearance, Albert's dismissive and acerbic manner provokes the receptionist, Lucy Moran, to stick her tongue out at him when he's finished speaking with her; his first words of "greeting" to Cooper upon seeing him are, "What the hell kind of a two-bit operation are they running out of this treehouse, Cooper?" Sheriff Harry Truman, one of the most accepting and easygoing personalities in the show, threatens to punch him in the mouth at the conclusion of this first encounter — a threat he later makes good on in the Twin Peaks morgue, much to Albert's chagrin. His cool irreverence toward Laura Palmer's corpse in the morgue prompts Doc Hayward to call him "the most cold-blooded man [he'd] ever seen" and to insist that he'd "never in [his] life met a man with so little regard for human frailty". He insults Deputy Andy Brennan every chance he gets, likening him to a dog and subtly mocking him for his tendency to cry at emotionally distressing events, and even goes so far as to snicker at Big Ed Hurley as he grieves after his wife Nadine's failed suicide attempt. Even Cooper himself, upon their first meeting (way back when Coop was twenty-three years old and fresh out of the FBI Academy), came away from the encounter asking, "who is Albert Rosen[field], and why is he so angry?"
It's a very good question, Coop, and one to which there are a myriad of answers.
To say that Albert is a cynic is like saying it's a bit chilly in Antarctica; however, his unrepentant douchebaggery stems largely from the fact that he is both utterly brilliant and utterly exasperated with the world in which he resides. As a forensic pathologist for the FBI (and, as Cooper himself remarks to Sheriff Truman, "the cream of the crop"), Albert has seen a lot of gruesome spectacles, hung out with a lot of dead bodies, and generally spent a great deal of his career attuned toward the tiny details and evidentiary minutiae that often prove to be the keys to cracking a case. Unlike Cooper, who is an active field agent, it's implied that Albert spends the vast majority of his time in a lab, and has his own team of agents to assist him in his work. However, this isn't to say that Albert's lack of social graces stems from the fact that he spends a lot of time around dead people as opposed to living ones; rather, his disdain for the people he meets and interacts with seems to come from a combination of impatience and a remarkably high intellectual and moral standard to which he assumes very few people will measure up. By Albert's reckoning, it isn't "innocent until proven guilty", it's "idiot until proven otherwise" — and he makes it very, very hard to prove otherwise.
However, this isn't to say that Albert is completely irredeemable. As Cooper remarks in the aftermath of what is perhaps Albert's most famous scene, the path he has chosen for himself is "a strange and difficult one". Though he'll gladly wage a battle of wits and scathing mockery with anyone who dares to come against him, he also subscribes to a belief in total pacifism, and chooses to live his life "in the company of Gandhi and King"; in the moment when tensions between himself and Sheriff Truman reach a second peak, Albert reveals that he "reject[s] absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation", after which he comments that "the foundation of such a method...is love", and concludes by professing that he does, in fact, love Sheriff Truman.
(After which he dons his aviator sunglasses like a boss and walks away, because that is just how Albert rolls.)
The important thing to understand about Albert, however, is that the cynical, belligerent approach that he takes to the world is not a mere mask that hides a tender soul within; he is very much a jerk, and an unrepentant one at that. But Albert is also a man with a ridiculously firm grasp on the beliefs he chooses to live by, strange and difficult though they may be. And he does have his moments where he relents, generally around the people that have managed to bear with him long enough to garner his respect — and most notable among these is Special Agent Dale Cooper.
Albert and Cooper have been acquainted and coworkers as far back as when Coop was fresh out of the academy, and it shows in the way they interact: while Albert doesn't spare Coop from his criticisms, he is notably more subdued in them, and never actually goes after Coop himself as a target (whereas he persistently likens Harry to a gorilla and Andy to a dog). Furthermore, even after mocking and deriding Coop's prophetic dreams and leaps of intuition throughout the entire series, when the critical moment hits and the fate of the investigation is on the line, Albert rather touchingly remarks:
"Cooper... an observation. I don't know where this is headed, but the only one of us with the coordinates for this destination in his hardware is you. Go on whatever vision quest you require. Stand on the rim of the volcano, stand alone and do your dance. Just find this beast before he takes another bite."
Throughout all the wackiness of the show, and despite all the disbelief, mockery, and cynicism he displays, Albert's faith in Coop is something that never wavers; though they have their conflicting interests and issues they disagree on over the course of the series (for example, when Coop has decided that he "[won't] take it personally" that Josie Packard shot him and left him for dead, while Albert is well and truly prepared to walk right out and arrest her the minute the forensics come back), he very clearly cares about Coop and generally manages to appear as a bastion of understated support in the moments when Coop needs it most — even when that support comes in the form of a simple, vaguely teasing remark about the outfit Coop is wearing, or a reassuring touch to the arm or shoulder in the moment when Coop seems to need it most. And in that, they make a good pair; of all the people for whom Coop tries to play life coach throughout the series, Albert is probably the one person who needs it least, and that makes him uniquely qualified to be the guy looking out for Coop, in turn. It's apparent from the way Albert behaves toward Coop that he thinks of them as a duo, or at the very least, as being on his side in the "us/them" equation; when Coop arrives to break up the fight between Albert and Doc Hayward in the morgue, Albert wastes no time in making a beeline for Coop, and actually pulls him in front of him as he demands that Coop arrest Doc Hayward for obstructing his investigation. This reaction is so natural and instantaneous that it's clear Albert assumes from the get-go that Coop will be on his side from the moment he walks in the door, and he ends up with a fairly rude awakening when things don't play out that way. Still, the sentiment persists throughout the series, and there is no doubt that Albert's allegiance lies first with the Bureau and with Coop, and like the rest of his convictions, that's something he fully intends to stick to.
In the aftermath of the first season finale, Coop asks simply: "Who shot me, Albert?"
Before the series ends, despite an evidentiary trail gone "ice-cold", Albert makes sure to find out.
And that, perhaps, demonstrates the essence of Albert Rosenfield better than anything else: for all his faults (and he has a lot of them), you can bet that he's going to come through when it counts.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
✔ Intellect — Albert is quite possibly one of the most intelligent characters on the show, whose strengths range from a wealth of hard facts to deductive reasoning to a brisk, biting wit. His bio-card indicates that he graduated first in his class from Yale University prior to entering the FBI academy, and he's got a notably wide vocabulary — something that tends to come up when he goes off on one of his characteristic Albert Rants™. The ease with which he plays with alliteration, rhythm, and slang is all indicative of someone who is both well-spoken and quick-witted, and the insults he tends to default toward usually involve disparaging someone's intellect in some way, which also suggests a certain superiority (at least in Albert's opinion) in the mental arena.
✔ Forensics — Albert is really good at his job. He has advanced training in chemistry and forensic studies, and his first namedrop in the series occurs when Cooper asks Diane to "give this one to Albert; he's a little more on the ball than [the forensic analyst that had previously worked on the Blue Rose cases]"; later, Coop describes him to Harry as a "forensics genius". He's also a medical examiner, and demonstrates his expertise on both the living and the dead over the course of the show — on Cooper in the aftermath of his shooting, and on the various autopsies he performs on the dead bodies that rack up as the series progresses. Despite having effectively no assistance from Coop in identifying the shooter and nothing to go on save for "a right-handed person between five-foot-six and five-foot-ten", a bullet belonging to "a Walther PPK", and some fibers he "hoovered off the carpet" at the scene of the crime, Albert eventually manages to piece together enough evidence to identify Josie Packard as the shooter — and then keeps building the case against her until that conclusion is undeniable.
✔ Reliability — When Albert takes on a job, you better believe that job is getting done and getting done right — even if he has to pull an all-nighter after driving the better half of a day while running on presumably nothing more than nicotine, caffeine, and sarcasm in order to do it. In Albert's own words: "What are we waiting for? Christmas? We've got work to do, dammit! They're putting this girl in the ground tomorrow and we've wasted half the day traveling out here to the middle of nowhere." Put him on a case and he is damn well going to see it through to the end, regardless of who or what might try to get in his way. And woe betide anyone who does.
✔ Conviction — Albert's firmness in his beliefs is basically impenetrable. As he says to Sheriff Truman, he is "a naysayer and hatchet-man in the fight against violence" who "pride[s] [him]self in taking a punch and...[will] gladly take another" because of his belief in following the examples of "Gandhi and King". And indeed, he does take a punch from Sheriff Truman without any semblance of physical retaliation (and in an unused script, takes another from Pete Martell after dryly remarking, "Not again"); as unpleasant and scathing as he can be verbally, he's devoted to his belief in pacifism, and will sooner turn the other cheek to a physical assault than strike back with one of his own.
✘ Social Deficiency — The personality section covers it pretty comprehensively, but to briefly reiterate: Albert is an unrepentant jerk to everyone and pretty much always has something bitingly sarcastic to say about the people he interacts with. While it's not impossible to earn his respect — Harry, for example, manages to go from a "chowderhead yokel" and "blithering hayseed" in Albert's eyes to someone worthy of a Manful Bro-Hug™ by the end of the series — he can be really unpleasant to be around, and can usually irritate even the most easygoing of people. As Harry so eloquently puts it, "Albert, you make fun of everyone and everything and then act like you deserve an award for it."
✘ Superiority — Also covered in the personality section, but worth mentioning again: Albert frequently condescends to people and tends to behave as though he's superior to them, both in intelligence and in morality. He's impatient with people because he's already preemptively judged them and found them wanting, and he won't just say, "I'm taking this piece of evidence back to the FBI lab"; he'll work in a casual jab at the deficiencies of the local facilities while he's at it. Summed up most concisely, when Sheriff Truman remarks that he's heard Albert is "real good at what [he does]", Albert's natural response is simply "Yeah, that's correct."
✘ Pacifism — The flip side of his strength of conviction: Albert is a stalwart pacifist who will sooner get punched in the face than strike back with aggression of his own. Though he does have his occasional moments of physicality — usually in the form of grabbing a person's shirt or lapels when he's attempting to get their attention or make a point — he rejects violence and retaliation, and only seems to resort to those moments of physical assertiveness as a response to someone else's aggressive actions. This will probably not bode well for him in a world that revolves around battling Pokemon and challenging Gym Leaders.
✘ Nicotine — A comparatively small flaw, but he does smoke and as we all know, that's bad for you. It's also presumably bad for anybody who tries to get between him and the pack of cigarettes, but I digress.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Breeder!
Starter: A Poochyena, please.Named Gandhina.
Password: Scrambled Eggs
Samples
First Person Sample:
[Good morning, Johto! Today, for your viewing pleasure, we have...what appears to be the rather dark and damp interior of a Poochyena's mouth, complete with glistening teeth and a tiny smear of drool at the edge of the camera feed. Not a very decent view, but that's okay, because there's plenty of audio to make up for that — and it seems we've tuned in right in the middle of some rather belligerent ranting...]
—ow what kind of game you're playing here, lady, but I have neither the time nor the patience to stand around while some overzealous kitchen marm tries to stuff me full of animal crackers and ship me off to elementary school. I want to know who you are, I want to know where I am, and most importantly I want to know how the hell you got me here to this godforsaken boondocks in the first place. I have plenty of work to do, and I do not have time for your inane prattle. Just give me some answers so I can be on my way.
[There is some background chatter here, which careful listeners may recognize as Mom's standard speech.]
Listen, June Cleaver, I'll make this very clear: I could not care less about these Puggymans you insist on rambling continuously about. The question is simple: where the hell am I?
[More background chatter! Are we sensing a trend?]
Hn. Forget it.
[Footsteps begin to tap across the linoleum, and in response, the camera begins to shake; evidently, the owner of those teeth is trotting over to give her own greeting to this rather angry newcomer to Johto. And it appears, when the footsteps pause, that he's just noticed her.]
What do you want?
[More shaking of the camera, and then suddenly there is bright light and a whole lot of twisting and rotating as the man apparently takes the Gear out of the dog's mouth and turns it over in his hand, twisting it every which way and tapping it as he inspects it. People who get motion sickness, this is really not the video for you.]
...what is this, a toy or some kind of Star Trek — HELLO.
[And hopefully no one had their volume turned up on their gear, because the man holding it is using his Outside Voice as he addresses the microphone that is apparently about three inches away from his face at the moment.]
I DON'T SUPPOSE YOU'VE GOT SOME ANSWERS FOR ME, MR. SCOTT?
Third Person Sample:
Much as he loathes to admit it, lately Albert's been catching himself almost starting to miss Twin Peaks.
Which, he mentally clarifies a moment later, is not to suggest that there is anything particularly likeable about Twin Peaks, but merely to provide a benchmark for just how much of an infuriatingly loathsome burg this dreamworld called Johto really is.
He's not entirely convinced it isn't a dreamworld, for the record. Sure, he's here, and seeing is believing and all that related garbage, but he's seen a lot of things come across his autopsy table in his years with the Bureau and he's long since learned that what you see is very rarely what it seems. That's why you have to get down into the details, the minutiae, the seemingly irrelevant specks and scraps of evidence that a less competent person would overlook or write off; every action has a reaction, and there's no such thing as a move that doesn't leave its mark somehow or another. It's not about trusting what he sees. It's about taking those tiny details and jigsawing them together to find out what kind of picture comes out at the end of the puzzle, and then looking to compare how well it matches to the one they were selling on the box.
And some of the things he's seeing just don't make sense, not by any line of logic native to the planet Earth. There is no way there's an evolutionary purpose for a turtle with cannons sprouting out of its shell, much less how it managed to develop them in the first place, or where the hell its ammunition is coming from. No behavioral psychology outside of outright brainwashing or Stockholm Syndrome can answer why one of these creatures can go from feral and retaliatory one minute to docile and friendly the next, just by hitting it upside the head with a ball. And there cannot possibly be valid rationale, not according to any form of natural law known to man, that can explain how a Diglett can sit on a couch, but supposedly that's Johto, and apparently that's the most explanation he's ever going to get.
It's the explanation Coop gave him, at least. Of course, Coop also takes advice from logs and conducts his investigations on leads given to him in dreams by giants, so that's not necessarily saying a whole lot in terms of alleviating the skepticism he has about this place. But in all the time he's known Dale Cooper, the man's never failed to have an uncanny knack for getting it right when it counts — regardless of how he arrives at that answer — and so as much as he dislikes it, Albert's grudgingly resigned himself to accepting it for the duration. Or at least until he can come up with a better one of his own.
But that doesn't mean he has to like it here, in this absurd place with tinny stereo music that never shuts up, this place that's rife with hotheaded teenage punks who are convinced they're heroes, loudmouth little girls with so much spirited optimism that you could choke on it, and of course, who could forget the delusional chowderheads who claim they're actually aliens and gladiators and ponies. It's like the entire world is a hellhole specifically calculated to grate on his every last nerve; Twin Peaks, for all its numerous faults, had at least had a diner that served some fairly decent pie.
Of course, Johto has Cooper. He supposes that's one thing.
(It's oddly needling to see him look so happy here. The broad Coop's been running around with is a real piece of work, make no mistake, but there are moments when Albert almost finds he can't even hate her because he hasn't seen Coop's face light up like that since — well. Since before Pittsburgh.)
And he's got this mutt, too, a shaggy wolfdog mix that Coop excitedly identified as "Gandhina" the first time he saw her — claiming he heard that one in a dream, as well. It's a stupid name, but in lieu of anything better, it stuck. (Though it's almost a shame she didn't turn out to be male, or Albert would've cheerfully dubbed her Deputy Andy Brennan, instead.) It's not so bad, really, having a dog, even if he's been saddled with her against his will and if asked, he would've catalogued himself as more of a cat person, anyway. If nothing else, the relaxing psychological effects of being a pet owner will help keep his blood pressure down.
And if he's going to be stuck in a place like Johto, he thinks as he picks a red rubber ball half-covered in saliva out of the grass with two fingers and gives it a heave for her to chase again, his blood pressure's going to need all the help it can get.
Name: Alex
Personal Journal:
alexclusiveE-mail: gloriousrikkaidai (at) hotmail (dot) com
AIM/MSN: MSN: same as above!
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route:
Yagyuu Hiroshi | Prince of Tennis |
usedlaserbeamCarmen Sandiego | Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? |
doitrockapellaCharacter
Name: Albert Rosenfield
Series: Twin Peaks
Timeline: From during or immediately after his last canon appearance in Episode 23.
Canon Resource Links:
Albert at the Twin Peaks Wiki
Albert at the official Wikipedia
Albert's official bio card
A selection of quotes from Albert
ADDITIONAL HISTORY (as per request)
[9:49:04 PM] Alex Spartacus: OH SHIT
[9:49:09 PM] Alex Spartacus: HOMECOMING QUEEN IS DEAD
[9:49:11 PM] Alex Spartacus: THIS SUCKS
[9:49:14 PM] Alex Spartacus: WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO
[9:49:16 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND THEN COOP SHOWS UP
[9:49:18 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND HE'S ALL LIKE
[9:49:23 PM] Alex Spartacus: HELLO I AM HERE AND ALSO MY BUSINESS HAIR IS ON???
[9:49:29 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND TWIN PEAKS IS LIKE OH SHIT
[9:49:32 PM] Alex Spartacus: LET'S LISTEN TO THIS GUY
[9:49:34 PM] Alex Spartacus: HIS HAIR MEANS BUSINESS
[9:49:36 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND ALSO INTRIGUE
[9:49:37 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND DRAMA
[9:49:41 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND HARRY IS LIKE HELLO
[9:49:49 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND COOP IS LIKE I PROPHESIED THAT I WOULD LOVE YOU A YEAR AGO
[9:49:54 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND HARRY IS LIKE ...OKAY THEN
[9:49:56 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND THEN THERE IS BROMANCE
[9:50:00 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND THEN
[9:50:04 PM] Alex Spartacus: THEY INVESTIGATE SOME SHIT
[9:50:08 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND LEO JOHNSON IS AN ASSHOLE
[9:50:11 PM] Alex Spartacus: BUT THEN
[9:50:12 PM] Alex Spartacus: MAGICALLY
[9:50:16 PM] Alex Spartacus: ALONG COMES EPISODE THREE
[9:50:22 PM] Alex Spartacus: EPI-FUCKING-SODE THREE
[9:50:32 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND ALBERT ROSENFIELD WALKS IN LIKE I'M HERE THE DAY IS SAVED
[9:50:36 PM] Alex Spartacus: AND IT FUCKING IS
[9:51:09 PM] Alex Spartacus: and then the whole rest of the show is basically albert is badass and there is a brotp
[9:51:11 PM] Alex Spartacus: oh right and they find the murderer
Personality:
Dale Cooper: (gently) No one does, Pete.
On the surface, Albert Rosenfield appears to be a callous, brilliant, sarcastic bastard with the social grace of a parasitic insect and roughly the same number of redeeming qualities. Unfortunately for everyone he encounters, that also remains true for him well beneath the surface. Literally within minutes of setting foot in the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department in his first canon appearance, Albert's dismissive and acerbic manner provokes the receptionist, Lucy Moran, to stick her tongue out at him when he's finished speaking with her; his first words of "greeting" to Cooper upon seeing him are, "What the hell kind of a two-bit operation are they running out of this treehouse, Cooper?" Sheriff Harry Truman, one of the most accepting and easygoing personalities in the show, threatens to punch him in the mouth at the conclusion of this first encounter — a threat he later makes good on in the Twin Peaks morgue, much to Albert's chagrin. His cool irreverence toward Laura Palmer's corpse in the morgue prompts Doc Hayward to call him "the most cold-blooded man [he'd] ever seen" and to insist that he'd "never in [his] life met a man with so little regard for human frailty". He insults Deputy Andy Brennan every chance he gets, likening him to a dog and subtly mocking him for his tendency to cry at emotionally distressing events, and even goes so far as to snicker at Big Ed Hurley as he grieves after his wife Nadine's failed suicide attempt. Even Cooper himself, upon their first meeting (way back when Coop was twenty-three years old and fresh out of the FBI Academy), came away from the encounter asking, "who is Albert Rosen[field], and why is he so angry?"
It's a very good question, Coop, and one to which there are a myriad of answers.
To say that Albert is a cynic is like saying it's a bit chilly in Antarctica; however, his unrepentant douchebaggery stems largely from the fact that he is both utterly brilliant and utterly exasperated with the world in which he resides. As a forensic pathologist for the FBI (and, as Cooper himself remarks to Sheriff Truman, "the cream of the crop"), Albert has seen a lot of gruesome spectacles, hung out with a lot of dead bodies, and generally spent a great deal of his career attuned toward the tiny details and evidentiary minutiae that often prove to be the keys to cracking a case. Unlike Cooper, who is an active field agent, it's implied that Albert spends the vast majority of his time in a lab, and has his own team of agents to assist him in his work. However, this isn't to say that Albert's lack of social graces stems from the fact that he spends a lot of time around dead people as opposed to living ones; rather, his disdain for the people he meets and interacts with seems to come from a combination of impatience and a remarkably high intellectual and moral standard to which he assumes very few people will measure up. By Albert's reckoning, it isn't "innocent until proven guilty", it's "idiot until proven otherwise" — and he makes it very, very hard to prove otherwise.
However, this isn't to say that Albert is completely irredeemable. As Cooper remarks in the aftermath of what is perhaps Albert's most famous scene, the path he has chosen for himself is "a strange and difficult one". Though he'll gladly wage a battle of wits and scathing mockery with anyone who dares to come against him, he also subscribes to a belief in total pacifism, and chooses to live his life "in the company of Gandhi and King"; in the moment when tensions between himself and Sheriff Truman reach a second peak, Albert reveals that he "reject[s] absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation", after which he comments that "the foundation of such a method...is love", and concludes by professing that he does, in fact, love Sheriff Truman.
(After which he dons his aviator sunglasses like a boss and walks away, because that is just how Albert rolls.)
The important thing to understand about Albert, however, is that the cynical, belligerent approach that he takes to the world is not a mere mask that hides a tender soul within; he is very much a jerk, and an unrepentant one at that. But Albert is also a man with a ridiculously firm grasp on the beliefs he chooses to live by, strange and difficult though they may be. And he does have his moments where he relents, generally around the people that have managed to bear with him long enough to garner his respect — and most notable among these is Special Agent Dale Cooper.
Albert and Cooper have been acquainted and coworkers as far back as when Coop was fresh out of the academy, and it shows in the way they interact: while Albert doesn't spare Coop from his criticisms, he is notably more subdued in them, and never actually goes after Coop himself as a target (whereas he persistently likens Harry to a gorilla and Andy to a dog). Furthermore, even after mocking and deriding Coop's prophetic dreams and leaps of intuition throughout the entire series, when the critical moment hits and the fate of the investigation is on the line, Albert rather touchingly remarks:
"Cooper... an observation. I don't know where this is headed, but the only one of us with the coordinates for this destination in his hardware is you. Go on whatever vision quest you require. Stand on the rim of the volcano, stand alone and do your dance. Just find this beast before he takes another bite."
Throughout all the wackiness of the show, and despite all the disbelief, mockery, and cynicism he displays, Albert's faith in Coop is something that never wavers; though they have their conflicting interests and issues they disagree on over the course of the series (for example, when Coop has decided that he "[won't] take it personally" that Josie Packard shot him and left him for dead, while Albert is well and truly prepared to walk right out and arrest her the minute the forensics come back), he very clearly cares about Coop and generally manages to appear as a bastion of understated support in the moments when Coop needs it most — even when that support comes in the form of a simple, vaguely teasing remark about the outfit Coop is wearing, or a reassuring touch to the arm or shoulder in the moment when Coop seems to need it most. And in that, they make a good pair; of all the people for whom Coop tries to play life coach throughout the series, Albert is probably the one person who needs it least, and that makes him uniquely qualified to be the guy looking out for Coop, in turn. It's apparent from the way Albert behaves toward Coop that he thinks of them as a duo, or at the very least, as being on his side in the "us/them" equation; when Coop arrives to break up the fight between Albert and Doc Hayward in the morgue, Albert wastes no time in making a beeline for Coop, and actually pulls him in front of him as he demands that Coop arrest Doc Hayward for obstructing his investigation. This reaction is so natural and instantaneous that it's clear Albert assumes from the get-go that Coop will be on his side from the moment he walks in the door, and he ends up with a fairly rude awakening when things don't play out that way. Still, the sentiment persists throughout the series, and there is no doubt that Albert's allegiance lies first with the Bureau and with Coop, and like the rest of his convictions, that's something he fully intends to stick to.
In the aftermath of the first season finale, Coop asks simply: "Who shot me, Albert?"
Before the series ends, despite an evidentiary trail gone "ice-cold", Albert makes sure to find out.
And that, perhaps, demonstrates the essence of Albert Rosenfield better than anything else: for all his faults (and he has a lot of them), you can bet that he's going to come through when it counts.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
✔ Intellect — Albert is quite possibly one of the most intelligent characters on the show, whose strengths range from a wealth of hard facts to deductive reasoning to a brisk, biting wit. His bio-card indicates that he graduated first in his class from Yale University prior to entering the FBI academy, and he's got a notably wide vocabulary — something that tends to come up when he goes off on one of his characteristic Albert Rants™. The ease with which he plays with alliteration, rhythm, and slang is all indicative of someone who is both well-spoken and quick-witted, and the insults he tends to default toward usually involve disparaging someone's intellect in some way, which also suggests a certain superiority (at least in Albert's opinion) in the mental arena.
✔ Forensics — Albert is really good at his job. He has advanced training in chemistry and forensic studies, and his first namedrop in the series occurs when Cooper asks Diane to "give this one to Albert; he's a little more on the ball than [the forensic analyst that had previously worked on the Blue Rose cases]"; later, Coop describes him to Harry as a "forensics genius". He's also a medical examiner, and demonstrates his expertise on both the living and the dead over the course of the show — on Cooper in the aftermath of his shooting, and on the various autopsies he performs on the dead bodies that rack up as the series progresses. Despite having effectively no assistance from Coop in identifying the shooter and nothing to go on save for "a right-handed person between five-foot-six and five-foot-ten", a bullet belonging to "a Walther PPK", and some fibers he "hoovered off the carpet" at the scene of the crime, Albert eventually manages to piece together enough evidence to identify Josie Packard as the shooter — and then keeps building the case against her until that conclusion is undeniable.
✔ Reliability — When Albert takes on a job, you better believe that job is getting done and getting done right — even if he has to pull an all-nighter after driving the better half of a day while running on presumably nothing more than nicotine, caffeine, and sarcasm in order to do it. In Albert's own words: "What are we waiting for? Christmas? We've got work to do, dammit! They're putting this girl in the ground tomorrow and we've wasted half the day traveling out here to the middle of nowhere." Put him on a case and he is damn well going to see it through to the end, regardless of who or what might try to get in his way. And woe betide anyone who does.
✔ Conviction — Albert's firmness in his beliefs is basically impenetrable. As he says to Sheriff Truman, he is "a naysayer and hatchet-man in the fight against violence" who "pride[s] [him]self in taking a punch and...[will] gladly take another" because of his belief in following the examples of "Gandhi and King". And indeed, he does take a punch from Sheriff Truman without any semblance of physical retaliation (and in an unused script, takes another from Pete Martell after dryly remarking, "Not again"); as unpleasant and scathing as he can be verbally, he's devoted to his belief in pacifism, and will sooner turn the other cheek to a physical assault than strike back with one of his own.
✘ Social Deficiency — The personality section covers it pretty comprehensively, but to briefly reiterate: Albert is an unrepentant jerk to everyone and pretty much always has something bitingly sarcastic to say about the people he interacts with. While it's not impossible to earn his respect — Harry, for example, manages to go from a "chowderhead yokel" and "blithering hayseed" in Albert's eyes to someone worthy of a Manful Bro-Hug™ by the end of the series — he can be really unpleasant to be around, and can usually irritate even the most easygoing of people. As Harry so eloquently puts it, "Albert, you make fun of everyone and everything and then act like you deserve an award for it."
✘ Superiority — Also covered in the personality section, but worth mentioning again: Albert frequently condescends to people and tends to behave as though he's superior to them, both in intelligence and in morality. He's impatient with people because he's already preemptively judged them and found them wanting, and he won't just say, "I'm taking this piece of evidence back to the FBI lab"; he'll work in a casual jab at the deficiencies of the local facilities while he's at it. Summed up most concisely, when Sheriff Truman remarks that he's heard Albert is "real good at what [he does]", Albert's natural response is simply "Yeah, that's correct."
✘ Pacifism — The flip side of his strength of conviction: Albert is a stalwart pacifist who will sooner get punched in the face than strike back with aggression of his own. Though he does have his occasional moments of physicality — usually in the form of grabbing a person's shirt or lapels when he's attempting to get their attention or make a point — he rejects violence and retaliation, and only seems to resort to those moments of physical assertiveness as a response to someone else's aggressive actions. This will probably not bode well for him in a world that revolves around battling Pokemon and challenging Gym Leaders.
✘ Nicotine — A comparatively small flaw, but he does smoke and as we all know, that's bad for you. It's also presumably bad for anybody who tries to get between him and the pack of cigarettes, but I digress.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Breeder!
Starter: A Poochyena, please.
Password: Scrambled Eggs
Samples
First Person Sample:
[Good morning, Johto! Today, for your viewing pleasure, we have...what appears to be the rather dark and damp interior of a Poochyena's mouth, complete with glistening teeth and a tiny smear of drool at the edge of the camera feed. Not a very decent view, but that's okay, because there's plenty of audio to make up for that — and it seems we've tuned in right in the middle of some rather belligerent ranting...]
—ow what kind of game you're playing here, lady, but I have neither the time nor the patience to stand around while some overzealous kitchen marm tries to stuff me full of animal crackers and ship me off to elementary school. I want to know who you are, I want to know where I am, and most importantly I want to know how the hell you got me here to this godforsaken boondocks in the first place. I have plenty of work to do, and I do not have time for your inane prattle. Just give me some answers so I can be on my way.
[There is some background chatter here, which careful listeners may recognize as Mom's standard speech.]
Listen, June Cleaver, I'll make this very clear: I could not care less about these Puggymans you insist on rambling continuously about. The question is simple: where the hell am I?
[More background chatter! Are we sensing a trend?]
Hn. Forget it.
[Footsteps begin to tap across the linoleum, and in response, the camera begins to shake; evidently, the owner of those teeth is trotting over to give her own greeting to this rather angry newcomer to Johto. And it appears, when the footsteps pause, that he's just noticed her.]
What do you want?
[More shaking of the camera, and then suddenly there is bright light and a whole lot of twisting and rotating as the man apparently takes the Gear out of the dog's mouth and turns it over in his hand, twisting it every which way and tapping it as he inspects it. People who get motion sickness, this is really not the video for you.]
...what is this, a toy or some kind of Star Trek — HELLO.
[And hopefully no one had their volume turned up on their gear, because the man holding it is using his Outside Voice as he addresses the microphone that is apparently about three inches away from his face at the moment.]
I DON'T SUPPOSE YOU'VE GOT SOME ANSWERS FOR ME, MR. SCOTT?
Third Person Sample:
Much as he loathes to admit it, lately Albert's been catching himself almost starting to miss Twin Peaks.
Which, he mentally clarifies a moment later, is not to suggest that there is anything particularly likeable about Twin Peaks, but merely to provide a benchmark for just how much of an infuriatingly loathsome burg this dreamworld called Johto really is.
He's not entirely convinced it isn't a dreamworld, for the record. Sure, he's here, and seeing is believing and all that related garbage, but he's seen a lot of things come across his autopsy table in his years with the Bureau and he's long since learned that what you see is very rarely what it seems. That's why you have to get down into the details, the minutiae, the seemingly irrelevant specks and scraps of evidence that a less competent person would overlook or write off; every action has a reaction, and there's no such thing as a move that doesn't leave its mark somehow or another. It's not about trusting what he sees. It's about taking those tiny details and jigsawing them together to find out what kind of picture comes out at the end of the puzzle, and then looking to compare how well it matches to the one they were selling on the box.
And some of the things he's seeing just don't make sense, not by any line of logic native to the planet Earth. There is no way there's an evolutionary purpose for a turtle with cannons sprouting out of its shell, much less how it managed to develop them in the first place, or where the hell its ammunition is coming from. No behavioral psychology outside of outright brainwashing or Stockholm Syndrome can answer why one of these creatures can go from feral and retaliatory one minute to docile and friendly the next, just by hitting it upside the head with a ball. And there cannot possibly be valid rationale, not according to any form of natural law known to man, that can explain how a Diglett can sit on a couch, but supposedly that's Johto, and apparently that's the most explanation he's ever going to get.
It's the explanation Coop gave him, at least. Of course, Coop also takes advice from logs and conducts his investigations on leads given to him in dreams by giants, so that's not necessarily saying a whole lot in terms of alleviating the skepticism he has about this place. But in all the time he's known Dale Cooper, the man's never failed to have an uncanny knack for getting it right when it counts — regardless of how he arrives at that answer — and so as much as he dislikes it, Albert's grudgingly resigned himself to accepting it for the duration. Or at least until he can come up with a better one of his own.
But that doesn't mean he has to like it here, in this absurd place with tinny stereo music that never shuts up, this place that's rife with hotheaded teenage punks who are convinced they're heroes, loudmouth little girls with so much spirited optimism that you could choke on it, and of course, who could forget the delusional chowderheads who claim they're actually aliens and gladiators and ponies. It's like the entire world is a hellhole specifically calculated to grate on his every last nerve; Twin Peaks, for all its numerous faults, had at least had a diner that served some fairly decent pie.
Of course, Johto has Cooper. He supposes that's one thing.
(It's oddly needling to see him look so happy here. The broad Coop's been running around with is a real piece of work, make no mistake, but there are moments when Albert almost finds he can't even hate her because he hasn't seen Coop's face light up like that since — well. Since before Pittsburgh.)
And he's got this mutt, too, a shaggy wolfdog mix that Coop excitedly identified as "Gandhina" the first time he saw her — claiming he heard that one in a dream, as well. It's a stupid name, but in lieu of anything better, it stuck. (Though it's almost a shame she didn't turn out to be male, or Albert would've cheerfully dubbed her Deputy Andy Brennan, instead.) It's not so bad, really, having a dog, even if he's been saddled with her against his will and if asked, he would've catalogued himself as more of a cat person, anyway. If nothing else, the relaxing psychological effects of being a pet owner will help keep his blood pressure down.
And if he's going to be stuck in a place like Johto, he thinks as he picks a red rubber ball half-covered in saliva out of the grass with two fingers and gives it a heave for her to chase again, his blood pressure's going to need all the help it can get.