Reply To: Still Life: What do you think of Agent Nichol?

This may be way off base, but I’ve always thought that Nichol perhaps had some form of Autism Spectrum Disorder, which, according to the National Institute of Mental Health website, is “a neurological and developmental disorder that affects how people interact with others, communicate, learn and behave.” She has something lacking in her ability to read people and “get” what’s going on. She often doesn’t grasp the obvious, or have much of a sense of humor, it seems. And yet she’s got a good brain, and she’s capable of having loving family ties, if not social. I inwardly cringed at her behaviors, but couldn’t help but wonder if this is why she couldn’t quite get what was missing in herself. I also wondered if her choosing to sit apart from the team all the time was from shyness, fear of rejection, arrogance, or a dislike of being physically close to others— I wanted her to see a therapist!
I’m not sure that Gamache doesn’t like her, per se. She’s certainly not his favorite person that he’d love to hang out with socially, and he certainly is frustrated by her, angered by her behavior, and eventually feels that she is too much of a liability to do effective work on this case, but I didn’t see his sending her packing as something so personal as like or dislike; he made a good executive decision, based on her actions. As we learn throughout the series, he’s dealt with numerous cantankerous, irritating people in his life and often grows to like or even love them, because he seeks out and often finds the good in people, but in her case, I felt he was not invested personally in her so much as professionally, and he didn’t have time to deal with her attitude and mistakes.
I think that perhaps her biggest sin in his book during this investigation was her lack of empathy and inability to follow orders (lying wasn’t appreciated, either). He needed her to be capable of these things to get the job done, and she wasn’t.