Random Worst Fictional Therapists in Television History (14 items)

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  (#14) Linda Martin (Lucifer)

  Counseling the Devil is no easy job, we’ll give her that. Still, Linda and Lucifer started off their relationship by exchanging therapy for sex, a clear ethics violation. Hell, a clear everything violation. Linda also sees Lucifer outside their therapy sessions, blurring the lines between friend and counselor. Furthermore, when Lucifer eventually reveals his true, demonic face to Linda, she reacts like no therapist should. Shock, silence, and terror. Not that there’s a rule book out there for dealing with the ruler of Hell, but still. A bit more self-control would have been advised.

   
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  (#2) Isaac Roa (How to Get Away with Murder)

  Roa is tasked with preventing Annalise from falling off the wagon after she gets sober. A pretty straightforward job, one would think. And yet, their relationship becomes problematic in a matter of a couple of episodes. Viewers find out that Annalise is actually a trigger for Roa, who is dealing with severe mental health issues of his own. Instead of referring her to another therapist, he becomes way too invested in the lawyer’s life. He pushes her too hard to reveal information she’s not ready to share, even when she points this out. And he even stalks another client, Bonnie, at work after she quits therapy.

   

  We’re not experts or anything, but we feel we should make a public service announcement for our less experienced readers here: if your therapist is full-blown stalking someone— even if that someone is also a client— you are dealing with a bad therapist.
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  (#5) Faith Wolper

   

  This is one of our favorite, hilariously bad therapists. As Christian’s therapist, Faith is nothing but professional. She pushes him to wonder whether he’s in love with his partner, Sean, basically causing him to have an existential crisis. She also sleeps with Christian and becomes obsessed with him, to the point where she gets a “Property of Christian Troy” tattoo. She also eventually tells Sean about Christian’s insecurities, information that should have stayed confidential. If there’s a Bingo card for bad therapist behavior, Faith is filling. It. Up.

   
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  (#7) Andrea Bayden (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt)

  Kimmy Schmidt is a wonderful person who unfortunately had a terrible mother and even more unfortunately was kidnapped at a young age and trapped in an underground bunker for years. In short, she deserves a really, really good therapist.

  Unfortunately, she ended up with Andrea Bayden, a therapist by day and thirsty alcoholic by night (and also, often, by day as well). Andrea genuinely wants to help Kimmy and encourages her to stand up for herself, but she’s a full-blown alcoholic, and alcohol and therapy do not mix. Andrea provides a few very helpful insights for Kimmy, but by the end of their “sessions,” the relationship is more about Kimmy helping Andrea than the other way around.

   
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  (#10) Jean Holloway (Gypsy)

  Even the premise of this Netflix show hinted at Holloway being not so great at her job. After all, the series follows a psychotherapist who secretly infiltrates the private lives of her patients. How involved is she, exactly? Well, she starts searching out patients’ exes and family members and other people they discuss in therapy in real life, under an alias. Not only that, but she also slips multiple times, mentioning things about her clients’ friends and relatives in therapy that she couldn’t possibly know. Oh, and did we mention she (potentially) coaxed a former patient to burn a house down? Since the show was canceled, we’ll probably never know if this is true. Still, she’s as shady as bad TV therapists get.
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  (#13) Tracey Clark (Ally McBeal)

  Clark’s methods are clearly unorthodox, from calling Ally nuts to advising her to come up with a theme song for her life. An advocate for smile therapy (a nonsense thing), Ally’s therapist tried to help her client with some tough love. It may have made for hilarious television, but we bet you wouldn’t like to be treated by someone as kooky as Clark in real life.

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