The Waiting Room: a true-ish horror story I wrote in 2011, right after a night in the ER with my sister. She’d been throwing up for 15 hours, my mom drove two miles an hour under the speed limit to get her there, and I took notes on everyone in the waiting room. Then I went home, wrote it all down, and sent it to my sister. (I probably shouldn’t have.)

Actor, advocate and writer on Netflix’s Big Mouth, Brandon Kyle Goodman joins me to read every muscularly thick, flabby-armed line of it.

Plus: what a hospital actually smells like, Brandon’s ER nightmare on the set of Modern Love, our porn star names, why the Scrubs finale is sacred, and how my mom made me a writer.

Character Development is a comedy podcast where actors perform the stories I wrote years ago (mostly as a teenager), and we roast every word.

New episodes every Tuesday

Follow me @VinceInFiction on TikTok & Instagram

0:00 Welcome Brandon Kyle Goodman

2:00 The worst script Brandon ever read

4:00 Brandon vs. horror movies

6:00 The story begins

7:00 What does a hospital smell like?

10:00 Brandon’s ER nightmare on Modern Love

13:00 The waiting room

15:00 Scrubs, diabetes and Brandon’s aunt

16:00 The Scrubs finale is sacred

18:00 Reboots: Scrubs vs. Will & Grace

22:00 Still on page one

24:00 Our porn star names

26:00 “I wasn’t out as bi back then”

27:00 Muscularly thick

28:00 Back to the ER

30:00 Brandon’s urgent care regulars

36:00 Every line of this really happened

39:00 “2011 Vincent, you’re cooking”

45:00 The unnecessary hyphen

47:00 The “I Pooped Today” shirt

48:00 Screws, Peppy and Sir Enormous

50:00 Too many characters, not enough names

53:00 A traumatic childhood moment

55:00 Mommy issues, the episode

59:00 Patient number 727

1:02:00 Lost in the white hallways

1:04:00 The ending explained

1:05:00 Moving out of mom’s house

1:09:00 How our families dealt with grief

1:11:00 You can’t blame your parents

1:13:00 Writing as therapy

1:15:00 How my mom made me a writer

1:19:00 Brandon’s book

1:20:00 Thanks for listening

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices