Pierce Hawthorne

Pierce Hawthorne joins the Spanish study group at Greendale Community College as a rich, retired moist-towelette-fortune heir who insists he's part of the gang even as everyone else quietly wishes he weren't. He's needy, boastful, and desperate to be seen as cool, dropping outdated slang and bragging about wealth to earn respect he doesn't realize he's forfeiting by trying so hard.

The writing uses him as the group's cautionary mirror — the loneliness underneath every character's insecurity, dialed up until it curdles into something sadder and funnier at once. Chase plays him with genuine wounded pride rather than pure buffoonery, so his constant need for validation lands as pathetic and, occasionally, unexpectedly human.