Nicole Franzelli

**Nicole Patterson "Nicky" Franzelli** (**Née Thompson**) is the titular main protagonist of *No Good Nick*.

She is a teenage con artist who infiltrates the Thompson family home pretending to be a long-lost relative to get revenge on them for ruining her life and getting her father imprisoned.

## What Makes Her Magnificent?

* She is a skilled con artist who rose to become the best scammer of the Harbaugh’s operation, always delivering in the end.
* She is a very sympathetic character with a tragedy explaining her grievance with the Thompsons, as they ruined her family pizzeria business to promote Liz’s restaurant through unethical and downright corrupt actions like stealing their menus or Liz’s husband Ed violating bank rules to deny Nick’s father an extension on a loan he needed in a clear conflict of interest despite her father being a model member. This led to Nick’s father being rejected by every other bank and turning to the mob in an act of desperation and ultimately being forced to steal from a convience store that led to his arrest, the family’s business being shut down, and Nick being sent to foster care, specifically to the foster parents Sam and Dorothy Harbaugh who were scammers who turned their foster children into scammers themselves.
* She came up with a well-thought out plan to infiltrate the Thompson home as a orphaned relative, preparing fake documents as “evidence” and put on a master class of acting, pretending to be a scared girl with Dorothy (as her fake social worker) coming in to make her look even more credible, eventually convincing the Thompsons to let her stay for awhile.
* She manipulated the Thompsons into continuing along with her operation by pointing out how much money and valuables the Thompsons while in reality she would be stealing for her father.
* She comes up with a variety of clever schemes throughout the series to steal and scam people.
* She is incredibly charismatic, quickly ingratiating herself to the Thompsons and everyone she meets, learning what they like and playing to their emotions. She is even able to fool a trained social worker when she comes to the Thompsons home and successfully frame Jeremy, the only one skeptical of her, as the crazy one.
* She is also quite funny and a source of a lot of snark in the series.
* She is a master of thinking on her feet when unexpected developments occur or she makes a mistake. Some prominent examples include immediately and convicingly faked emotions to claim hat she sometimes used her mother’s last name to remember her by, when she changed her mind of drugging the family with their drinks, she “reflexively” pull the table cloth and destroyed all the plates and drinks, claiming she saw a bandaid in the bottle that everyone bought, rigging the ballot election when Jeremy bombed the debate to secure his victory and ensuring she wouldn’t be discovered.
* She deduced her love-interest Will was a Harbaugh foster kid just via him saying the saying “the juice isn’t worth the squeeze” which only the Harbaugh’s say and quickly framed him for ruining an operation to steal all the phones of her high school and getting caught by a cop. However, in reality that “cop” was really one of her and her dad’s friends and she got to sell all those phones and get the money for herself, completely playing Will and the Thompsons.
* She grows to genuinely care about the Thompsons over the course of the series and not wanting to steal and scam them anymore as they had been so good to her, only doing so after discovering her father owed money to the mob and his life was on the line.
* She decides to test the Thompsons to see if they regretted what they had done to her and her dad so she could abandon her vendetta against them, but when she realized they wouldn’t regret it, she stopped holding back and quickly framed Liz’s restaurant as a mice-infested hazard on live TV, got Jeremy framed and expelled as a test cheater and rigger of the election, and framed Molly as a corporate sellout through an elaborate scam and released security camera foot gate to expose her selfish ranting about her friends to the school, destroying her social life. In other words, she single-handhelds crushed the Thompsons within a few short moments.
* She felt bad about getting revenge after Jeremy confronted her and initiated her last plan that she had planned throughout all of part 2 to get the $100000 to pay off her father’s debt by stealing a diamond necklace of a client of Ed’s bank that she had ingratiated herself towards and gotten a job at, successfully doing so and foiling any unexpected hurdles. Afterwards, she planned to leave with a fake ID and bus ticket.
* After Ed unexpectedly got arrested for her bank robbery and Jeremy and Molly expose her true name, she comes clean, confessing and explaining everything, allowing Ed to walk free.
* She confronts her father and tells him that while the Thompsons weren’t in the right in their conflict, he’s not fully innocent either and can’t blame them for his imprisonment, since turning to the mob and stealing from a convenience store were fully his decisions.
* In the finale, she pulls a epic gambit to redeem herself fully. Knowing the Harbaugh’s would be coming to pick her up from the police station and force her to reveal the location of the necklace, she meets with the DA and convinces him to give her and her father immunity from any new charges and in exchange for taking them down and giving him the real necklace while he provided her with a fake. Next, she pretends to be hopeless and broken when the Harbaugh’s find her and order her to drug the Thompsons so they could steal the necklace, even planting a phone on her to listen and watch, but upon arriving at the Thompsons house, she tells them to be quiet and reveals a notepad to the Thompsons explaining what was about to happen and how she had a plan they needed to go along with. Then, after providing closure to the Thompsons over dinner, she seemingly knocks them out with drugged drinks, allowing the Harbaugh’s to come in and steal the necklace, knowing they would also go to steal all of the Thompsons valuables as well, only for the Thompsons to reveal they were conscious and corner them before the police burst in to arrest them once and for all. Just like that, Nick single-handedly outplayed and took down her criminal mentors, granted herself and her dad permanent immunity, and proved herself in the eyes of the Thompsons, later clearing up their name in other regards before reconciling with them as she was leaving town via bus and staying with them for a while.

## What Makes Her a Baddie?

* She is a con artist who has stolen thousands through robbery and various scams.
* She framed Jeremy as having stolen a test answer sheet and rigging the presidential election, resulting in him getting expelled.
* She released rats in Liz’s restaurant to frame it as a health hazard, resulting in it getting shut down by the health department.
* She ruined Molly’s social life by showing the whole school her rant. While Molly had it coming due to her selfish and unpleasant behavior towards her friends, she was the one who believed in Nick the most.
* Even if what the Thompsons did to her father was wrong, her getting revenge on them isn’t completely justified, as she herself note.