Brendan O'Driscoll (Tragedies and Triumphs)

Brendan O'Driscoll is Kimberly Hart's current boyfriend. A native of Galway, Ireland, he first came to the United States in 1995, landing first in New York. Shortly thereafter he transferred to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he met Kimberly in September of 1996. They began dating less than three months later.

Early life
Brendan was born in Galway, County Galway, Ireland, the third child of Patrick and Caitlin "Kate" (née Quinn) O'Driscoll (after his older brother John and his older sister Adrianne). His father was originally from County Cork while his mother was a native of Galway. Brendan's father is foreman at a hat factory and runs a slew of vending-machine and other rent-based operations on the side, while his mother is a former music teacher; Kate Quinn's upper-middle class family had initially opposed her union to a man of working-class background without any higher education, but were swayed when they met Patrick and his genteel charm and sharp instinct for business convinced them he would be a loving mate and capable provider. After John and Brendan, the O'Driscoll's had four more children: Kathleen, Cathal and Blanche.

Patrick and Kate were attentive parents who gave their children a solid but not overbearing traditional Roman Catholic education. Brendan was an adventurous but obedient child, fond of literature and serving as altar boy and participated in Scouts. As a non-rebel he did fairly well in school but never liked it, considering it dulled the day and never really taught him what he wanted to know. After about age 10 he also began to see his schoolmates as rather monolithic and boring, dreaming of hitting up a more cosmopolitan life in "the big cities."

At age 16, after completing Transition Year, Brendan announced to his parents his intention to stop school and move to Dublin. His parents took this news with a grain of salt, asking how he intended to work and eat, but Brendan already had a connection to be a server in a French restaurant and money saved up from odd jobs to stay at a B&B for a few nights until he found lodging. Soon they realized he was serious and they pleaded with Brendan to change his mind, just to finish secondary school, but his mind was made up. Fearing that he would rebel if they forced him, as they might have done while he was under 18, his parents allowed him to leave once he was ready, and so he took off in August.

Brendan's stint in Dublin was a professional success but a social and psychological disaster for him: he couldn't adapt to the kind of rough-and-rebel friends he found there, partly due to what he considered their blasphemous beliefs and rather vulgar language in contrast to his own devout and relatively posh upbringing, but especially because of their experimentation with hard drugs. Not wanting to admit defeat, he kept telling his parents things were going well, but by February, just two months before his 17th birthday, he could bear it no longer: he packed everything up, quit his job overnight and hauled back across the country to his parents' home, where he spilled out everything.

Though he'd missed a year, Brendan was determined to get back to "normal" provincial life and re-enrolled in Senior Cycle in fall 1993. However, this move only revived his previous determination to get away: not only was he now a year older than most of his classmates, but also, his urban experience had left him all the more "on-the-edge" and autonomous and he could scarcely handle his teachers talking to him as they did to any other teenager. Mutual irritation between Brendan and his parents due to the former's frustration at being "bound" also developed, though Brendan knew it wasn't really his parents' fault and did what he could to mitigate things.

Coming to America
In spring 1995, Brendan turned 19. He applied for and won a lottery visa to the United States right before receiving his Senior Cycle diploma. His mother's brother Damien and his wife Pauline (née Kennedy) were attorneys in New York and had a son Brendan's age, Lawrence, at Columbia University, so his social connections would be a bit more solid. Hearing of their son's plans to begin working as soon - and as much - as possible and take community college classes on the side, Brendan's parents asked him if he might not reconsider doing a full-time degree program at a more solid institution. But such programs were pricey in the U.S. and Europe didn't much interest Brendan:

"You made the good life for yourself, Da. I'm going to do the same!"

Arriving in New York late June, Brendan stayed a few weeks with his uncle, aunt and cousin while he easily found a job as a bartender in the Financial District in the hot mid-1990s New York economy and a nice flatshare in Brooklyn. Amazed by the sheer amount of money he could make, Brendan forewent enrolling in community college for a moment and took on as many shifts as he could, gaining great experience in the process and putting away quite a stash of cash.

By late January 1996, however, Brendan was feeling just a bit saturated by the workload, and too conscious of the fact that life wasn't "enjoyable" and that his options to "push ahead" would be limited if he did not do something about his education. The ever-present temptation to work 24/7 in New York, and the unbearable weather ranging from extreme hot to extreme cold, took their toll, and in March Brendan bought a sturdy old Ford and trekked down I-95 to Fort Lauderdale. Within a week he had a job running spectacular shifts at an Irish pub, a much lower rent and an enrollment certificate for Broward Community College, intending to spend two years on prerequisites there before finishing at Florida Atlantic University - or why not somewhere else in some other state?

Meeting Kimberly
One Friday evening in September 1996, a trio of young local female gymnasts - Kimberly Hart, Cindy McClintock and Marlene Cristiano - had dinner at the bar where Brendan worked. Planning a beach outing with a few of his friends from BCC the next day, Brendan invited the three to come along, and they hit it off - especially Kimberly and Brendan, but he knew that she was dating a boy her age from her home town of Angel Grove, California.

To Brendan's surprise, however, Kimberly asked him to be her date to Homecoming, to cover so she wouldn't have to say yes to any guys at Hollywood High School. Brendan found the evening quite enjoyable and thought Kimberly had rather enjoyed his company as well.

So although they were both busy, he made efforts to see her when he could over the next few weeks, including a weekend Yacht cruise with some school friends, and Kimberly showed herself open to these outings. So much so that Brendan began to forget - more or less voluntarily - that Kimberly was formally "taken." Then after a post-Thanksgiving dinner with their friends, a moment produced itself, and Brendan and Kimberly found themselves kissing. Shortly thereafter Brendan learned that Kimberly had broken up with Tommy and the two began dating.

But if Kimberly had thought that this would be a "normal" civilian relationship free of any Ranger-related oddities, she and especially Brendan were in for quite the surprise. While Kimberly was in Europe for a gymnastics exhibition and to see her mother over Christmas break 1996-97, she and Brendan and their families began receiving a series of verbal and physical "warnings" from a stalker, including the breaking of the arm of Kimberly's brother David and the bombing of the hat factory where Brendan's father worked (20 people were killed; however, Patrick was not inside at the time).

The warnings turned out to be from Lord Zedd, who wished to marry Kimberly after the recent death of Rita. To this end, Zedd forced the unknowing (see below) Brendan onto a cargo cruise to lure Kimberly in. After rescuing Brendan, Kimberly was forced to go with Zedd, but was rescued by the Power Rangers before being forced to say "I do."

Personality and interests
Brendan is energetic, fun-loving, poetic and thoughtful. He is very adventurous but firmly-grounded and straight-laced. Not a fan of formal schooling and not liking to be directly controlled, he will nevertheless acquiesce when it is clearly in his interest to do so.

Brendan has a bit of a temper, but he also comes to terms easily with his hot-headedness and is very quick to apologize and ask for forgiveness. He can be tough but he is very caring and wants to see others happy.

Though his mother's family and all his siblings are very musical and vocal, Brendan is not a particularly strong singer. He can play the piano and the tin whistle but is not particularly passionate about them, although he appreciates hearing good music.

Brendan was a scout, and enjoys more "adventure" sports than traditional field sports: hiking, hunting, fishing, sailing and swimming. He is also an avid fan of classic and historic literature as well as the "period" genre of movies.

Though not an alcoholic, Brendan is quite habituated to alcohol and has a fairly impressive tolerance.

Relationship to the Power Rangers
Brendan grew up in Europe, where stories of the Power Rangers tend to be vague and misbelieved. Consequently discovering that his girlfriend was in fact a former Power Ranger was a cultural shock on a level his experience among Dublin druggies could never parallel. He had a difficult time digesting and accepting it, but having witnessed Lord Zedd's transformations and teleportations, he could scarcely fault Kimberly for explaining them to him. Though acknowledging that he believed his girlfriend, he made it obvious that the facts were "too much" for him and Kimberly's Ranger-era adventures do not figure into their relationship.

Religious views
Brendan is a practicing Roman Catholic, like the vast majority of his extended family members. Ultramontane, orthodox and rigorous in outlook, he does occasionally cause consternation in his friends - even other Catholics - and even priests due to his scrupulous and exaggerated moral conscience. Surprisingly, however, Brendan is not one to bring up religion as a topic of conversation, though he will readily defend his beliefs if someone begins to make remarks. His faith and devotion quickly convinced Kimberly's strongly Catholic Bavarian paternal grandparents, with whom she boards in Florida, but Kimberly's father wasn't wholly impressed, owing to his alienation from religious practice after his divorce from Kimberly's mother.

Along with his brothers, Brendan attended St. Mary's College in Galway. As a child he served as an altar boy in his parish Church. The parish was pastored by the very conservative Canon André de Bourges, a Frenchman who, unusually for the hierarchically clerical Irish Catholicism of the 1980s, clashed repeatedly and publicly throughout the years with the more progressive Eamon Casey, then-Bishop of Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora. It was rumored that Casey attempted repeatedly to have Bourges transferred out but that the more powerful bishops of France feared the embarrassment that the outspoken royalist and anti-American right-wing political views of the charismatic priest would cause them if he were to return to France during the delicate Mitterrandist period, and thwarted his attempts. When, in 1993 (shortly after Brendan had returned from Dublin), Casey was forced to resign upon news that he had fathered a bastard child with American divorcée Annie Murphy, Bourges gave a fiery sermon not directly referencing Casey but sniffing at "Progressives who live as disastrously as they believe!"