Miss Parker is just as mysterious and ambiguous as her first name. Her parents both worked for the Centre (one still does) and she was born and raised there and ultimately ended up working for the Centre herself. When the show began she was as cold and depressing as the Centre; some of this coldness persists today. In season 2 she has mellowed out and sometimes shows an emotion rather than anger.

Her personality traits, including her deep-rooted hate, all stem from a traumatic experience when she was twelve years old. This event was none other than watching her mother being shot and killed in a Centre elevator. She regressed the memory of the tragic event soon after it happened and was brainwashed into thinking that her mother committed suicide -- the explanation the Centre officially gave to explain Catherine Parker's death. It wasn't until much later, in 1996, when Jarod, who also witnessed the murder, left her clues as to what really happened did she find out that the Centre was responsible for her mother's death.

Miss Parker began chasing Jarod alongside Sydney when he first escaped. In pursuit of Jarod, the mean-spirited, cigarette-smoking side of her personality was often revealed. Jarod's genius allowed him to escape every time. Parker and Sydney were close sometimes, but always at least one step behind Jarod. This greatly frustrated the high-strung Miss Parker to no end. It even gave her a terrible ulcer towards the end of season 1. Because of this she made her hate for Jarod known loud and clear, espeically to Jarod himself whenever she got the chance. Ironically, when she was twelve, around the time she met Jarod she gave him his first kiss from a girl. This, including other clues dropped here and there (one of the most recent in the 2/7/98 episode "Gigilo Jarod") suggested there might be a deep-seated ambiguous romance between her and Jarod. With her sharp resentment of Jarod and her pursuit to catch him, this might prove the old cliche' "you always hurt the ones you love."

Recently her pursuit of Jarod has taken a back seat to her ongoing pursuit to put her past together. The pieces of the puzzle have been provided by Jarod, who hopes Miss Parker can return the favor by getting him information on his own mysterious past. But Miss Parker does not know any more than Jarod does. Jarod knows a lot more about her past than he's revealed and won't tell her everything until she begins helping him uncover what he doesn't know about his family. Her hate for Jarod has also been displaced a bit for her hate for Mr. Raines (Richard Marcus) and the Centre, a hate that grows as she finds out more about the Centre. The Centre, for a long while, was all she had to believe in and the disillusionment has been near devastating.

Jarod lead Miss Parker to Ben Miller, the caretaker of a summer home in Maine that her mother visited each year before her untimely death. She found out that her mother and Ben Miller had an affair after talking to Ben, a sweet old man who misses Catherine Parker almost as much as Miss Parker. In a season 2 episode where she revisits Ben Miller to find out more about her mother, she comes to a shocking revelation: at the end Jarod instructs her to count the months backwards, starting with January when her birthday is and she discovers she was concieved over the summer and the only man Catherine Parker was with over the summer was Ben Miller. Thus, Mr. Parker (Harve Presnell) turns out to most likely not be her actual father.

The writers of The Pretender continue to do an outstanding job developing Andrea Parker's character, Miss Parker. Miss Parker is becoming more likable and multi-faceted. As said before she is mellowing out and the "gushy" side of her is coming through. This is especially evident in season 2 episodes where she comforts Sydney in times of need and even comforts and comes to understand Angelo, the psychic savant, whom she before reguarded as nothing more than an animal. She has even taken a shine to a child, Broots' daughter Debbie no less! Taking a shine to Broots, on the other hand, is going to take more time!