"Okay, what's your favorite viking erotica?" - Alex to Joy

Professor Alex Dorpenberger P.H.D is one of the two deuteragonists on Close Enough, the other being Bridgette Hashima. He is Josh Singleton's best friend, Bridgette's ex-husband, and a close friend of Emily Ramirez.

He is voiced by Jason Mantzoukas.

Biography

"Alex is Josh’s neurotic best friend from high school. He lives in the walk-in closet of the apartment he shares with Josh, Emily, Candice, and Bridgette (his ex-wife, but it’s not a big deal). Alex dreams of being a famous author but currently scrapes by as a community college professor. The only thing he enjoys more than proving he’s right is proving other people are wrong." ^[1]

Personality

Alex is a loyal and overall good friend who helps Josh on his wild adventures and helping his family life. He's also neurotic, depressed, and insecure about his intelligence, desiring respect from his students and needing to feel on top of everyone else. Although Alex is knowledgeable in anthropology and mythology (particularly Norse), he's shown to be a conspiracy theorist and an eccentric oddball. He strongly dislikes modern technology and finds moral superiority over it.

Physical appearance

Alex is a human man in his 30s. His ethnicity is unknown (possibly Greek). He is the tallest out of the main characters and has a pot belly. Alex has a light brown skin tone, shaggy black hair and a beard, and u-framed glasses. He wears a charcoal-grey sport coat with brown elbow patches over a light teal dress shirt, brown pants, a black belt with a bronze-coloured buckle, and greyish-brown shoes.

"Time Hooch" shows that three years previous to the start of the series his hair was styled the same except shorter. His other past selves within the last seven years have varying hairstyles ranging from shorter to the same way it looks now. When Alex first met Bridgette it was straighter and he had the bangs swooped over to the right side of his head.

Relationships

Friends

• Josh
• Emily
• Bridgette (ex-wife; current girlfriend)
• Randy Watson

Others

• Candice
• Pearle Watson

Trivia

• Alex is strikingly similar in appearance to Nuclear Nadal from the movie The Dictator, who was also portrayed by Jason Mantzoukas.
• He graduated from Stanford University.
• He once taught at UC Berkeley, and formerly taught at UCLA.
• Alex is sexually aroused by Viking-themed foreplay, role-playing, cosplay, and erotica.
• In "Cyber Matrix", Randy claims that Alex has a weird smell.
  • This episode also reveals that Alex doesn’t like the sixth season of Friends.
• In "Time Hooch", there were many things revealed about him: he once was into collecting 1960s memorabilia; he was born in 1982; he and Bridgette got married in Las Vegas; and he got fired from UCLA for dating Bridgette, who used to be his student.
  • This episode also implies that he was cloned from one of his time-displaced past selves, who was mistaken for a neanderthal after becoming trapped in amber.
  • Interestingly, his voice actor is nearly a decade older than he.
  • JG Quintel, the creator, was born in 1982
  • However, Season 2 may take place in 2020, as Jim Crunch died in "Josh Gets Shredded" - the first episode of that season - and his headstone states that he lived from 1960 to 2020.
  • It is possible that he befriended Josh when he was a junior or senior in high school, and Josh was a freshman or sophomore, since Josh is implied to be around 32.
• Alex's voice actor, Jason Mantzoukas, also voiced several characters on J.G. Quintel's previous series, Regular Show, including Sad Sax Guy and Scabby Grossman.
  • He also voiced Mr. Ross: the main antagonist in Regular Show: The Movie.

Appearances

Season 1

• "Quilty Pleasures"
• "The Perfect House"
• "Logan's Run'd"
• "Room Parents"
• "Skate Dad"
• "100% No Stress Day"
• "Prank War"
• "Cool Moms"
• "Robot Tutor"
• "Golden Gamer"
• "So Long Boys"
• "Clap Like This"
• "First Date"
• "The Canine Guy"

Season 2

• "Meet the Frackers"
• "Sauceface" (no lines)
• "Houseguest From Hell"
• "Joint Break"
• "Cyber Matrix"
• "Haunted Couch"
• "Man Up"
• "Handy"
• "Birthdaze"
• "Time Hooch"
• "World's Greatest Teacher"
• "Where'd You Go, Bridgette?"
• "The Erotic Awakening of A.P. LaPearle"
• "Secret Horse"

Season 3

• "Where the Buffalo Roam"
• "Venice Vengeance"
• "Hellspital"
• "Candice Candice Revolution"
• "Randy Free Solos"
• "Summer Job"
• "Bridgette the Brain"
• "Never Meet Your Heroes"
• "Robots with Benefits"
• "The Weird Kid"
• "Legend of the Pier"
• "Bike & Survive"
• "Halloween Enough"
• "The Perfect Couple"
• "Match Made In Valhalla"

Total: 43

Gallery

The gallery for Alex can be viewed here.

References