Andrew

Andrew is a major character. He was a regular character up until Season 5, where he became a recurring character for the remaining two seasons. Andrew was one of the four original Club members, along with Ben, Jake, and Rachel.

Development
Andrew is actually a combination of three characters; Garret, James, and Andrew. Andrew was Rachel's younger brother, James was a womanizer, and Garret was a student who was friends with Jake. None of these characters were working individually, so they were merged them into one character, naming them Andrew, giving them the womanizer traits of James, along with the friendship Garret had with Jake. This mishmash of characters proved troubling to develop storylines, as both the original Andrew and James were more or less background characters, and Garret was only meant to stick around for the first season.

Andrew was originally meant to be written out during the shows third season, akin to Garret's original exit, though through the poor excuse of his mom getting a job in another state. The writes felt like Andrew hadn't really done much, but still saw potential in the character, so decided to let him stick around. After brainstorming ideas, Andrew's first storyline to be conceived was his love triangle between Tina and Kitty. This got the ball rolling, leading the writers to ask why he was such a player, thus his dads cancer storyline was birthed. From here, the idea to make him be a doctor when he grows up, as well as his love affair with Billie, were also developed.

Though Andrew had a few storylines, none of them really felt like they were anything groundbreaking, unlike many other characters on the show who had at least one pivotal arc. One of the writers had suffered from trichotillomania and wanted to see it explored in media, and decided to give it to a character, which ended up being Andrew. The writers felt it was also important to use this storyline to show mental health and body image issues in young straight males, a change from these storylines usually being given to the gay or female characters. At this time, the plan to have Jake and Andrew bond at the start of Season Four due to Jake's memory loss had already been planned, and the idea of them having experienced similar feelings of anxiety proved dire in their quest to become friends. They had plans to have Andrew relapse with his TTM later in the show, but this never happened. This was supposed to happen sometime during the shows fifth season, but instead wanted to focus on Andrew being an advocate for mental health, providing help and support to others. According to the writers, in universe, his relapse happened off screen during the five year time jump, due to stress of exams.

Trivia

 * Andrew was the name originally given to Rachel's younger brother, but it was later changed to Tom.
 * Andrew was originally meant to move away to Arizona at the end of Season 3 after his mom got a job transfer. However, the writers felt his character hadn't been developed enough and kept him on the show. They also didn't have any plans to bring Andrew back for a mini-arc in the final season, and thus felt that he should remain on the show until the others graduated.