Line #9 Series/TheFosters


1	[[quoteright:302:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_fosters_1577.jpg]]
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3	The Fosters is a drama on Creator/ABCFamily. Produced by Nuyorican Productions, a company owned by Creator/JenniferLopez, it first aired in 2013. The series revolves around an interracial lesbian couple who have both biological and adoptive children together. They decide to take in Callie (Creator/MaiaMitchell), a troubled teen, as their new foster child.
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5	Not to be confused with the Creator/CartoonNetwork [[WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends animated series about imaginary creatures that reside in a foster home.]] Also not related to the 1970s UK television series ''The Fosters'', a BBC adaptation of the US series ''Series/GoodTimes''. This ''may'' explain why the BBC acquired the spinoff [[NoExportForYou but not the parent show.]]
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7	The series concluded in summer 2018. A spinoff titled ''Series/GoodTrouble'', starring Creator/MaiaMitchell and Creator/CierraRamirez as Callie and Mariana Adams Foster respectively premiered in January 2019.
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9	!!Tropes:
10	* AbortedArc: Lena changing the points of Jude's admission test so he could attend the school she works for. It never is mentioned again nor is his trouble of being too uneducated for his age.
11	* ActorAllusion: Creator/StephenCollins, who plays Lena's dad, becomes ordained via the internet in order to perform Lena and Stef's wedding. Characters even refer to him as "The Reverend" multiple times throughout the episode. [[Series/SeventhHeaven This is not the first time Collins has played a reverend]].
12	* AbusiveParent: Obvious with the main plot of the show.
13	** Callie mentions in the pilot that she had been hit by plenty of her foster parents, and before moving in with the Fosters, she attacked her foster father's car with a bat when he started beating Jude.
14	** Jesus and Mariana's mom was a drug addict (though her treatment can border more on neglect)
15	** Also implied with almost all of the foster youth that are shown on the show, especially the characters at Girls United, AJ and Ty, and the manager of the drop- in center.
16	** Jack, Jude's new friend in season 3B is also being abused by the older boys at his group home, and Jude's boyfriend, Connor moved in with his mom in order to get away from his dad, who physically punished him.
17	** This is taken to a new height in episode 3x19 when Jack is [[spoiler: murdered]] by his foster father.
18	* ActionMom: Stef, by virtue of being a cop.
19	* AllLesbiansWantKids: Stef and Lena already had Brandon when they adopted Mariana and Jesus. They care for children so much that they agree to foster and later plan to adopt Callie and Jude. Lena also desperately wants to have a biological child. [[spoiler: By the end of Season 1, she is pregnant and the whole family is thrilled.]]
20	** [[spoiler: after the timeskip near the end of the show, Stef and Lena foster one more kid, Corey]]
21	* AmicablyDivorced: Mike and Stef. They are partners on the police force for a time, they make an effort to parent Brandon together, Mike is civil to friendly with Lena, as well as acting as a family friend/father figure to Stef and Lena's shared kids. Any tense moments the do have are because they disagree about family issues.
22	* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Averted. Callie gets the crap beat out of her in the first episode and her face is still bruised into the second episode. A male version occurs as well when [[spoiler: Brandon gets his hand crushed in a car door. The injury sticks and, as it is an extremely serious injury, permanently affects the nerves in his hand to the point that it affects his music playing ability.]]
23	* BerserkButton:
24	** For all their teasing and Becca's attitude towards Cole, when Cole gets called a freak for trying to use the men's bathroom on a field trip, ''all'' of the Girls United group (sans Callie) stand up for him.
25	** Stef, when one of the kids in her class calls her breasts a positive asset following her mastectomy.
26	* BigDamnHeroes: [[spoiler: Callie when she goes down into a burning basement to help rescue Becca]]
27	* BittersweetEnding: "I Do". On one hand, [[spoiler: Lena finally gets the wedding she's always wanted and Stef is able to overcome the lingering doubt about being gay that was instilled by her father. Also, they decide to adopt Jude and Callie.]] On the other hand, [[spoiler: Liam gets off scott free, Lexi and her family is temporarily leaving the country but since they're undocumented the logistics are unclear, and Mike takes much of the flak for the shooting since he feels that Stef has a family to think of and revealing the truth at this point would kill her career. Also, Callie decides that running away is the solution to the problem of the attraction she and Brandon have.]]
28	* BrotherSisterIncest: They're not biologically related, but the romantic tension between Brandon and Callie causes a lot of drama. [[spoiler: They eventually decide to not pursue it, as both realize Callie needs a family more than she needs a boyfriend]].
29	* ButNotTooBi: Callie shares a mutual attraction and a kiss with Ximena after having had relationships or attractions to nothing but guys throughout the series. Unfortunately, this isn't expanded upon once Ximena's story arc is resolved.
30	* ChickMagnet: Brandon
31	* ClosetKey: Jude, for Connor.
32	* ConflictBall: Callie in season 3 episode 2, when Jude wants to invite Donald, his biological father and the man who raised Callie for years, to a Father's Day dinner at their house, and Callie shows instant hatred for both the idea and for Donald, saying that he never cared about them, only signed his parental rights away to get them out of his life, and that he killed their mother. This goes against a previous episode, where Donald tells Callie he cares about them and wants to eventually regain custody, but she begged him to sign the papers to relinquish his rights, and Callie had specifically stated that he didn't kill her mother.
33	* CPRCleanPrettyReliable: Averted. When [[spoiler: Stef is shot and we finally see her post-surgery in the emergency room, the room is littered with blood, tools are in disarray, various waste (bags and containers) litter the floor, and it looks pretty much like what it is: the aftermath of a lot of people worried and working to save a life rather than keep things neat.]]
34	* DarkAndTroubledPast: Callie, fresh out of juvie, [[spoiler: though in truth, she doesn't really have any sort of rebel streak. The families she's lived with before the Fosters, on the other hand, may have been less than stellar. She was even [[RapeAsBackstory raped]] at one point. As a result, she's learned to mostly just shut up since people rarely listen and trust her. This in turn means she'll silently take the blame for whatever people assign to her.]]
35	* DepravedBisexual: [[spoiler: Monte]] comes close to this trope, interfering with [[spoiler: Lena and Stef's]] relationship. She tells Lena that she set her preference on a dating site to men and women, because why not try women after [[spoiler: she ended things with her husband]]?
36	* DisappearedDad: Naturally in a show revolving around {{Foster Kid}}s. Almost all the fathers of the Adams Foster kids have been absent for various reasons.
37	** Callie and Jude's father Donald Jacob was sent to prison for manslaughter after he [[DrunkDriver drove drunk]], causing their mother's death in an accident, so they were put into the system. In the back-ten premiere, Callie learns their dad had been out of jail for a year and hadn't contacted her. Eventually when they do make contact, Donald signs away his parental rights so they can be adopted by Stef and Lena. But later ...
38	** It turns out Callie's biological father is someone else from her mother's past named Robert Quinn, who had no idea Callie was his child.
39	** Jesus and Mariana meet their birth father, Gabe in the second half of season 3, who the twins have never even met, [[DaddyHadAGoodReasonForAbandoningYou because he's on the sex offender registry for his relationship with their birth mother Ana because he was 18 and she was only 15.]]
40	* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale: In quite possibly the weirdest zig-zag on the show. A major part of season 1 is Callie coming to terms to her sexual assault by an adult foster brother in a previous home. This is explicitly addressed as not only illegal, but morally wrong, particularly since Callie was 14 when it started. The following season, Brandon is assaulted by his father's girlfriend while he's drunk. When his parents find out, the show rightly addresses the criminality of the action (the girlfriend is arrested), but the morality is treated differently. The overall vibe is that Brandon is somehow more responsible for his assault, and he carries a lot of guilt about it for years after. He feels that he should have somehow prevented it and that it was a betrayal of his father, a feeling his dad doesn't really deny. His guilt about it comes up in a significant way in a later season, and it's ''Callie'' that has to tell him that it was ''wrong,'' in addition to being illegal, and that it wasn't sex, he was raped--because despite being the child of two police officers and one school principal, none of them ever mentioned it.
41	* TheDreaded: Liam.
42	* DrunkDriver: Callie's BackStory. Dad [[spoiler: drove drunk and crashed, killing her mother and at least two other people, going to prison for manslaughter]] leaving her and Jude in foster care. Call a cab, people!
43	* ElaborateUniversityHigh: On the ''oceanfront'', no less. Perhaps made more unusual in that it's a charter school (which receives less public funding per student than a non-charter school in exchange for greater flexibility).
44	* {{Ephebophile}}: [[spoiler: Mike's girlfriend in season 1, Dani, sleeps with a drunk Brandon moping over his heartbreak over Callie and bad decisions, then has the nerve to point fingers saying ''Brandon'' had been drinking, when she was cognizant the whole time of what was happening and was the adult in the situation.]]
45	* FinancialAbuse: Mariana's been stealing Jesus's ADHD medication to give money to their biological mother.
46	* FirstEpisodeTwist: [[spoiler: Callie has a younger brother and he joins the family at the end of the episode.]]
47	* FlirtyStepsiblings: Between Brandon and Callie, [[spoiler: which goes as far as them having sex when Callie mistakenly believes she won't be able to get adopted.]] This naturally causes a lot of problems.
48	* FriendsRentControl: Averted. Stef and Lena's house is realistically nice for a mid-career professional couple, but it's old and small, and a bit crowded with five kids.
49	* FrozenInTime: The events of "I Do" happen shortly after the Supreme Court overturned California's Prop 8 ban on gay marriage. Given the production lead times, they must've made "go" and "no-go" versions.
50	* GoodStepmother: Lena fully intends to and does play a positive parental role in Brandon, her stepson's life.
51	* HalfSiblingAngst: Callie was raised all her life believing herself to be the older sister of her brother, Jude. However, she eventually finds out that she and Jude only share a mother, and she has another half-sibling, Sophia, on her father's side. While she insisted that Jude is her brother and Sophia is ''just'' her half-sister, both were understandably shaken up by the news. However, she and Sophia eventually start bonding, and Jude is okay with it.
52	* HappilyAdopted: The twins. Eventually, Jude and Callie.
53	* IJustShotMarvinInTheFace: Stef was clearly worried about the way Lena was waving that kitchen knife in the second episode, and was actively trying to avert this.
54	* InformedJudaism: Emma casually mentions she's Jewish when bringing over kugel for Stef's father's memorial. To the show's credit, it actually is a Jewish custom to bring food to those sitting at a shiva and kugel is an Ashkenazi dish that's not particularly well-known to the general public. Her last name is revealed in 5x04 to be Kurtzman.
55	* InsistentTerminology: Initially, Callie is fairly insistent that Jude is her brother while Sophia is her ''half''-sister, despite the fact that they have the same blood relation to her.
56	* InstantDeathBullet [=/=] OnlyAFleshWound: Averted; when [[spoiler: Stef]] is shot, it's presented firmly in the middle. The person isn't incapacitated immediately, but they're also not running around willy nilly. And even though the shot itself is perhaps a 5 on the regularly 10 point getting hit by a bullet movie list, it's treated as extremely life threatening. Even the aftermath is so since it's specifically mentioned that while said person survives the shooting, bullet fragments risk causing paralysis.
57	** When [[spoiler: Connor]] gets shot in the foot, he's hospitalized and told he's going to not be able to play baseball for awhile, but he's otherwise fine.
58	* JerkAss: Liam.
59	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Stef's dad, who apologizes to her for scaring her away from church.
60	* TheLadette: Emma. Part of her conflict with joining Mariana's dance team is that it makes it harder for guys to take her seriously in her other pursuits.
61	* LimitedWardrobe: Stef seems to live in her uniform. She also only seems to own one pair of pajamas to sleep in.
62	* MeaningfulName: ''The Fosters'' is about a family with the surname Foster who have foster children; this series has a DoubleMeaningTitle.
63	* MistakenForEvidence: mistaken for evidence of the wrong thing, at least. In the webisodes, one of the girls finds what she thinks is a pregnancy test in the trash, and speculates that it might be why Gabby ran away from Girls United. [[spoiler: It's actually not a pregnancy test, but a HIV test--Gabby is HIV positive]]
64	* MistakenForRacist: A variant. The Riveras, being fervent Catholics, are suspected by Stef and Lena to be homophobic, causing the Fosters to be leery about the church camp they're encouraging Jesus to attend with Lexie. Turns out [[spoiler: they're totally okay with gay relationships, because "what's more Christian than family?"]]
65	* MissingMom: For Jesus and Mariana, we come to find that their birth mother is a drug addict and was pretty much incapable of raising them. For Callie and Jude, [[spoiler: their family was driving and their father happened to be drunk at the time, resulting in him running a red light and T-boning another car. Their mother was killed, their father sent to jail for manslaughter, and the two of them going into the foster system since there were no other relatives.]]
66	* MyBelovedSmother: Lena's mom manages to be this despite the fact that her daughter is fully grown.
67	* NakedPeopleAreFunny: In the SeriesFinale, Stef and Lena have a [[TwoPersonPoolParty naked frolic in the ocean]] at night - only to [[GoneSwimmingClothesStolen have their robes picked up by an oblivious resort worker]] leaving them [[NakedPeopleTrappedOutside stranded]]. In their next scene, they are scurrying across the property using palm fronds as HandOrObjectUnderwear before taking some {{Modesty Towel}}s from a hamper. Then to get a new key, they have to walk up to the front desk receptionist, clad in their towels, where they're relieved there's nobody else up and about - only to run into Brandon's soon-to-be parents-in-law. HilarityEnsues when they awkwardly try to explain their predicament without admitting anything, but give up bashfully.
68	* NWordPrivileges: The show has openly used certain words have have been used to hate on homosexuality but when it comes to what Lena's half-brother said to their mother, it isn't said what exactly he said.
69	* OrphanageOfFear:
70	** Not Stef and Lena themselves but since a shockingly high percent of foster kids in Real Life are subject to sexual abuse, there's a strict rule about no relationships between foster/adopted siblings; Stef mentions this when it's suggested that Brandon might be attracted to Callie and vice versa.
71	** The foster father Callie and Jude had before Stef and Lena (the one who got Callie sent to juvie) was extremely abusive, terrible enough that Callie was willing to be sent back to juvie in order to get Jude out of his house.
72	* ParentalAbandonment: Jesus and Mariana were abandoned by their drug-addicted birth mom, and later "returned" by their foster parents, which is how they met the Fosters.
73	* PetTheDog: The audience already knew that Rita cared for the girls at Girls United, but the scene where she [[spoiler: brings Cole home from the hospital]] shows her tough veneer cracking just a tiny bit
74	* PlayingTheHeartStrings [=/=] LonelyPianoPiece: At the same time when Callie and Brandon play a duet. The impromptu song becomes the closing background music for the episode.
75	* RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic: Veers slightly towards more realistic dictation as people tend to interrupt each other/talk over each other, there are occasional pauses in dialogue, and people drop 'ums' and 'ahs' regularly. Similarly, conversations are often presented in natural arrangements; when Callie and Mariana talk during bedtime, Callie spends the first part of the conversation talking into her pillow away from Mariana.
76	* ShoutOut: One piece of graffiti in Wyatt's house reads [[Series/DoctorWho "Bad Wolf"]].
77	* SkinnyDipping: In "Under Water", dreading her upcoming mastectomy for inevitable breast cancer, Stef imagines herself swimming peacefully in a pool naked. After Stef asks Lena to take her swimming during a heartfelt conversation, Lena indulges her by sneaking into an absent neighbor's backyard at night and having a TwoPersonPoolParty in their pool.
78	** In the SeriesFinale, [[CallBack the moms go skinny dipping at night again]] at a beachside resort - which ends up a case of NakedPeopleTrappedOutside after an [[GoneSwimmingClothesStolen oblivious resort worker fetches their robes]] as well as their room key, leading to NakedPeopleAreFunny (see above).
79	* SpotTheThread: Liam has a pretty good thing going with a scam where he has Sarah (his former foster sister who Callie, suspecting he was sexually abusing Sarah like he had abused her, had managed to get out of his house) steal Callie's identity to buy a whole lot of expensive handbags online and then resell them on Craigslist. Even when they get busted, they both maintain that Liam didn't know that Sarah had stolen Callie's identity, ruining her credit. Then Callie is able to figure out what Liam had overlooked: [[spoiler: She has Stef check Sarah's credit too, showing that it had been ruined as well by Liam pulling the scam with some other girl.]] Sarah immediately turns on Liam, confessing his role in the scheme and to having sexual relations with him (which, since she's a minor, meant Liam is going to jail for a looooong time).
80	* TheTopicOfCancer: Brandon's girlfriend Grace has leukemia.
81	* TokenMinority: Mariana overhears the captain of the dance team tell her friend (who Mariana beat out for a spot) that this was the reason, something which gnaws at Mariana for a long time. Hayley finally tells her the real reason she was picked: [[spoiler: Lena had been cutting a lot of programs in order to save costs, and the team figured she wouldn't cut the dance team if her daughter was on it.]]
82	* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: Callie and Mariana are a somewhat subdued example (Callie is a bit more of a tomboy than Mariana, but is still fairly girly herself). Emma and Lexi are a bit more pronounced example.
83	* WackyCravings: [[spoiler: Lena]] eats spaghetti and potato chips for breakfast because "the baby wants it".
84	* WhatTheHellHero: The Girls at Girls United collectively call Callie out for wanting to live on her own as opposed to working towards getting back into the Fosters' house; they all come from broken or unsupportive homes, and think Callie is throwing away her life to not be trying to get back with a loving and supportive family. She eventually realizes she needs a family more than just a relationship with Brandon.
85	* YoureNotMyFather:
86	** Inverted. Jesus considers (and calls) Lena and Stef his moms while he refers to his birth mother by her first name (Ana). His sister is a little more forgiving with their birth mother though it's suggested she really shouldn't be.
87	** Likewise, when Callie [[spoiler:finds out that she and Jude have different biological fathers, she flat-out tells her birth father Robert Quinn that she still considers Jude's biological father to be her father, not him.]]

Context Series / TheFosters