Favorite Characters: Mariana Adams Foster (The Fosters)

When I started watching The Fosters, I wasn’t a fan of Mariana – however, I suspect I wasn’t really supposed to be.  At the start of the series, she’s drawn as a fairly typical shallow teenage girl.  She’s materialistic, does stupid things for boys, and lets her desire to be popular dictate what she does.  To make matters worse, she initially gives Callie, our eyes into the show, the brush-off.  Nothing about her screams “awesome character,” but oh, the characterizations, they are a-changin’.  (Some Mariana-related spoilers.)

Let’s be real:  when the show begins, Mariana is kind of a brat.  In addition to copping attitude with Callie, some of her other shining season one moments include 1) pocketing her brother’s Ritalin to sell at school and 2) backing down from dancing with her moms at the lavish quinceañera they throw for her.  It’s not all hopeless, though.  It isn’t long before she’s more welcoming to Callie, and she instantly regrets not dancing with Stef and Lena, making it up to them later in the evening.  And the money she gets from selling pills?  It’s to give to her junkie birth mother, who has Mariana wrapped around her manipulative little finger – a stupid and dangerous thing to do, yes, but understandable for a girl who, despite her loving family, can’t shake the feeling that she doesn’t belong like she should, that she’s not worth being wanted.

So yeah, Mariana is messed up.  She has issues and flaws, and her flaws have issues.  She pulls brain-headed moves when she gets too gaga over guys (someone told her to put her underwear in a boy’s pocket at a party, and she thought it was good advice – yeah.)  She feels uncomfortable connecting to her Mexican heritage because she feels her only link to it is her aforementioned junkie birth mother who essentially chose getting high over raising her children.  She compromises herself painfully easily in the hope of being better liked, and, along with many of the Adams Fosters, she has a talent for self-sabotage.

However, she’s also pretty great.  Some of it is seeing her learn to brave her flaws and work through her issues, but beyond that, the show has definitely taken her in cooler, more creative directions than where she was when she started.  I initially side-eyed Mariana’s “dance team” exploits in season 2.  My grounds were pretty reasonable.  She joins, not really because she’s all that interested in dancing, but as part of her desire to belong/fit in/be popular.  She attempts to mold herself into a rough copy of the other dance team girls.  When she overhears a teammate telling another girl that she only made the team due to affirmative action, she dyes her hair blond in an attempt to downplay her ethnicity.  Not having proven to be a natural dancer, she’s ready to throw her hands up and write herself off as hopeless.

Yet, in the midst of all that, Mariana keeps going.  She works her butt off, she immerses herself in the routines, and she learns not to take crap from two-faced girls who make assumptions about her.  Around the same time, she joins another school club – STEM.  As you might imagine, this one doesn’t have the same popularity associations.  Nope, Mariana joins because she’s capable, and she codes because she likes it.  By the end of season 2, she’s applying her coding skills to her dance routines to put on an incredible spectacle at competition.  And that’s what I love.  She’s girly and techie.  She’s insecure, but she’s learning to stand up for herself.  She likes to look sexy, but she doesn’t go further with guys than she’s ready to.  She’s damaged and caring, naïve and intelligent.  She’s not just one thing; she’s so much more.