How to Be Indie

Marlon, Indie and Abi.

How to Be Indie is a Canadian Kid Com revolving around Indira 'Indie' Mehta and her two best friends Abigail 'Abi' Flores and Marlon Parks as they make it through junior high and Indie tries to get through life even with her strict Indian-Canadian parents. She also likes to occasionally speak to the audience.

And it has nothing to do with Alternative Rock.

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Tropes used in How to Be Indie include:

• Abusive Parents: Indie and Abi's mothers in How To Strike A Balance.
  • Indie's father to all three kids in How To Make A Comeback.
  • All of this is Played for Laughs
• Adults Are Useless: Averted, most of the time.
• Alpha Bitch: Evil Cousin Rubi.
• Asian and Nerdy: Abi.
  • Bollywood Nerd: AJ.
  • Hollywood Nerd: AJ's rival, Mike O'Donell
• Ascended Extra: Carlos Martinelli
• Bad Bad Acting: A couple of times

Marlon and Abi: Shame on you Indira Mehta, Shame!

• Book Dumb: Marlon and Carlos.
• But Not Too Foreign: Averted with Indira's parents, although their children are quite North Americanized, which can be Truth in Television.
• The Chessmaster: Indie tries to be this and 'Fails'
• Child Prodigy: Abi.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Marlon. Indie, Occasionally.
• Cool Big Sis: Chandra.
• Dawson Casting: Melinda Shankar (the actress who plays Indie) was 16 when filming, playing a 13-14 year old.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In How To Pass The Smell Test, Indie's joining of Carlos' crew is treated like an alcohol addiction, complete with 'I can quit anytime I want!' from Indie.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Carlos failed a paper on protein based adhesives so the science teacher glued him to the ceiling by his feet.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom/Department of Redundancy Department:

Chandra: Your funeral... of death.

• Double Meaning Title: How to be a girl nicknamed Indie, as well as how to be a girl that is Indian.
• Egg Sitting: "How to Get Gotten"
• Expy: Of Guitar Hero in one episode and of Dance Dance Revolution in another.
• Four Man Band:
  • The Hero: Indie
  • The Lancer and The Sixth Ranger: Carlos
  • The Smart Guy: Abi
  • The Chick and Team Pet: Marlon
• Half-Identical Twins: Chandra and AJ, who are female and male respectively.
• Hey It's That Girl: Alli Bhandari plays Indie.
• Hollywood Hacking: The Shadowkings, they can write computer code using their minds!
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: How To Name An Episode.
• In Space: Teenage Girls Diary: THE MUSICAL!
• Jerkass: Carlos, no heart of gold here.
• Line-of-Sight Name: Gary Sugar-Thing.
• Little Miss Badass: Indie can take out her brother who’s in the wrestling club.
• Love Interest: Arguably the entire reason Marlon exists
• Mad Scientist: Bobba G
• Ms. Imagination: Indie.
• Only So Many Canadian Actors: This show's the reason why Melinda Shankar's Degrassi character was Put on a Bus to private school for a while.
• Pillow Fight: One occurs between Indie and Evil Cousin Ruby in "How to Keep Your Cool in a Heat Wave". Evil Cousin Ruby has a 'hand tooled combat pillow'.
• Pink Oni Blue Oni: Indie and Abi
• Race Tropes: Indie's parents, grandpa and Abi's mother are all hit and miss.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Marlon and Abi, also qualifies as wild loves uptight.
• Secret Diary: Indie's family all read hers. At least by the end of the episode she's bought a lock.
• Sick Episode: Chandra and AJ both get ill in one episode. Their mother makes them eat (or bathe) in wacky antidotes.
• Ship Tease: Abi and Marlon.
• Shout-Out

Carlos: Curses! Foiled again!
Abbi: And you would have gotten away with it, too.
Marlon: If it weren't for us meddling kids.

• Slumber Party: Evil Cousin Ruby hosts one in "How to Keep Your Cool in a Heat Wave". Marlon and John unwisely decide to crash it.
• Stalker with a Crush: Indie to Chad, and Ram to Indie.
• This Loser Is You: Indie is well-intentioned, but most of the crazy schemes she concocts are disasters and make everything worse.
• Token White: Marlon.
• Troperiffic: Amazingly so.