. The original series was started by Husband in April of 2021 as a response to a series of animated videos called Become Jehovah's Friend AKA Caleb and Sophia produced by the Watchtower to promote the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses. Husband, as both an atheist and a member of a Unitarian Universalist church, sought to promote free thinking instead, and frequently made targets of both religious cults and conservative politics with the show's main characters often being persecuted and opposed by their religious and ideological rivals. The main setting in the series was an unnamed Town in east Texas in the early 21st Century.Dale Husband's channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvL-nauz3BFqWaeq33RsVNQ
Most of the saga of the Debbie and Carrie universe is here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrumsQpVQB3x0Av31Nfq01MYQ1XBvoTgh
The saga includes:
1. The original Debbie and Carrie Show, which ran for 15 seasons and was set from the years 2021 to 2036.
2. The Hudson Phamily Show: About a rock band consisting of family members who live in Los Angeles. Was a direct spinoff of the first series. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrumsQpVQB3ybKPpAfEutEmnoOFibt0Ga&si=Wo9rP2TUGq9wCYbd
3. Debbie and Carrie, the Next Generation: Featured much older versions of the characters introduced in the original series. Is currently in production, with six seasons so far and set from 2060 to 2079.
4. The New Debbie and Carrie Show: Set in Dallas, Texas in an alternate timeline of the year 2037. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrumsQpVQB3wLJEVW0zBL9aAEHosGza7i&si=r-XCFml2iHHY7orP
5. Grolock and Pelabong: Set 100,000 years ago in the land to be known as northern Italy, featuring cavedwellers introduced in Debbie and Carrie, the Next Generation. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrumsQpVQB3wr9w8MlA9uNEFrVLJ5PzMC&si=pn4-aTjH9N-DQHBe
6. The Debbie and James Show: Yet another alternate timeline, in Tulsa in the year 2025. Also Darker and Edgier https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrumsQpVQB3ypkY12Kxw_nmSd9Yv8laBH&si=lxGFqjHNDQMVlSMr
Finally, there are two completely separate versions set in alternate universes.
7. Debbie and Carrie, the All Ages Version, a Lighter and Softer take on the original series concept: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrumsQpVQB3xwOo-mRAYYvnb_aktGuT3H&si=xODWcUt5me6srqRR
8. "Debbie": A somewhat different version even more centered on Debbie Smith than the original one: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrumsQpVQB3xTAyzCuPOtLwm3VS4IYplc&si=ACGOO_1hNF7CAoXS
Tropes
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A - B
- Activist-Fundamentalist Antics: Several examples, including...
- making a protest in front of a restaurant owned and employed by atheists or...
- burning down a church that was once Baptist but later became Unitarian Universalist...
- attempting to share the Gospel with travelers on an ocean liner, or even...
- trying to send a BOMB through the mail to kill at least one atheist!
- Alliterative Name: Examples include.....
- The Tuscany Tavern, an Italian restaurant founded by Debbie and Carrie's mothers that becomes a hub of activity for the Central Characters for most of the series.
- Sandy Smith, Debbie's mother, though her maiden name was actually Sandy Green.
- Aphrodite Agency, a modeling agency that Debbie was a co-founder of.
- Alternate Timeline: A surprisingly common theme in the show is characters going back in time to change their own history to make things better.
- Continuity Reboot: Debbie of the year 2056 going back to the year 2021 to give her mother Sandy a vaccine so she wouldn't die of a disease in a few years. This later enabled Sandy to become mayor of her Town and cause so many changes for the better.
- Back from the Dead: Played with. In 2029, Richard Sims's two gay fathers, Michael Jefferson and Charles Mc Kinsey, were murdered by a homophobe. Then in the year 2061, Debbie and Carrie went back in time and undid that event, killing the homophobe before he could get to his targets. As a result, Michael and Charles survived to the 2060s instead. They even were stars of a Spin-Off series, "The New Debbie and Carrie Show", set in the year 2037 in the city of Dallas.
- Ret-Gone: In yet another timeline, Debbie and Carrie never met in the Town in Texas, because Carrie was never there at all. Debbie and her family instead moved back to Tulsa and Debbie had a much more difficult life as a result. THIS timeline was undone by Debbie, Carrie, and James themselves from the year 2062 intervening in the year 2020.
- Alternate Universe: A different version of events and settings involving many of the Debbie and Carrie characters is shown here, completely outside the original saga: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrumsQpVQB3xTAyzCuPOtLwm3VS4IYplc
- Amicable Exes: What Steve and Sandy became after their split. Sandy even went so far as to find Steve a new wife for him.
- Debbie and Carrie also were this for a while when Debbie was dating another girl, Laura Park.
- Anyone Can Die: The longer the saga goes on, the more we see even the most prominent characters tend to die off, a form of brutal realism most animated shows lack.
- Artistic License – Geography: Many scenes in Plotagon depict forest environments, including those used to depict summer campsites. But the Debbie and Carrie Show is set mainly in east Texas, which is mostly grassland.
- Artistic License – Medicine: Surgeons in real life are normally expected to wear protective masks while operating on patients, to prevent those patients from being infected by the surgeons' germs. But in Plotagon, it is not possible to show such masks on characters, so when they are working in operating rooms, they are shown unmasked.
- As You Know: Frequently characters would refer to earlier events in the series in conversations. This was intended to bring those who didn't see earlier episodes up to speed on why certain events are happening in the present time.
- Author Avatar: Dale Husband actually had a Plotagon avatar of himself appear several times in the fictional Debbie and Carrie universe. The most notable example of this was the episode "Ex-Religious Discussion Group", in which Dale interacted with many of the characters via a teleconference.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Subverted repeatedly. Sandy's successors as mayor of the Town include Wayne Bentley, Mike Florence, and Matt Lesenski, who are all more conservative than her, but none of them are as corrupt as Ted Anderson was. They even ally with Sandy at times....and one of them honors her after she is dead.
- Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: The very things that the Central Characters consider good, including atheism, freethinking, sexual liberty, and equality of all peoples, are abhorred by most of the Town's people at the beginning of the saga as being anti-Christian. The common Christian and conservative values of the Town are in turn seen as harmful by the Central Characters.
- Bigotry Before Reason: Subverted. The corrupt Town leaders were relying on this trope being played straight to justify the persecution of the Central Characters. But they made one fundamental mistake: The Town's mayor, Ted Anderson, egged on by Corrupt Corporate Executive Leonard Wilson, had both neglected the Town's roads and sabotaged the sewage system to make more money for the hospital, a tire company, and a bottled water company that Wilson was a co-owner of (Anderson also was a stockholder in the latter two companies). These harmful policies affected EVERYONE in the Town, not just despised minorities. So when Sandy Smith ran for mayor on a platform of fixing the roads and the sewage system, she won the office and discredited Ted Anderson forever and Anderson's attempts to demonize her as a "Communist" (because she was an atheist) failed to help him.
- Black-and-White Insanity: The enemies of the Central Characters are able to justify their attacks on them by claiming they are pure Christians and their opponents are depraved because of their atheism. The truth is that these enemies are hypocrites, believing that the ends justify the means, even if they commit outright crimes or attempt to overthrow the U. S. government.
- Blaming the Victim: Former Town mayor Ted Anderson did this when he made a podcast after the Town was hit by tornados and flooding, claiming that his successor Sandy Smith was to blame because she was an atheist. Ironically, the only person in the Town who died in the disaster was Deborah Flowers, who was a devout Catholic.
- Bloodless Carnage: Because Plotagon was not capable of showing blood being shed from injured or killed targets, even after they were shot or stabbed. The only exception was using a red clown nose to represent a bloodied and/or broken nose. But badly injured people could be shown covered in bandages later to depict their massive wounds after they were treated.
C - D
- Catchphrase and Running Gag: Averted. Dale Husband hated these tropes and usually avoided using them in his works, even in cases where such tropes would have made characters or situations more interesting or amusing.
- Characterization Marches On: Lucy Sims and her wife Jessica Sims were originally created just to be both lesbians and an interracial couple, so that both LGBT and racism issues could be explored through them. Lucy later became known for being an ex-Jehovah's Witness, whose sister Victoria was one of her enemies. Jessica remained a Flat Character, acting as a foil for Lucy, until she started working at a pharmacy and began giving away free birth control to teens, making her offensive to conservative parents in the Town.
- Debbie and Carrie began the saga as teens who were each other's Best Friend but soon underwent a Relationship Upgrade. Then they got married. Then they had a son, Richard. They continued to be a couple all the way to the end of their lives, because of their Undying Loyalty
- A more dramatic example was that of Scott Miller, Lucy Sims's nephew, who like her was raised a Jehovah's Witness, and then would leave the cult as an adult, just as she did decades before. Unlike Lucy, he would convert to Islam and marry a Muslim woman.
- City with No Name: The Town in east Texas where most of the stories in the series is set is never given an actual name, though other cities, such as Boston, Los Angeles, or Dallas are mentioned by name.
- Class Struggle: One of the basic themes of the show is the efforts of Progressive advocates like Sandy Smith to promote the welfare of the lower classes and expose and end the abuses of corrupt business and political leaders who seek to enrich themselves at the expense of those that are considered poor and therefore inferior. For that, Sandy gets called a "Communist" at least once.
- Color-Coded Characters: : Efforts were always made to keep the colors of the major characters consistent throughout the saga. Debbie was associated with cyan, Carrie with magenta (or black sometimes), Sandy with red, Lucy with dark blue, Jessica with cyan, Carla Jenkins with yellow and Laura Park with pink. Richard Sims, Debbie and Carrie's son, was usually dressed in white as a child or cyan as a adult. Jessica and Debbie were also blondes, meaning they had so much in common that it was no surprise that Carrie would fall in love with Debbie.
- The Hudson Phamily Show, a direct spinoff of the Debbie and Carrie Show, featured an entire family as a living rainbow, with Daniel Hudson (the father) as dark blue, his wife Maria as orange, their elder son Matthew as red, their daughter Suzanne as yellow, their younger son Tommy as green and even Matthew's girlfriend and later wife Carla Movenski/Hudson as violet. Then Matthew and Carla had a daughter, Diana, who was dressed in cyan (foreshadowing her marrying Richard Sims when they are adults, since Debbie wore the same color). Then Laura Park joined the family by marrying Suzanne, and she wore pink.
- Death Is Cheap: Due to the tendency of Debbie, Carrie, Richard, and Diana to use time travel to undo events in their past that caused the deaths of loved ones. See the entry for Alternate Timeline above for details.
E - K
- Easily Swayed Population : Subverted, in that the corrupt leaders of the Town never imagined that they would ever be defeated, especially by "outsiders" like the Central Characters. But there were certain stunts they pulled or at least tolerated that most of the townspeople found too terrible to accept, such as Ted Wilson sexually assaulting one girl and then beating another nearly to death, and later the Town's own police chief (and son of the Town's mayor) attempting to destroy through arson a restaurant that provided jobs and food to many people in the Town. The blatant hypocrisy became too obvious to tolerate.
- At one point, the Central Characters visited the Baptist church that dominated the Town, and gave detailed statements before the congregation to explain why they were atheist and why they fought for LGBT rights. In response..... most of the church members abandoned the Southern Baptists and became Unitarian Universalist, something even the Central Characters never imagined would happen.
- Faking Faith: Diana Kalli is an explicit example of this, telling her Arch-Enemy Sandy Smith (who is an atheist) that she has learned to quote the Bible and make references to Jesus to impress Sandy's relatives, with whom she intends to marry into via one of Sandy's brothers. Sandy herself rejected Christianity because of the hypocrisy in this same family.
- Feuding Families: There are two cases in the saga.
- The Greens vs. the Kallis, which included as members Sandy Smith (maiden name, Green) and Diana Kalli. This feud ended only when Diana was killed by Sandy.
- The Owens vs. the Smiths (including Rev. Dave Owen, Sandy Smith, Debbie Smith, Nicolas Owen, and finally David Owen (Nicolas' son and Dave's grandson). Dave and Nicolas were killed and then David was kidnapped and left to die about 50,000 years in the past.
- Fish Out of Water: Carrie and her lesbian and atheist mothers move to the Town in Texas from Boston in 2020 and find it difficult to adjust to being surrounded by the far more conservative people that are common there.
- A more blatant example involved two cave dwelling teens from 100,000 years ago that were taken to live in the 21st Century.
- Five-Man Band: The original series had five Central Characters (listed on the Characters page of this saga)
- The Leader: Sandy Smith
- The Heart: Debbie Smith
- The Lancer: Carrie Sims
- Girly Girl: Jessica Sims
- Token Minority: Lucy Sims
- The Hudson Phamily, stars of the first Spin-Off of the original series, were a literal example of this:
- Daniel the Scientist, the father and bassist of the band
- Maria the Caretaker, Daniel's wife, keyboardist and the mother of their three children.
- Matthew the Warrior, the lead guitarist and the eldest son.
- Suzanne the Feminist, the middle daughter and the lead singer.
- Tommy the Comic, the youngest son and the drummer.
- Genre Shift: The saga began as a Teen Drama, but as the title characters reached adulthood, it began adding science fiction elements, including Time Travel, and space missions.
- Happy Ending: Several episodes in the saga are considered "end points" in which a storyline is resolved with a postive outcome for the protagonists. This allows the viewer to stop and move on. However....
- Happy Ending Override: There are always new problems, enemies, and losses of loved ones to be faced in later parts of the saga, if the viewer is willing to face them.
- Heel–Face Turn: A common theme in the storyline is people in the Town who were enemies of the Central Characters realizing they do not deserve to be hated and switching sides in the conflicts that those characters are involved in. The earliest example is English teacher Carla Jenkins, a follower of Rev. Dave Owen, whose demand that her students do Bible readings are opposed by Debbie and Carrie. Several years later, Jenkins is converted to atheism.
- Hollywood Atheist: Subverted from start to finish; the whole point of the series was to depict atheists as loving, normal people who were targets of hateful Christian bigots.
L - O
- Lack of Empathy: One of the basic concepts of the saga is that one cannot be truly good without a sense of empathy for others, regardless of your religion, or lack thereof.
- Lighter and Softer: An alternative version of the show, designed for small children rather than older teens and adults, is here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrumsQpVQB3xwOo-mRAYYvnb_aktGuT3H
- Lipstick Lesbian: Both Debbie Smith (who had a career as a model) and Laura Park (who was a successful actress in Hollywood) were this trope personified. Debbie in particular was way more feminine than her wife Carrie Sims, though Carrie was not really a Butch Lesbian or a Ladette despite her being more of a Girly Bruiser than Debbie.
- Long-Runner Cast Turnover: After so many seasons of content, it was inevitable that even some of the most prominent early characters would die off or simply not be seen or heard from again. But new characters would be added also, including children being born and growing up to adulthood over time.
- Love Triangle: There were several examples of this in the saga.
- Sandy Smith, her husband Rich Smith, and Rich's mistress Diana Kalli. Sandy's discovery of the mistress led to her and Rich divorcing.
- Debbie Smith, Carrie Sims, and Laura Park. After tolerating the situation for several months, Carrie forced Debbie to choose between the other two, leading to Debbie ending her relationship with Laura, though they remained friends.
- James Smith, Penny Bentley, and Whitney Owen. Penny and Whitney not only both loved James, they fell in love with each other as well, taking the concept of Betty and Veronica to an extreme level. James eventually married Penny and then Whitney married someone else.
- Sandy Smith, Steve Miller, and Denise Kalli (sister of Diana Kalli). Ironically, it was actually Sandy who arranged for Steve and Denise to meet and start a new relationship with each other, as Sandy was ready to divorce Steve and move on. Steve then took Denise to be his second wife.
- Meaningful Name
- Debbie Smith was named after actress Debbie Reynolds, while Carrie Sims was named after Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds' daughter. In real life, the two actresses died within a day of each other, which led to the fictional Debbie and Carrie also dying on the same day.
- The entire Sims family, including Carrie Sims, was named after the Sims series of video games, which like Plotagon involve the use of 3-D character models in a virtual environment.
- Name and Name: Debbie and Carrie, along with their mothers, are the Central Characters the whole storyline revolves around. All five are atheists and four of the five are LGBT, putting them directly at odds with the conservative Christian based values of their Town.
- Noble Bigot: The Rev. Dave Owen, pastor of the local Baptist church, saw himself as this because of his contempt for Debbie, Carrie and their mothers. They see him as a Big Bad, however.
- But while Dave Owen may have been sincerely delusional, the other two Town leaders, Ted Anderson and Leonard Wilson, clearly were motivated solely by desire to make as much profit as possible off their own people. For them, religion was merely a tool to keep the people in line.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up and Not Allowed to Grow Old: Averted by design, unlike most animated series such as The Simpsons. Once Dale Husband committed himself to making a long-term series, he realized that for the sake of realism the characters would have to get older over time. So he began changing their character models. Debbie and Carrie themselves began as teens that grew to adulthood and eventually reached their 70s by the year 2079....the time of the sixth season of "Debbie and Carrie, the Next Generation".
- One-Steve Limit: Defied, in that Dale Husband would name characters without regard to what he had named other characters before. Examples include Steve Miller, who was unrelated to Victoria Miller (he was white, she was black). There was a Jennifer Kalli who actually met a teenage girl who would later be known as Jennifer Smith. There was also Ted Wilson and Ted Anderson, but at least it was specified that one was named after the other. And even Vicky Sims and Paul Jenkins, a couple who were actually named by Husband after ANOTHER Vicky and Paul couple that had originated in a different series by a different creator.
P - Z
- Prime Timeline: The "original" timeline of the Debbie and Carrie Show was eventually revealed to actually be an alternate timeline caused by the intervention of the 2062 versions of Debbie, Carrie and James in the year 2020. The actual original timeline? A Darker and Edgier storyline known as The Debbie and James Show: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrumsQpVQB3ypkY12Kxw_nmSd9Yv8laBH
- Religious Edutainment: An unusual form in which atheists promote a religious movement, Unitarian Universalism.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: The attitude of the Central Characters towards the corrupt and bigoted Town leadership early in the saga. By contrast, those leaders were motivated by a Might Makes Right attitude fueled by religious bigotry.
- Shout-Out: Several examples, including:
- An inspiration for the Debbie and Carrie Show was "Caleb and Sophia - All Grown Up", created by the owner of the YouTube channel The JW Chronicles. It was from them that Dale Husband learned about Plotagon. Dale paid tribute to this other creator by having the adult version of Sophia appear as a guest in an early episode of his own series.
- Expy: Diana Kalli, one of Sandy Smith's worst enemies, was directly based on a character named Hermine Benson that was created by Mary Bliss peanutcat1977, who also used Plotagon and uploaded her episodes of her Paul and Vicky/Blazing Beauty series on YouTube. The two creators even collaborated to have each other's main characters appear in their different universes.....somewhat.
- Dale directly referenced both those creators at the end of this episode.
- An inspiration for the Debbie and Carrie Show was "Caleb and Sophia - All Grown Up"
- Show Within a Show: In addition to Vicky and Paul Jones appearing as "real life" versions of themselves in the Debbie and Carrie Show, Debbie and Carrie, along with Suzanne Hudson and Laura Park, created a web based news series called the America for All network, which was broadcast from the Texas Town as well as from Los Angeles.
- Time Skip: There are two in the saga:
- From 2036 (the last season of the original Debbie and Carrie Show) to 2060 (the first season of Debbie and Carrie, the Next Generation).
- From 2063 (the third season of Debbie and Carrie, the Next Generation) to 2075 (the fourth season of that same series).
- Time Travel Crossover: In the sequel series, "Debbie and Carrie: The Next Generation", the title characters and others travel back 100,000 years and meet a family of cavedwellers led by Grolock and Pelabong, who would later become stars of their own Spin-Off series.
- Villains Act, Heroes React: Almost every conflict in the saga was the result of the Central Characters' enemies doing something to try to harm them or those enemies being highly offensive to what the heros thought was right.
