Carmen Consuela Lopez (Masiela Lusha)

Carmen Lopez[edit]

Carmen Consuela Lopez (Masiela Lusha) is the daughter of the Lopez family; Max's older sister; granddaughter of Manny and Benny. Misunderstood and somewhat melodramatic, Carmen always displays superior intelligence and a love of writing laughably dramatic, dark, or melancholy poetry. However, her judgment of right and wrong is not always the best, and she has performed daring acts of defiance against her parents' wishes if she feels the urge to protest against supposed injustices in her parents' orders or security in a certain environment. Carmen loves poetry and romance. Unfortunately this has left her quite easy to manipulate, as her search for true love and acceptance from her peers blinds her to a person's true nature. She usually has been misled through someone else's deception or by her own desires (such as when she ran away from home with the womanizing Zach Powers and later insisted upon re-decorating her bedroom symbolically in order to match with her supposed maturity). Carmen often shows a liberal bent to political issues (even more than others in her household) and has an affinity for social justice causes. However, George frequently underestimates Carmen's intelligence and has little faith in her, sometimes apparently perceiving her as dim and airheaded. Aggravated by her parents' limits, Carmen often performs acts of rebellion against them as a means of proving her maturity and independence, albeit her father often fears for her Towards the conclusion of the series, Carmen left for college and the role filled by her character was replaced through the addition of her snobbish, overindulged, wealthy cousin Veronica, whose trust fund has been left in George's care after the death of her mother and who debuted shortly before Carmen's departure.
Like Angie, Carmen has unrivaled beauty. This made her a source of jealousy among other girls her age and leaves her with few friends, thus leaving her with extremely low self-esteem. Her parents pulled her out of public school and placed her in a private one (at considerable expense), only to have similar problems follow her there.
Carmen has dated a multitude of boys, most notably Zach Powers and a member of the high school baseball team, Jason. Jason came to live with the Lopez family briefly while he trying to earn a baseball scholarship. He was known for his on-again-off-again romance with Carmen. Despite his usually good-natured personality, he had been known to cheat on her and break up with her constantly in exchange for different and more experienced girls. Many episode plots were established through his stay in the Lopez household. However, Carmen's second most notable relationship was the one that she shared with Zach Powers, the vandalistic, despicable, loathsome, lawless, womanizing teenage son of George's boss. Carmen was convinced that the pair genuinely was falling in love. In reality, Zach was only trying to lure her into having sexual intercourse before dumping her. George was infuriated by his actions and Zach admitted his intentions to George during a confrontation. Carmen boldly defended Zach against her mother and father's claims of his true intentions. She rebelliously fled to San Francisco with him against George and Angie's wishes in one episode. Eventually she admitted that her parents were right all along about Zach when she confessed that he had dumped and ditched her in a nightclub shortly after she refused to sleep with him at a hotel he had taken her to. Carmen doesn't exactly have good taste in men; she often falls for the handsome popular jock with a sob story.