Basic Trope: An older female character is sexually attracted to younger characters.
- Straight: Alice is in her 40's who is dating a 25-year-old Bob.
- Exaggerated: Alice is a 50-year-old woman who has a deep sexual lust for a 16-year-old Bob.
- Downplayed: Alice is 30 years old and has a crush on a 22-year-old Bob.
- Justified:
- Alice finds younger men more attractive than men around her age — they're more energetic.
- Bob is just a genuinely good guy, and a woman at any age can appreciate gentlemanly behavior.
- Inverted:
- Subverted: Bob is 25 and keeps being hit on by Alice, who he thinks is a middle-aged woman who likes younger men. Then he asks how old she is; turns out she's an 18-year-old who's had a hard life full of alcohol, cigarettes, and tanning.
- Double Subverted: Actually, she was just lying about her age so he wouldn't think she's too old. She's a well-preserved 65.
- Parodied:
- Alice is a 40-year-old who always make Bob speechless with her sexy schoolgirl outfit.
- Alice is a 150-year-old woman who has a deep sexual lust for a 6-year-old Bob.
- Zig Zagged: We hear about Alice and Bob, that she's 46 and he's 23 and she was his college professor, but it turns out they got it backwards, she's quite youthful looking and he has a full beard that's greying and a mature manly voice, except Alice really is 46 and a downplayed version of One of the Kids, preferring the company of friends in their 20s and early 30s over her own age while Bob really is a recent college graduate, he's just a classic example of Older Than They Look. Despite her being the older one, people naturally think of her as being younger than him or around his age, that is until she tears it up in trivia competitions dominated by questions about the era she grew up in, whereas he doesn't get all but the most obvious 80s references.
- Averted: Alice is in her 40's, but isn't interested in younger men.
- Enforced:
- The writers want to include a May–December Romance, but older men pursuing younger women would be too icky. Plus, flustered young men are funnier than flustered young women, and they could get away with casting a young Mrs. Robinson to keep things from getting too... wrinkly.
- Alice is played by an actress who is quite popular with younger male viewers, and Bob is an Audience Surrogate — so having the two match up in the series is viewed as a natural thing to have happen.
- Lampshaded:
- "Wow, Bob, she's into you a lot, and you're half her age."
- "I have a thing for hot, sexy, young guys like you."
- Invoked: Alice pretends to be 40 online to seek out men who like older women.
- Exploited: Bob Likes Older Women and seeks out women like this.
- Defied: Alice is 40 and attracted to men of various ages, but doesn't get involved with men under 30 because she doesn't like guys who see her as a mother figure, people might think it's strange, she considers it to be a bit wrong, and she doesn't like all that drama that comes with potentially being a guy's first serious relationship.
- Discussed: "Are you sure you want to date this man? He's over a decade younger."
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Alice relationship brings her social ostracization because some people view her relationship with a younger man as immoral.
- Alice ends up sleeping with a minor, which causes her to be arrested for being a sex offender.
- Bob is too immature to sustain a relationship with a fully grown woman.
Back to Mrs. Robinson.
