Favorite TV Dads

Huh. What a coincidence. You’d think they were the same person ....

 

It was Mike Brady. He didn't go to his oldest son's high school graduation. You can scratch him off the list.

 

Ok memory is bad.

 

When sitcoms stereotype fathers, they seem to suggest that men are somehow inherently ill-suited for parenting. That sells actual fathers short and, in heterosexual, two-parent contexts, it reinforces the idea that mothers should take on the lion’s share of parenting responsibilities.

Why are sitcom dads still so inept?

 

John Walton Sr.

Or am I the only person who watched “The Waltons”?

 

My mother used to make us watch the Waltons on reruns. I hated it. My sisters loved it. My mother often said we needed to be more like the waltons. One day there was an episode (and there was likely many) where old man Walton got some flack for not going to church. However, he didn’t give a shit about the badgering and still didn’t go. So that Sunday, I proudly stated I intend to be like the Waltons, and refuse to go to church. I was slapped silly, but I never had to watch the Waltons again.

 

It was Sherwood Schwartz's fault. Robert Reed hated that episode so much he refused to appear in it.

He wrote a long note to Schwartz about character development and audience expectations (he was always writing notes criticizing the plots, etc.). In this particular note he said it would be absurd, for example, for Batman to appear in the operating room in a MASH episode. The audience would never buy it. And he concluded the note by saying, "Without belaboring the inequities of the script, which are varied and numerous, the major point to all this is: Once an actor has geared himself to play a certain style with its prescribed level of belief, he cannot react to or accept within the same confines of the piece, a different style.
"When the kid's hair turns red, it is Batman in the operating room.
"I can't play it."

The Hair-Brained Scheme

 

I blame

 

Walter White

 

Obviously not the greatest or favorite, but he had his moments:

 

It's hard to appreciate the scene without watching the 6-part episode, which was phenomenal.

But this scene is ... what it's all about.

 

Tim Taylor, Home Improvement
Keith Mars, Veronica Mars
Charles Ingalls, Little House on the Prairie
Martin Crane, Frasier
Danny, Joey and Jesse, Full House
HM: Carl Winslow, Family Matters