Who was your favorite TV Dad?
For me growing up it was any sitcom dad as they all seemed to be clones of each other. They always understood, had a sense of humor and guided you through life’s troubles unlike my dad who had his moments, but not much of a sense of humor and rarely understood what I was dealing with.
If your dad was more the stereotypical sitcom dad then I (and I suspect most of us) would probably envy you.
When I watched more recent shows with Asian families like “Fresh Off The Boat” and “Kim’s Convenience”, I found myself going “Gee, I wish Randal Kim or Paul Hyung-Sung Lee were my dad” because I never met an Asian father like either of them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for more Asian representation on mass media but I wish Asian dads were more based on real Asian dads rather than a variation of the sitcom dad in yellow face.
The closest sitcom dad I’ve ever seen to my reality of Korean dad is That 70’s Show’s Red Foreman.
Still way funnier than my dad, but Red had that sharp edge missing from most TV dads. He didn’t want to show emotion. Would rather read the paper or watch TV than deal with the family. Gave unflattering nicknames to us… well, me mostly. Throw in some biting sarcasm and gruffness. Make Red Foreman, a Korean man obsessed with good grades… that’s my dad.
Red Foreman is definitely a favorite along w/ Titus dad.
For nice dads I always wanted the Courtship of Eddie’s Father but got more of the Great Santini though after he got out of the military he mellowed out.
my dad was a pretty simples straight forward broken soldier
you know,…all smiles and kindness cept for when he wasnt
considered running 10km with a backpack full of sand a morning jog
when he was good dad…he was good dad….when he wasnt he had a viciously sharp tongue….never violent tho…unless we count spanking….but that was still pretty normal back then…
mum got the worst of it….suspect that why she worked the night shift for many years
oh right…favourite tv dad
ill go with philip
Andy Griffith, who was basically dad to all of Mayberry.
Lassie was a boy, so in a sense he was actually a dad to al of those puppies.
My dad “forgot” to pick me up for more than a year and showed up completely inebriated one Monday, thinking it was Sunday, to pick me up like he had just been slightly late to a meeting.
And that, in my mind, was his second best quality.
I didn’t have kids because I’m smart (no offense to all the very smart parents around these parts who
<em>Technical difficulties…please stand by…</em>
…so with all of that said and taken with the grain of salt it rightly deserves
…and the fact that I’m not all that smart because I do have someone who’d be mad if she were to read this comment because I’d be side-STEPping her without mention……and in case she does, as her “stepdad”, I am very proud to be less smart than I really should have been (fuck off, she’ll laugh at this when it’s her turn!)…
My favourite TV dad would have to be Tony Danza on “Who’s the Boss?”
No TV dad cared so much about their child/children than Tony Micelli. And that, at least to me, is what really matters.
Sidenote: Please don’t take anything I say on the subject seriously and if you are a parent, PLEASE HELP!
In a roundabout connection to Tony Danza and TV dads, this episode of Taxi is an absolute gem.
Tony Danza isn’t the main character, but he does get in a good rant about George Steinbrenner. Danny DeVito, Judd Hirsch and Marilu Henner also get some nice little bits in too.
But it’s mainly about the Reverend Jim and his dad, and Christopher Lloyd is amazingly good in it. An absolutely jaw dropping performance.
NICE! Taxi is one of my comfort shows.
I was worried you were going to post a clip of the first episode which…NO…but when you went on I knew exactly to which episode you were referring.
That free streaming service Pluto has Taxi, but when I went to check they don’t have this one. The stupid music clearance legal issues killed it, I’m sure. The episode wouldn’t make any sense if you edited it out.
Tomorrow is my first Father’s Day without my dad. He passed away last August 19th. Today my daughter and I went to his grave for the first time since his passing to put flowers on his grave for him. It was and is so hard.
Sorry for your loss. I miss my dad every day but I try to pass on his wisdom & love of life to my daughters. I hope you can do the same & remember all those good times & pass those on to the next generation. I see so much of my dad in my eldest daughter.
Aw hell. But I’m sure he appreciated having had the both of you.
Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews) from Brooklyn 99.
Phil Dunphy from Modern Family is a fantastic character that exists to remind every person ever with a shitty dad how much better it could have been had we had better dads.
As an adult, Johnny Rose from Schitt’s Creek is probably my favorite. He is genuinely trying and he loves his family, but also he’s a twit often enough to keep it entertaining.
I remember my Dad as being like a sitcom Dad, but that might be rose-colored glasses. He was a union engineer and as he rose through the ranks he got priority for more and more overtime, which he gladly accepted, not only for the paycheck but also to get out of the house.
I remember him always joking around, and telling slightly dirty and sometimes slightly racist jokes, but a couple of my siblings remember nothing but arguments. My father enjoyed a beverage or two, and because he worked where he worked, which operated 24 hours, he’d sometimes come in (I can’t believe no one ever called Child Protective Service on us) and crack open a beer at, say, 6:30 am. He would have put in a 14- or 16-hour shift. I’d be crammed in eating breakfast and talk about, like, “I have this math test and I don’t think I’m going to do very well. I just don’t get it.”
He would say, “Here, have some of this.” And hand over his glass of beer, for me to calm my nerves. My mother would go crazy when she found me sharing the glass, and my father would just laugh and say, “Here, drink some water, spit it out in the kitchen sink, and have this cinnamon Trident, and hope your teachers don’t smell the beer on your breath.”
The other thing was my parents smoked quite heavily. So imagine nine-year-old overachieving Mattie showing up for 4th grade reeking of cigarette smoke and maybe with a little beer on his breath. It’d be like trying to educate the Mickey Rourke character in Barfly, but this was the twilight of the great era of smoking. I think almost all of the teachers did. Certainly most of the parents did. So maybe no one had much of a sense of smell?
Happy Father’s Day, Daddy. You were the best.
PS: My father did not try to create a lush of a son, I did that to myself. My parents were very appreciative of the public school system, but it didn’t have the resources to keep up with me, through private tutoring or jumping me three of four grades in English (I think that’s now called “Language Arts,” which is bogus.) That was discussed, and maybe two or three grades in Social Studies, and I had already started learning French out of a Living Language box set of LPs. And my parents couldn’t afford tutors.
So, come to think of it, I actually had quite a bit of homeschooling. I mean, I went to the public schools, and they were excellent, but then there were things like Hemingway novels lying around and flea market finds of college-level classic European histories that I would read for fun. I wish I still had them. I’m sure they’re verboten now, but there was a time when American college students were taught that they/we are the children of the European Enlightenment, and here’s what happened, in 800 pages, hardcover, illus.
My three dads: