In honor of Father’s Day, let’s hope your dad is better than most of the patriarchs seen on television.
TV dads these days are given a bad rap, and usually with good reason. For dramatic purposes, they range from the tyrannical to the neglectful — and the sometimes murderous.
Just a few weeks ago, “Game of Thrones” turned Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane) into a villain beyond redemption when he had his pre-teen daughter Shireen (Kelly Ingram) burned at the stake. A full three minutes of the child screaming as the flames grew higher did not convince Stannis to change his mind and reach for a bucket of water. Nice guy. Desensitized “GoT” fans always find a way to defend the show’s widespread carnage, but even Shireen’s death gave them pause.
Even in the modern TV world, dealing with Dad can be a losing battle. Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard), the scheming father on Fox’s hit series “Empire,” exiled his gay son Jamal (Jussie Smollett) in favor of his less talented playboy son, Hakeem (Bryshere Gray) — and outright rejected his eldest son, Andre (Trai Byers) when he was discovered to have a mental illness.
Such harsh behavior always results in some satisfying comeuppance on TV; in the season finales of their respective shows, Stannis was stabbed to death and Lucious was jailed. Karma’s a bitch.
Still, the institution of fatherhood, at least on TV, remains under attack. That’s why it’s refreshing that for every Eli Pope (Joe Morton), the vicious dad to Olivia Pope on “Scandal,” you get a character like Sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) on “The Walking Dead.” He’s been schlepping his way through the zombie apocalypse now for what seems like an eternity, yet he always keeps an eye on his truly annoying son, Carl (Chandler Riggs).
Not an easy task, considering many fans of the show are dying for the zombies to make a snack of this kid already.
Sitcoms make it much easier to find a good dad, since these fathers aren’t trying to kill or spy against the US government — like Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) on “The Americans” who, despite his nefarious job, is a good dad to his teenage kids Paige and Henry. So we’ll cut him some slack.
To find the epitome of the good TV dad, you need look no further than Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell) on ABC’s “Modern Family.” With his goofy insistence on performing magic tricks for his smarty-pants kids, Phil is the most entertaining father on television: a daffy, eccentric bumbler who’s devoted to his family.
Phil is everything you want in a TV dad and Burrell, in addition to his light touch and Emmy-winning talent, sounds like a pretty decent guy in real life. He just created a competition where he will volunteer to be a fan’s dad for a day and will invite the winner to the “Modern Family” set and to a lunch date. It’s all to benefit the charity Kids in the Spotlight, which helps young people in foster care learn filmmaking.
Burrell could singlehandedly improve the status of TV dads everywhere.
If only there were more Phil Dunphys out there.