Bumbling Dad/Playing With
- Basic Trope: A comically incompetent father in a Dom Com.
- Played Straight: Bob means well, but he often grabs the Idiot Ball and gets his wife and children into all sorts of misadventures with him. He is also a very flawed (yet sympathetic) individual.
- Exaggerated: Bob is an outright Jerkass who is a borderline (if not outright) abusive father.
- Downplayed: The family share possession of the Idiot Ball pretty fairly, but Bob carries it more than most.
- Inverted:
- Bob is a Standard Fifties Father
- Alternatively, Alice is an incompetent mom.
- Justified:
- Unfortunately, emotional maturity and common sense are not (and never have been) prerequisites for parenthood.
- Bob's family is a rather Dysfunctional Family
- Subverted: Bob seems dumb, but that was Obfuscating Stupidity.
- Double Subverted: But it turns out, he was really that dumb. When he seemed smart, he was Feigning Intelligence
- Deconstructed: Can have a negative effect on his children and his wife, leading to the breakdown of the (presumably already dysfunctional) family.
- Reconstructed: Bob is dumb and irresponsible, but he sincerely loves his family and is capable of stepping up when it's important.
- Parodied:
- Bob is The Ditz.
- Alice ends up Parenting the Husband as much as (or more than) her kids.
- Lampshaded: "He's like all those bumbling dads you see in sitcoms."
- Averted: Bob is a competent father.
- Enforced:
- "All those perfect Dom Com families on TV...they make me sick! I'll make a Dysfunctional Family, with a blithering idiot as its head!"
- One of the parents needs to be somewhat on the ball for the sake of Conservation of Competence, and you want the characterisations to be relatively consistent rather than a constant game of Idiot Ball. You know that every time the dad is shown to be somehow "superior" to his wife, you'll have a protracted battle with the Moral Guardians, but not so the other way around. What are you gonna do?
- Invoked: Alice specifies in her Lonely Hearts ad that she's looking for an Adult Child with whom to settle down and raise kids.
- Defied: Alice breaks up with Bob when she sees that he is too immature to raise a family, and not likely to change any time soon.
- Discussed:
- Conversed:
- Played For Laughs: Almost always is.
- Played For Drama: Bob's mistakes and selfishness negatively affect his family.
Back to Bumbling Dad