Bumbling Dad/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • 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:
  • Justified:
  • 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:
  • Lampshaded: "He's like all those bumbling dads you see in sitcoms."
  • Averted: Bob is a competent father.
  • Enforced:
  • 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.

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