Dysfunctional Family: Difference between revisions

[[File:046_3746046 3746.jpg|link=The Simpsons|frame| [[Sarcasm Mode|Just one big happy family.]]]]

In American comedies this was originally a subversion of the ''[[Leave It to Beaver]]''/''[[The Brady Bunch]]'' almost-too-good-to-believe family, but eventually ballooned into a genre of its own. The [['''Dysfunctional Family]]''' has been a [[Britcom|British comedy]] staple since the 1950s.

Contrast with [[Quirky Household]], where the people are merely ''weird'', but generally happy -- indeedhappy—indeed, more happy than more conventional households.

* The Tendou/Soatome household from ''[[Ranma One Half½]]''.

* In the Josei manga ''[[With the Light]]'', (almost) each child or parent Sachiko encounters has a dysfunctional family. One chapter had the saddest way to start: a father is stinking drunk and the son tries to run away- only to see his mother escaping asap in a taxi- leaving him alone. Another child, Eri-chan, refused to tell a teacher about Hikaru, an autistic boy, getting seriously hurt in fear that her father would [[Tear Jerker|hit her "just like he hits mommy".]]

* ''[[Oyasumi Punpun]]'' has a more serious version of this trope. Mom and Dad are divorced after an incident of domestic abuse, Uncle is a serial cheater, and poor Punpun is {{spoiler|raped by his aunt}}. They do care about each other, but most of them have too many issues to express it in a healthy manner.

* The central branch of the Achike family from ''[[Purple Hibiscus (Literature)|Purple Hibiscus]]''. Father is a religious maniac, Mother is [[Domestic Abuse|regularly beaten]] but too frightened of him to say anything but still considers herself lucky to be his wife, daughter is almost mute from terror and only the eldest son recognizes that something is really very wrong. Or so it is at the beginning of the novel, anyway.

* In [[Michael Flynn]]'s ''[[Spiral Arm (Literature)|Up Jim River]]'', Zorba explains Bridget's silence by this: the Hounds are like brothers and sisters, but there is a certain amount of sibling rivalry.

== [[Live -Action TV]] ==

* ''[[Malcolm in Thethe Middle]]'', although the level is more comparable to [[Big Screwed-Up Family]], unsurprisingly due to the creators wanting to make the worst Dysfunctional Family possible.

* ''[[Married... Withwith Children]]''

* Reversed in ''[[The Addams Family (TV)|The Addams Family]]'' and ''[[The Munsters]]'', both families are wildly dysfunctional in the classical sense, but treat each other with respect and love. That it's expressed via poisoning, stabbing, and other grievous and macabre means is [[Crosses the Line Twice|just funny.]]

* ''[[Titus]]''

* ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]''

* In ''[[3rd Rock Fromfrom the Sun]]'' the aliens resemble this. In one episode, they use it as a cover for their odd behavior when they become the subject of a documentary on dysfunctional families.

* [[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined(2004 TV series)|The Cylons]]. But given the screwed up process by which they are created, they can't help but be dysfunctional (and a bit psychotic).

* ''[[MamasMama's Family]]''

* ''[[The George Lopez Show]]''- George's dad [[Disappeared Dad|left him]], his mom's a [[Lady Drunk|bitter drunk]], his daughter gets bullied an extreme amount and always is getting in trouble with boys, his son is [[L Is for Dyslexia|dyslexic]]...you get the picture.

* ''[[The Osbournes (TV)|The Osbournes]]''. It's not completely off the mark to describe their [[Reality TV]] depiction as a live-action ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|Simpsons]] for old metallers.

* The Monk family in the Crime Dramedy series ''[[Monk (TV)|Monk]]'' is heavily implied to be dysfunctional. The parents raised their kids, Adrian Monk and Ambrose Monk, in a very strict fashion, which evidentally contributed to their quirks (such as Adrian Monk's various phobias and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, as well as Ambrose Monk's Agoraphobia), their father, Jack Monk, eventually and inexplicably [[Parental Abandonment|left the family in 1972 while going to get Chinese Food]], which also resulted in Ambrose and their mother becoming cataconic. Their Christmases were also heavily implied to be horrible experiences for Monk. Jack Monk's other family, Jack Jr. was also proven to be no different. Although Jack Monk mentioned that Jack Jr. was a heart surgeon in Baltimore, it was later revealed in the same episode that Jack Monk lied about that out of shame, and that Jack Jr. was actually a putz (actually, not even a putz, but a person who dreams of one day becoming a putz), who lives in his basement, smokes Marijuana, and steals from Jack's wallet, and also had a criminal record of selling stolen cars and intends to move to Paraguay.

* On the kids' sci-fi show ''[[Halfway Across the Galaxy Andand Turn Left]]'' the main family consists of a gambling-addicted father, a scatterbrained mother, a dreamy [[Cloudcuckoolander]] older sister, and a child genius younger brother. The family relies on its middle child, [[Only Sane Man|ten-year-old X]], to run their daily lives whilst adapting to Earth culture and keeping them safe from the wrath of the Zyrgonian Government. The strain of running her family actually makes X ''[[The Woobie|physically ill]]''.

* ''[[Grandmas House|Grandma's House]]''

* No one in the [[Gorillaz (Music)|Gorillaz]] is related by blood, but they sometimes come off this way, especially with the guys' [[Big Brother Instinct]] towards [[Little Miss Badass|Noodle]]. It would be kind of cute if they weren't a schizophrenic [[Big Eater|overeater]], a [[Cloudcuckoolander|barely coherent]] painkiller addict and an alcoholic [[Jerkass]]. [[Social Services Does Not Exist]] in this world, obviously. A more cut-and-dried example would be Murdoc's family, who put him through a [[Hilariously Abusive Childhood]] and are now all either incarcerated or dead. [[What Happened to Thethe Mouse?|The story has yet to reveal what happened to his psychotic father.]]

* ''[[El Goonish Shive (Webcomic)|El Goonish Shive]]'': Not only Tedd's mom is gone to Europe, but when Nanase's mom asked about her sister, [http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2010-01-28 the answer sounds] much like Pandora-Chaos {{smallcapssmall-caps|[[Berserk Button|at her worst]]}}.

* In ''[[Sinfest]]'', [httphttps://wwwweb.archive.org/web/20140209164600/http://sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2267 Satan characterizes the world as this.]

* Zeus and Hera's family in ''[[ThaliasThalia's Musings]]'', both with their legitimate children and Zeus' bastards to whom Hera is the [[Wicked Stepmother]].

** Hephaestus, Aphrodite, and Eros.

** Averted with the Muses, [[Happily Married|Hades and Persephone, and Asclepius and Epione's]] family.

* ''[[The Simpsons]]'': The obvious exemplar and the page image, we could be here all day with examples to back up their inclusion. However, even if [[George HWH. W. Bush|the President]] wished Americans could be "more like ''[[The Waltons]]'' and less like ''The Simpsons''," they stay together, go to church together and eat dinner together every night, and they're ultimately closely-knit.

* ''[[Family Guy]]'', although by this point, they're probably closer to the trope [[Big Screwed-Up Family]] trope.

* ''[[Daria]]''. Here, the central character's family, the Morgendorffers, are seemingly screwed up; but the family of Daria's best friend - the Lanes - is far worse, to the point that they're the former [[Trope Namer|Trope Namers]]s for [[Hands-Off Parenting]].

* ''[[DextersDexter's Laboratory (Animation)|Dexters Laboratory]]'': Dexter's family is dysfunctional all right. His big sister Dee-Dee is extremely ditzy, naïve, simple-minded, crazy & cuckoo. Dexter's Mom has trouble being around the rest of the family without her rubber gloves. She is rarely seen without her gloves and starts going insane in an episode when they have gone missing from her nightstand. Both she and Dexter have one thing in common: their perfectionist streaks. Dexter's Dad however is not nearly as intelligent as his son he sometimes imparts common sense and good advice to Dexter, such as advising him to get his glasses fixed even though they were regarded as "cool" in their broken state. Dad is also depicted as unreasonably hostile towards Dexter and Dee Dee when they interfere with a sports-related activity such as watching the "biggest golf match of the year" or breaking his bowling trophy.

* ''[[Moral Orel (Animation)|Moral Orel]]'' lives and breathes this trope, though it's more the "Idyllic outside, dysfunctional inside" version.

* In ''[[Adventure Time (Animation)|Adventure Time]]'', Princess Bubblegum's family, from what we can tell, is pretty screwed up. We never see her parents, or hear about them, and it's implied that they set exceedingly high expectations for their daughter, causing her to become an adult way before her time. She's quite a young ruler- only 18, and she lamented about never being able to act like a kid. Thus, she turned out to be a perfectionist. Her son, Lemongrab, is WORSE off than Princess Bubblegum. He was "the first of her experiments gone wrong," and it's implied that he's brain-damaged, due to a scientific error in his creation. He's a perpetually unhappy, sour, bitter, angry, isolated person who was stuck, by Princess Bubblegum, inside a castle outside of the Candy Kingdom walls- possibly to keep him away from everyone else. And they DESPISE each other. If you think about their family situation long enough, it gets very depressing.

* ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender (Animation)|Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'': The Fire Nation royal family. Hoo boy...

* On ''[[Hey Arnold!]],'' the residents of the boarding house are presented as being dysfunctional [[True Companions]].

* The United States of America, in a similar sense. Then again, though, you can look at the political atmospheres of ''any'' country and then you would see this.