Parental Favoritism: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Everybody Loves Raymond]]''. Even the show title suggests so. Robert always gets the short end of the stick from their parents.

* Some episodes of ''[[Wife Swap]]'' have a family in which one or both of the parents have obvious favorite children. Normally the wife of the other family points this out to the father and adds rules pampering [[The Unfavorite]] during the rules change. Generally the family learns their lesson in the end and is shown treating their children more equally in the "where are they now?" ending.

* ''[[The West Wing]]'' presents something of the parent's point of view; President Bartlet clearly has a much more difficult relationship with his middle daughter Ellie as opposed to his eldest Elizabeth and particularly his youngest daughter Zoe, but when accused of this trope, Bartlet angrily denies that he "loves any of his children less than the others".

* Miley's grandmother in ''[[Hannah Montana]]'' feels that her brother Jackson got the short end of the stick being the normal brother of a world famous pop star, and so she tries to make up for it by openly admitting that he's her favorite. For instance, she blows off Miley's visit with the queen of England to see Jackson's volleyball game. In the same episode, we're shown that Jackson think's Miley's the world's favorite (including their father's), as she gets all the attention, being an international pop star.

* In ''[[Order of the Stick (Webcomic)|Order of the Stick]]'', Eugene Greenhilt favored his daughter Julia over his son Roy, because Julia became a wizard like him, while Roy became a fighter. ("I can tell because you never use the phrase, "crashing depression" when talking about her.")

** In a later example, Elan's father Tarquin favours Elan over his other son [[Evil Twin|Nale]], even though Elan is [[Character Alignment|the opposite alignment of both himself and Nale]]. Not only is Elan a lot closer to Tarquin in mentality, but Tarquin doesn't find Nale's [[It's All About Me|egomania]], arrogance and short-sightedness ([[The Starscream|which led to Nale trying to kill him just to satisfy his own ego]]) to be very conductive to a healthy father-son relationship. {{spoiler|Elan may want to kill him too, but at least he's got a good ''reason'' for it instead of "I want to be in charge".}}

** Also a subversion, as the change was due completely to Ash's actions. {{spoiler|In Ash's past (s)he wrote a letter to his/her mom. As a boy, masculine pride made him throw it away. As a girl, the letter was sent.}}

* A humorous variant is found in ''[[Something Positive]]''. Fred MacIntire has two (living) biological children, Davan and Dahlia, and an adopted daughter, Monette. His fourth "child" is Davan's [[Platonic Life Partners|friend PeeJee]], who lives with them; one strip has him admitting that ''she's'' his favorite. It's [[Played for Laughs]], of course, as it's made remarkably clear through all the [[Deadpan Snarker]] dialogue that Fred's actually a damn good father.

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]

[[Category:Parental Favoritism]]