History Main / AwkwardFatherSonBondingActivity

* One episode of ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' starts with a father taking his son fishing. The son does not enjoy it--until his dad fishes up a dead body. Suddenly it's the most BadAss fishing trip ever.

* In one Radio/AdventuresInOdyssey episode (from the album A Date with Dad and Other Calamities), Ed Washington takes his daughter Tamika on a day of Awkward Father-Daughter Activities when he feels like he's losing touch with the teenager she's becoming. Said activities are based on her interests as a much younger child and merely wind up embarrassing her. The episode ends with Ed learning that he needs to relate to his daughter as the person she is, not the one he remembers, while Tamika realizes that her father is genuinely trying to have fun with her and that she should make an effort to appreciate that he wants to be involved in her life. They find a mutually agreeable activity and ultimately wind up averting this trope.

* Eddie and his dad, Morty, go camping in an episode of ''{{Birdz}}''. It starts out as one of these but in the end, Eddie admits it was fun.

* SilentHillShatteredMemories: It is never seen on screen, but you can hear a voice message of a disastrous father-son hunting trip. (Depending on your PI, it plays out differently.)

* In That70sShow, Kitty once convinced Red to take Eric (along with the other males from the main cast) hunting in an attempt to get them to bond. They wind up spending the day in a tree with Red berating Eric for missing a shot at a deer. At the end of the trip, Eric demonstrates that he's a good shot by hitting a can off a fence and explains that he consciously decided not to kill the deer, which gains him some respect from Red, who would rather his son be a pacifist than a lousy shot. He then spoils any actual bonding by shooting a deer himself in utter disregard to Eric.

* A textbook example appeared in {{Zits}}: Jeremy was already not excited about waking up at the crack of dawn to go on a boring fishing trip with his dad Walt, but then Walt decides to use the alone time to give Jeremy TheTalk, making the awkward meter shoot skyward.

* Variation: the awkward father-''daughter'' bonding between Veronica and her father in ''BetterOffTed''. For years the two of them have interacted mostly through corporate espionage and trying to one-up each other, but when Veronica's father develops terminal cancer they make some awkward attempts at spending time together. They quickly decide that they preferred the corporate espionage.

* In ''TotalDrama Presents: The Ridonculous Race,'' one of the teams is a BumblingDad named Dwayne and his [[WackyParentSeriousChild far savvier]] thirteen-year-old son Junior. Dwayne mentions that he spends most of his time at the office and is happy for this bonding time, even though Junior [[AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents doesn't seem to share the feeling]].

* Happens many, MANY times in ''{{Foxtrot}}''. An example:

* It's not ''playing'' baseball, but in ''{{Ragtime}}'', when things are really starting to fall apart for the family, Father (who has been mostly neglectful) decides to take the Little Boy to see a baseball game whether he wants to go or not. In the end, Father is the one who has a miserable time (the game has more swearing, spitting, and immigrants than he remembered), while the Little Boy finds it all quite interesting.

* In the Pilot of ''NoOrdinaryFamily'' Jim tries to get the other members of the family interested in family bonding, including throwing the football around. Nobody cares to do so. The trip that they take where they have a plane crash and get their powers was another family bonding attempt.

* In an attempt to masculine his son, Ludovic's father in ''MyLifeInPink'' enrolls him in a soccer team. Ludo fails miserably at it though.

* In ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'', Roy goes fishing with his grandfather in the afterlife. Since Roy is an adult, it goes better than most of them.

* A textbook example appeared in {{Zits}}: Jeremy was already not excited about waking up at the crack of dawn to go on a boring fishing trip with his dad Walt, but then Walt decides to use the alone time to talk to Jeremy about sex, making the awkward meter shoot skyward.

* There was a commecial which featured a clearly nerdy dad who was sporting facial piercings, talking about bonding with his son at Burning Man. The son just sat there looking utterly mortified.

* In ''WesternAnimation/MoralOrel'', Orel and his dad go hunting. "Awkward" would be a bit of an understatement. [[spoiler: His dad ends up shooting Orel accidentally.]]

* In ''{{Dinosaurs}}'', Earl goes hunting with his son Robbie, in order to lure him away from herbivorism and to turn him back into a carnivore. While [[HaveYouTriedNotBeingAMonster herbivorism is obviously a stand in for homosexuality]] here, in this specific context it would actually make sense for this kind of "therapy" to work. [[spoiler: In Robbie's case, though, it doesn't. Instead, [[TheHunterBecomesTheHunted he and Earl get eaten]] by an [[AlwaysABiggerFish even larger predator]]. They get better.]]

* Subverted in ''PS238'': In the intro, the father-son bonding between [[ComicBook/IncredibleHulk The Hulk]] {{expy}} and his son (who is [[ModeLock permanently in Hulk form]]) isn't seen as boring by either party, but involves breaking stuff.

* Played around with in ''Franchise/{{Noob}}''. In the backstory, a father tried that with his teenage son after the death of his wife. Problem: the father is a WellDoneSonGuy and the son has InferioritySuperiorityComplex, so the father tries to do his best at the activities, which puts an invisible toll on the son's self-esteem. PoorCommunicationKills kicked and the two ended up drifting away even further. The son eventually started playing the {{MMORPG}} in which the story is set, hoping it would be a place where his father wouldn't follow him, but turned out to be very wrong. Long story short, things deteriorated to the point that secretly going ArchnemesisDad online ended being the only way the father could interact with his son. In ''Film/NoobLeConseilDesTroisFactions'', they get themselves to a family therapist who suggested that they try board games and had to be told that the usual activities don't work on them. He ended up prescribing them playing the {{MMORPG}} with brand new avatars.

* Played around with in ''Franchise/{{Noob}}''. In the backstory, a father tried that with his teenage son after the death of his wife. Problem: the father is a WellDoneSoneGuy and the son has InferioritySuperiority complex, so the father tries to do his best at the activity which put an invisible toll on the son's self-esteem. PoorCommunicationKills kicked and the two started drifting away. The son eventually started playing the {{MMORPG}} in which the story is set, hoping it would be a place where his father wouldn't follow him, but turned out to be very wrong. Long story short, things deteroited to the point that secretly going ArchnemesisDad online ended being the only way the father could interact with his son. In ''Film/NoobLeConseilDesTroisFactions'' they get themselves to a family therapist who suggests that they try board games and has to be told that the usual activities don't work on them. He ended up prescribing them playing the {{MMORPG}} with brand new avatars.

* In a non-related example in ''FanFic/{{Shatterheart}}'', Fai attempts to bond with [[spoiler: R!]]Syaoran after he ostracized and ignored the latter for months by having cooking lessons with him and going book-shopping. [[spoiler: R!]]Syaoran hates it the entire time because it comes across as extremely forced and Fai overcompensates too much. [[FromBadToWorse It ends in tears]] [[AdultFear when Syaoran gets]] [[DistressedDude kidnapped in the bookstore.]]