Parents As People / Live-Action TV

• Norma Bates in Bates Motel, as opposed to her depiction in Psycho where she was an Abusive Parent, is a mother who makes a lot of bad decisions, especially in regards to her son Norman. She's controlling, tries to get Norman to do activities with her, acts passive-aggressive and guilt trips a ton when Norman isn't interested, acts jealous and petty when Norman shows interest in other women, and most damaging of all, when Norman shows signs of mental problems she refuses to get him treatment. The thing is though, she does this all because she really loves Norman, but not in the way a mother should love her son.
• Blark and Son: Spoken almost word-for-word in "The Adults Are Not Alright".
  Regina: Parents are people too, ya know.
  • Stacy genuinely loves Junior even if he adopted him just because all his friends had kids, but he suffers from depression and struggles to properly raise Junior right.
• In general terms, this is a popular trope in drama series like The Bill or Holby City when the children of characters in high-pressure or high-profile jobs (such as doctors, teachers, political figures, or rescue services) are involved. Often the child will have a scene where they berate their parent for being a hero to everyone else but their child (i.e. a successful doctor who's never home because she refuses to abandon her patients, a teacher who goes the extra mile for her pupils while completely forgetting her own son's graduation).
• Britta has to deal with this in season 6 of Community when her friends meet the parents she's always described as repressive autocrats and find them to be lovely people who admit they weren't great at raising her, but go on to lend her thousands of dollars via her friends in an effort to look out for a daughter who refuses to have anything to do with them.
  Frankie: One of the most unfair lessons we're forced to learn is that our parents are human beings. We want to think of them as gods — or demons, because then that would make us heroes — but ugh, gimme a break, we all suck.
• Control Z: Nora is quite overprotective towards Sofía, largely because her father's death, (or at least that's what she thought), has completely torn her apart, even more when her daughter is admitted to a psych ward due to mental health issues. Nora fears that something bad might happen to Sofía, so she constantly meddles in her daughter's life, questioning her decisions and the people who she hangs out with.
  Nora: If something happens to you, I'll die.
• The Crown (2016):
  • George and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon are portrayed as loving parents but still possess many faults. They follow advice that Elizabeth only needs schooling in areas directly related to the monarchy, leaving her entirely unprepared with a broad range of subjects when she took the crown. Her younger sister Margaret ended up feeling like a lesser sister than Elizabeth and as a result, acted out for attention, though she believed that George loved Margaret better than Elizabeth.
  • Elizabeth and Phillip, especially in the second season. Though both love their children, Elizabeth's job as queen keeps her unavailable to them. She is also becoming distant with Charles as he is a constant reminder of the representation of the Crown and of her own mortality. Likewise, Phillip is disappointed in Charles' sensitive nature and attempts to toughen up his son by sending him to a notoriously tough boarding school. He also at times feels outranked by Charles, who is his wife's successor.
• The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: As Seladon states, Mayrin is a queen first and a mother second. She tries to impart her values to her daughters and steer them on the right path but often clashes with Brea and puts so much pressure on Seladon to follow in her footsteps. At times it's up to Tavra to keep the family together.
• Dead Like Me strongly focuses on this trope for the Lass family, particularly Joy. She's selfish, judgmental, narrow-minded, and completely breaks down when things don't go her way, but she's also trying to cope with a huge amount of grief and stress after what is implied to be years of putting in efforts for her family that went unappreciated.
• In Flashpoint, Ed Lane struggles to be a good father and husband but his job often comes first, causing strain between his wife and son.
  • Parker's alcoholism had caused his wife to divorce him and his son to refuse to see or speak to him. But since then, he has cleaned up his act, resulting in reuniting with his son for the first time in ten years and eventually, his son Dean decided that his father is a good man and came to live with him.
• Martin Crane in Frasier is a down-to-earth, likable, and friendly guy, especially when compared with his uptight, snobby sons, so it's easy to see why people tend to get on better with him and take his side in the tension he has with Frasier and Niles. But it's made pretty clear, and Martin himself at times concedes, that he has as much if not more responsibility as they do for the difficult relationship he has with them. While he clearly does love them, he appears to have been a rather distant parent who was largely uninterested in the more esoteric and refined interests of his sons and didn't make a lot of effort to bond with them. He tends to take other people's sides in arguments against them (including bullies) and appears to have spent more time at his favourite bar than bonding with them, something he later comes to regret.
  Martin: Maybe if I'd spent less time at Duke's and more time with you guys, I wouldn't be sitting opposite a son who places so much stock in one beer.
  • Hester Crane, Martin's wife and Frasier and Niles's mother, gets this somewhat less because she's deceased by the events of the series and all three choose to abide by Never Speak Ill of the Dead. Nevertheless, while she was a loving mother and wife to her family, she had feet of clay as well; she had a brief affair at one point, her overly clinical and psychological method of parenting appears to have directly resulted in a lot of Frasier and Niles's neuroses, and she appears to have been actively hostile to a lot of the women her sons chose to date.
  • This was demonstrated in vivid detail in her lone appearance in Cheers, in which she threatened to shoot Diane.
• Game of Thrones: Stannis to Shireen. Unlike his wife, he tries to be a good parent to her, but he is too busy with the war. To his credit, he's a much better parent than Robert...or not.
• The George Lopez Show: Several examples.
  • Benny neglected and mistreated George. But in her defense, her husband abandoned her to live with George, and while did have some moments of kindness toward George, her own parents were downright merciless to her.
  • George himself works to provide for kids, but often can give them the wrong advice, and can play favorites with Max perhaps because he is trying too hard to be a good dad due to his feelings of abandonment left by his own dad.
• Ginny and Georgia: Ginny's parents are both flawed people with full lives.
  • Her mother Georgia is fiercely protective (up to murdering her second husband as she feared he'd molest Ginny), but also often childish, violates Ginny's boundaries and manipulates people.
  • Her father Zion on the other hand is more stable and even keel, but often away due to his work (which he regrets).
• Blanche Devereaux from The Golden Girls clearly didn't enjoy being a mother, mainly due to her vanity and It's All About Me personality. She basically left childcare to nannies and even admits that as they got older, she would tell people they were her husband's from a much earlier marriage. It all comes back to haunt her as she gets older and none of them want anything to do with her. An interesting perspective flip, as this is told from the view of the "bad" parent rather than the child. (Also, in a show known for its Negative Continuity, this is one of the few details portrayed consistently.)
• The Hardy Boys (2020):
  • Gloria did love her daughter Laura and was devastated by her death but they had a strained relationship due to Laura's disgust of the Estabrook legacy that Gloria perpetuates.
  • Fenton undoubtedly loves his sons but he leaves them behind in Bridgeport so he could investigate his wife's death in a potentially dangerous mission where he could get killed and leave them orphaned altogether, while Frank and Joe are still freshly grieving and should have their father with them. When Fenton eventually returns to Bridgeport, he is dismayed to find his sons have been getting into danger while he was gone. Trudy calls him out on it, as what else did he expect to happen when he left his sons behind when they needed answers just as much as he did?
• Hercules: The Legendary Journeys frequently made a point of showing that those of great significance can make imperfect parents.
  • The top example is the king of the Olympians himself. Zeus is regularly portrayed as a Doting Parent that dearly loves his son and protects him from his worst enemies on Olympus, but he was never around when Hercules was growing up. He's a Dirty Old Man who prefers chasing mortal women and having fun to doing his job; one such incident gave Hera the opening to kill Herc's wife and children. Every encounter between father and son references these items in some way, with Hercules wanting to embrace his father but also resenting their history and how he has to clean up messes that the old man causes.
    • Conversely, Alcmene was shown to be the perfect parent: always around, always beaming with pride, etc. Zeus himself acknowledged that he couldn't be the father that Hercules needed, which was why Alcmene was so important.
  • As for Iolaus, his father was Skouros, a famed general who neglected the family before outright abandoning it. During one of the times he was dead, Iolaus encountered him in the Underworld, laid into him for his faults, and showed forgiveness when Skouros actually apologized for his mistakes. This actually proves very important in the long run; in the Grand Finale, Iolaus cites this lesson to Hercules to help him let go of his own bitterness towards Zeus. As he says, everyone is an imperfect being trying to make their way in an imperfect world.
  • Aphrodite has a tense relationship with her son, Cupid. She takes her job more seriously than Zeus, but she was still content to party and think of herself most of the time. Cupid remarks he spent much of his life never even seeing her unless she had a job for him to do. She does love Cupid, but she doesn't really know how to interact with him. An episode of Xena: Warrior Princess has her suffer empty nest syndrome and regret not being a mother when she had the chance.
  • Cupid actually had it easier than Deon, the half-mortal product of a one-night stand Aphrodite had with a fisherman. The moment Deon was born, she dropped him off at his father's house and never looked back. Hercules ends up meeting Deon and helping him with his legacy. He notes that Aphrodite has plenty of good qualities, but also a drive for fun that often hurts people.
• Much like its parent show, House of the Dragon contains several flawed parents:
  • Viserys Targaryen loves his daughter Rhaenyra and wants the best for her, but he refuses to acknowledge her flaws and at some points unintentionally enables them. He also displays some blatant Parental Favoritism for her over the kids from his second marriage, whom he does love but doesn't pay much attention to, leaving most of the actual raising of them up to Alicent.
  • Otto Hightower is shown to care for Alicent several times, but being such an ambitious social climber means that he uses her as a pawn and manipulates in order to further his own schemes, like forcing her into starting a friendship with Viserys so that he will marry her, driving a wedge between her and Rhaenyra, her best friend, that forms the eventual conflict between them.
  • Alicent herself is shown to have trouble taking care of her children and even though she loves them deeply, has a very complicated relationship with all three of them, stemming from having them at such a young age as well as the lack of any sort of decent father figure to help her raise them. She has the difficult task of trying to mold Aegon into becoming a good heir despite his lack of ambition for it, and is constantly frustrated with him, causing him to resent her. Despite her trying to be patient with Helaena and connect with her, she struggles to understand her since Helaena has autism in a setting where there is no medical diagnosis for it at all, meaning that Alicent has absolutely no idea how to raise her daughter properly. On the other hand, she seems to favor Aemond, presumably because he's easier to raise compared to her other two kids, and dotes on him to the point where after Aemond loses an eye from a fight with Rhaenyra's sons, she takes a dagger and tries to attack Rhaenyra and her sons in a fit of rage.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • Lily's father Mickey loves his daughter and can occasionally be a Doting Parent for her but he was emotionally apathetic towards her during most of her life and his gambling and money problems hurt his relationship with Lily who has difficulty trusting him. It's pointed out in a later episode that when she was a baby he was an exceptionally good parent. His flaws didn't manifest until she reached school age and he had to find other things to fill his time.
  • Barney's single mother Loretta slept around, constantly lied to him, refused to tell him or his half-brother who their fathers were, and was generally neglectful throughout his childhood. However, she's also a Mama Bear who dearly loves Barney and him her, and in "Cleaning House", she confesses that she only ever lied to him to protect his feelings, including about his biological father.
  • Speaking of which, Barney eventually meets his father who abandoned him when he was six. However, unlike most stories like this Jerry sincerely regrets leaving Barney and truly wants to form a relationship with him.
• Graham and Jan in the Inside No. 9 episode "Last Gasp." They do love their daughter, who is terminally ill; but have no qualms in taking advantage of her illness for their own ends (Graham wanting money, Jan wanting to meet her favourite pop star.) When the pop star dies while blowing up a balloon for their daughter's birthday, they spend most of the episode ignoring her, instead preferring to argue with the singer's staff over who owns the balloon; which contains his literal last breath and as such is worth a lot of money.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022):
  • Louis de Pointe du Lac loves Claudia unconditionally, dotes on her, spends quality time with her, and tries to steer her on a path where she can retain some of her humanity. But this leads to him babying her and not being fully aware of what she is capable of or how ruthless she can be. And as Daniel Molloy points out, he ultimately chooses Lestat de Lioncourt over her by not letting her burn his body, and when she keeps insisting on it, Louis lashes out at her and pins her by the neck to the armoire. Louis himself in the present day is ashamed of all the ways he failed as her father.
  • Lestat, although he ultimately saw Claudia as a means of keeping Louis with him, genuinely cared for her in the beginning; he gave her nice clothes and gifts, taught her to drive, defended her behavior at Louis' mother's wake, and he acknowledges that she is a "prodigious killer." However, his callous handling of the Charlie incident, their too-similar natures, and Lestat's jealous temper destroy any chance of a real father-daughter relationship. By the time "A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart" starts, any affection that existed between them is gone, and they only see each other as obstacles for Louis. However, invokedWord of Saint Paul from Sam Reid is that Lestat, in his way, does love Claudia and is proud of her for outsmarting him and killing him.
• Keep Breathing: Liv's father cared deeply for her and raised her after her mother ran away. However, he could be temperamental and controlling. He also made the questionable decision to hide the fact her mother was trying to reach out to her by hiding the postcards.
• Devin's parents in The Kicks aren't perfect, but they do their best and are generally pretty on top of things.
• Kim's Convenience has a lot of focus on the parents of the Korean-Canadian immigrant Kim family interacting with their children. Mr. and Mrs. Kim (Appa and Umma) love their children Jung and Janet, but often butt heads with them due to cultural differences. This includes Umma meddling with their love lives and (in Janet's case) nagging for grandkids and Appa dismissing Janet's opinions/decisions due to his traditionalist views. Appa also kicked Jung (who was doing mild juvenile crime at the time) out of the house many years ago after catching him stealing money from the family store; this lead to both the parents coddling Janet more than she would like them to and also Appa and Jung avoiding each other ever since. It's revealed that Appa is very conflicted about his son — he does want to see him again and has fond memories of him, but he just can't let the resentment go, even though Jung has straightened himself out. Umma regularly contacts Jung but also often obsesses over his delinquent past, which Jung calls her out on. The family frequently addresses these issues and makes progress of sorts with each other as the series goes on.
• Kingdom (2014): Alvey is a troubled, damaged man who has trouble emotionally connecting to his sons; his ex-wife Christina is a former addict and sex worker who gets clean but never quite fulfills the maternal role.
• Another cop example is Inspector Brackenreid in Murdoch Mysteries. When his youngest son Bobby is kidnapped, he laments his failure to spend adequate time bonding with him, partly blaming his career, and resolves to put things right when Bobby is found.
• My Left Nut: Mick's mother Patricia is a Struggling Single Mother who misses her husband just as much as Mick misses his dad, and she struggles to bond with her son, especially with things that a father usually teaches his son, such as shaving or dating.
• My So-Called Life can be considered the Trope Codifier in Teen Drama — Patty and Graham played just as large a role in the plot as Angela herself, because a Written-In Infirmity (Claire Danes' age — child-labour laws prevented her from spending a full work day on set) necessitated Two Lines, No Waiting.
• Never Have I Ever: Nalini has good intentions, but is of course a deeply flawed parent who doesn't always understand her daughter.
• Rumplestiltskin in Once Upon a Time is a Doting Parent toward his son Baelfire; but to save his son from being drafted into the Ogre Wars, he becomes the Dark One to get power, becoming increasingly ruthless and would even kill people in front of Baelfire as a massive overreaction to any injury done to his son. When offered the chance to live with Baelfire in a world without magic, he's unable to let go of his power and ends up losing his son.
  • Rumplestiltskin's wife, Milah, may also count since when she was around before Rumplestiltskin became the Dark One, she was often at the village's tavern and seems to not think about her son. Not to mention running away on Captain Hook's ship and letting her family believe she was dead.
  • That series runs on enough Big, Screwed-Up Family to power a whole season of Jerry Springer; Charming and Snow didn't get to be parents due to the curse, and are starting from scratch when dealing with Emma (who is now thirty and was raised by the Department of Child Disservices). Regina (aka Snow White's stepmother) is the adopted mother of Henry (Emma's biological kid from a Teen Pregnancy), but neglected the boy for hours on end because bullying the townsfolk into submission and batshit crazy revenge schemes against her old enemy Snow White were a more "worthwhile" use of her time. Regina's own mother Cora was weapons-grade sociopathy, and Regina's birth was nothing more than part of the plan to have the whole universe bowing to her in revenge for the royals making fun of Cora's low birth as a miller's daughter. It's bad when the boy who hasn't yet hit his teens is a good candidate for Only Sane Man.
• The Other Two: Pat Dubek is genuinely enjoying the perks of her 13-year-old son becoming a star, after what is implied to have been a difficult life back in Ohio. She appears on talk shows, goes to parties, and writes a children's book.
• In Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, the Liars learn that their mothers whom they love are hiding secrets about being responsible for the death of a girl when they were in high school. Imogen discovers the truth that she didn't know her mom, who she saw as an amazing, loving mother when she was alive, wasn't who she thought she was in the past.
• Rebelde Way the three main parents exemplify this. While Sergio is absolutely abusive towards Pablo, Sonia and Franco instead are presented as doting parents who would do anything for their daughters, Mia and Marizza, even to the point of spoiling them. Yet they're also shown to have flaws in their parenting: the girls at times act a little too bratty due to their parenting; Sonia has difficulty connecting to Marizza who feels overshadowed by her, and Franco has kept Mia wrapped in a figurative plastic bubble that shields her from the reality surrounding her. Not to mention that when the two discover the parentage of their missing parents, the girls naturally freak out.
• Sadakatsiz:
  • Despite her obsessive behavior and lack of scruples, Drin is genuinely a good mother. Even when she's executing one of her hare-brained schemes, her first priority is to make sure someone she trusts is taking care of Zeynep. She's loving and always thinks of her and her well-being. Her demeanor brightens up whenever Zeynep is involved. She's not above using Zeynep to manipulate Volkan but it's not done in a way that damages Zeynep. For instance, lying about their daughter being sick or throwing a tantrum out of discomfort to get his attention. By contrast, Volkan selfishly makes Ali's life more difficult so he can interfere with Asya's relationships. When Asya convinces Derin to seek therapy, Asya's argument is that Zeynep needs her mother; which leads to Derin's redemption.
  • Asya is a sensible mother who sets boundaries, enforces discipline in non-abusive ways, and is always emotionally available for her son. Most of her decisions throughout the series are motivated by Ali's well-being. Questionable as it might be, Asya doesn't interfere with Ali having a positive relationship with his father; she doesn't poison Ali's mind against Volkan and even encourages him to patch things up with his father if needed. Unfortunately, this leaves her powerless when Volkan's manipulations tear Ali so much, that both his parents start hesitating at dealing proper punishment for his increasingly reckless actions out of fear of alienating him.
  • Volkan starts out as a loving father for both his son Ali and his daughter Zeynep. But, just as Asya and Derin are definitely Good Parents in a difficult situation, Volkan slowly evolves into an Abusive Parent. Due to his own Fatal Flaws of entitlement and cowardice, he slowly destroys his relationship with Ali and his actions prevent him from even being present in Zeynep's life. He loves Ali but is not above causing him emotional turmoil, enabling his aggressiveness, and actively misguiding him to get what he wants. He only prompts Ali to have a good relationship with his mother when it suits him.
• Schitt's Creek: Johnny and Moira were too busy globetrotting and enjoying their wealth to be active parents to their kids, but when they move to Schitt's Creek they are forced to connect with their adult kids without the money as a crutch.
• Star Trek: Despite Worf being a good and honourable man, he’s shown to be an inadequate father and clearly has no idea how to raise a child. He loves Alexander deeply but just doesn’t know how to connect with him, and sent him away to be raised by his adoptive grandparents for most of his childhood. Worf also generally doesn’t factor Alexander into his personal decision-making, i.e. when the Enterprise is destroyed, he decides to resign from Starfleet and relocate to the other side of the Quadrant, and doesn’t even consider the effect that would have on his son until Chief O’Brien explicitly reminds him. When Alexander shows up as a young man in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Worf is surprised to learn he’s enlisted in the Klingon military, indicating he had no idea what his son had been doing since he last saw him. Their adult relationship is a bit closer but is still noticeably awkward.
• Supernatural:
  • John Winchester is a good-hearted man who had something awful happen to his family... but no matter how much he tries or how much he loves his sons, he's just incapable of being a good father. Before he dies, he gives Dean an extra-horrible order to kill Sam if he can't save him, treats Sam like a child and Dean like a blunt weapon, and an awful lot of their issues that are still going on today can solely lay the blame at his feet.
  • Mary Winchester is revived by Amara in season 12 after having been dead for the past three decades. In addition to being a Fish out of Temporal Water, she turns out to be just as flawed as John was and not the idealized vision that Dean had of his mother (she's a complete stranger to Sam, who was a baby when she died). Amara later makes this clear to Dean when he asks her why she brought her back in the first place.
• The Walking Dead (2010):
  • Rick and Lori Grimes have their share of problems when it comes to parenting. Lori initially refuses to allow Carl to have any combat training despite it being the most practical solution in the apocalypse, simply because she doesn’t want him to undergo Break the Cutie. Rick also has a habit of ignoring how cold his son is becoming and this feeds Shane’s resentment of him during Season 2. In Season 4, he relents and tries to course-correct Carl, but eventually concedes he will have to continue to kill and fight. Notably, when Judith grows up years later, Michonne raises her to be a level-headed and capable warrior against walkers by the time she’s ten years old, avoiding most of the problems that Carl went through.
  • Hershel insisted to his daughters that the walkers were merely sick people who could be cured, and also tried to teach them that no outsiders could truly be trusted or allowed. Hershel is forced to admit later that he was wrong and essentially didn’t allow his daughters to grieve their lost family members, but he ends up being partially vindicated when the group encounters hostile humans.
  • Deanna and Reg Monroe are well-meaning good people, but their adult sons Aiden and Spencer turned out to be fairly shitty people. Aiden is an egotistical coward, while Spencer shows selfish tendencies and later foolishly goes to Negan to ask him to kill Rick for him so he can take over the town to rule on Negan’s behalf.
  • Jessie Anderson loves her children and tries to protect them from their abusive father, but even when he is out of the picture, she does a poor job raising her sons. She coddles Sam and doesn’t try to help him work through his depression, and also allows Ron to develop a nasty grudge towards the Grimes family while not helping him deal with his conflicted feelings towards his dad. Both sons end up suffering Sanity Slippage just like their father and get the three of them killed.
  • Ezekiel and Carol are both some of the best characters of the series, but their adopted son Henry grows up with too much idealism and “save the day” heroism. This leads to Henry being Too Dumb to Live and foolishly charging into the Whisperer camp to rescue a girl he likes, resulting in the deaths of over a dozen people including himself.
  • Michonne, despite the earlier note that she raised Judith to be a well-adjusted apocalypse child, frequently ends up inadvertently neglecting Judith and her feelings. She refuses to listen to Judith or treat her with respect, insisting she stay focused on school and not trusting her to make decisions. Eventually, Michonne realizes the error of her ways when Judith finds a friendship with Negan of all people, who even spells out that she needs to get her shit together as a parent.
  • Maggie unfortunately allows her own grudge against Negan for killing Glenn to negatively impact her son Hershel. He grows up in the shadow of his father’s death, asking if his murderer got what he deserved at a very young age. Hershel is shown to frequently grieve in silence, and later pulls a gun on Negan when he learns he killed Glenn.
• Young Sheldon, and to a lesser extent The Big Bang Theory, show that the Coopers generally mean well but don't know how to raise a kid like Sheldon, who is much smarter than them and very likely neurodivergent, let alone balance his wants and needs against those of his average siblings. Mary overmothers Sheldon and tries to force him to live her idea of a "normal" childhood, which he doesn't want to do and may not even be capable of, in one episode intercepting and destroying offers from colleges to prevent him from leaving home. Meanwhile, George cares about his kids and does offer them encouragement and advice on occasion, but is largely checked out of their lives unless they cause trouble. However, they do still try to do the best they can, for example, making an effort to pay more attention to Missy when they learn she feels left out.
  Sheldon: My father didn't always get the credit he deserved. The advice he gave me was actually worked out pretty well. Of course, I never told him... He may not have been the world's greatest dad, but maybe we weren't the world's greatest kids.

---