Out With Dad is an online short-form narrative webseries produced in Toronto. It's a quirky drama about a teenage girl and her single father, at a time when Rose is coming of age and coming out of the closet. Out With Dad tackles issues of coming out, homophobia, first loves and heartbreak, making mistakes and acceptance, learning and love.
In season 3, a spinoff series, Vanessa's Story, started running alongside the main show, focusing on Vanessa after she runs away from home.
Out With Dad provides examples of:
- All Women Are Prudes: Vanessa's mother is ultra-conservative regarding all topics involving sexuality and is absolutely intolerant to the possibility of her daughter possibly being gay.
- Attempted Rape: Happens to Vanessa. Fortunately, she manages to fight the guy off.
- Bookends: The series starts with Rose and Vanessa together and Nathan moving towards them, it ends with Rose and Vanessa together and Nathan walking away. There's no The Big Damn Kiss like some fans wanted, but still, the point comes across fairly clearly.
- Butch Lesbian: New Vanessa, or Nessa, in contrast to Rose and Claire. She has boyish short hair, usually wears tank tops and similarly overall masculine clothing, with her personality also being somewhat more brash. Plus her collection of piercings.
- But Not Too Bi: Vanessa realizes she's bisexual after having a mutual attraction for Rose. She's not actually shown as attracted to boys however really, and her only romantic interests on the show are girls.
- Call-Back: Done in the grand finale. When Nathan tells Rose he's asexual, Rose starts to launch into the same speech Nathan used when she came out to him. He stops her before it gets too far, but it is very funny.
- Childhood Friends: Rose, Kenny, and Vanessa have been each other's best friends since they were little.
- Closet Key: Rose and Vanessa both are this for each other. After practicing kissing, it stirs a mutual attraction which both initially have anxiety over. Rose realizes that she's a lesbian as a result. Vanessa takes longer, but later realizes that she's actually bisexual.
- Coming of Age Story:
- Ultimately, the main theme of the entire series. Growing up is hard enough and it's made so much harder when you're gay just because of everything everyone who isn't says or does. Even parents, whether their kid is gay, straight or has stripes like a zebra, still have some growing up to do.
- Lampshaded by action in the final episode. Rose has finally grown up and grown into herself, Vanessa can finally have the meaningful relationship with the person who started this particular ball rolling in the first place, and Nathan has finally learned to live a life separate from his daughter.
- Coming-Out Story: There are separate stories with two characters - Rose gets the total support from her dad, Vanessa gets the homophobic reaction from her mom. Near the end, Nathan tells Rose he's asexual as well, which is fine though she teases him by repeating one of his lines to her from her own coming out.
- Daddy's Girl: Rose is rather close to her father, having been raised in a single-parent household after her mother died during her birth.
- Death by Childbirth: Rose's mom died while giving birth to her, as it triggered an undiagnosed heart condition.
- Double Date: Rose and Claire end up crashing Nathan and Angela's date. It's rather awkward for Rose and Nathan.
- Face Palm: Nathan and his dad both react this way when his mom worries Rose will cut her hair short, since she's a lesbian.
- Gay Best Friend: Nathan's best friend, Johnny. He had been close friends with the Miller family for years. Rose even refers to him as "Uncle Johnny". No relation. He's a nice Camp Gay guy who gives the two of them support and advice, while he has no onscreen love life at all.
- Gayngst: Big time, especially in Rose's case, and increasingly in Vanessa's as she starts coming out. They are both shown to have a great deal of anxiety about it, and it's pretty justified as they're bullied (in Rose's case) or driven to escape (Vanessa). Rose gets over it much easier, since her dad's very accepting. Vanessa, on the other hand, is briefly homeless. She gets therapy to handle the trauma of the experience.
- Genki Girl:
- Claire, Rose's bubbly, perky, openly-gay friend and later girlfriend.
- Angela, Nathan's love interest, a Motor Mouth who doesn't hold much of anything back.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Just about every episode had either "Out", "With", or "Dad" in the title, with only a very few exceptions.
- Late Coming Out: Nathan is past forty at least when he's made aware of the fact that he's a romantic asexual, never having heard of the idea before though when told he realizes that it describes him. Rose, who came out to him much earlier, teasingly echoes one of his own lines after learning she's a lesbian.
- Like Brother and Sister: Rose and Kenny. They're quite close, though only as friends, reinforced as Rose realizes that she's a lesbian.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Rose and Claire. They're lesbians with long hair, traditionally feminine clothing and both also act indistinguishably from straight girls (aside from their sexual orientation, obviously).
- Keet: Kenny is described as "always bursting with energy (probably with a touch of ADHD!)".
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: Vanessa's mother kicked her older brother out for him marrying a woman because she was a Muslim, a person of color, or simply not Catholic (Vanessa isn't sure).
- Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: Rose has long hair, feminine clothing and acts basically like the straight girls. Her girlfriend New Vanessa (or Nessa) on the other hand has boyish short hair, masculine clothing (she almost invariably wears tank tops) a ton of piercings and a far more brash personality. In their case, it doesn't work out.
- Maybe Ever After: Rose and Vanessa, specifically addressed by Rose in her final vlog. Maybe they can be friends after everything that happened, maybe they'll be something more, we'll never really know.
- Missing Mom: Rose's mother passed away when she was born, due to a sudden heart attack.
- Musical Episode: Season 3, episode 6, "Out with Song and Dance" features a Massive Multiplayer Ensemble Number (with basically the entire cast up to this point in the show, even those who hadn't been in season 3), complete with Spontaneous Choreography.
- My Beloved Smother: Vanessa has one of these. Exaggerated once she starts intervening into her daughter's social life and refuses to allow Rose and Vanessa to interact with one another. Ultimately, it drives Vanessa to run away.
- No Bisexuals: One of the homeless kids Vanessa meets believes this. Averted in the actual show, as Vanessa and another one of the homeless girls are explicitly bisexuals.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. First there's Rose's friend/crush Vanessa, then she also dates another girl with the same name, whom they call "New Vanessa", and later nicknamed "Nessa".
- Papa Wolf: Nathan willingly comes to his daughter's defense once Vanessa's mother begins speaking ill of her, although this eventually backfires on him once he accidentally outs Rose as a lesbian, which further increases the rift in hers and Vanessa's relationship.
- Phenotype Stereotype: Nessa, a Latina, has the usual looks in US media-olive skin and black hair.
- Plucky Comic Relief: Kenny occasionally provides a brief dosage of humor to the frequent heaviness of the series.
- Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: Rose and Vanessa appeared to have this dynamic with one another before Rose had begun questioning her sexuality. The two are very close, inseparable even, so it's no big deal when they both practice kissing together. However, then Rose realizes she's attracted to Vanessa, which starts her self-realization that she's a lesbian. Vanessa first pushes her away, but eventually admits she returned her feelings and is a bisexual girl.
- Queer Romance: Rose and Vanessa have a mutual attraction which leads to both realizing they're queer, though it doesn't go far. Later on, Rose's romances with her two girlfriends are a big part of the series, but they don't work out. It's hinted at the end that she and Vanessa may still get together.
- Questionable Consent: While at the homeless shelter, Kayla gets into bed with Vanessa, then they have sex offscreen. However, later on Vanessa says she just submitted to Kayla, indicating the sex wasn't something she'd really wanted though at the time they'd kissed apparently with mutual desire.
- The Quiet One: Rose likes to think of herself as "the shy type" of person and even mentions being quiet as being her one true label before starting to question her sexuality.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- Delivered by Steven Lemay unto himself when Vanessa comes back.
- Another one delivered to Rose by Nessa after it eventually comes ousaust that she (Rose) was never very interested in her and let that mess keep building. Sadly, though delivered through intense (and frankly justified) anger, Nessa does make more than a few good points about Rose's behavior and way of handling her life.
- Romantic False Lead: It was pretty clear from the beginning that any relationship between Rose and Vanessa 2.0 was doomed from the get go. The former still hadn't settled high school issues and the latter was just too quick to fall in love. It's still no less painful to watch it go down in flames though.
- Ship Sinking:
- After finally sleeping together, it looks like team Claire is officially done for.
- The same episode that seems to cement this also delivers the final salvo into any remaining hopes for a relationship with the New Vanessa.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Vanessa obviously feels some sort of an attraction to Rose, but at first she isn't shown displaying interest in any other girl in the series. It's averted in episode 2 of Vanessa's Story when she does have sex with Kayla, though later from what Vanessa says it was just submitting to her.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Rose and Vanessa have blatant feelings for one another, but can't be together due to the conservatism in Vanessa's family and the possible circumstances being in a relationship could bring. This is even lampshaded in the fourth webisode of the first season, once the two dance to Side Swept by Late July, which pretty much suggests just this.
- Time Skip: After season three, the series jumps ahead, with Rose going from being fifteen to beginning university.
- Title Drop: Used in the last line of the final episode.
- Took a Level in Jerkass:
- Vanessa refuses to acknowledge Rose at school and interact with her for a while after Rose comes out to her as gay, coldly referring to her as a "queer" and distancing herself from their friendship. It's later revealed that her family's conservative, strictly Catholic views may have been to blame, as Nathan suggests, and that Vanessa is simply scared of her possible sexuality.
- Ultimately subverted when after Rose confronts Vanessa about this, she breaks down, apologizes for her behavior, and says that she's afraid of everything, ultimately proving Nathan's theories.
- Trans Tribulations: Morgan, a transgender member at the PFLAG meetings, recounts having been beaten and raped by some men in the past due to being trans.
- Twofer Token Minority: New Vanessa, or Nessa, is a Latina lesbian (the only woman of color in the main cast).
- What Happened to the Mouse?: After season 3 we never see Kenny again. Some noises are made regarding him, implying that he and Alicia broke up because he was inattentive, but we never hear from him or his story.
