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• Basic Trope: A comically incompetent father in a Dom Com.
• Played Straight: Bob means well, but he often grabs the Idiot Ball and gets his wife and children into all sorts of misadventures with him. He is also a very flawed (yet sympathetic) individual.
• Exaggerated: Bob is an outright Jerkass who is a borderline (if not outright) abusive father.
• Downplayed: The family share possession of the Idiot Ball pretty fairly, but Bob carries it more than most.
• Inverted:
  • Bob is a Standard '50s Father
  • Alternatively, Alice is an incompetent mom.
• Justified:
  • Unfortunately, emotional maturity and common sense are not (and never have been) prerequisites for parenthood.
  • Bob's family is a rather Dysfunctional Family
• Subverted: Bob seems dumb, but that was Obfuscating Stupidity.
• Double Subverted: But it turns out, he was really that dumb. When he seemed smart, he was Feigning Intelligence
• Deconstructed: Can have a negative effect on his children and his wife, leading to the breakdown of the (presumably already dysfunctional) family.
• Reconstructed: Bob is dumb and irresponsible, but he sincerely loves his family and is capable of stepping up when it's important.
• Parodied:
  • Bob is The Ditz.
  • Alice ends up Parenting The Husband as much as (or more than) her kids.
• Lampshaded: "He's like all those bumbling dads you see in sitcoms."
• Averted: Bob is a competent father.
• Enforced:
  • "All those perfect Dom Com families on TV...they make me sick! I'll make a Dysfunctional Family, with a blithering idiot as its head!"
  • One of the parents needs to be somewhat on the ball for the sake of Conservation of Competence, and you want the characterisations to be relatively consistent rather than a constant game of Idiot Ball. You know that every time the dad is shown to be somehow "superior" to his wife, you'll have a protracted battle with the Moral Guardians, but not so the other way around. What are you gonna do?
• Invoked: Alice specifies in her Lonely Hearts ad that she's looking for an Adult Child with whom to settle down and raise kids.
• Defied: Alice breaks up with Bob when she sees that he is too immature to raise a family, and not likely to change any time soon.
• Discussed:
• Conversed:
• Played For Laughs: Almost always is.
• Played For Drama: Bob's mistakes and selfishness negatively affect his family.