http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BumblingDad

Mr. Bergstrom: Lisa, your homework is always so neat. How can I put this? Does your father help you with it?

Lisa: No. Homework's not my father's specialty.

Mr. Bergstrom: Well there's no shame in it, I mean, my dad—

Lisa: Not mine.

Mr. Bergstrom: You didn't let me finish—

Lisa: Unless the next word was "burped", you didn't have to. The Simpsons : Unless the next word was "burped", you didn't have to.

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Born out of the Sitcom Dysfunctional Family, he's a deliberate subversion of the Standard '50s Father. Now so ubiquitous the older trope is nearly forgotten.

Although he's clever at times, he's not usually allowed to be smart. He has no idea that Shortcuts Make Long Delays. He's lazy, gluttonous and has miscellaneous other glaring vices. His children may love him, but they often don't respect him. However, he is still a sympathetic character; the source of his charm is his complete love and loyalty to his family, even if the main way he shows it is by fixing problems he caused himself.

His family is made up of at least one child nearing or in their teenage years, and a wife (usually much prettier than Dad) who spends her time Parenting the Husband. If he has one or more teenage daughters, at least one will be a Bratty Teenage Daughter or a Daddy's Girl; whether they are or not, the dad will be an Overprotective Dad in regards to the girl(s) — and quite often Amazingly Embarrassing to the girls and the boys alike.

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Naturally, filled with Unfortunate Implications, and often used as an enabler of several double standards. Sometimes, on the rare occasions that a mom does something dumb, she's cut more slack than she otherwise would be, since the bumbling dad is there to make her look better by comparison. The frustrating and stagnant gender roles enforced by this trope are often pointed to as an example of sexism against men. On the other hand, this trope doesn't let female characters off so good either. For example, if everyone's used to tolerating Dad's incompetence, they might still hold Mom to the standards of a competent adult. In fact, she may end up being held responsible for Parenting the Husband and fixing his screw-ups. After all, somebody's got to be the grownup in a family, and you can't hold Dad accountable for not acting like one if he's just an idiot.

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This trope is still mostly seen in sitcoms and cartoons, along with many commercials, especially ones aimed at kids. In anime, this type of character is taken more respectfully, since it usually consists of a goofier dad, more involved with his family than the stereotypical Salaryman. This is even more common when his children have no visible mother.

This is an example of how a Subverted Trope can end up becoming the norm. Back in the day, fathers were assumed to be wise and in charge, and the bumbling dad was something fresh and unusual—which was arguably what made it so funny in the first place. Today, sitcoms have made bumbling dad an Undead Horse Trope, and consistently competent fathers are a comparative rarity.

Examples:

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Popular in many, many television commercials — especially for products associated with domestic tasks like cooking, cleaning and childcare, as this plays into the complementary trope and stereotype that Men Can't Keep House. One such commercial that stoked up a significant amount of ire in the United Kingdom which invoked this trope was an ad for the oven cleaner Oven Pride, which somehow managed to create a triple standard(!) by implying that not only are dads too stupid to figure out how to use a bottle of chemicals, but that mums should stay in the kitchen because theyre the only ones smart enough to use the product.

This trope's over-use in advertising is frequently Lampshaded and held up for scorn on advert deconstruction forum Ad Turds.

Eggo Waffle commercials have dumped their live-action gimmicks in favor of crudely-drawn cartoon shorts featuring a bumbling dad trying to steal his daughter's waffles.

A commercial for Verizon internet showed a bumbling dad whose wife had to boss him around — for the good of the family — to stop him from neglecting his chores in favor of playing with the new computer under the guise of "helping" his daughter with her homework. The way it was played out came across as so unfunny and pointlessly insulting it was actually removed from the air after complaints. Heck, several phone and cable commercials will still treat the dad like a goofy dumbass even when he's doing exactly what he's supposed to and buying the advertised service!



Anime and Manga

Film — Animated

The Father in The Movie of Coraline. In contrast, the Other Father is attentive, caring, and much cooler.

Professor Bomba from Epic is already unused to interacting with humans, let alone his own daughter.

In Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure Scamp sees his father as one of these, a lazy dad who could never understand his desire to be a wild dog. Little does he know that his father was THE wild dog back in the day.

As pointed out by The Nostalgia Chick in her episode on Disney Princesses, there was a pretty huge trend in "infantile, impotent fathers" that the Disney girls had to put up with during the company's Renaissance era; while they were always well-meaning and wanted the best for their daughters, they tended to get easily fooled, were intelligent but eccentric, were too caught up in traditional values, etc.. Interestingly enough, the main aversion to this is Fa Zhou, wise, poetic, kindhearted Retired Badass and father of Mulan, who wasn't even really a princess.

Film — Live-Action

Played with in American Beauty. Kevin Spacey's character is initially a depressing version of this, but as the movie continues he manages to shirk the mantle. Subverted in Cheaper by the Dozen. Tom is unable to control the kids at times, but he's clearly frustrated, not stupid. Although many claimed Tom was stupid, this clearly is not the case.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Wayne Szalinski is a more highly intelligent version of the bumbling dad. But he is far from irresponsible, even though his inventions have done bizarre things to his loved ones. Big Russ Thompson, on the other hand...

Gang-du from The Host is clumsy, immature and absent-minded, which explains why his wife left him. He feeds his daughter Hyun-seo beer and can't even gather enough money to buy her a cellphone. In fact, he's so clumsy that he inadvertently allows his daughter to be captured by a giant monster from the river Han. Still, as incompetent as he is, he loves his daughter more than anything else in the world and fights with all his might to save her. And as it turns out, the authorities are even more inefficient than he is.

Played with in Juno, where the protagonists' father and stepmom look clueless in the beginning but appear wiser and emotionally supportive as the movie advances.

Subverted in Maleficent, where three female pixies are bumbling moms and the only male involved in raising the child is shown to be quite good at it.

Mean Girls has Cady's father who doesn't know that kids aren't allowed outside when they're grounded.

Played With in Moms' Night Out. Alysson imagines all sorts of horror scenarios when Marco and Sean are in charge of the kids. However, most of the shenanigans, including the fathers and their kids winding up in jail, are the fault of the mothers.

Mr. Mom is about a bumbling dad who has to stay at home and take care of the kids while his wife works. Once he stops feeling sorry for himself about being unemployed and his wife being the breadwinner, he gets it together and gets quite good in the role.

Clark Griswald is very much this in the National Lampoon's Vacation movies. Pretty much, every movie where Chevy Chase plays the dad, starting with Cops and Robbersons and going rapidly downhill. His role as Clark Griswold might have been an aversion if he could have kept his plans from going to hell, but that was rarely ever his fault; fate just doesn't like the Griswold clan. Whatever it may be, Rusty Griswold is looking to receive this same treatment in Vacation.

Subverted in Suffragette; Maud's husband Sonny seems to be this at first, when he fails to dress his son in the morning and the child still wears a pyjama when he's sent to the carer. However, it soon turns out that he is not loyal to his family, but ruthless enough to give the son up for adoption without Maud's consent, which the law of that time allowed.

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

Country Music parodist Cledus T. Judd has "Where's Your Mommy?", a parody of Toby Keith's "Who's Your Daddy?" that features a man struggling to keep a baby entertained and clean while the mother's away.

Kaito often gets portrayed as this in Vocaloid fanworks that make him and Meiko the Designated Parents of the Crypton Future Media Vocaloids, though usually not to the extent of the typical sitcom dad; sweet and well-meaning, but naive, childish, and obsessed with ice cream, as opposed to the usually more mature if somewhat hotheaded and booze-loving Meiko.

Newspaper Comics

Theatre

Played to tragicomic effect in Canadian playwright Ed Riche's one man show Possible Maps. While the protagonist's father, a university professor, wasn't stupid by any means, he was somewhat scatterbrained at best and manic depressive with what looks like a touch of autism at worst. Most of the play revolves around the protagonist reminiscing about what a chore it was for the family to put up with him and his own anxieties about the possibility of inheriting the man's mental frailties.

Old Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice. This arises partly from the fact that he's too blind to recognize his own son.

Video Games

Asura from Asura's Wrath was like this before being betrayed. Unlike most of the other examples however, this isn't out of actual idiocy: Since his Mantra is that of Wrath, he's so angry about almost everything that the only parenting he knows is of the two step variety: 1) Find reason daughter is crying. 2) Apply punch to the face of said reason.

Boggy from Banjo-Kazooie is a polar bear who is utterly incompetent at parenting. In the original game, he abandons his kids at Christmas to go sled racing, leaving Banjo and Kazooie to find their missing presents. In Banjo-Tooie, he has given up sled racing to watch his big-screen television set, leaving his wife to take his kids to the Witchyworld amusement park, and Banjo and Kazooie to round them up for her.

Wally Warbles from Cuphead is an interesting example. He's shown as short-tempered and aggressive, but he's not exactly bumbling, being as tough a boss as the others in the game. His unnamed child mentions the two of them "bringing the pain" together and doesn't seem to be ashamed of him. Despite this, Wally still shows signs of incompetence, most namely during his bullet hell phase, in which he strains himself to the point of losing his breath.

Octodad, who due to being an invertebrate creature with poor motor controls has difficulties performing tasks that would be otherwise simple for human beings (at least in gameplay). Jun Kurosu's father, Akinari Kashihara, in Persona 2: Innocent Sin, which contributed to his divorce, and lead to young Jun's embarrassed lies about his father, which created a shadow copy of Akinari that Nyarlathotep took over . Somewhat de-Bumbled in the second half of P2, Eternal Punishment, enough to at least keep his marriage intact.

. Somewhat de-Bumbled in the second half of P2, Eternal Punishment, enough to at least keep his marriage intact. Persona 4: Ryotaro Dojima downplays this. While he isn't a totally incompetent parent, he still feels he's not doing a good raising his daughter Nanako on his own after his wife's death. The protagonist can help Dojima reconnect with Nanako in both their Social Links. Sadly, he does play this trope straight later on, but in a very tragic light. Once he suspects the protagonist of being involved with the murders, Dojima takes him to the police station to question him, while leaving Nanako alone at the house, which makes it very easy for Taro Namatome to kidnap her, throw her into the TV World, and much later note Provided the protagonist makes the right choices , permanent death.

Web Animation

Pop of Happy Tree Friends. It's usually fatal for Cub when he's Distracted by the Shiny. He means well, but he doesn't exactly live in a world which pities mistakes or oversights. (Or seemingly safe and sensible decisions for that matter.)

Webcomics

Web Video

In what fellow troper Bishop Barron calls "The Homer Simpson Effect," popular works like The Simpsons and Family Guy depict fathers as boorish, stupid, and unvirtuous to make the women in the family look better. While he understands this as a Deconstruction of patriarchal norms, the Bishop cites Aristotle to argue that women can be virtuous without relegating good fathers to the trash heap.

Dad's heart is bigger than his head; he means well, but he embarrasses Daughter, struggles to have any sort of authority, and is generally a goof.

Web Original

Teddy Almanzor from Less Is Morgue is Riley's tiny, ineffectual father. He doesn't even believe that Evelyn exists, and doesn't seem to fully understand what a podcast even is.

Western Animation