Sunday Best: TV Dads of All Time (Updated 2022)

 In honor of Father's Day today, I thought we'd recap the best TV dads.

Now this is not as easy as it sounds, considering that television is, for lack of a better term, a moral cesspool.  Too often the dads are the "cool" dads who buy their kids condoms or they are buffoonish bums.  But we cannot deny that what we watch on tv influences the culture, so we should try to find good examples of fatherhood out there on the airwaves

This list is an updated from a previous list.




10.  Murray Goldberg ("The Goldbergs")

I don't know why, but I am partial to "yelly" dads on TV.  For some reason I find them to be more reflective of life.  And having grown up in the 80's, there is a truth to Murray's parenting style.  He isn't into all of the touchy-feely schmaltz, but he does whatever his kids need, even if its them needing to be called morons.  And above all, he does everything he does so that his kids can have a better life than he has.

9.  Joe West ("The Flash")

Joe is a great dad because he sees being a father as the center of his life and he never stops trying to be a great dad.  He is protective (maybe overly so) of his only daughter Iris.  He raised Barry as his own son and never let him feel as if he wasn't as special to him as Iris.  And when he found a son he never knew, Wally, Joe didn't hesitate to open his life and his heart completely to him and do everything that a father could do.

8.  Harold Weir ("Freaks and Geeks")

Simple, yet relatable, Harold is the average father doing his best.  And even his flaws in parenting, like always being more worried about his daughter than his son simply because she's his daughter, are understandable and endearing.

7. Clark Kent/Superman ("Superman and Lois")

After watching for nearly two seasons, I am very comfortable with this choice and it has potential to rise higher on this list.  The innovative concept of this show is that we see Clark and Lois raising teenage sons.  This allows us to see an entirely different side of him.  We get to watch Superman do in the concrete what he has been doing in the abstract: teaching us how to be better people.  But the in the show we see the challenges and frustrations that come with instilling virtues in those whose nature is to rebel against parental teaching.  With all of his power, we see him helpless sometimes.  I love the fact that he is a father who holds his sons to a high moral standard.  When one is kicked out of school for drugs, he blows up at him in a way that made me have flashbacks to my own childhood (the yelling, not the drugs).  But he knows when to relent.  My favorite line is when he tells his son that he knows that he has to let him make his own mistakes, but that its the hardest thing to do.  But a good father has let his children grow up to be adults.

6.  Red Foreman ("That '70's Show")

While nearly everyone on that show was a moral degenerate, Red was the constant boot in their you-know-where to help them grow up.  Tough as nails, he gave what structure.  And though he wasn't warm and fuzzy, he was always there for his kids (even his kids' friends).

5.  Keith Mars ("Veronica Mars")

This was a smart, funny, hard-working dad who put everything he had towards the happiness of his daughter.  Yes, he bent or broke the law every once and a while to do it, but he always did it with his daughter's happiness in mind.

4.  Philip Banks ("The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air")

Uncle Phil could have been a simple over-bearing stereotype.  But he was tough and tender as needed.  He was as much a father to Will as he was to his own children.  The episode where Will's dad comes back is particularly poignant and shows what a real father is.

3. Jack Pearson ("This is Us.")

Jack is a complicated and flawed man.  He is scarred from the abuse he suffered from his home and from the Vietnam War.  He inherited a tight-lipped stoicism and his father's alcoholism.  But Jack shows us that a father is not a man without flaws.  All of our fathers have flaws.  But Jack never forgot the gift he had in his family.  He saw them as his life and his earthly salvation.  Early in the series, his best friend offers to give him relief from the stresses of family life.  But Jack understands that those stresses are part of the glory of family: that's the good stuff.  And even though Jack fails, he gives everything he has to his family.  As a result, his presence looms large over the lives of everyone because he fulfilled one of the most important parts of being a father: to be your children's first hero.

2.  Heathcliff Huxtable ("The Cosby Show")

[The text below was written before most of the scandals regarding Cosby came to light.  If you look at the show outside of the real-world context, then the following text still applies]

No television dad reminds me more of my father.  I think people misremember Cliff as being wacky and fun-loving.  In fact, he was a stern disciplinarian who pushed his kids to make good life decisions.  The humor tended to come from his exacerbation at the idiocy of his children.  But he always put them first and was a great role-model.

1.  Jonathan Kent ("Smallville")

Speaking of role models, there is none better than Jonathan Kent on Smallville.  In fact, that is his whole function to the Superman mythos.  He gets his powers from his Kryptonian parents, but he gets his heroism from his earthly ones.  Jonathan gives Clark the moral compass he needs to understand that his powers are a gift to help others.  And while he did make mistakes, he always did so with the intent to help his family.  He was the one who taught Clark not only how to be a Superman, but how to be a man.