Bit of a long one this week, but look at me sticking to my bi-weekly schedule. Just a little reminder that if you are new or visiting through a link, usually the newsletter email will be sent to your promotions/spam folder so a gentle housekeeping note that if you want them to be sent to your primary folder to make sure you move it on over! Okay let’s talk about dads.
Early last week when it was announced that Bob Saget had died, immediately the headlines started running that America’s tv dad had died. At first I was bummed like everyone else at the news of his sudden passing, but the more the headlines included the phrase “tv dad” the more a familiar feeling started creeping it’s way back into me. The first time I had this feeling was in August 2014 with the death of Robin Williams. I instantly cried, which was different for me at the time because I don’t think I had ever cried over a celebrity dying. My gut reaction was to call my mom and cry to her, even though my family isn’t big on celebrity culture. And although my mom and I have a great relationship, we don’t really talk about personal things. Our convos are usually a check in that everyone is alive and okay and maybe a few things here and there about our week. But in that moment I wanted comfort from her more than anyone else.
I specifically wanted comfort from my mom because I would soon realize that Robin Williams was my screen dad and I needed my mom since my dad had died. Growing up I was limited in what I was allowed to watch since I was raised in a Christian household. Nothing PG-13 or higher and I was forced to turn off the TV every night at 6:30pm when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came on (which would later come back to haunt my parents at a friend’s birthday party because someone in a Michelangelo costume walked into the room and it sent me screaming like hell and scurrying into the arms of the first available adult). Also I was usually only allowed to watch Christian based programming, shout out to my fellow McGee and Me watchers.
However I was allowed to watch Robin Williams no matter what he was in. He broke through the Christian barrier so we owned copies of Mrs. Doubtfire, Flubber, Jumanji etc and that was usually my Sunday-after-church-parents-are-taking-a-nap go to. My mom said he was the only person who could really make my grandfather laugh (I never really met my grandfather so insights like these I always grab onto) but to my dad Robin Williams was special because it was the first time my dad saw himself on screen. Which was in Williams iconic role in the movie everyone absolutely knows him for- Moscow on the Hudson. Till this day my dad likes to remind us that Williams portrayal of a Russian defector was akin to him defecting Bulgaria and the not so warm welcome he received when he first came to the States. But little did my dad know that introducing me to Robin Williams was also introducing me to my first screen dad. The dad I would go on to unknowingly grow fond while wishing he was my own.
Coming from the religious world, my idea of a dad was always going to be grounded in fear. The portrayal of the “Heavenly Father” is at its core supposed to invoke fear so that we won’t end up in hell. I know the portrayal goes deeper into a loving more nurturing Father, but we have the phrase “put the fear of God in them” for a reason. “God, the almighty enforcer!” and this almighty enforcer created Hell, a place of everlasting torture. No thank you, dad. Because of this I correlated dad to fear. My own dad didn’t help since he would perpetuate that fear based parenting style, a result of his own traumatic upbringing. So of course I was projecting the fear of a Heavenly Father into a fear of my own father and he was proving this projection correct.
I also never once thought about my biological father until I was around 17 and even then it was because someone else asked about him, introducing me to the prospect of his very existence. The possibility of a good dad was so foreign to me that I somehow never gave any credence to what impregnated my biological mom (spoiler: in the last year I found out some info about my bio dad and… he sucks too!). The concept of dad had just always been a scary one and in a self preserving way, I staved off the thought of my birth father so I wouldn’t be scared of him either. Heavenly Father, full of doom and gloom, my own dad doom and gloom and a sperm dad doom and gloom. But Robin Williams? No doom glooming there.
The word parasocial exploded because of John Mulaney and just like anything that rises in the zeitgeist exponentially, a sudden downfall is at its heels. I don’t know how it will happen, but any day now Wordle will be milkshake ducked. So I understand the use and explanation of the word being something that people stop reading at, but it’s the only way to describe how some of us were able to survive our bad circumstances through television. I lean towards parasocial relationships with good tv dads since my experience with my own dad was not TGIF worthy. So creating a parasocial relationship with the many tv dads of the 90’s gave me the chance to experience a healthy male remodel, even if they were fiction. And when someone dies who we may have created a parasocial bond with it’s safe to say a piece of us, even if fake and dormant for decades, has died as well. In Why We Mourn the Loss of TV Dad Bob Saget it mentions that “the loss of a parasocial relationship is very similar to the loss of a real one and can create anger, disappointment, and sadness. Because parasocial relationships create real feelings of connection, the response to losing one is equally real. The space the loss leaves is real.” And that space only grows greater over time the more we lose our tv loved ones.
As silly as it sounds, the loss of connection to our tv dads does mine a hole in our hearts. It makes the infinite seem more finite than ever, especially for those of us growing out of young adulthood. The character of Danny Tanner will live on forever, but the realization that Bob Saget is dead hits hard because it’s created a stopping point. It’s put a halt to something that seemed endless and the world getting smaller only equates to feelings of loneliness.
As writers we strive to redirect or fix our traumas through the creation of characters, not always perfect, but still a way of feeling less alone. This is so we can see our bad circumstances transpire on screen with a comfy resolution coming around the corner. I think a lot of TV centers around the cause and effect of trauma these days, and I am trying to use that word a lot more sparingly to give weight to situations that are actually traumatic. I mostly agreed with this New Yorker piece, The Case Against The Trauma Plot, that discusses how our modern day tv/film is more trauma based than ever.
“But in deft hands the trauma plot is taken only as a beginning—with a middle and an end to be sought elsewhere. With a wider aperture, we move out of the therapeutic register and into a generational, social, and political one. It becomes a portal into history and into a common language.”
And the common language with the fun and caring tv dad is the language for those of us to communicate with who weren’t able to experience a real life Danny Tanner or Carl Winslow. Full House wasn’t centered on trauma, but it created that portal for us to feel less alone.
When tv gives visibility to personal struggles it offers a nice cool balm to soothe or even try to fix those struggles. As mentioned before Danny Tanner was the squeaky clean balm. Tony Soprano, though very flawed, was the dad that still yelled about curfews and grades and took his daughter to visit colleges. Uncle Phil, although not a dad to Will, was the surrogate dad who reminded us fatherly love is cast wider than your own kids. There’s plenty of bad dad representation too, sure, but the ones that stuck out for me were the good dads, those fabricated patriarchs. And the patriarchy is something our society needs to punch up most these days so being able to see that play out in healthy TV roles allowed us to be coddled by a good father figure. We are finally seen and heard as the music fades into a commercial for Pizza Hut.
In Why We Get So Attached To Fictional Characters, Kimberly Truong mentions the media psychologist Karen Dill Shackleford who says “that because storytelling is a way to touch on ideas that are important to us, connecting to a story and its characters is important — and often, we might even feel more empathy for a story than we do for things and people in our daily lives.” Which is why over the summer, that tv dad feeling washed over me when the news broke on Twitter that Bob Odenkirk had collapsed on set of Better Call Saul. Better Call Saul was the best show I watched in 2020 and I somehow created a fatherly parasocial bond with the character of Jimmy McGill (I know, not a shining example of good character and extremely flawed but stick with me I do think there is a good dad somewhere in there). When the news broke I was quarantining because although I was vaxxed at that point, I had been exposed to COVID. But my fears over COVID abated the more we didn’t get an update about Bob because I couldn’t handle anything but his well being at the time. I cared less and less about the possibility of being infected because I was too invested in the possibility of losing another TV dad. When it was f i n a l l y announced he would be OK, there was a collective sigh all throughout Twitter because our screen dad had lived for once.
Research after research after research suggests cutting screen time down is healthy for our brains and important for child development. But it is also understood that watching tv does increase empathy. It can fill a hole you didn’t know you had, one that secretly widens as the years progress. It exposes you to relationships in different forms and gives representation to parts of you that you thought were unidentifiable to others.
I love television and I love all my tv dads. Because of this, here are my top five other tv dads:
Roger Callaway (dad from It Takes Two), the rich dad with a good heart.
Tony Soprano, the only dad I am okay with yelling at me.
Coach Taylor, the comfort dad that will wake me up at 5am to go for a run but also tell me I’m better than whoever I’m crushing on.
Uncle Phil, my smart dad who wants to be tough and mean but is the biggest softie at heart.
And finally Larry David, my actual true dad. The dad who is more my dad than anyone else, and that is evidenced by the fact I wish him happy father’s day instead of my own dad on Instagram every year.
I do have some empathy for my own dad. This essay might seem like he is a terrible person, but there is some good in him. He’s the dad that can fix anything. He self taught himself everything about cars and was an electrician so we never had someone come over to fix anything. When he lived in Bulgaria he was known as a free thinker who used art as an outlet and even attended art school. I never got to meet that version of my dad but I learn about him through relatives. When my dad came to America, that artist personality was ultimately stolen by American Christianity (something to write about for another time). I read something once that was like “I wish I could hug my dad’s inner child” which I think about a lot. I know he was pretty much in survival mode constantly his first half of life, which makes him the rough protector he is these days. But I want my soft artist dad to peek through, if only for a few minutes. I’m lucky that at the end of the day my dad is loving, in his own way, but I’m also very grateful for all my tv dads who raised me in kindness.
re: what’s going on
Of course I will start off with the Yellowjackets finale and no I won’t say anything else (unless you want to, let’s discuss) but I did love reading Kayla Kumari’s reviews on Autostraddle so here is the finale Yellowjackets review.
A few newsletters back I mentioned getting a smaller water bottle and I finally did it. I love it and think that carrying a smaller water bottle throughout the day actually makes me… drink more water? Get a smaller water bottle and change your life (and back since you’re not lugging around 10 pounds of liquid all day).
I ran 15 miles last weekend for my marathon training and it’s the longest I’ve ran since the marathon I did in 2019. In the last year I’ve had several injuries and even had to go to physical therapy over the summer for my hip so it’s just very nice to feel my body again.
Alright thanks for reading! Just a little note, I am looking for freelance writing gigs this year so if any of you readers know anything please pass my way. Alright see ya in two weeks!