The Evolution of the Doltish Dad

This past fall, the networks began to experiment with new gender dynamics. In a crop of new sitcoms, from Man Up! to Last Man Standing, the husbands were unemployed or otherwise obsolete while the wives went to work. (In Up All Night, Chris? wife Reagan is a TV executive for an Oprah like diva.) At first the shows just overlaid the old sitcom stock types?doltish dad, haranguing wife?onto the new storylines. But then the writers began to relax and experiment, assigning certain personality traits of the old stock type to the wrong gender. Reagan for example turned into a version of Ralph Kramden, prone to tantrums and meddling. Like the classic doltish dad, she creates elaborate schemes to fix domestic problems but only winds up making everything worse. And then Chris swoops in, Alice-style, to make it all better. The success of Up All Night bodes well for the slightly evolved dad; Last Man Standing, starring Tim Allen, has also survived.

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