Dear old Dads. They hold the handlebars on our bikes when the training wheels come off and know the perfect moment when to let us go. Unfortunately for me, my Dad let me go while in the direct path of a tree. The lesson he taught me? Don’t trust people kid. Submitted for your approval, a companion piece to The Top 10 Mother Lode of TV Moms featuring a fellowship of fathers you could trust to steer you on a sometimes cheesy, sometimes informative and always entertaining path through the fatherhood.

10. Frank Costanza

 


Show: Seinfeld
Father of: George
Favorite quote: “Your gravy is lumpy, your meat loaf is mushy, and your eggplant parmesan is a disgrace to this house!”

Francesco Costanza might not have been the most sensitive father on the small screen, but he was an Italian immigrant with moxie. He gave us the Bro/Manssiere (bras for man boobs) and gifted the world with the alternative Christmas holiday of Festivus for the rest of us. Highly complex, Frank was scared of mice, fancied squirrels and was a seasoned chef who couldn’t get over the fact that he had accidentally induced food poisoning on his troops during the Korean War.
Despite a love-hate relationship with his son Georgie and wife Estelle, we could always count on Frank to be perfectly frank and hope that he finally achieved his dream of moving to Florida to live in Del Bocca Vista so he could tick off the Seinfelds for many Festivuses to come.


9. Captain Merrill Stubing

Show: The Love Boat
Father of: Vicki
Favorite quote: “Passengers, this is your Captain speaking.”

Name one other Dad who would let his tween daughter travel on a luxury cruise liner reserved for sea lovesick passengers and crew members named “Gopher”. I think Captain Stubing deserves the coolest TV Dad of the Year Award for welcoming his little girl Vicki all aboard the Pacific Princess where she had the chance to cruise from California to Mexico and back once a week while schmoozing with well-known actors and film stars of yesteryear who were wooking pa nub in all the wrong places. If I were Vicki, I would’ve spent all my time hanging with the ship’s bartender Isaac Washington on the Ledo deck with his killer daiquiris and that stylin’ ‘stache.

Word is Merrill is still a single Dad and has been found cruising Eharmony.


8. & 7. Michael Taylor & Joey Harris

Show: My Two Dads
Fathers of: Nicole
Favorite quote: “Please let it be that she left us luggage.”
Single mom dies leaving orphaned daughter Nicole parentless. Ma was never quite sure which of her ex-lovers was Nicole’s real Pop, so Judge approves mom’s wish and awards joint custody to the two potential fathers – the Odd Couple of the late eighties. Two straight guys, one pre-pubescent girl, a cranky judge/landlady who looked like Walter Matthau and a sitcom that could have been ended any moment by a simple blood test.

Regardless of the premise, I enjoyed watching Michael and Joey redefine the roles of the modern family, facing the turmoil of raising a pre-teen daughter in a loft in New York City. From first dates to first menstrual cycles, these guys stuck around when they didn’t have to. Nic’s actual paternity was never revealed on the show, but she did take a DNA test and destroyed the results before reading them.

Smart move Nicole. Two sugar daddies are better than one.


6. Steven Keaton

Show: Family Ties
Mother of: Alex, Mallory, Jennifer and Andy
Favorite quote: “Parents are conditioned to accept a few mishaps. A broken vase, some spilled milk on the floor… There was a kangaroo in my living room.”
When it comes to TV fathers, Steven Keaton was just your average, run-of-the mill bearded, prematurely graying dad. Manager of local public television station WKS-TV, Steven was a former hippie with a hot blonde feminist wife, and together they formed a united political front as peaceful liberal Democrats. The two Woodstock loving activists procreated giving birth to fashion forward Mallory, tomboy Jennifer, adorable Andy and a fanatically conservative Republican son, Alex P. Keaton. Steven and Alex butted heads on many a Reaganomic issue, but the love was always there as stated in their theme song –

“And there ain’t no nothing we can’t love each other through.
What would we do baby, Without Us?”

I wonder if they would’ve been able to love each other through the Obama/McCain race.

”Sha la la la.”


5. Peter Griffin

Show: The Family Guy
Father of: Meg, Chris and Stewie
Favorite quote: “Holy crip, he’s a crapple.”
Resident of Quahog, Rhode Island, Peter is the patriarch of the Griffin household – husband to Lois and father to teenagers Meg and Chris, plus a diabolical baby who speaks in an aristocratic, affected English accent. Peter is part Irish, part African American and part nudist, often parading around with his ample belly overlapping his junk.

Not the quintessential Family Guy, Peter drinks more than his share of Pawtucket Patriot beer at the Drunken Clam bar (no surprise with the middle name Löwenbräu) and once sold Meg to pay off a debt. He did make it up to her by pretending to be a teenager, attending prom as her date so she’d look cool while also cracking down on the latest drug-craze of licking toads.

2nd favorite Peter quote -“For more about flatulence, you can visit my ass.”


4. Jim Anderson

 


Show: Father Knows Best
Father of: Betty, Bud and Kathy
Favorite quote: “I wonder how much money they want now.”
Writing a Top TV Dad article and failing to mention Father Knows Best pop Jim Anderson would be like discussing flamboyant bedazzled piano players and failing to mention Liberace. Once a week from 1954 to 1960, a mild-mannered Jim would return home from his job as an insurance agent, change into a comfy sweater and spend quality family time with a pretty pearl clad wife and an adoring trio of perfect children.

There’s no denying Jim was TV Dad of the Decade, the true Father of Wisdom capping each show with some sort of moral lesson… Still, I could never help but wish that just once Jim would throw a newspaper at Bud, kick the cat or scare little Kathy with a ferocious “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!”

You might have been a little too perfect for my taste Jim, but you were still one mother of a father.
 

3. Tony Micelli

Show: Who’s the Boss
Father of: Samantha
Favorite quote: “Oh-Ay Ay-Oh.”

Former pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, Tony Micelli wanted a better life for his impressionable, tough as rocks daughter Samantha, so he relocated her far, far away from the mean streets of Brooklyn to the white picket fenced streets of Fairfield, Connecticut. From stealing bases to sweeping baseboards, Tony made a humble living for his daughter by wearing an apron and cleaning toilets for successful ad exec Angela Bower and her son Jonathan.

You gotta love Tony. His middle parted feathered hairdo, his healthy tan, the way he called his daughter Saman-ta. Not many men would sacrifice their manly meatballs by working as some chick’s male housekeeper, but Angela and Tony were the Adrian and Rocky of 80’s sitcoms and eventually they found love…

…or he could’ve been getting to 4th base with Mona the whole time.


 

2. Heathcliff Huxtable

Show: The Cosby Show
Father of: Sondra, Denise, Theo, Vanessa, Rudy
Favorite quote: “Your mother and I are rich, you have nothing.”
Upscale obstetrician Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable lived with five children of all ages, sexes, sizes and demeanors in his Brooklyn based brookstone, along with beautiful wife Clair and a few hundred oversized patterned sweaters. An All American Dad, Cliff confronted issues with clever one-liners, impersonations and at times a Snoopdog-like made up language i.e.: “I would please like some firsnazzle difornazzle with the flabble and the smazzle.”

A well-educated man and doctor, Cliff often complained in jest about the number of children who made up the Huxtable clan. Well Cliff, you should have written your wife a prescription for birth control before you had any more sexy late-night shnizzle with the schnazzle.

1. Papa Smurf

Show: The Smurfs
Father of: Smurfkind
Favorite quote: “Nature Smurf, this time your love of animals has gone too far.”
Papa Smurf and all of his smurfy progeny make the OctoMom clan look tiny. Not only did Papa have a lot of mouths to feed, but he also had to keep them all safe and protected from Gargamel and his cat Azreal while keeping all the horny smurfs away from Smurfette. Talk about stress for an elderly man.

Papa didn’t preach and had mad skills when it came to creating magical spells and potions in his laboratory. Sadly, he could never gather up enough courage to tell Lazy Smurf to get up off his blue butt and get a job.

Lazy is still mooching off Papa today, crashing on his couch at the Old Smurf’s Home.