Preteen girl looking at a cell phone with her parents

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Parents' Guide to

Dads

By Joyce Slaton, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 16+

Painfully unfunny comedy rife with stereotypes.

TV Fox Comedy 2013
Dads Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this TV show.

Community Reviews

age 18+

Based on 1 parent review

age 18+

Your kids may want to eat pot brownies before they get creative......

Ugh! First of all 8 PM EST???? Should be 10 or later if it has to be on at all!! I just happened to catch this show and started watching it because of Peter Riegert. Yes seems warm and fuzzy about dads living at home with their adult kids but the idea ends there. I would not want my 14 year old daughter watching this; The young couple has dialogue such as "are you trying to have intercourse with me" dad walks in "oh are you two having sex?" in the office there's discussion about the creative person needing to get high to make him creative and the colleagues pushing him do so with the "brownies" they made. He brings the brownies home and the dad ends up eating them and he's the one who gets high. Are you kidding me? that message encourages kids to get high to be creative???Then more ridiculous comments about Jews and Asians. This is totally inappropriate for kids and young teenagers. AWFUL! And the poor actors who have to deliver the lines....terrible writing.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: (1 ):
Kids say: Not yet rated

Oh dear, does the talented cast of Dads deserve better material to work with. For every joke that lands, such as when the always charming Seth-Green-as-Eli asks a video game voice actor to try reading a line again with "a more wizardlike quality," there is a joke that will make most wince, such as when Eli demonstrates to a female employee how he wants her to cover her mouth and giggle when she dresses up as a "sexy Asian schoolgirl" for a pair of Chinese clients. Said clients later send the female employee a picture of his "tiny China penis" and the whole cast bonds by gathering around the computer and offering up deeply unfunny jokes about said penis: "It looks like something you'd pick out of a salad," says David, while Crawford offers "I see an inchworm in a little tiny fireman's hat."

Worst of all, unlike other shows that offer up less cringeworthy racist/sexist/homophobic/ageist humor, none of the characters onscreen object to the jokes. Veronica, the character who dresses up as Sailor Moon in Dads' pilot, makes a joke about her (presumably Asian) dad beating her "with a math book." Ha ha, racist jokes about Asian people are funny, you see, because she's Asian. That makes it okay! Not so much. All in the Family made that old racist Archie Bunker acceptable because everyone else onscreen argued with his offensive tirades. Having the characters on Dads not just accepting the casual racism and sexism, but also playing along with it, renders this show positively painful to watch.

TV Details

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