The World is Catching on to 'Dad TV' Becoming the Most Popular Genre, and I'm Here for It

If you haven't seen Reacher yet, I highly recommend you do. It's based on a series of Lee Child novels I've never read, and has the same titular character of the Tom Cruise movies. But with a star who is more of the physically-imposing badass described on the written page. But I think this scene is pretty representative of the tone the series, which has just been approved for a third season. Anyway, it's Certified Fresh on Thorntomatoes [tm]. 

And Reacher is just the latest in a growing number of popular shows that belongs to a genre that was at first being derisively called "Dad TV." But fans of these types of shows are embracing the term. Even the ones who work for taxpayer-funded news outlets that normally lean toward anti-"toxic masculinity" opinion pieces:

NPR - Reacher is smart, strong and out of the military, traveling the country with no home base or fixed job. He's a typical wandering hero — in the books and Prime Video's Reacher series, which has a second season dropping Friday — using the skills he developed as an investigator in the U.S. Army's military police to help others. 

In the series, he's played by Alan Ritchson – a mountain of a man with a movie star's face and an instinct for Reacher's incisively blunt, no-nonsense style.

But Reacher is also a, um, prime example of a genre some critics are calling Dad TV.

For me, Dad TV is one of those pop culture terms that may have been invented as an insult, but actually describes a potent and powerful genre. These are TV shows aimed at appealing to and reflecting the perspectives of middle-aged guys – men over age 30 who are often, as it turns out, dads – with a yearning to see fellows like themselves reflected in some of the programs they watch. 

It's John Krasinski's game-but-underwhelming take on the hopelessly bland intelligence analyst in the Prime Video series Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. Or Titus Welliver's soulful, passionate portrayal of jazz-loving-cop-turned-private investigator Harry Bosch in Prime Video's Bosch and Amazon Freevee's Bosch: Legacy.

I'm going to violate one of my own personal guidelines with the way I begin this next sentence. When I was growing up, the adult males on TV fell into a few categories, almost all of them positive. They were the sitcom dad who had a decent job and whose defining characteristic was that he was wiser and sharper than all the kids and the idiot neighbors who were always trying to put shit over on him. Think Mr. Cunningham from Happy Days or Sheriff Taylor from The Andy Griffith Show. Or they were men of authority who adhered to a strict moral code. Cops. Doctors. Lawyers. Sometimes they were sidekicks, but even then they brought much needed laughs to the proceedings and were in on the joke. 

Even when I hit adulthood, the dads were someone you respected. Sam Malone was a retired Red Sox player who owned his own business and a huge ladies man. Seinfeld was a relatively sane man who gleaned comedy from being surrounded by lunatics all day. Al Bundy was a loser in his professional life. But he was the one getting all the laughs, hilariously running down everyone around him with exception of his buddies. 

But at some point, things went sideways with grown men on TV. Almost without exception, they became buffoons. The butt of every joke. Not as smart as their own children, if they even have any. And for sure not in the same galaxy as their all-knowing, infallible wives. To be perfectly clear, I loved some of those characters. Homer Simpson. Peter Griffin. All the incorrigible degenerates at Paddy's Pub. Even legacy heros like Obi Wan Kenobi and Hawkeye were passed over in their own eponymous TV series, reduced to just side characters and replaced with a chick.

But like the NPR piece suggests, as some point a guy looks for entertainment that reflects not the worst aspects of the male species, but the best. Something that is aspirational. You want to watch the men who embody the best that's in yourself. And what you hope to bring out more of.

I mentioned "toxic masculinity" earlier. I don't even know if that term is still in popular usage. But I suspect you'll still find it in college lectures and workplace seminars taught by someone getting paid $2,500 and hour to tell half the population of the planet they suck. But you'll notice that everyone quits worrying about the toxicity in someone's manhood when the power is out and you need someone to climb a utility pole in a raging storm. Or when the roads need to be ploweed. A skyscraper needs to get built. Or a child gets abducted, like in that clip. Then you want someone with the work ethic, toughness, and courage to do what needs to get done. That to me is the essence of Dad TV. And its appeal. 

At their best, men are protectors. In whatever form that takes. Whether it's snapping some kidnapper's forearm on his car door and taking his gun, or providing for his family. 

That even goes for the ultimate Dad TV antiheroes:

--Vic Mackey in The Shield was a crooked cop who shook down the criminals he was supposed to be policing and even committed murder. But he kept the money for his wife and kids. And there was no one you'd rather have on the case when it came to getting (beating) information out of some child rapist. 

--Walter White in Breaking Bad was sick of his ordinary, meager existence and scraping just to provide for his wife and special needs son. And his cancer gave him the freedom to turn his back on that life and become a drug kingpin. And when he admits he did it for himself, because he was good at it, you couldn't help but say, "Fuck yeah!" and keep rooting for perhaps the best character arc in TV history. 

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--John Dutton in Yellowstone rules over his cowboy kingdom. Which might include the most testosterone to appear on a screen at the same time since the movie Predator. He also murders, steals, threatens and cheats everyone from the local tribes and politicians to real estate developers. All to preserve his family legacy he inherited for his posterity. 

Those first two shows went off the air years ago. As did other more recent Dad TV shows like Justified, Billions, and Succession. But there's a growing list of such programming. The Last of Us, employing the classic trope of the man protecting the Girl Who is the Key to Everything to safely guide her through a hostile environment. The Mandalorian has strayed a time or two; but at it's best it's traveling through those same waters. The Boys is a warped, darkly hilarious Dad TV treatment of the superhero genre and can't come back fast enough. 

And I for one am glad the perjorative term Dad TV has been embraced by a demo that the networks and streamers should be catering to, but have largely ignored. Which explains why all of them with the possible exception of Netflix are drowning in red ink. You can't keep telling half of your audience they're worthless and stupid and expect them to keep watching and subscribing. Give us more Reachers and fewer doofuses and see how that works for us both.