| Fancy seeing you here! Anyway. "hateful"? The show strikes me as a sitcom set in the 1970's about a middle-aged slightly-worse-than-average dad with an average family who's pretty dissatisfied with his life and social status. Because it's a sitcom, it makes everything more two-dimensional and extreme than you'd see in real life. Once you get past that, you see that * The dad thinks of himself as THE family provider, but is willing to back down from that position when the wife tells him to fuck off * Both parents hate the fact that they're burdened with kids, but they don't hate the kids and understand that they have to make things as good as they can for the kids * The kids are just your typical free-range, somewhat-troublesome kids * The dad doesn't get the free-spirit neighbor, but kinda respects him and envies his lifestyle * The dad tries to do what's best for the people that depend on him, but he's not above launching a mean-spirited prank on someone who has deliberately fucked him over for doing the right thing |