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TV Poll: The Worst/Best Dads in TV History

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Just before Mother’s Day, time.com ran a feature on the worst and best mothers in popular culture. I’m not sure if it plans on reprising the feature for Father’s Day—though, between you and me, dads, we all know Mother’s Day is the real holiday—but I do know that it got all kinds of attention. And because I’m just shameless enough to piggyback on that sweet, sweet web traffic, let me pose the question:

Who are the worst (and the best) fathers in TV history?

There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit out there, and let’s face it, this post is all about letting you do the work for me. But I’ll nominate a couple of my personal favorites:

Worst: Cotton Hill, from King of the Hill. Because there was no achievement of his son Hank’s he couldn’t denigrate, no aspect of his parenting he couldn’t second-guess and no amount of selfishness he couldn’t justify in the name of toughening Hank up, or with a “They shot off my shins!” He was even able to die spitefully (see clip below).

Best: Hank Hill. For doing a pretty good job, in spite of being Cotton’s son: