Stories about daughters and their overprotective fathers sometimes seem to stretch all the way back to, well, the cavemen. But I have to admit I’m kind of excited by Dreamworks twist on that dynamic in The Croods, which features Nicholas Cage as an overly cautious caveman dad who tells his children stories that all end with the moral, “One day, she saw something new and died,” and Emma Stone as his adventuresome daughter, who gets her family out into the sunshine:

I dig that the daughter’s adventurous spirit isn’t just a way of asserting her right to make her own decisions and to be trusted by her father, but as a means for her entire family’s evolutions. And it’s cute that her name is Eep, a name that sounds an awful lot like Eve when spoken aloud, which is appropriate for a girl who’s leading people into a world garden, especially if she doesn’t get blamed for screwing things up this time around. Hopefully her father gets to be something more than the garden-variety animated neurotic or oaf, or both, as cartoon fathers so often tend to be.

This post contains spoilers through the September 18 episode of Sons of Anarchy.

Wayne Unser has always been one of my favorite characters, on any television show. His backstory with the Sons would make a tremendously rich part of the backstory if Kurt Sutter ever makes his First Nine show, both personally and politically. And after four seasons of reaction and declining power, there’s something tremendous about watching him rise from a beating with new purpose. He starts from a low point. “You really come over to feed the bird?” Clay asks him as they confront Gemma’s ruined home, Wayne not entirely able to stand on his own power. “She’s on her own trip these days,” Wayne admits, acknowledging what his gestures of loyalty have often meant to a woman who has often been attracted to more violent, unstable men.

But he peels himself literally and emotionally off of Gemma’s floor and takes himself back to his old office for a conversation with Eli Roosevelt that brings both their races and their visions of the governance of Charming. Wayne kept quiet when Clay insisted that the attack must have been further black retaliation for Tig’s killing of Pope’s daughter, but it’s because he’s saving a theory for himself. “This wasn’t black retaliation,” he tells Roosevelt. “It felt more white to me.” Roosevelt is skeptical, asking him: “Really? And what does white feel like?” “Sloppy. Clumsy,” Wayne explains. “The beatdown was obligatory, not angry.” Much like Homeland and Carrie’s suspicions of Brody, this is a case where we know Wayne is right, given that we see white men dumping Clay’s safe, a white man reading the paperwork recovered from it. But it’ll be fascinating to see him prove it, and along the way, forge an identity that doesn’t involve the Sons, or Gemma. “I learned how to make it work with the Sons,” he tells Roosevelt, who has been resisting precisely that in a repudiation of Unser’s term. “And yeah, I got a little more comfortable with them than I should have. But I never did dirty work. Still don’t. I’m going to be poking around these home invasions. I find anything, I’ll let you know. I’d appreciate the same.”

That’s an idea of a partnership, rather than a real one. And it’s interesting to see that wisp of a relationship in the air, especially as Jax is finding a new mentor. Jax may be at the head of the table, but his vision for what he’ll do once he’s there remains considerably underdeveloped. Now that Clay is in exile and John Teller’s vision is in doubt, Jax needs someone new. And in Nero, he finds an ally who isn’t enmeshed with the club or its business deals, someone who’s developed an effective, independent business model, a man who seems at peace with himself and his family. He doesn’t need to scramble for more money from the Sons, telling Jax that he’s letting them hide there because “Let’s just consider this networking, okay? Maybe at some point, you get to help me.” He explains to Jax that his business deal with the women he runs doesn’t involve a huge profit margin because the long-term stability of the business is more important than the short-term gain. “I take 25 percent in house, 30 for house calls,” he says. “It don’t pay to be greedy. You got to treat your girls good. They stay happy. They got regulars. The money stays steady.” And unlike Jax, whose sons live at home, with their mother, Nero makes time for his son, who is severely disabled and lives in a facility. “My first boy was born with his insides upside down. His mother was a junkie. I wasn’t paying attention, either,” Jax admits. And despite Nero’s laid-back attitude, his mild, “Sorry. I don’t get out much,” to Jax, he’s more than capable of handling the car chase. The Sons’ model may be polluted. But Nero represents a vision of criminality governed by respect, even kindness. It doesn’t surprise me to see Gemma come back to him either. One of her husbands is dead, the other nearly dead to her. Nero, who had fun with her, gave her son shelter, found him an officiant for his wedding, represents a third attempt at a possible family.
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If last year was the he-cession television season, with a series of unsuccessful shows about the struggles of men to stay financially solvent in the downturn, this is the year of the stay-at home father figure. On Fox, Ben & Kate, and on NBC, Guys With Kids and The New Normal are all, with varying degrees of success, exploring what fatherhood means.

The best of the pilots for these shows I’ve seen is that for Ben & Kate, created by Dana Fox, who was an adviser on New Girl, and this year is out on her own. In that show, Ben Fox, who is based closely on Fox’s real-life brother, is a shiftless man who ends up moving home to live with his sister Kate and her daughter. Kate is a single mother, and Ben ends up deciding to take over her daughter’s care, an idea that both frees Kate up to get her life back on track, and spurs Ben on a road to maturity he’s thoroughly avoided. When I asked Fox at her panel how she would avoid falling into the cliche of treating men with small children as if they were inherently hilarious, she said she hoped to create a specific dynamic that would avoid that trap.

“Growing up he got into so much trouble,” Fox said of her brother. “He’s a really, really smart guy who intentionally does incredibly dumb things all the time and would get us into so much trouble…And the thing that I noticed was that he was “the” world’s greatest father, and I sort of thought, like, in a million years, if you had met my brother when he was younger, you would never think that he could have kept two children alive, much less actually kept them happy and well adjusted…I realized that, you know, this character who was so sort of inherently goofy himself and so young at heart himself could talk on the same level to this kid. And when they talk, it’s like two grown ups talking. He doesn’t talk down to her. He really thinks that…they’re kind of best friends.”

That’s a terrific dynamic for a showrunner to articulate, specific and fully realized, and the Ben & Kate pilot really captures the relationship Fox described. If only Guys With Kids and The New Normal, which play out the dudes-with-babies-are-riotous dynamic inflected alternately by heterosexuality and homosexuality, had the same level of insight.

Guys With Kids is neatly encapsulated by what Jimmy Fallon, who created the show, described as his inspiration for it in his session yesterday. “[He and his producing partner] were just talking about all the guys that we were seeing around New York City and Time Square, like with the Baby Bjorns and the babies on the backs of their bikes, and I was saying, like, these are like young good looking guys,” he told the audience. “They’re just embracing the role of dad, and we both said at the same time ‘DILFs.’” That phrase became the working title for the pitch, and while it may be a new (and deeply unnecessary) turn of phrase, the show that’s resulted from it, about a group of young fathers who live in the same New York apartment building, feels like a refugee from 1995. All the humor is predicated on the idea that men wearing baby bjorns, or in fact, spending time with their children during the work day, is such a strange and comical juxtaposition that it will inherently produce laughs. The premise might have worked if the show presented itself as a broader version of NBC’s Up All Night that ditched the extremely wealthy parents of the title and simply taken the fact that men take care of children as a matter of course, exploring the specific relationships they have with their children instead. But the story is a long way from that happier medium.

The New Normal, by contrast, perhaps could only be made in 2012, but that hardly makes it free from cliches, some of which undermine the show’s entire message. In this sitcom, from Glee and American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy, a gay couple, played by Girls’ Andrew Rannells’ and Justin Bartha, decide they want to have a child together and choose as their surrogate a single mother who hopes to use the money from surrogacy to go back to law school. It’s not a bad premise, but it gets off on an extremely sour note: the couple begins thinking surrogacy because Rannells’ character falls in love with a baby in a department store who is wearing an adorable sweater. It’s a sequence that confirms all the worst stereotypes about gay men as materialistic, selfish, shallow, even seeking instant gratification, and it’s done extremely effectively.

“My partner and I have been having conversations about surrogacy and meeting with people and talking about it,” Murphy said. “We’re really writing hopefully a great depth to this couple, and it’s not hard to be it’s not easy to be a gay couple having a child. We deal with those issues. For me, obviously as somebody who very much does have that dream, I don’t feel that way. I would never feel that way.” That may be his hope, but the gaps between Murphy’s emotions and his execution is clear throughout The New Normal.

I think Ben & Kate stands a chance of being excellent, Guys With Kids could develop into a sold if unmemorable show, and The New Normal may be simply too bounded by Murphy’s private obsessions, including Real Housewife Nene Leakes, to reconcile its ambitions and what it actually offers to the world. But the show demonstrates the challenge of trying to do shows about men taking up their share of childcare. We live in a world where for some people, that’s a new normal, and for others, it’s unfathomable to the point of hilarity.

I’ve been watching screeners of Louie‘s absolutely terrific third season over the past few days—y’all have a real treat coming in your direction at the end of the month—and it got me thinking. Television often revels in the father as a clueless or disconnected figure, whether it’s the cheerful bigotry of Peter Griffin on Family Guy or the raft of shows that treat the very prospect of men raising children as if it’s inherently comedic. In this environment, Louis C.K. has to be the best father on television. That doesn’t mean he’s the most competent father in pop culture, or the best provider—among his bits are his discomfort over the fact that he doesn’t own a home. But his mix of honesty, tenderness, and attempt to pass something like wisdom and honesty along to his daughters, on television and off, make him remarkable. Here are five of the best reasons to hold up Louis C.K. as a role model on Father’s Day.

1. He thinks hard about how to teach his kids about prejudice, America, and the virtue of living life to its fullest: In “Country Drive,” Louie takes his daughters to see an aged female relative—who turns out to be a virulent racist. The lessons he gives in the episodes about how to love your country, respect even your most difficult relatives, and take responsibility for your privilege should be a textbook for all parents who want to raise their kids with awareness of American racism.

2. He’s willing to bury his bitterness about his divorce for his children’s sake: Watching Louie bite his lip as his youngest daughter explained in the first episode of the last season of Louie that she likes her mother’s—Louie’s ex-wife—house better than Louie’s was an exemplar of staying civil, if not together, for the kids. The show is a constant reminder that children have the power to wound as well as to delight. Being a good parent means working through the pain.

3. He’ll protect his daughter’s duckling on a USO trip through Afghanistan: In “Duckling,” one of the best episodes of television of 2011, Louie got saddled with his daughter’s elementary school class ducklings the night before a USO trip—and touched down in a war zone to find he had a baby duck on board. Rather than trying to pass off the responsibility on someone else, Louie nurtured it through Afghanistan. That’s devotion to the family pet, and your child’s happiness.

4. He’ll reconcile with Dane Cook to get his fictional daughters concert tickets: In “Oh Louie / Tickets,” Louie sat down to work out his character’s (and real life) beef with frat comedian Dane Cook to get his daughter concert tickets. Given Cook’s general wretchedness, and the widespread assumption that he stole jokes from C.K., that’s a pretty awesome sacrifice to make for your kids.

5. He’s teaching his daughters that his love for them isn’t linked to their looks: When I interviewed C.K. at the Television Critics Association press tour in January, he told me that he tries never to tell his daughters that he loves them because they’re pretty. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t tell them that they look nice, but he’s trying not to make his love for them feel conditioned on their appearance. It’s an awesome example of thoughtful, feminist parenting.

The usual warning: this post contains spoilers through the first episode of the second season of Louie.

The thing I love about Louie is that it’s a fundamentally decent show, without clear, or even any, villains. It’s like a sadder-key version of Parks and Recreation if tone if not in conception. It’s also, in its own way, a really good primer on Feminism for Guys, and this night’s episode, in which Louie dealt with father-daughter relationships and brother-sister relationships, was a wonderful illustration of that.

The episode begins with a fundamental challenge to that decency, that fragile equilibrium, when, while brushing her teeth, Louie’s youngest daughter tells her father, “I like Mama’s better. I like Mama’s better because she makes good food. And I love her more. So I like being there more…I like being here too, just not as better.” It’s a horrible thing for anyone to say, but she’s a child, so Louie just tells her, “Okay. Alright, baby,” and puts her to bed. It’s an illustration of how buffeting the world can be.

And that decency gets challenged again when, making what looks like a beautiful dinner for his children the following night (presumably in reaction to his daughter’s criticism of his cooking), Louie gives her older sister a mango pop, and then refuses to give her anything. It looks like an act of petty tyranny, of overreach in trying to teach a child that her sister is “a separate person from you. You’re never going to get the same things as other people.” But then he turns it around, trying to make the story a lesson about compassion, telling his daughter “The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure they have enough,” before making her share her chocolates with her sister. It may be, as Louie says in his stand-up routine, that “The five-year-old, not much good at anything, really. Not to put her down, she’s five. But she’s shitty at pretty much everything.” Turns out, though, that she and her father are kind of bad at the same things, including consistency, clarity, and not hurting each other.

Even as the episode starts with an anecdote about the pain of being a parent, it ends with a story about how awful it could be not to be one. I loved the conversation between Louie and his sister about her miscarriages, which while not protracted, I thought was usefully frank and sad and real. “When we lost the last one, we just went through too much,” Gretchen tells Louie. “It got ugly. He left. And I said screw it. I’m in my forties. I’m fatter than shit. I don’t want a man. I want to be a mom. You know, Mom is the only person I ever admired.” That kind of foregrounding means that when she freaks out over a gas attack, she’s not some dumb hysterical broad (and it says a lot that Louie manages to show vastly more respect for women who don’t look like supermodels than mainstream movies ever manage to show for most gorgeous ingénues). Her terror is understandable, as is Louie’s concern for her. He genuinely loves his sister enough to leave his kids with his newly discovered, profoundly decent gay neighbors, one of whom promises him, “If we steal your kids, come knock on our door and we’ll give them back.” And there’s actually something sort of beautiful about watching Louie’s concern for Gretchen, the purity of his love and fear, enlist a miniature army of neighbors, cab drivers, and doctors, all of whom assemble around Gretchen’s bed.

And in a way, that love, that decency, that’s scarier than isolation and abandonment because it can go away. Your little daughters can find you wanting. Your neighbors might not want to be your friends any more. But the thing that’s beautiful, even radical, about Louie is that the show and the comedian don’t really suggest that you can be anything other than open to the world. It’s a real rebuke to ideals of stoic masculinity. And I dig that.