What I really appreciate about Bluey is that it’s one of the few children’s shows with a really great and relatable Dad character. The Dad in most children’s shows is either barely present or a total idiot that nobody respects.
The episode "The Sign" is an incredibly deep story from multiple angles.
Bandit is a fantastic role model and I have learned a lot from this pretend dog dad lol.
My father is deceased. I feel like a lot of the advice he would have given me, I picked up from watching Bluey.
This show is so good on so many levels.
ALLEGABLY!
The number of young men I saw come in and out of the lobby wearing Bluey t-shirts...
The kids are gonna be alright.
But sometimes he is literally fleeing the kids, to not have to play with them, instead of saying no.
(But from the avaiable alternatives, he is indeed the best role model that comes to mind)
She said it also really helps that they’re a bit older now. A 2 and a 4 year old have a much bigger age gap than a 6 and 8 year old.
All that said, she still doesn’t get much time pursuing her hobbies. She says it’s the after school activities that do her in now.
And yes, after a certain point more becomes easier - after all, one teacher can handle a class of 20+ students.
The hardest is when the oldest are too young to help with the youngest.
In any case I don't think either of those shows tries to portray the average - more of an ideal we should strive for on good days.
It’s also somewhat told from Bandit’s perspective (understandable given the author).
The episode “Burger Shop” is a good example of him not getting his way at the same time he does, even though he ends up admitting his experiment was a failure.
https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Bumbling_Dad
However, in the 80s there were still examples of mostly competent fathers, like The Cosby Show and Family Ties.
Are you restricting yourself to family sit-coms?
If not, there's plenty of characters in all kinds of media that just happen to be fathers and/or husbands and are treated normally.
But I agree with your general sentiment. That's one of the reasons I hate Peppa pig with a passion.
You might (or might not) like the treatment of Hilda's dad in the third season of the animated series.
Comedies often have some mockery built in, and comedies aimed at kids in particular like to take shots at authority, but there are a lot of examples I can think of in just the general-TV-millenial-vibe-y things I've watched over the past couple of decades. More than the "bumbling dad" type, I'd say, from things I've seen in the zeitgeist (I guess one recent super typical example is Rick and Morty, though everyone sucks there):
* Arrested Development: Michael is the most competent of the bunch. His father was also quite competent, if an asshole and eventual criminal. But, you know, that put the "sit" in sitcom...
* Luke from Gilmore Girls is pretty consistently more sane than Lorelai, turns out to be a good dad too IIRC; other fathers include a loser and a number of very successful businessmen, teachers, etc.
* King of the Hill: doing his best, often the most sane of the bunch
* Bob's Burgers: haven't watched a ton of this but from what I've seen Bob is a goofball but respectable and wholesome, kinda a Hank Hill. Not a lazy Homer
* Parks and Rec: Ben Wyatt is a pretty positive character
* Brooklyn 99: Terry is practically a superman of competence and seems to hold is own with his wife and kids. Holt is a supremely competent husband. Boyle is a goofball generally and in dating, but that does not really extend to his eventual marriage and child, where he seems to be doing quite well.
* Schitt's Creek: Johnny is the competent center of the family surrounded by comically exaggerated crazy wife + kids
Dramas seem even further away. Where do Breaking Bad or the Sopranos land?
I'm always impressed by TV or movies that can pull that off, usually one or the other of us finds the content uninteresting.
Bandit is the dad all of us dads wish we could be.
I personally suspect one reason for the “bumbling dad” trope is the “classically ideal dad” is everywhere in stories, and thus becomes boring.
Subverting the conventional power figure is also played for laughs a lot, while Bluey doesn’t ask us to laugh at anyone.
Fathers are depicted as staggering oafs or well-meaning clowns, to be suffered by their wives and insulted by their children.
Classically ideal dads are so rare that this cartoon character is being lauded as one of the best examples of the ideal in recent memory.
What's robotic ink?
.. along with an unintended cool in-joke about how dogs can't type.
I also can entertain my kids for 8 minutes a day!