It is Free for All Friday here on the Council of Trent podcast. Mondays and Wednesdays we talk

apologetics and theology. Friday, we talk about whatever I want to talk about. Today, I am talking

about the TV dads who led us down. They were the ones we looked up to. They were the ones that

taught us those important life lessons about how it's wrong to try to cheat your way through school

or sneak out with your best friend

Richard Millhouse-to-Bone, aka Boner, probably then realizing you shouldn't have a best friend

whose nickname is Boner. I'm, of course, referring to Growing Pains. The wonderful dad there,

Alan Thick, telling that rebellious Mike Seaver what he should and shouldn't be doing.

Though, it's funny, though, Mike Seaver, Kirk Cameron really grows up to be the most pious person after his conversion to evangelical Christianity. Yeah, I just wanted to talk about the TV dads today because I realized, oh, there's a few of them that they were the ones you looked up to, and then they had these horrible scandals. you're like oh my gosh that completely contrasts

with their clean cut image now thankfully i'm not sure if there are any scandals of some of the

other dads that helped me but when thinking about yourself who are the dads that you looked up to

mine would definitely include uncle phil from fresh prince of bell air what millennial does not remember that scene where Will Smith's at the house, I mean, come on, you got to know the story of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air in West Philadelphia, born and raised on the playgrounds where I spent most of my days, you know, going to live with his family in Bel Air. But then his deadbeat dad shows up for Will Smith saying,

you know, hey, we're going to be together, going to be a family, I'm going to take you on a road trip. And Uncle Phil knows this guy's a deadbeat. He makes promises all the time and he doesn't keep him. And Will Smith doesn't believe him until his dad walks out on him again. And Will Smith tells Uncle Phil. Like, I'm gonna, I'm to be the best dad. Why didn't he love me, Uncle Phil? Why didn't he love me? It's always sad about it. You shouldn't make fun of these. These are serious things. They are serious. That was really a good performance by Will Smith there. But, I mean, it doesn't, it still doesn't rival the, the diet pills and saved by the bell. I'm so excited. I'm so scared, Zach,

which, I mean, abusing pills, things that is serious. But when you put it into these kinds of shows,

it becomes less so, I imagine. So Uncle Phil, Ellen Thick from Growing Pains, that was a huge one for me.

Not Patrick Duffy as much from step by step. I don't remember him as much. There's too many zany antics going on there. Oh, the dad from Boy Meets World, although really Mr. Feeney was more the father figure in Boy Meets World. I haven't found any scandals amongst them, but I do have scandals, some of the other dads we grew up with. So I'm going to be going back in chronological order, starting with the oldest. So if you're from more of the baby boomer generation, Gen X, definitely, you might remember this one, Little House on the Prairie. We started watching this with our kids, and they like it. At first they didn't, but they love the Little House books. They really enjoyed the little house books. And so we started watching Little House on the Prairie. And the show is the storylines are only vaguely related to the book. I mean, the books, they're not that long, right? The show ran for like eight years. So you're going to come up with a lot more stories that were not in the books. I mean, you have a lot of the characters, like Nellie Olson is bad in the book, and she's spoiled and stuck up in the show. And so they get a lot of that stuff right. And the main dynamics, the Ma and Pa Ingalls and the girls live with them. They're living out in the house that's right on the edge of the town where they're at. And so it's life in the old west, you know, in the late 19th century. And it's just to see this wholesome show. And Michael Landon plays, you know, Paul Ingalls, you know, the frontier dad, husband, always has that, you know, perfect half smile he makes. Like, oh, let me teach you the lesson here. And he's the patriarch that

teaches the kids their important lessons. And they're really good on the show. Well, it turns out

in real life, he was actually, Michael Landon was actually kind of a skeezy dude. So here's an article

here from the New York Post. It starts, says, it's enough to make Reverend Alden, the virtuous pastor on the hit

TV series, Little House on the Prairie, choke on his communion wine. Actress, actress Karen Grassle,

who played Ma Ingalls on the 70s and early 80s show, revealed that Michael Landon, who

portrayed her wholesome on-screen husband, would openly talk about his libido on set. I didn't want

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