The Worst TV Parents Ever

Many parents (both fictional and real) have screwed up their kids in some way. After all, no one is perfect — and parenthood doesn't have a certification test. 

Between wildly disparate disciplinary styles, a lack of free time, and a general misunderstanding of how something said in the heat of the moment can impact a child for life, parenting isn't exactly an easy job. However, while some parents make honest mistakes and try their best, others fall into patterns like substance abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, or worse.

When it comes to TV, there tends to be more awful parents than decent ones depicted onscreen. In both teen and adult shows alike, parents are often at the forefront of the drama. There's no point of tuning if there aren't any stakes in a TV show, and awful parents certainly add that tense element. From "Supernatural" and "Friends" to "Game of Thrones," here are some of the very worst parents TV has offered us in recent years.

One way to ditch the kids you never wanted is to fake your own death — but it makes you a pretty awful parent. In "Prison Break," Christina Scofield is initially lauded as a wonderful mother who died young, leaving two kids behind with a deadbeat dad and a future in the foster care system. But that's just a fraction of the story. 

As it turns out, both parents worked for an insidious secret cabal known as The Company that controls every aspect of the U.S. — from running the country to controlling the police force. We later learn that the father of Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) and Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) left to protect them from The Company that he defected from. Their mother Christina (Kathleen Quinlan), however, is a different story.

While fans previously thought that The Company framed Lincoln for the murder of the Vice President's brother to take revenge on Aldo's desertion, mommy dearest was actually at the helm of that particular decision. When she magically appears alive and well in Season 4, Christina reveals that she begrudgingly adopted Lincoln after the death of his parents at the request of Aldo. Still, she resented him for dragging her biological son Michael into his criminal path.

While she never wanted kids, Christina recognized Michael's genius and wanted to recruit him into The Company. Of course, Michael would never join the murderous cabal. So what does Christina do? Oh, just shoot Lincoln and stick a stiletto heel in his bullet wound to force Michael to do her bidding. When she realizes that converting Michael is a lost cause, she turns her gun on him, leading Sara, the mother of her unborn grandchild, to kill her — and sending a pregnant Sara to prison. 

Most kids' parental nightmares involves walking in on or hearing about their parents' sex lives. For "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" dad Frank Reynolds and his adopted twins Dee and Dennis, that's not only a common occurrence but an hourly one. Frank wouldn't understand the concept of boundaries if it slapped him in the face. As a result, his kids follow in his dysfunctional footsteps.

For instance, Frank gets Dennis a job with his company, and instead of showing him the ropes of how to be a businessman, he hooks up with a sex worker in front of his college-aged child. Sure, Dennis' future actions and choices are his own, but how does someone come out of a home life like that unscathed? No wonder everybody thinks Dennis is a serial killer. Even more disturbingly, this isn't the last time Frank would solicit sex in front of his kids. 

Their mom is no peach either — but Frank making his children dig up her dead body to see if she faked her own death takes things ten times too far. Additionally, Frank continually calls their mother slurs, putting them in the middle of their toxic feud. Somehow, Frank manages to top these grievances by constantly getting Dennis and Dee into illegal and life-threatening situations, normalizing this behavior and egging it on in his kids.

"Game of Thrones" is the holy grail of toxic parentage, boasting endless familial storylines of incest, abuse, and even murder. Biological twins, spouses, and parents Cersei and Jamie Lannister hit the trifecta. 

Interestingly enough, both parents (particularly Cersei) are lauded for loving their children more than life. However, Cersei's obsessive love dooms the children she supposedly cares about — and helps create one of the most notorious (and annoying) ruthless killers the series has ever seen: Joffrey Lannister (Jack Gleeson).

Cersei (Lena Headey) spoils her son rotten despite seeing how insufferable it makes him, and instead of setting up boundaries for his own good, she continues to give into his deadly temper tantrums. While she's not as physically abusive as many "Thrones" parents, Cersei has been known to slap him around a few times. While their two other children, Tommen and Myrcella, escaped Joffrey's terrible traits, it's no wonder Joffrey sucks so much.

Additionally, Cersei and Jamie (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) lie to their kids about their incestuous origins, gaslighting their concerns — and implying that they know, on some level, that their relationship is not okay. Cersei may love her kids, which her husband cites as her best trait, but her ruthlessness even gets her daughter Myrcella killed.

Postpartum depression is no joke, but there's no justification for killing a baby. In "Smallville," Lex Luthor's mother, Lillian (Alisen Down), suffers from a severe case, and instead of getting help, she smothers her baby Julian with a pillow when he's crying. Knowing the violent way Lex's father Lionel (John Glover) has raised Lex, she doesn't want to subject her baby to the same treatment, opting to murder him instead of running away with her boys.

Despite his reputation, Lex (Michael Rosenbaum) is a profoundly emotional person with a strong sense of compassion. An 11-year-old Lex even falsely confesses to accidentally killing Julian, sparing his mother's life. This ultimately leads to the lifelong issues between Lex and his dad — carving Lex's future path to villainhood.

Lex's descent into mad-scientist territory is a tragic villain backstory because, initially, every early misguided and deadly decision he makes stems from a place where he's trying to help people. However, no one trusts him, so he eventually decides to give in to their expectations. Indeed, his life could have turned out very differently if his mother hadn't acted the way she did. 

After Lex tells Lionel the truth about Jullian's death as an adult, Lionel says that things would have been different had he known. Lex responds, "Yes, Dad. You might have actually loved me."

Decent parents are difficult to come by in "The Vampire Diaries" universe, but Esther (Alice Evans) and Mikael Mikaelson (Sebastian Roche) are a unique brand of negligence. Sure, there weren't any parenting books back in the 10th Century, but not turning your abused children into bloodsucking monsters seems like common sense, regardless of the time period. 

Esther and Mikael's relationship began on a toxic note, given that the young witch was captured and held hostage by Mikael's Viking people. Call it Stockholm syndrome, a desperate ploy to leave behind her captivity days, or the fact that he didn't exactly give her a choice — but Esther accepts Mikael's proposition.

After losing their first child to a shady first-born deal with Esther's sister, Mikael begins getting violent with his other children, beating and emotionally abusing them. Esther never lifts a finger to stop him, even when he mercilessly tortures Klaus — the byproduct of Esther's affair with a werewolf. After the tragic death of her youngest son, Esther turns her children into the world's first vampires without their consent — forcing immortality and bloodlust onto a bunch of abused kids. 

Of course, this concoction doesn't end well, leading to neverending body counts that span over a thousand years. Naturally, when Esther comes back from death over a thousand years later, she doesn't like what her vampire children have become (by her own hand) and tries to kill them all.

It's bad enough when teenagers get fat-shamed by their peers in school — but doing it as a parent is a particular brand of awful. 

Nevertheless, Monica and Ross Gellar's mom Judy (Christina Pickles) in "Friends" has no problem doing exactly that. Even after Monica (Courteney Cox) loses a significant amount of weight, she still can't escape her mother's unwavering criticism.

Additionally, Judy openly prefers Ross (David Schwimmer), to the point where she blames Monica, the younger sibling, for any mistake Ross makes even in adulthood. It's clear that this behavior deeply affects Monica, and it's possible that her mother's comments even resulted in an eating disorder. 

Judy only cares about aesthetics and optics. Additionally, Judy's terrible treatment of Monica likely contributed to her daughter using eating as a coping mechanism in the first place.