The 10 Most Dysfunctional TV Families

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There's nothing to make you appreciate your family like the last leg of the holiday season—that, and watching significantly more messed-up families on television. All of a sudden, the years of stupid arguments over unwashed dishes with your parents and brothers feel like blessings in comparison to the disagreements between various HBO show relatives in which you aren't totally certain that every party will make it out alive.

Thankfully, tomorrow night Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy), the patriarch of Showtime's underrated dark comedy series Shameless, will make his return. TV's most respected new alcoholic on the block will be back on the scene to spread the liquid love and fill the void left by Dexter when it comes to getting your effed-up family fix (especially after Dex and Deb's last few episodes). In honor of the Gallaghers' second season, we present you with our list of The 10 Most Dysfunctional TV Families.

Written by Lauren Otis (@LaurNado)

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10. The Lannisters (Game Of Thrones, HBO, 2010-Present)

Getting cheated on by your woman is rough. Getting cheated on by your woman when the other man is her brother? Infinitely worse. Welcome to the Jerry Springer-esque world of relationships on Game Of Thrones, at least when it comes to the Lannisters. Unlike the belly shirt-clad chicks whoo grace Jerry's couch, however, Queen Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) and her brother, Ser Jaime Lannister (Nicolaj Coster-Waldau) are more than desperate to keep their incestuous messing a secret. Catch them in the act and they might just toss you off a building, something that a few of their in-laws-to-be had to learn the hard way.

9. The Wolfe Family (Rocko's Modern Life, Nickelodeon, 1993-1996)

We're all about paying this long-underrated Nicktoon its dues. While your favorite childhood network had its fair share of bizarre families, from Ren And Stimpy's volatile and ambiguous domestic partnership to the ultraneglectful Pickles brood on Rugrats, we can't think of a single one we'd be less psyched to bring friends home to than Heffer Wolfe's.

In one particularly awkward episode, Rocko decides to join the group for a meal, and things get weird fast. The wallaby's steer best friend, despite growing up around wolves, had no clue he'd ever been adopted. When it comes out at the already-uncomfortable dinner, his family confesses that they initially had planned on eating him, but grew to love him. Reassuring.

Meanwhile, Hef's temperamental father's outbursts at his stoner brother (we can only assume), capped off by his grandfather's beating of Rocko with a stick while calling him a "beaver," only further confirm the family's status as one of our most beloved that we'd never want to belong to.

8. The Reynolds (It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, FX, 2005-Present)

You'd think that Charlie Kelly's (Charlie O'Day) and Ronald "Mac" MacDonald's (Rob McElhenney) family Christmas traditions would take the cake: One's mother gets nailed by a steady influx of Santa Clauses, and the other's bootleg Grinch of a father urges him to steal gifts from neighboring families. But we're going out on a limb and saying that neither of these upbringings possibly compare to the amount of trauma that would come from being a product of the Reynolds family.

Dee (Caitlin Olson) and Dennis (Glenn Howerton) might be two of the most awesomely and horribly manipulative, not to mention self-involved, characters on television, but we challenge you to handle having a dad like Frank (Danny DeVito) with the amount of, um, grace, that his offspring have. Mr. Reynolds dates crack-smoking hookers and specifically buys himself the holiday gifts his children pine away for.

 7. The Whites/Schraders (Breaking Bad, AMC, 2008-Present)

Once upon a time, when Breaking Bad first began airing in 2008, chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) was feeling stifled by his boring life. Though he had a loving, supportive family—including his in-laws, Hank (Dean Norris) and Marie Schrader (Betsy Brandt)—Walt was alive, but barely living. One lung cancer diagnosis later, everything changed, and before long one of TV's most emasculated men evolved into one of its most powerful.

With this refined new sense of self, however, came certain sacrifices. His professional and personal lives began to intertwine far more than anticipated, and his family crumbled as a result. Four seasons into Breaking Bad, the White/Schrader family are light-years away from their original selves, with brother-in-law Hank (the show's supplier of comic relief) becoming an obsessive, crystal-collecting douchebag who takes out his frustrations on wife Marie. And Marie isn't a saint herself, with her klepto tendencies and compulsive lying. Over at on the White side, Walt's loyal wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) has evolved into an unapologetic cheater and money launderer, and even their normally obedient son, Walt Jr. (RJ Mitte) calls his mom a "bitch."

Unfortunately for Walt, it remains to be seen as to whether his family can recover from the impact of a profession he initially sought out to take care of them.

6. The Simpsons (The Simpsons, Fox, 1989-Present)

We're so grateful that Marge decided to do us all a favor by settling for Homer that fateful day. You'd think that after 20-plus years of steady chaos, the Simpson family would've long since split, but no. In that time span, we've seen couples far better matched than Homer and Marge hook up and go their separate ways. But thankfully, despite Lisa's preachiness, Bart's inability to go one episode without doing something that would, in reality, land him in juvie, Homer's fondness for strangling his son and drinking all day, everyday, and Maggie's evident growth impairment, the fivesome remain surprisingly solid. And consistently dysfunctional.

5. The Gallaghers (Shameless, Showtime, 2010-Present)

As crappy as some of the other kids to grace our list may have had it, they were at least blessed with parents who (at some point, to some degree) cared about their upbringing. Not the case with Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy), who's perfectly content to sit on his ass drinking, collecting disability checks, and letting his six children raise themselves.

Among his kids, there's one who kills animals (Carl, played by Ethan Cutkosky) and another who earns all his cash by taking other students' tests (Philip, played by Jeremy Allen White). Who knows what the Gallagher crew would do without eldest sibling Fiona (Emmy Rossum), who helps hold the troop together in daddy's mental absence? Come to think of it, who knows what we would do without the sexy Emmy Rossum?

 4. Just About Every Family On True Blood (HBO, 2008-Present)

It's hard to point a finger at just one clan on this show: practically every family tree in the town of Bon Temps, Louisiana is worthy of mention. Unless you've ever witnessed an episode of BBC's Skins, it's rare to encounter that many sets of relatives in one region that evolve into such shit-shows behind closed doors.

For starters, Tara Thornton's (Rutina Wesley) alcoholic mother makes any memories of your mom's inebriated song outbursts on Thanksgiving seem pale by comparison. At least she hasn't drunkenly tried to bash your head in with a bottle or dry hump loan officers at the bank. Sam Merlotte's (Sam Trammell) lineage isn't much more brag-worthy; when his hillbilly birth parents aren't soliciting money from him, they're watching his shapeshifter brother, Tommy (Marshall Allman), get ripped to shreds in the illegal dog fighting ring in which they force him to compete.

Even when it seems Arlene Fowler (Carrie Preston) and hubby Terry (Todd Lowe) might be the most normal unit on the block, it's then that we discover there's a reason her boo Rene's (Michael Raymond-James) Cajun accent has sounded so grating all first season long: He was a serial killer.

3. The Griffins (Family Guy, Fox, 1998-Present)

If there's anything we've learned from Family Guy, it's that any subject matter that will almost assuredly get your show pulled from the air—or at least score you major backlash from the FCC—is passable in the world of a 2D cartoon. No single TV family is more reflective of this than the Griffins, whose reign over the past decade has been fueled by their ability to broach topics that live-action sitcoms wouldn't dare. Picturing David Schwimmer sticking a toe in the mouth of a girl he's babysitting makes us feel more uncomfortable than full of laughter.

In a typical episode, you might witness family pet Brian fantasizing about engaging in bestial acts with Lois (his owner), father Peter getting caught in the act of whoring himself out on a street corner, and son Chris being forced into countless social situations with a pedophile admirer. As for daughter Meg... Well, you'd probably be pretty messed up yourself if you had parents who loved to cackle at your diary entries and joke constantly about what an ugly loser you were.

2. The Sopranos (The Sopranos, HBO, 1999-2007) 

Father. Husband. Uncle (sort of). These are all roles that New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) managed to botch beautifully during his groundbreaking, eight-year Sunday night run on HBO.

To be fair, though, it's not like his family made it easy for him. His son, Anthony Jr. (Robert Iler) was a spoiled brat who needed to be bribed in order to behave; plus, to this day, we still can't wrap our heads around how he landed Dania Ramirez. His wife, Carmela (Edie Falco), fessed up to being in love with his driver between secret trips to his money stash, and his nephew-cousin Christopher (Michael Imperioli) was a girlfriend-beating junkie who produced horrible-looking movies. His daughter, Meadow (Jamie Lynn-Sigler), on the other hand, was perfect.

There are some TV fathers that manage to rise above it all, but Mr. Soprano was never that guy. His cheating was frequent and far from discreet, whether fingernails were getting left in the bed or traces of Soprano DNA were left on animal cages at the zoo. Just when Big T would start to seem like he was coming around, he'd go ahead and arrange for your fiance to be murdered in the woods. And we can't forget his unbelievably overbearing sister, Janice (Aida Turturro), or late, hateful mother, Livia (Nancy Marchand). No wonder Tony was in therapy.

1. The Bluths (Arrested Development, Fox, 2003-2006)

Arrested Development, which tells the story of Michael Bluth's (Jason Bateman) efforts to hold his family together in the wake of his father's prison sentencing, was actually cancelled due to less-than-great rating. The show's producers, in fact, playfully acknowledged the bad news with their Season Three "Save Our Bluths" campaign, and miraculously Arrested Development has been resurrected, with new episodes announced for Netflix streaming in 2013.

From the moment that the wealthy family made their debut in 2003, it wasn't uncommon to bear witness to endless jump-offs, cousins falling for cousins, one member's seriously effeminate husband parading around in a pair of denim poom poom shorts, and attempts to instill some sense of work ethic by assigning shifts at the family's pitiful Banana Stand. Just about every last member of the Bluth clan counts among the kind of people you're thankful never to have to associate with again after college, from Lindsay's (Portia de Rossi) spoiled naivete to George-Michael (Michael Cera) and Buster's (Tony Hale) crippling awkwardness.

That said, there's nothing more entertaining than watching an entourage of people such as these—capped off by Gob's (Will Arnett) flailing magic career and the occasional appearance of stew enthusiast Carl Weathers—driving each another crazy under one McMansion roof.