In this episode Dara explores the American father as captured in TV sensations The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. He also looks at Arthur Miller’s theatre masterworks Death of a Salesman and All My Sons before briefly visiting old Hollywood depictions of idealised fathers, both with and without collars!
He resists the sentimentalisation of fatherhood and critiques his own patterns of behaviour as a father before moving on to discuss a disturbing revelation about the abuse perpetrated by the Catholic Church in France. This leads to an examination of institutions as proxy fathers and the implications of their failure.
The episode concludes with Dara talking about his own father and reading a poem about him that is an exploration of ageing, memory loss, agency and erasure. And of course, also love.