Worst Teen Drama Parents

*Except, of course, Fred Andrews.

Dan was arguably even worse than Bart, but I’m giving him points for his redemption in saving Nate in the end (and Jamie earlier on). The man was a horrible father for years, rejecting Lucas as his son and making Nathan think his only worth was in sports. He then KILLED HIS BROTHER KEITH, who had basically raised his son Lucas. Dan was the actual worst.

Literally all the parents on Riverdale are awful (except Archie’s parents and FP!), but Cheryl’s are pretty spectacularly bad. Penelope is a serial killer who called Cheryl deviant for liking girls, and Clifford was a murderer who killed his own son.

He tortured his daughter to try to condition her to hate the smell of blood, even though she was a vampire who would always crave it. Then he abandoned her because he refused to complete his transition to become a vampire. So horrible!!!

Hiram is a mob boss who kills people, and Hermione consistently goes back to his side even when promising Veronica she won’t. Plus, they’ve tried to have each other KILLED. Hiram is also incredibly manipulative and won’t let Veronica have her own life and succeed on her own merit.

Hal was a literal serial killer and Alice gave away Betty’s college tuition to a cult, so…yeah. Alice also admitted she loves Betty more than Polly, which is just a huge parenting no-no. She is somehow both over-involved and absent from Betty’s life, plus she brought the murderous Chic into it.

Julie was super materialistic and vain, and she was a terrible mom to Marissa. She has an affair with her daughter’s HIGH SCHOOL ex and overall gave Marissa an incredibly unstable home life.

She’s not as bad as most of the other Riverdale moms, but she still brought a drug ring to Riverdale and lied to her family about it. Not cool.

Another abusive father. He literally locked his son in a freezer for things like bad grades. I’m just going to say it: I was happy when he died.

Byron cheated on Aria’s mom consistently with Meredith and made Aria promise not to tell. He also later dated Meredith, who was unstable and drugged Aria. To top it all off, he was super creepy and threatened Alison. I honestly thought he killed her for a while.

Melinda Clarke played yet another bad parent. She was super absent from Matt’s life, and when she did show up, she was unstable and selfish. She hooked up with her son’s best friend Tyler and constantly abandoned Matt when he needed her. She also worked with Katherine in the last season, when Katherine was basically the devil. 🙁

Tyler’s dad cared more about status than his family and was incredibly aggressive. He shamed Tyler for not winning a fight, then tried to get him to physically fight Jeremy. This was another parent I was glad to see go.

(Hello again, Marisol Nichols.) Corinne shot at Malia’s adoptive family’s car, causing them to crash and Malia’s werecoyote powers to be triggered, leading to her killing her adoptive family. She then tried to kill Malia multiple times to take back her power. Peter was actually not awful to Malia, but he was an awful person in general that killed many, such as Derek’s sister.