My Dad the Bounty Hunter breaks one gross sci-fi trend during one episode of the show. It seems like an established rule in the sci-fi genre is not to show bathrooms. For something that is bound to naturally occur, the fact that sci-fi media avoids tends to avoid showing bathrooms is interesting, particularly considering that the alternative – no bathrooms at all – is even grosser. In fact, having suits that get rid of waste weirdly seems to be a more common choice to explain the absence of bathrooms in the sci-fi genre, but My Dad The Bounty Hunter bucks the trend.
My Dad the Bounty Hunter follows the story of two children, Lisa and Sean, as they discover that their father Terry is an intergalactic bounty hunter rather than a truck driver like they initially thought. As the family embarks on an adventure in space in Netflix’s show My Dad the Bounty Hunter, they have to face various threats. The children participate in their father’s work, finishing a bounty that will take them home while their father has to face problems awaiting them wherever they go, including his favorite restaurant in the galaxy, which the children see in episode two of My Dad the Bounty Hunter.
My Dad The Bounty Hunter Breaks A Strange Sci-Fi Bathroom Ban
Strangely enough, bathrooms are never really shown in sci-fi movies or TV series, as mentioned, save for a few exceptions. Given the abundance of space casino and bars that are generally present in sci-fi media, bathrooms seem far less common than viewers would expect. However, My Dad the Bounty Hunter breaks this unspoken rule of not showing bathrooms in episode two. In fact, My Dad the Bounty Hunter features a bathroom fight scene, thus flipping the missing bathroom trope that seems to have become a standard in sci-fi.
While My Dad the Bounty Hunter flips the trend, it is not a rule exclusively found in sci-fi. Most media does, in fact, veer away from showing bathrooms. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is notable for, among many other things, the first time a toilet was shown in cinema, actively going against the Hays Production Code at the time that deemed toilets “vulgar.” Although standards have changed in since then, and bathrooms are more common in film and TV generally, they are very infrequently present in sci-fi media in particular, except for notable exceptions like My Dad the Bounty Hunter and The Mandalorian.
My Dad The Bounty Hunter’s Sci-Fi Rule Break Also Makes Its World Better
However, breaking this gross sci-fi rule is actually a good idea for My Dad the Bounty Hunter as including something like this ultimately makes the world of the show more realistic. In fact, featuring a bathroom fighting scene in the second episode of My Dad the Bounty Hunter, an animated Netflix original, makes for even better world-building in the series. Thanks to breaking the infamous no-bathroom rule, the My Dad the Bounty Hunter audience gets to see the uniqueness and peculiarities of what a bathroom in space could look like, including some unusual urinals.
It is, however, important to note that this is not the first time a bathroom has been featured in recent sci-fi TV series. The Mandalorian caused a stir when it introduced bathrooms to the Star Wars franchise in the show’s first episode. As such, similarly to My Dad the Bounty Hunter, The Mandalorian improved and expanded its world-building by showing what a bathroom in the Star Wars universe looks like, something that has always been somewhat of a mystery across previous Star Wars media.