A bespectacled man sits in his armchair, reading the newspaper and catching up on yesterday’s events. The steam from the coffee (black, naturally) swirls up into the air beside him. He might rake the leaves off the lawn today, maybe not. There may not be time. One thing is for certain, however: he’ll finish the day off with a cold beer and fall asleep in front of the tube.
Let’s start by making it very clear that Ted Wheeler, or “Mike’s Dad” in Stranger Things, isn’t interesting. At all. Looking like a spitting image of the animated president from Monsters Vs Aliens, he is bland, dry, and dull to be around. Ted is a bore. Ted is the kind of dad to sit you down for the hockey game each week because you feigned an interest once, or to cook you a crispy bacon breakfast even though you’ve been a vegetarian for the past year.
Joe Chrest is Mike’s Dad in Stranger Things
True to form, in the seven episodes of season four that we have been gifted so far, Mike’s Dad is seen only briefly and very sporadically. Once at the dinner table, complaining that Mike’s friends are there yet again, another time at the town meeting (not interacting in his community’s major debate), and once more half-threatening that the kids should be locked up to teach them an actual lesson.
Expertly played by Joe Chrest, it’s baffling how little of an input Mike’s Dad has on this show. Even Ted’s one characteristic (his shirt and tie) is no more than a hint of an identity, a suggestion of a (presumably) well-paid job. But at no point is it revealed what Ted actually does for a career, making the shirt and tie merely a ruse, robbing us of the half of a distinctive feature he has. He’s denied even that attempt to make him more well-rounded.
He is so uninspired to the point where this very article you’re reading now gives him even more dimension than the person we’ve seen in passing on the actual show.
The Hands-Off Parenting Style of Ted Wheeler
Ted’s very first line in the series, while messing with the bunny ears on the TV (and avoiding parental responsibilities), is “I think you should listen to your mother.” In the three and a half seasons we’ve witnessed so far, the most Ted has exuded himself at any point is by keeping track of his own children’s language when met with swears.
Even when presented with the threat of his wife having an affair with a much younger and far spicier lifeguard Billy Hargrove (Dacre Montgomery), Ted is none the wiser to her advances. She would decide against the fling at the very last minute, but only after getting dressed up to go and meet him at a hotel, and with no deciphering of the hints from her husband whatsoever.
Ted is so invisible to the greater story, that Vulture even published this fun piece titled “Stranger Things Season 3, As Told by Mike and Nancy’s Clueless Dad,” in which the fictionalized Ted muses on his daughter enjoying swimming so much, and that’s why her and mom are at the pool so frequently. Elsewhere in their rankings of” Best and Worst Fathers in Stranger Things,” Fatherly even called the character out directly, saying: “When he does speak, it is mainly to be the useless, uninformed skeptic. Mr. Wheeler, why do you suck so much?”
Mike and Nancy’s Dad is Yesterday’s News in Stranger Things
But there is a reason for Ted’s passiveness. Now four seasons and 33 episodes in (until next month, when the rest of the season will drop), Mike’s Dad has remained stuffy and nonplused. Seemingly glued to the dinner table and the newspaper like some nuclear bomb site mannequin, Ted is intentionally detached from his three kids, entirely clueless to their otherworldly goings-on and what’s happening right under his nose.
His viewpoint simply doesn’t fit in to that of his children. When focused on the Stranger Things gang, their adventures are heightened versions of our own childhood pastimes, those saccharine afternoons chasing each other around the yard with sticks pretending that they’re swords.
When met with Eleven’s containment team at his door, Ted takes them at face value and lets them in, not questioning their introduction because he believes that they’re the government, and therefore “good.” His genuine ignorance to what is going on in the world (and even his own home), acts as an ideal counterbalance to the adventure his children are on. Ted is a reminder that Hawkins, the tiny fictional town that Stranger Things is set in, is boring and drab and never destined to change — providing one never looks for change. Even the newspaper constantly attached to both of Ted’s hands is a sign of a dead platform, yesterday’s information, as we the audience watch the show from our streamers and read articles like this uploaded within the hour on our state-of-the-art laptops and phones.
Ted is a dinosaur and a relic of everything Mike and his friends will do their best to never turn into. He is there to remind us that not everyone is special and that this childhood and the otherworldly scrapes that these kids keep being forced into are happening now and are incredible… but also won’t last forever.
Tearing Down the Wall
The first season of Stranger Things is set in late 1982. Going one step further, it’s fair to assume that Ted would have already seen some form of action with the Vietnam War. This season makes it very clear that Hopper had served in the military, and the two are similar in age, so it checks out that Ted would have been drafted as well. Hopper is actively vocal about his time spent there, and one could guess that it would have the exact same effect on Ted as well, now opting for as little action as possible.
By 1982, Ronald Reagan had been President for over a year and a half, and Ted is a like-for-like substitution for his commander-in-chief. You can’t help but imagine that if Ted found one of his kids doing drugs, he’d be angrier than if he knew what was actually going on in his sleepy little town.
In between the heavy and direct references Stranger Things makes to 80s movies like Ghostbusters, The Goonies, E.T., and A Nightmare on Elm Street, Ted Wheeler acts as a real-life political backdrop. A fearful and frustrated worker bee of a constantly in-the-balance Cold War, Ted reflects the anxious passivity that the American people would have had to have lived through in the decade (while his children and opposing action-dad Hopper live out the more obtuse American wishful-thinking by taking the Commies head on).
As Stranger Things continues to be one of the most highly entertaining TV series on right now, perhaps this is all a red herring and Mike’s Dad will actually open his eyes and step up, become this saviour of all (or even the real Big Bad…?). Honestly, though, it’s highly unlikely that Mr Wheeler is ever going to evolve past his current role and into anything more than a one-sentence-an-episode cardboard cut-out.
The evolution of the character really isn’t likely to make the same jump as, say, South Park‘s fellow TV dad, Stan Marsh, as as Mike and Nancy’s Dad doesn’t serve the story or the world. So for now, Ted will continue to go to work, drink his coffee, and thumb through the newspaper. It’s not like there’s anything else going on in this town.