Parental Abandonment/Live Action TV

"Sam: Yeah, and my dad told my mom he was coming back."
 * Little House On the Prairie: What Nancy, the bratty orphan who Nels and Harriet Olesen adopt, claims her mother did to her, all to gain sympathy from her new family and friends. (In truth, Nancy's mother suffered from pre-enclampsia and died while giving birth to her; when officials are unable to track down her biological father, Nancy is made a ward of the court and is moved around from orphanage to orphanage.) Charles Ingalls is able to uncover the truth after he makes a casual remark to the director of the last orphanage where Nancy was staying.
 * Heroes
 * See Missing Mom and Disappeared Dad for Hiro, Matt, Mohinder, and Claire's situations, because while they fit here, there are... rather complex details.
 * Molly Walker's parents were both Sylar victims. She's now got a My Two Dads situation instead.
 * Nikki's dad not only walked out on her but was also abusive.
 * Elle's mother is never seen and Sylar kills her (abusive) father.
 * The Petrellis' mom: evil. Dad: committed suicide.
 * Actually, the father didn't commit suicide, he was paralyzed by his wife in retribution for attempting to kill her son. And the father was also extraordinarily evil.
 * Sylar's
 * iCarly: Carly and Spencer's father is in the military, whilst their mother is either dead, locked up in a mental hospital, jail or has completely abandoned them, having never been mentioned on the show once. The whereabouts of Sam's and Freddie's fathers is unknown, and Sam's mother is a depressed lump who rarely gets up before noon.
 * Sam's father's abandonment is finally addressed in iParty With Victorious:

"Shifter!Dean: Me? I know I'm a freak. And sooner or later, everybody's gonna leave me.
 * Lost. In a show where literally everyone has parent issues, this trope shows up in spades:
 * Hurley's dad left when he was a kid (which caused his eating and weight problems), then showed up again after Hurley won the lottery.
 * There's both the father of Claire's child and her own father (who also turns out to be.
 * Ji Yeon (Jin's and Sun's daughter) is seemingly abandoned by her mother as she returns to the island.
 * Jin's mother was a prostitute, who left him with the man she claimed was his father right after his birth. She later blackmailed Sun with this information.
 * Locke was given up for adoption after he was born. We won't even go into what his parents ended up doing to him.
 * Miles was raised by his mother, who never spoke to him about his father. Later, it's revealed that he's actually the son of.
 * In Power Rangers, parents often go unseen, though Rangers are seldom seen in the sort of situations that make one wonder "What did Mom say when they got back from fighting the villains?" Villains conveniently attack after school but before dinner most of the time. However, in the Mystic Force season, the Rangers have been shown to pull the occasional all-nighter at Rootcore, making one wonder how they explained it. And then, there was the story in which Vida became a vampire, which took place over the course of several days... did Dad notice his daughter's fangs and aversion to sunlight? Exceptions tend to be the times one parent of one Ranger is a main character -- and when this happens, count on the other parent to be curiously absent and never referred to.
 * Justified in Operation Overdrive: Mack has a father, but his mother is absent. You don't question it at first because that's how PR rolls, but later, it is revealed that.
 * Mystic Force: We actually get a two-parent family! In the end, once all the connections are revealed, anyway. However, we manage to get the usual situation also. Clare was raised by her aunt, Udonna, because her mother (Udonna's sister) died in the Great Offscreen War pre-series. Apparently her dad wasn't in the picture.
 * Trent's situation is justified by adoption.
 * In RPM, the Red Ranger's dad is a major character. No sign of Mom, though since it takes place After the End, it could be she went the way of the majority of humanity. However, that's not said, unlike his brother, whose death in battle we saw. We don't get that one line that clearly puts her in the past tense while maintaining Never Say "Die" (see Dana and Ryan Mitchell below.)
 * Wes of Time Force also has a dad but no mention of a mom ever.
 * Dana and Ryan are the chief's son and daughter. Mom is actually mentioned once and it sounds like she's dead (old friend of Captain Mitchell said Dana reminded him of her mom, and that she'd be proud if she could see Dana now.) but that one scene is the only mention of her.
 * Villain single parents are also common.
 * Master Vile is the father of Rita and Rito, but no mother.
 * Divatox is Elgar's aunt. General Havoc may be his father, but no mother. We also meet Divatox's mom, but the absence of a dad is explained: she tossed him into the Pit of Eternal Sorrow and the source of the screaming we heard the entire time it was open was apparently him. Yeesh!
 * Scorpius is the father of Trakeena, but no mother.
 * Bansheera is the mother of Impus/Olympius, but no father.
 * Ransik is the father of Nadira, but -- you guessed it -- no mother. (The same season has a Ranger whose dad is a main character, but whose mom is never mentioned.)
 * Lothor is the uncle of Marah and Kapri. Their parents are only mentioned in passing, but they evidently do exist.
 * Necrolai is
 * Don't think Power Rangers is the only series in the world of American Toku to have this as a rule. Dex, the Masked Rider, has a grandfather (King Lexian) and an uncle (usurper Count Dregon, the Big Bad.) We don't meet or hear of Grandma. His parents, though, were mentioned to have died when he was young. (Like RPM, the ruination of the world pre-series makes "they got dead" a logical assumption when it comes to this situation, but it's never made clear - and also like RPM, you wouldn't think the parents' deaths would be mentioned but not hers if it happened.)
 * Kamen Rider Dragon Knight: Kit has a dad but no sign of mom.
 * Big Bad Beetleborgs: At first you'd think it's this, as Roland's dad and grandmother are main characters but there's no sign of a mom. However, eventually, the dad leaves the show and is replaced by the mom. (They're only seen at the comic book shop run but he grandmother, so presumably it was just a change of jobs and they're still together.)
 * VR Troopers: Finding his dad is Ryan's main motivation. His mom? No sign of her.
 * London from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody had a father who she never saw, any time she did see him he was hidden behind his bodyguards. He was always away on buisness so her lonliness led her to buy extravagent things every time he canceled time with her.
 * Some of the Doctor Who companions: Vicki, Dodo, Jamie, Sarah Jane, and Adric are orphans, Victoria's mother is dead and in her first story her father gets exterminated, Nyssa's mother is dead and in her first story her father is killed and his body hijacked by the Master, Ace's father is never mentioned and likely out of the picture, Rose's father is dead (though not for lack of trying to prevent it), and both of Mickey's parents walked out when he was very young and his grandmother, who raised him, died tripping on a damaged piece of carpet on the stairs he never got around to fixing. Naturally, he feels very guilty about this. We also find out (in his final episode) that Turlough's mother was killed during a civil war on his planet, his father and stepmother were sent to a prison planet and killed when their transport crashed, whilst he was exiled to a boarding school on earth.
 * For the duration of Series 5, Amy's parents had never existed.
 * On Hustle, Emma and Sean had this with their father who had abandoned them when they were 5 and 3. This led them to becoming con artists. They even pull a con on their own father, who doesn't recognize them.
 * Torchwood reveals that Captain Jack's father was killed when Jack was a young teenager.
 * The Secret Life of the American Teenager gives us Ricky's parents. His dad had drug problems and sexually abused him. His mom had drug and alcohol problems and is implied to be a prostitute. Needless to say, they lost custody of him a long time ago and both ended up in prison. Though  and  . However, Ricky has very loving and supportive foster parents and he considers them his "real" parents.
 * In The Sarah Jane Adventures Maria's parents are divorced but Chrissie appears so often that this trope isn't in play for her. However both the other kids have it: Clyde's parents -- who are divorced -- are never seen (he lives with his mother apparently); Luke has no father, literally, he's an artificially-grown human but he was adopted by Sarah Jane.
 * The one, the only Party of Five. In the pilot episode, we learn the parents were killed by a drunk driver six months prior.
 * Chuck and Ellie Bartowski's mother left when Chuck was in fifth grade, and their neglectful father finally up and left as well about ten years later. They learned to get along with just each other to rely on.
 * Battlestar Galactica: Starbuck was orphaned at a very young age during a Cylon attack.
 * In the reimagined version, Lee "Ace Attorney!" Adama's Missing Mom and Kara "Starbuck" Thrace's Disappeared Dad, not to mention all the people who lost parents and spouses in the destruction of the Colonies and New Caprica, plus the human-type sleeper cell Cylons who have no parents due to being clones, a few of which have to deal with being parents themselves.
 * Supernatural: A really jerky one here. John obviously kept Dean on a tight leash when he was younger but what happens the first time Dean goes on a hunting trip by himself? He uses it as an excuse to ditch him. While it might have been justified, Dean obviously thought he had done something wrong:

Sam: What are you talkin' about?

Shifter!Dean: You left. Hell, I did everything Dad asked me to, and he ditched me, too."


 * The angels. God's gone missing, and left them to their own devices.
 * On Angel, most of the characters' parents, except for Fred's (who stand out by being loving and responsible), are MIA. Angel/Angelus ate his, Gunn's are never mentioned, Cordelia's are in jail for tax evasion; Wesley's mom is in England, with his emotionally abusive father; Spike turned his mother, but had to kill her when she turned out to be a worse monster than he was, and Lorne's parents live in another dimension -- plus his father is probably dead, and his mother hates him. Much love.
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy and Dawn's father is in Spain with his secretary, while Xander's parents (drunken and always fighting) and Willow's mother (too clinical) put in one episode-only appearances. Willow's father is only referred to. Tara's mother is dead and her father is a bastard (as are her brother and cousin). Anya's parents, never referenced, will have been dead for centuries. Fortunately, Giles serves as father figure for the whole gang.
 * One of the main themes of Pushing Daisies is the effect that suffering this trope has had on the two leads. Both of them lost a parent when they were children (on the same day, in fact ). Chuck was raised by her aunts after that, while Ned's Jerkass father abandoned him at boarding school.
 * Only Fools and Horses. Del and Rodney's mother died when they were young and their father walked out on them, leaving Del to bring up himself and his brother. Admittedly, Del has used that fact to get Rodney to go along with a Zany Scheme or two...
 * In Voyagers!, Jeffrey Jones' parents died in a car accident and he was dumped on an aunt who didn't really want him. Consequently, he latched on fiercely when the time-traveling Phineas Bogg showed up in his life, having nothing in particular to leave behind.
 * In best Soap Opera fashion, the Korean Series Can You Hear My Heart includes Ma Ru, who was left in the care of his uncle by his mother as a baby and never knew his biological dad.
 * In Dexter, the title character was raised by a good, caring foster family. He didn't care about his biological family for the most part, until weird things bring them up.
 * Subverted in the WB/CW television series about Superman's early years, Smallville, where his foster parents are aware of his alien origin and supernatural abilities since birth and remain supportive of him.
 * Alias: During the first season we learn that Sydney's mother apparently died in a car accident when she was six. However, at the end of the Season 1 finale we learn that.
 * The titular character of Sabrina the Teenage Witch is raised by her aunts. Her dad the warlock lives in the magical Other Realm, and only shows up a few times to visit. Her mom is a mortal, which means she and Sabrina can't see each other or Mom will turn into a ball of wax.
 * A variation occurs in Firefly, where the Tam siblings' parents send River to a government-sponsored Academy that proceeds to wreck her mind while experimenting on her. When Simon tries to explain to them what is happening, they show increasingly less interest in River's welfare, to the point that their father threatens to disown Simon if he continues causing trouble trying to reach her, which he eventually does before Simon rescues River. It is up in the air as to whether or not this is simply callous abandonment by their parents or outright Parental Betrayal, if you follow the line of thought that the Tams deliberately gave River over to the Academy.
 * Alternatively the Tams could have simply been in denial - after all River was in a government school how could anything be wrong?
 * Star Trek: The Next Generation's Data. His "parents" shut him off, and when he next woke up, he was the only survivor of the whole colony.
 * Wataru, the eponymous Kamen Rider Kiva, never knew his father and lives alone in his house after being put there by his mother when he was a child. Later, he learns exactly why:
 * In Quantum Leap, Al's mother abandoned him and his younger, mentally handicapped, sister when they were young. Then their father put them in an orphanage, so he could travel for work. The father later died, and Al left the orphanage once he was an adult. He went back later to retrieve his sister, Trudy, but she had died from pneumonia.
 * Lilly Rush of Cold Case had a father who left when she was a child and an alcoholic mother.
 * Not one of the main characters of Merlin has a complete set of parents - Morgana and Gwen's fathers are both dead. Neither of them has even mentioned their mother, so it can be assumed that they, too, are deceased. Arthur's mother is dead (and his father tends to treat him very coldly as a result). Merlin never knew his father,
 * Stargate SG-1's Daniel Jackson lost his parents to an accident (involving heavy stones while setting up a museum exhibit) when he was a kid. This is revealed when the team is trapped in an alien Lotus Eater Machine which makes him relive this memory over and over. He was Not Amused to say the least. His granddad was too busy as an Adventurer Archaeologist to take him in so he went into foster care.
 * Most of the main cast seems to be missing a parent. Sam Carter's mother died in an accident when she (Sam) was a teenager. Vala's father dropped by occasionally, but she was pretty much raised by her mother. (When asked if she'd got anything from him, she replied, "Some minor food allergies.") Cassandra lost both parents in an engineered plague, and was adopted by Dr. Frasier, who would die only a couple years later when Cassie was barely out of High School. Teal'c was forced to be a Disappeared Dad to Rya'c for awhile, because he was afraid the System Lords would use his family against him. Rya'c and his mother Drey'auc didn't take it well. Jack O'Neill's parents are probably dead, and Jonas Quinn doesn't mentions his. Only Cam Mitchell has both parents definitely living.
 * Strangers with Candy's Jerri Blank was traded away by her birth mother for a pitcher of beer. She herself would later trade her baby son for a guitar.
 * Paige of Charmed was abandoned by her parents at a church because of fear from the Elders.
 * On Bear in the Big Blue House, the unstated rule seems to be "we just don't talk about it." Some of the kids have grandparents, but Treelo seems to have nobody at all other than Bear, and Tutter apparently lives in the Big Blue House.
 * Subverted/parodied in Absolutely Fabulous. In one episode, a central lady character learns of a sister she never knew of before, and they meet. They end up talking about their mother, and it turns out she was a sexual monster. One sisters claims she "sprinkled illegitimate children all over Europe" and both remember her catchphrase, whenever she had given birth: "take it away, and bring me another lover!" It is heavily suggested that the fathers were never known. Neither of the sisters hold grudges for their mother or invoke angsty childhood.
 * Friday Night Lights has several cases of this, the most glaringly obvious being the Riggins' parents--their father lives in another city, and their mother is mentioned all of twice (and never seen.) The Colletes also have an absent father, and their mother is a stripper. Becky Sproles' father has another family in Seattle. Vince Howard's father has been in prison most of his life, and his mother is a drug addict. Matt Saracen's dad is a lifelong military man, and never shown to be close to or affectionate to his son even when he's home.
 * Adrian Monk's father left the family in 1972 while attempting to get them Chinese Food. It is later revealed that the cataclyst was a chinese fortune cookie stating that he should "be his own man", although it is implied that the frustrations involving his family also contributed greatly as well.
 * On Friends, Phoebe's father walked out on his family when Phoebe was a baby, her step father ended up in jail and her mother killed herself when Phoebe was 14 years old. Later she found her.
 * Punky Brewster was abandoned by her mother; as to why was never disclosed. The subject of Punky wanting to reunite with her mom came up a few times during the first couple of seasons (and once in the animated version).
 * Peter Caine of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues has a continuing case of this. His mother died when he was young, he was separated from his father when he was twelve--believing that he, too, had died--and even after he was reunited with his father as an adult, the elder Caine left again repeatedly. To make matters worse, Peter's adoptive father left for personal reasons at the end of the second season and never returned (sadly, due to the death of the actor). Unsurprisingly, Peter has issues.
 * On Bones this is said to be one of the reasons behind Bones' retreat to hyper-rationality and cutting herself from forming emotional attachments. Also in the backgrounds, in various ways, of Booth (abused by his alcoholic father, raised by his grandfather) and Sweets.
 * Step by Step: The reason why Frank Lambert is single and left to raise three children alone. Except for the series' pilot and scattered mentions in early first-season episodes, the Lambert children's mother/Frank's ex-wife is never heard from, leaving Carol (whom Frank marries in the pilot) to fill the void.
 * Family Matters: Urkel's parents leave unannounced to live in Russia, forcing the Winslows to take him in. As a Running Gag had it that his parents were never really fond of him, Urkel is not really bitter or resentful.
 * Later episodes, revolving around cute kid 3J joining the Winslow household, established that 3J was abandoned by his mother when he was a baby. (Carl does take 3J to meet a waitress, to help him explain that someday, his mother will be willing to meet with her son; only Carl is aware that the waitress is 3J's biological mother, and she shows gratitude and is relieved that 3J will be raised in a stable household.)
 * Happy Days: Fonzie's father had left the family when he was very young. Several episodes are built around his surrogate family (the Cunninghams) helping Fonzie try to come to terms with his father's absence. In a Christmas episode aired in 1978, Fonzie finally gets some answers after a letter is hand-delivered to him by a sailor (the letter explains that his father had joined the Navy, and that he didn't have the courage to tell him face-to-face).
 * At some point in Fonzie's childhood, several years after the father had left, Fonzie's mother also leaves her son behind. Fonzie goes to live with his Grandma Nussbaum, which he does until he joins a gang -- the Demons and the Falcons -- and is involved in minor criminal activity in both. (This is all part of the Backstory, and continues until he befriends Richie and eventually becomes a surrogate member of the Cunningham family.) In one of the later episodes, Fonzie attempts to meet with his mother, which he does ... unknowingly.
 * Little House On the Prairie: Several episodes revolved around parents leaving the family for various reasons, with the Ingalls or other main characters helping the involved child cope with their loss(es). However, at least two main characters had direct involvement:
 * Albert Quinn (Matthew Laboreteaux), whose drunken father leaves the 10-year-old boy on the streets of Winoka at the start of the 1978-1979 season; Albert is eventually adopted by the Ingalls family. (Several times, Albert's biological father, John, attempts to regain custody, but these efforts fail.)
 * Nancy (Allison Balson). Averted; her claim of being abandoned by her mother is a fabrication, to help her cope with the mother actually having died while giving birth to her (as well as her unstable life of moving around to different orphanages).
 * All in The Family: In the ninth-season opener, Edith's chronically drunk cousin, Floyd, leaves his daughter Stephanie on their doorstep and leaves (presumably to get help, find work or go on his drinking binges). Although Floyd does appear from time to time -- continuing into Archie Bunker's Place -- to regain custody of (or make contact with) Stephanie, he in fact has "abandoned" her ... and by early 1981, Archie (who by now is widowed) has been granted full custody of Stephanie.
 * Boy Meets World: Happens to Shawn several times over. First by his mother, then by his father, then by his mother again, then his father again...
 * On Frasier, it's mentioned that two of the reasons for both Frasier's extreme clinginess towards his brother and friends and his love-life-destroying fear of rejection (apart from the fact that his first wife, his fiancee, and his second wife all left him), are a) his mother's tragic death from cancer, and b) his distant relationship with his father, which was exacerbated by said death.
 * On The A-Team Face wandered into an orphanage after being abandoned at five years old, he knows neither parents. Murdock's mum died when he was five years old and no mention is ever made of his father. BA has a mother but no mention is given of what happens to his dad.
 * Smallville: Tess's father left her at an orphanage from hell. His abandonment has an obvious affect on her later, once she really remembers it. (Of course, as her father ends up being Lionel Luthor, she probably would've preferred being kept in the dark about everything.)
 * Starsky and Hutch: Starsky's father was murdered when he was young. His mother is still alive, but it is implied he was sent to California without her.