How many times have we seen shows in which the kids look nothing whatsoever like they're supposed 'rents- and we're left wondering if they were adopted or the TV mom may have had some kind of fling? Here's the thread to call the casting directors on their bogusness in not being able to match kids/rents/ sibs to looking anything like each other:
First nom: Toby's blond-haired, blue-eyed dad Jeff Isaacs(from Degrassi:TNG). Bad enough that his supposed ex Anne-Marie (Toby's mom) was a red-head with green eyes- yet they somehow conceived a brown-haired/brown eyed kid but then he makes a cameo on 'Radio Free Roscoe' playing the jet-black haired, Middle-Eastern teen Ray's dad Mr. Brennan (and the whole episode was about how he was trying to make Ray look like a 'real Brennan' to fit in with the rest of the family for a portrait so no chance he was Ray's step or adopted dad). Come on, were there NO Middle-Eastern middle-aged men available for the part- or, for that matter, no middle-aged brown haired men available to play Toby's dad- or brown haired women to play Toby's mom? Bogus!

Ah, the Ruthie Camden Memorial thread (2 episodes to go, don't let me down, CW).

But the tv genetics that bugs me most is how the brunet Bob Saget and his dead Greek wife -- Uncle Jesse's sister -- produced 3 blonde, blue-eyed daughters. Okay, the daughters part is feasible, but not the recessive genetic traits. Then Jesse hooks up with a brunette, and he, too, spawns blue-eyed blonds. Did the Full House casting people think all children are born blond and eventually become swarthy?

Lana Lang. Not only are her parents white, but her aunt has red hair.

The Ramones from Everybody Loves Raymond. Ray has dark hair, his wife has dark hair. They have twin boys and a girl who are blonde.

In an episode entitled 'Goodbye, Mister Bear' Michelle is shown the home video of her mother Pam bringing her home from the hospital. In it we see for the first time what she looked like. The actress who played the mother was shown to be blonde.

Hair dye doesn't change genes (except on tv).

In the first season of Full House, Jesse's last name was Cochran, but was later changed to Katsopolis because of John's Greek heritage.

I understand what you guys are saying, but for what it's worth I have a friend, very dark (half Italian/half German) who married a Greek (very dark) and they somehow produced two blue-eyed, blond children. I know for certain that they're theirs - anyway, you can tell by their features. I'm still amazed when I see them, but it does happen.
Still, you'd think casting agents would try a little harder. At times the difference between "siblings" is just so glaring.

I always found it funny that they cast 90210 so Brenda looked the dad Jim Walsh, and Brandon looked like the mom Carol, yet they were fraternal twins and looked not even a little bit like each other.
Maybe it's rare, but I went to school with a pair of fraternal twin girls that looked nothing alike, but not quite to that extreme.

With the exception of the Olsen twins who look alike but are infact fraternal, most fraternal twins tend to look different from one another(The Bush twins). They'll have a family resemblence because they're siblings, but they can be very different in terms of height, eye color, and hair color because they're conceived from two different eggs and two different sperm, which makes them no different genectically from regular siblings.

This isn't exactly about their look, but what about when the actors that portray the parents/kids have small age gaps between them? For example, on The OC Kirsten is supposed to be around 40+, Seth is 17 and Ryan is 18, while actually Kelly Rowan (Kirsten) is only 38 and she's 11 years older than Benjamin McKenzie (Ryan) and 12 years older than Adam Brody (Seth).
I hadn't found it disturbing before but this season there are times where I see Kirsten and Ryan in a scene together and I actually have to remind to myself that she's supposed to be his mother. I'm sorry but she doesn't look over 35, especially not when she wears tight jeans and tops, and Ryan already looks 30... it doesn't really match.

I know! When they did the flashback to S1 a month or so ago, I was shocked by how young Ryan/ Ben looked. Ben McKenzie is looking every day of his 27 years now. When he had a beer in the bar with Chloe two weeks ago, I snarked when they mentioned that he was drinking underage. Sorry, but he's so not getting carded.

I can see Kirsten as 40+. She's always been wealthy so I can see her being a "Hollywood 40+", the women who execrise often or have trainers and can afford spa treatments and teeth whitening, and a great hairstylist, health food, etc. Plus she had her one child relatively early in life.

Kirsten is not Ryan's mother. Just Seth's mother. Ryan was taken in by the family in the first episode but he is no genetic relation to anyone in that family.

I know, but my point was that she's supposed to be his adoptive mother and look old enough to be a mother for a teenager, which doesn't really work since to me he doesn't look like a teenager at all.

Oh, I agree Ben does not look like a teenager. He's just way too old to be believeable. That's one of my many problems with the show. Kirsten to me looks over 40 so I don't have a problem with the beief that the actress could play the mother of teenagers. However, these are men she is acting opposite not teenagers.

Eh, some people just look young. Melinda does not look like she would have kids that are teenagers. Neither did Tate Donovan, even though technically at fortysomething he should be able to have kids. So they had some throw-away comment about Julie being about 18 when Marissa was born. And then there's people like Charisma Carpentar, who are in their mid-30's but can still convincingly play 20's and thus don't get Mom roles.

I do remember there being such an uproar about how ridicolously young the parents looked, though. I think alot of it was because in most teen shows, the parents are either unattractive, frumpy, or look to be about 60. The O.C. and One Tree Hill seemed to change that stereotype, as it seems that the parents are also expected to look good shirtless or in lingerie.

I would have thought that Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki don't look enough alike to be related aside from the similar eye color, but casting Jeffery Dean Morgan as their father was genius. He manages to look like he could be the father of both boys. At certain times he looks like Sam, and at others he looks (and sounds) like Dean.

As for Seth Cohen... not so much. Not because he doesn't look overall like he could be the son of Peter Gallagher and Kelly Rowan, but they both have blue eyes and he has brown.

And while I admire Edward James Olmos for wearing blue contacts on Battlestar Galactica, Jamie Bamber doesn't exactly look like he could be EJO's son. Fortunately the acting is so good that you forget about that.

For the longest time, I thought Megan on Drake and Josh was Josh's biological sister, but she is fact, Drake's sister. This...could make sense, we never saw Drake's biological father (or Josh's biological mother) but what makes it weird is that Megan has jet black hair (like Josh) but her mother and Drake's hair is reddish. It drove me buggy.

On the opposite side of the spectrum I thought Brady (Miranda and Steve's kid) from Sex and the City looked just like he was really their kid.

It used to bug me that Tina Yothers (Jennifer) looked so different from her "siblings", Justine Bateman (Mallory) and Michael J. Fox (Alex) on Family Ties. Not just because she was blonde, but because Bateman was very petite, Fox was short and slightly-built and Yothers was, well, large.

On reflection, though, it may have been exceptionally smart casting. They were supposed to be the children of Meredith Baxter Birney (blonde and slender) and Michael Gross (dark and tall). Maybe the kids were a genetic mix. Mallory and Alex had their mother's bone structure and their father's coloring, while Jennifer was blond like her mom and tall and strapping like her dad. When the last child, little Andy, was born later in the series, I thought he looked enough like Birney to be her child.

I agree it worked, but if the casting crew had known what kind of growth spurt Tina was going to have they would never have cast her. In Televisionland, parents who are not considered Old are supposed to be larger than their kids. Some of it is that child actors are usually small for their age and playing roles younger than their actual age, so they tend to stay that way. But "Roseanne", for example, could have cast bulky kids. Or "Buffy" in which the title character was already being played by an adult, could have cast at least one parent that wasn't enormous compared to her. Look at the parents on "The War at Home" and then at the kids. The ones that do reach parental proportions, a good current example being Reese on "Malcolm in the Middle" tend to be kids who were cast so many years ago that everyone is surprised the show is even still on. I understand casting, say, a 13 year old to play a 13 year old and then simply getting surprised when he turns out to be a midget. But if you're casting a 20 year old as your 16 year old and you know perfectly well that further height increases are unlikely, why on earth would you make both parents a head taller? Are they really that scared we'll forget that the guy sitting in the armchair yelling "No, you can not get your belly button pierced, young lady!" is the father?

8 Simple Rules comes to mind.

Everyone in the family has either brown hair or red hair, yet there was one blonde girl. I'm guess they just need a "hot daughter" for the show.

What about The Partridge Family? I used to watch that show in syndication when I was younger and it took me a while before I figured out that those kids were supposed to be related, not just some random kids who got together to fake-play instruments. Okay, David Cassidy and Susan Dey could pass for brother and sister, but that's about it.

At least the Brady Bunch got it right. They had two sets of kids cast - 3 blond and 3 brunette girls and the same as with the boys. It all depended on who they cast as the parents. Since they cast Florence Henderson and Robert Reed we got the blond girls and the dark haired boys.

Just the 10 of us used to crack me up; you have one somewhat large, overweight, bald (but used to be brunette) father, a petite, slightly overweight blonde mother, and the kids? In order: Tall, thin, curly haired brunette; fraternal twins, skinny, one blonde, one redhead, a medium sized brunette, a skinny brunette boy, a chunky brunette daughter and about a thousand babies. The casting confused the hell out of me, but I guess it's funny because NONE of the kids looked like anyone else.

On Arrested Development, Middle Eastern actress Alia Shawkat played the daughter of Portai DiRossi (who's as white and blonde as you can get) and David Cross (who has dark hair, but is definitely not Middle Eastern.)

To the show's great credit, they played up the possibility that she wasn't their biological child, with her appearance being one of the main reasons it was suspected she was adopted. But when the show first started, I couldn't believe the casting.

And CletusMusashi, I'm glad I'm not the only one who wonded how the Connors' kids ended up so thin. Maybe network execs thought audiences wouldn't want to look at an entire family of overweight people, and insisted on the casting of slender young actors?

1st Ruthie from 7th heaven does not look like the others

and 2nd i never really watched The Walton's but from what i have seen it seems like they had children w/ every single hair color, lol, (red,brown,blonde & black)

This has been a subject of considerable debate over on the 7th Heaven thread, where the consensus is that Ruthie's adopted. I don't buy the adoption theory for two reasons:

1. Nobody on earth would be foolish enough to saddle themselves with a child as unpleasant as Ruthie if they didn't have to; and

2. The Camdens have huge egos and no ability to keep their mouths shut about anything. They are incapable of doing a Good Deed without congratulating themselves loudly over and over again. There's no way that they could have adopted Ruthie and then never mentioned that fact once in the entire run of the show. They just don't have that kind of self-control.

If you think about it, it works. He got Sandy's coloring. He got Kirsten's slender yet muscular build. Then he inherited his brown eyes from his Nana. And genectics-wise, it's totally reasonable for two blue-eyed parents to sire a brown-eyed child, since blue eyes is a recessive trait.

Going on with the OC I actually did like the casting of Mischa Barton being the daughter of Tate Donovan and Melinda Clarke. She inherited her height and sandy blonde hair from Jimmy. Then she got her blue eyes and thin build from Julie. The original Kaitlin definitely did not look like she could have been Jimmy and Julie's(dark hair, brown eyes) but Willa Holland really does tie the Cooper's family look together.

I agree with the worst lookwise family being Just the 10 of US. I'd also offer up Eight Is Enough...none of them looked alike.

The best family casting I've ever seen was Party of Five. They all looked so much alike. Bailey's blue eyes did stand out, but that's pretty explainable. Toddler Owen didn't quite look so much like he belonged in the family, but the 5-year old they re-casted him with looked seriously like a Salinger. Claudia and Julia were obviously sisters...the crazy thing was though, that Jennifer Love Hewitt really looked like she could have been in that family, too.

MethodActor05, That is actually physically impossible. Blue eyes are a recessive trait, which we will symbolize as bb (you have two allels for every trait, one from each of your parents), whereas brown eyes are either Bb or BB. Because both Kirsten and Sandy are bb there is no B for them to give Seth. If both parents have a recessive trait it is certain that their offspring will have that trait. Sorry for the science geekness, I just had to say something. Other than that I agree with your assesment of the OC families.

Actually, while not common, it is not impossible

Topic: The Full House thing always bugged me too! I also never understood how Roseanne and Dan didn't have at least one overweight child -- they were eating the same foods as the parents.

Becky(slender, blonde) definitely had to have been recieving some recessive traits.

On the flipside of that though, the younger daughter could absolutely pass as the mother's real-life daughter. The resemblance is amazing.

Casting was always pretty good when it came to Erika Kane's girls. Orig Bianca, Orig Kendall aka Sarah Michelle Gellar, Eden Rigel, and the actress playing Kendall now all looked like they could be La Lucci's daughter. More so, in fact, than her actual daughter, who plays Gwen on Passions.

I always thought David Palmer's son Keith on 24 just looked nothing at all like either of his parents or his sister Nicole. Not one single feature in common with any of them. Whenever he was on screen it was all I could think about. I think this phenomena happens the most with ethnic casting, so I know the Huxtable kids and the Bankses kids are going to show up on this thread.

For a good match, I'd say the Brown family on Everwood.

Watching Numbers the other night, I was amazed at how much the father and two sons look alike. They really could all be related.

I thought they did a reasonably good job on Joan of Arcadia, and that Jason Ritter and Amber Tamblyn could pass for Joe Mantegna and Mary Steenburgen’s kids easily enough. Michael Welch doesn’t look like the others, but since I don’t think Luke felt he really fit in with his family (and the poor kid really was ignored), it kind of made sense to me that he didn’t look like them either.

Oh, I don't know. My father and mother both have brown hair, mine's brown, too, yet my brother's both are blonde. It's totally possible.

What about Ross and Monica Gellar? Their hair color was the same, but that was about it. Monica looked Irish, while Ross had Hebrew features.

You know, I was a little taken aback at the casting at first, too, but the more I watched the show, the more I really began to see a resemblence between David Cross and Alia Shawkat. Their facial features are pretty similiar (noses and jawlines) and have kinda similiar builds. It's actually pretty subtle, if it was done on purpose.

On the other hand, Michael and George Michael look stunniningly similiar.

I don't find Jeffery Dean Morgan looks much like Jared, but he could definitely pass for Jensen's father.

On 90210, Kelly Taylor and her mother looked exactly alike. It was startling.

I find that Nathan and Dan from One Tree Hill look a lot like father and son. Lucas and Dan? Not so much. Lucas and his mother? Not so much.

I agree. Partly, I would say this is helped by the fact that, although both Mantegna and Steenburgen both have dark hair, they otherwise look dissimilar enough (he much bigger in both build and features than she) that their combination allows a wide range of plausible appearance in their "children" -- including even Michael Welch.

I think all the Winchester men look as if they could be a real family. And what a nice looking family, too. Mmm hmm.

I always thought the casting for The Waltons" was phenomenal. Some of the kid actors may have been mediocre, but they did look they were related. I do admit I loved that show.

On a personal note, my parents, brother and sister all got the dark hair and olive skin. I got the blonde hair and blue eyes(Yes, we are all blood relatives). Some may feel I got lucky, but I always wanted the exotic look.

It was like that on Reba, too. Blonde daughter (Cheyenne), red-haired daughter (Kyra), and brunette son (Jake). Jake was the odd one out. Reba's a red-head and Brock was a blonde/strawberry blonde. I do think the actress who played Kyra really looked like she could be Reba's daughter.

Who knows with genetics, though. My mom (red hair and blue eyes) and my dad (black hair and brown eyes) produced three brunettes (two with brown eyes, one green) and two blondes (both blue eyes).

A bit of good casting, I think Alias was usually okay with casting families (Nadia notwithstanding.) Jennifer Garner really does look like what a child of Lena Olin and Victor Garber would look like.

On Buffy there is Dawn and Buffy who look nothing alike.

I always thought Theo, Vanessa and Rudy Huxtable looked alike, while Sandra and Denise looked nothing alike.

To be fair, Buffy didn't look that much like Joyce either.

Re: Arrested Development, I actually think Portia De Rossi and Alia Shawkat made a really believable mother and daughter. The first time I watched the show, I was really impressed by how alike they looked.

Kelly Rowan's youngish looks on "The O.C." seem to be getting more problematic. I swear she is looking younger with each season. She not only looks too young to be Adam Brody's mother, but she's even starting to look too young to be Peter Gallagher's wife (or first wife anyway).



Sandra and Denise were a problem--not only did they not look like Theo, Vanessa, or Rudy, but they also didn't look like Cliff or Claire, either.

I agree that Sandra and Denise looked nothing like Cliff or Claire. . . . but I thought they did look like Cliff's dad!

Finally something that makes sense lol