If we’re strictly using TV as evidence, the badass gene apparently skips a generation. Or maybe there’s something in the water over in TV World that us real-life folks don’t consume. Regardless, there seems to be a whole host of TV badasses whose kids turned out to be their polar opposites. Whether it be Carl on Walking Dead being nowhere near as deadly as his father Rick, Dana Brody on Homeland always complaining about trivial garbage while her father Nicolas tried to keep his status as a sleeper agent/double sleeper agent a secret or AJ Soprano on The Sopranos just being a general thorn his mob boss father Tony’s side, these kids all come across as cheaper versions of their parents. Especially AJ. He sucks. Even if Tony wasn’t a badass, he’d be a large black cloud in that household.
Whether it’s the fault of the character’s choices, the actor’s inability to properly portray said characters or the difficulty that the writer’s room faced giving these characters things to do, none of these children can even hold a candle to their parents in the badass department.