Dan Tanner

Daniel Ernest "Danny" Tanner, portrayed by Bob Saget (and by John Posey in the unaired pilot), is a widowed father of three girls: Michelle, Stephanie, and D.J.. He is a co-host of Wake Up, San Francisco. Before that, he was a sportscaster. He is the brother-in-law of Jesse Katsopolis and has a best friend named Joey Gladstone.

Personality
Danny is the archetype of the "not-hip dad" or the "uncool" character. He sees himself as the "raddest, baddest" dad ever (which his daughters do not agree with him about at all). In episodes like "Ol' Brown Eyes" (season four) or "To Joey, With Love" (season eight), he wants to show the others that he has the same coolness that Jesse has. In "Ol Brown Eyes", when Danny is dressed like a rock star, D.J. finds him to be very embarrassing.

Danny is usually seen as a control freak, not by just the girls, but by the rest of the family as a whole. In addition to the spring cleaning (see below), he made a "Clipboard of Fun" for the rest of the family in the season three premiere "Tanner's Island", and this led to rising tensions among the grown-ups and thus, leaving the girls worried and D.J. having to use a conch/shell near her feet to calm everyone down.

Danny is also obsessed with cleaning and wants to make sure there's no speck of dust, dirt, or mildew on anything he owns. His motto is, "Clean is good, dirt is bad." D.J. and Stephanie do not like cleaning as much as Danny thinks they do. In "Granny Tanny", Stephanie had confessed that one Christmas, when she asked Santa for a cleaning tool, she did not know he would actually bring it to her. In the episode "Honey, I Broke the House", he even seems to care more about the mess that Stephanie made in the kitchen, than the fact that she drove Joey's new car through the kitchen wall. In the episode "The Trouble with Danny" in season five, it was hinted that Danny may have had a mild form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) because of his obsessive cleaning and him telling D.J. and Stephanie to chew their food "24 times" exactly. However, he decided to find a balance between clean and dirty because he realized his cleaning was getting out of control. In the episode "Joey Goes Hollywood", he revealed that his favorite scent is Lemon Pledge. He got Michelle to become his special helper on his "Christmas" (Spring cleaning), making her hope that he would be proud of her if she was very clean and tidy. In "Spellbound", he used cleaning products to teach Michelle the alphabet.

Danny is protective of his daughters. He has a habit of spoiling Michelle and treating her like a baby. Stephanie also stated in the show that while she was talking to a boy, Danny saw that her shoelaces were untied and bent down to tie them for her. His excuse was that he didn't want her to trip, but Stephanie retorted to him that she did trip, over him. D.J., on the other hand, usually has a rebellious attitude towards him when she finds out he's been prying into her private life (something she constantly warns Stephanie against), and his habits of doing this usually lead to arguments, which usually lead to her running off and/or isolating herself in her room.

He seems to have a lot of authority on his daughters. They are afraid of what his reactions are going to be like in the episode "The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang" (season four). In season two's "Joey Gets Tough", Danny teaches Joey about authority. Jesse, on the other hand, tends to conflict with Danny's authority figure like in "Please Don't Touch The Dinosaur" (season six) or in "Fogged In" (season two); in season one's "Our Very First Night" he takes the blame for allowing the girls to have sweets after midnight when his band came over for a rehearsal, but Danny still makes the girls apologize to him. Only three times has he taught both (together) about authority and lectured them about such: the series premiere, after he accused the guys of "losing" D.J., "Our Very First Night" (where he lectures Joey as well even though he was out), and again in the season one finale "D.J. Tanner's Day Off", where both guys considered punishing her, then realized they should've stuck to their guns after he lectures them again. Danny also teaches Becky about authority in "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" (season four) after D.J. comes home late from going out to study.

When Danny threatens to ground the girls "for life" (season five's "The Devil Made Me Do It", the season six premiere "Come Fly With Me", and the season seven finale "A House Divided"), it's not really for life, but for an amount of time set by him. Only once in the series has he grounded all three of them at the same time (in season five's "Sisters in Crime", for an unknown period of time).

His parenting style is more authoritative (demanding and responsive) than authoritarian (demanding only), as him being authoritative allows him to discuss issues with his daughters in a calm manner; only on occasion is he authoritarian, and often viewed as such.