the dad and Trip

Honestly, I don't think the Dad had it in him!

Although most times the dad is more protective of daughters than the moms, I think it was ironic, but it seems Mrs. Lisban is wayyyy more of the disciplinary in the house than Mr. Lisban. You see it in the scene where the dad tells Lux the girls can go on a group date and the mom is giving him a stern attitude and saying they'll talk about later.

I think he enforced the mom's wishes at home as not to upset her, but in when in public he seemed to have become very oblivious after the suicide of his youngest daughter.

I wondered about that, too. Maybe he was too ashamed of his daughter's "indiscretion" (even though it was Trip who was the jerk) to make any scene or accusations. If he ha gone to the administration to get Trip punished, he'd have to admit his daughter's position (even as a victim), which would make them look "bad".

Keep in mind that immediately after this event, you have Mrs. Lisbon pulling the girls out of school, pretty much indefinitely. The principal later confronts Mr. Lisbon about it and he tries to shrug it off ("Have you checked out back?").

Once his girls were taken out of school, Mr. Lisbon was being put in an untenable position by his wife, to whom he cannot stand up to.

The fact that he doesn't wear the pants in that relationship is not something new, but the problems caused by his wife's refusal to allow his daughters to attend school are...and he's now between a rock and a hard place. At that point, Trip Fontaine is the least of his concerns.

He was obviously coming apart at the seems, and it was showing as he spoke to those "spider plants" (or whatever their actual names are) on the window sills...asking whether they'd "photosynthesized [their] breakfast today".

If his daughters were still in school, perhaps he would be having his own version of a "hard discussion" with Trip, about responsibility, trust, and how Trip breached it on the night of the homecoming dance. Of course, by "hard discussion", I mean those points between a lot of dithering, expressing great disappointment and saying that Lux won't be allowed to see him any more.

However, we'll never know, because that's not what happened, and we're left with a man who's probably thinking "Oh my gosh. My daughters are prisoners in their own home! It's just a matter of time before I'm asked to leave this job, and I'm unemployed! Go to a happy place. Go to a happy place...."

...And then he talks to plants and stares off into the distance.

Movie wise Trip loses his importance after that hence why the older him leaves. Shamefully he was one of the more important characthers and helped cause all of what followed yet he left and was never seen again. I guess that's why it was thrown under the rug. It's a shame though I wish they kept him around at the end and have him discover Lux with the boys but alas it wasn't written that way.

But when push came to shove Mr Lisban wasn't man enough to call Trip out on his BS. Just like with his marriage he was oblivious to reality and tried to run from it as much as he could. Then add to it the stress of the situation driving him loony it made it worse. Once he was talking to those plants he was full on lost and had no regrets; hence why he lost his job.