First off, this is one of my favourite comedies of all time, but I'm never quite sure what the Walter's dad subplot adds to the movie. It bookends the film (seems to only really appear at the very beginning and very end), so I feel it could be easily removed and not affect the main story at all.

I showed this movie to my boyfriend recently, and one of his comments was that he didn't care about the dad subplot at all. I see where he's coming from. I guess at the end we're supposed to assume that he's going to get "Money Pitted", but does anyone really care?

Is anyone else confused by the addition of the Walter's dad character? I can't make sense of why it's included at all!