Quite a range of problems to deal with.

I wouldn't even call him "abusive," unless I missed something really big, and I'm making this point only because I think this was one of the _many_ strengths of the script. Any idiot can write another "evil stepfather" character. This guy was different: Most of what he said to his stepdaughter, or what he believed himself, was true in its own right (you _can_ overdo the headphones or the video games), and he wasn't an obvious bad guy. But as in many real-world situations, he just hadn't established the kind of relationship with the children of the woman with whom he was involved that would allow him to act as a father in that house, even when it came to saying things like "I thought you'd never get up" (or whatever the exact words were), or how the headphones weren't good for her, etc. That would include, for instance, deciding to move her out of her bedroom so he could move his "business" in--without asking her, with finding out whether it was OK, and even more, without even her mom working this out with her. It's the kind of relationship where you have to look a little bit into it to find out where all the resentment is coming from, or in other words, a lot more like real life than the usual overdramatized Hollywood version.

The girl had her part in it, too, as she would in real life. When she turns up the volume on the TV in direct defiance of what he tells her to do, that is real. And then, when he snaps, he doesn't beat the kids or the mom and put them into the hospital; he just throws the remote and breaks it, because to him this is just an aggravating, defiant kid, and they never connect, and that's how these situations just _are_ sometimes. He's not a terrible person top to bottom; he's just a guy who's interested in sleeping with the mom and not so much being involved with the kids, other than when it comes to keeping them in line. But kids have a sort of unspoken deal with a parent that they don't have with anybody else, and this guy hasn't gotten to that point, and he never has a clue why that's a problem. So real, like the rest of the movie.