What we saw in this episode was a different version of Charlie's dad. Remember in Fire+Water he got the piano for Christmas, his mom woke him up. Then we got a shot of Charlie's dad (I saw this part in the dvd extras- anatomy of an episode, so this is in reference to that not the show) was a butcher, chopping the heads off of dolls, I think he was talking about how you can't go anywhere with music as a career. In this episode his dad is cheery and being... well, a dad. I agree with ND that something must have happened to his dad-- maybe it was an accident with water. Hope we find out!