Some of Favorite TV "Dads"

This is my submission to Strange Culture's Dads in Media Blogathan.

I love a television show with a strong female lead and two of my favorites are Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars. These two shows had a great many things in common including some pretty touching father/daughter relationships.

While Buffy's biological father was largely missing in her life, her relationship with watcher Giles was in every way a father/daughter relationship. Giles was only supposed to be her watcher, a bit like her boss, but he couldn't help growing to love her as a daughter. He admired her courage and strength and like a father found that letting her make risky decisions related to her calling caused him personal grief. He had opinions about who she dated and wanted her to grow and succeed as a human and not just a slayer. On Buffy's end, it was clear that Giles filled the missing role of father in her life and she placed a tremendous amount of trust in him. Yet even as Buffy continued to grow in skill and as a human, Giles came to the point where he realized he needed to let her go. Some of the most heart wrenching moments in the series were when these two were at odds with each other.

In Veronica Mars, the father daughter relationship was an actual father/daughter relationship though there were times Veronica wondered if Keith was truly her father. What made Keith Mars so admirable as a father was that he had such tremendous respect for Veronica. You could always tell that he truly just enjoyed the company of his daughter. She followed along in his crime fighting footsteps and never seemed to resent him or his strong moral actions that led to them being shunned by the Neptune California society elite. Their relationship at times echoed the Carson Drew/Nancy Drew relationship. Keith was always willing to put himself at personal risk for his daughter and for others. He often took the higher moral ground and paid the consequences. But his success was in raising a smart and beautiful daughter who did the same. This series, sadly, ended prematurely on a very sad note for this particular father and daughter, but one can only hope the storyline will eventually be resolved in comic book or film form.

Both of these are great examples, in my opinion, of a loving father in a non-traditional situation.