Bruce Davison vs. William Petersen
Battle of the Puffy, Pallid Patriarchs

Screen dads don't come in many flavours. There's Sad Dad (think Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle); he's a widower or a divorcé, and he's trying to hold it together for his child (usually a precocious boy), and eventually he finds love. There's Bad Dad (Robert Duvall in The Great Santini is the president of this particular fraternity); he does some combination of the following: drink, gamble, yell, commit felonies, get in bar brawls, beat his kids, beat his wife, molest his kids, lower his kids' self-esteem, sell his kids' toys for drug money, kick pets. Bad Dads are certainly cinematic, given all the drama and angst. But there's something to be said, too, for the Decent Dad -- the dad who stands up for his kids, cares deeply about their welfare, and sometimes hurts them though he's acting in their best interests. You see, it is an integral component of the Decent Dad constitution -- both on-screen and in life -- to have a clear and painful awareness of the ways in which the world is a treacherous and disappointing place. A Decent Dad will try to shield his children from this knowledge as long as he can, but something always happens that prevents the Decent Dad from keeping his children from the truth. As William Petersen and Bruce Davison well know, the truth hurts.

To this commentator, Davison and Petersen both embody the Decent Dad -- the paternal instinct made flesh. Even in moments of calm, they seem to be coiled in a state of catlike readiness, prepared to spring into the middle of the proverbial good fight. And even when they're not playing fathers, they evince the mannerisms of the Decent Dad: as Gil Grissom on C.S.I., Petersen displays the world-weary fatalism of a man who's seen first-hand exactly how dangerous the world can be to those innocents who haven't sufficiently girded their loins against the enemy. We don't know whether Davison's Senator Robert Jefferson Kelly has any children of his own, but he certainly is concerned that the entire population of American children not be molested by possibly evil mutants.

Petersen and Davison have now both played iconic Decent Dads to nubile teenage daughters gone wild -- Petersen in the 1996 film Fear, and Davison in the current crazy/beautiful. (In a funny coincidence, the daughters gone wild -- Reese Witherspoon in Fear and Kirsten Dunst in crazy -- have previously faced off as 2 Stars 1 Slot, too.) Both are beleaguered fathers unprepared to meet the challenges posed by their daughters' burgeoning sexuality and persistent defiance; the twist in Davison's case is that he doesn't think his daughter is good enough for the disadvantaged yet responsible and upstanding lothario played by Jay Hernandez. Whether struggling to help a drunken teenager to her feet, or chase a psychotic stalker off his property, Davison and Petersen work hard (sometimes so hard that innocent scenery falls victim to their manful chewing) to dramatize the inner conflict that is the lifelong condition of a Decent Dad -- trying to negotiate the fine line between sensible protectiveness and passive-aggressive overprotectiveness, and perhaps beating the crap out of a former underwear model in the process. Sure, the situations in Fear and crazy/beautiful may seem exaggerated to the average viewer. After all, your dad has probably never watched you take off from the house with an unsuitable beau, sunk to his knees, reached out after your departing car with one arm and screamed, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" But if you ask, I'll bet he'll say there were many times when he wanted to.

Advantage: Um...what the hell -- Petersen.