Our inspiration was innocuous enough: as fervent “24” watchers – and occasional haters – the entire Bullz-Eye staff fell head over heels for one of the terror thriller’s female leads. Smart but challenging, tough but vulnerable, every minute that she wasn’t on screen – provided Jack wasn’t killing or maiming someone, of course – was just wasted time. Eventually, we declared her to be the official girlfriend of Bullz-Eye, because she was the only girl we could all agree on. We’re talking, of course, about…
Chloe O’Brian.
What, you were thinking Michelle Dessler? Nina Myers? Kim Bauer? First Lady Sherry Palmer? Mandy the bisexual assassin? Good guesses all, but none of them hold a candle to Chloe and her delightfully quirky “personality disorder,” as her supervisor Bill Buchanan succinctly put it. Once we had christened her, though, we wanted more girlfriends. Eventually we went all “Big Love” on the boob tube (oh man, do we deserve to be slapped for that one) and started appropriating women from dozens of shows to join our burgeoning harem.
And now, our harem is having its debutante ball, its season premiere, if you will. We have hand-selected 100 women from the last 40 years of television and put them into ten categories, based on personality type, career, intelligence (or lack thereof) and even marital status. We’ll unveil a new list each month, and you, gentle reader, will tell us which ones you would most like to have as your girlfriend. Once we’ve whittled the list down to one girlfriend from each category, we’ll pit them against each other and get the hell out of the way.
With that in mind, it is our great pleasure to introduce the first group: Hot and Smart.
Liz Lemon (Tina Fey, “30 Rock”)
With her quirky sense of humor, social ineptness and those sexy librarian glasses, Liz Lemon may be the only true-blue nerd on our list. That, of course, is anything but an insult. As the head writer for NBC’s “TGS with Tracy Jordan,” Liz doesn’t have a whole lot of free time to date, and even when she does go out, chances are she’ll figure out a way to sabotage the whole thing. But Liz’s foibles merely make her that much more endearing, even if the incessant “tick-tick-tick” of her internal clock understandably makes us a little nervous. Then again, there are worse things in life than settling down with an attractive, intelligent and successful woman who loves junk food, “Star Wars” and a good joke. Her boss, Jack Donaghy, still suspects that Liz may be a lesbian, but we’re not ashamed to admit that the mere possibility only heightens our interest in her. Plus, she kind of looks like the beautiful (if slightly crazy) Sarah Palin.
Dr. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson, “The X-Files”)
Smart, tough, beautiful – Scully is an insecure man’s worst nightmare. She challenged and contradicted Mulder at every turn, and even though she was usually some version of wrong, it never deterred her. Always the skeptic, she somewhat grounded her partner by demanding some sort of logic and scientific proof. Wrangling Mulder was like herding cats, but Scully might have had a little feline in her as well – she avoided death on several occasions leading to the theory that she was, in fact, immortal. It’s more likely that she was just too stubborn to die. She stared down countless psychopaths, supernatural beings, aliens — you name it — and always came back for more. This quality — her fierce and undying loyalty — was her greatest trait. True, the woman could be a giant pain in the ass, but Fox always knew that she would have his back, and that’s why he eventually fell in love with her. And really, who can blame him?
To see the rest of Bullz-Eye’s Hot & Smart TV Girlfriends and vote for your favorite, click here. We will announce the winner – and the nominees for our next group, Pretty, Vacant – on Friday, February 27.
