TV Moms II – The Hot Mom

Well it`s more dignified than the term MILF but make no mistake about it the Hot Mom is the very definition of that term, all the more so because I`m doing the picking on this one based on my own prejudices!

Contrary to some expectations, the Hot Mom is not a modern development While I can`t think of any Hot Moms from the 1950s (maybe Dennis`s mom from Dennis The Menace) they do start to appear in the 1960s. They seem to be quite common today – just think of those shows where some fat schlub (like Jim Belushi) is married to some beautiful woman (say Courtney Thorne-Smith) who by all rights wouldn`t be seen dead with him unless he was worth a lot more than the schlub has any expectation of earning in his entire life. Anyway, here`s my highly subjective list of TV`s Hot Moms.

Laura Petrie – The Dick Van Dyke Show: Two words – Capri pants. Three more words – Mary Tyler Moore. While I realise that Moore can be hard to work with (Ken Levine has told some real horror stories about working with her: "Think Ordinary People but without the warmth.") but at the time of the Dick Van Dyke Show she was physically a very attractive woman with great legs, a toned body, and an ass that Rob Reiner said that as a teenager visiting the set he couldn't resist grabbing. This physical nature had a lot to do with the fact that Mary had been a professional dancer as well as an actress (and they made the character a dancer as well). It also helped that they dressed her in clothes that emphasised her physical qualities. Suffice it to say that it always amazed me that the Petries only had one child in those days before The Pill, because if I were Rob I wouldn't have let a little thing like twin beds get in my way.

Samantha Stevens – Bewitched: While Ozzie and Harriet may have been the first TV couple to sleep in a double bed, Samantha was the one who you knew used it for something other than sleeping in. The proof of that is found in the two kids that Samantha gave birth to during the show (necessitated by actress Elizabeth Montgomery's own pregnancies). Samantha had a great face which was where the character's attractiveness really lies since the show toned down Elizabeth Montgomery's body type by showing her in the sort of clothing that a young matron in the early to mid '60s would wear, except when she was in her more "witchy" attire. Some people say that the character of Serena was closer to the real character of Elizabeth Montgomery; certainly she wore sexier clothes than Samantha did. But Samantha was still pretty hot even dressed like a '60s mom.

Ann Romano – One Day at a Time: Bonnie Franklin's character of Ann Romano broke a lot of barriers when Norman Lear's One Day at a Time debuted. For one thing she was a single woman who wasn't a widow but rather a divorcee. Only a few years before CBS had balked at having Mary Richards be a divorcee on the more than slightly spurious grounds that people would think that Rob & Laura Petrie had gotten a divorce (after which Laura changed her name to Mary Richards and moved to Minnesota?). Ann was a woman who decided that she was going to be her own woman rather than just being someone's daughter, wife or mother, which in itself is a bit sexy. Franklin tended not to wear a bra – leading to some people calling her "bouncy Bonnie" – which was typical for a lot of women in the period. Most scandalous of all, Ann had sex. She wasn't as promiscuous as a lot of characters in a lot of today's series, but she was more chased than chaste. Most of all, when the character slept with a man she did it on her terms – she was engaged to – and slept with – her lawyer but broke off the relationship when he stated that he wanted kids and she was through with that part of her life, not for medical reasons but because she didn't want any more kids.

Beverly Crusher – Star Trek: The Next Generation: Okay, a lot of people probably don't get this one but it's my list and my preferences, and I have a fondness for redheads and dancers and Gates McFadden is both of these. Crusher was highly competent as a doctor (temporarily serving Star Fleet Medical she commanded the Enterprise in an encounter with the Borg and did it well. She also had to deal with a lot of things including Wesley as a son, and the fact that Captain Picard was clueless when it came to dealing with women who served him breakfast – it took temporary telepathic abilities for him to realise that Crusher was attracted to him and after she decided that she wasn't ready quite yet to explore the romantic side of their relationship he completely gives up on it! Not that Beverly wasn't getting some action because she was. There was an Irish ghost who had been keeping her grandmother happy for years and was ready to take up with Bev, and of course she had the resident Enterprise manwhore, Will Riker (admittedly his body was temporarily housing a Trill symbiote whose previous body had also been Beverly's lover).

Catherine Willows – CSI: Catherine is undoubtedly one of my favourite TV characters. She's smart, she's ambitious, she enjoys her sexuality and she's a mother, all of which are important parts of her character on the series. She was a former nude dancer (in an early episode she tells Greg Sanders "If you saw me, you'd remember me.") and has had several relationships that seem to have been primarily about sex during the period of the series. In fact at one point she tells her boss Gil Grissom about her frustrations with work and her family life ending by telling him how long it's been since she's had sex – it's measured in weeks rather than months. Her daughter, Lindsay, is one of the reasons why she stopped dancing and why she worked the night shift at the lab, so she can spend at least part of the day with her daughter. Later, Lindsay's rebellious behaviour is why Catherine seeks a day shift job only to be given command of the swing shift.

And the mom who is definitely not a hot mom:

Roseanne Conner – Roseanne: I could just as easily fit her in the Hybrid category, but that was a deliberate choice on the producers' part – they wanted to make the show the "anti-Cosby Show" and Roseanne Conner was about as far from Claire Huxtable as is possible. Then there's the fact that I have never been able to stand Roseanne Barr since the time she was doing her standup act, before she got her TV show. I wouldn't quite say that she made me nauseous, but it was close. So maybe I'm a bit prejudiced; all I know is I wouldn't touch her with a 10 foot pole – ten foot Poles wouldn't touch her with a 10 foot pole.