THE "TEAM MARY ANN AWARD" FOR MOST DESERVING ROMANTIC LOSER

Louis C.K., Louie

With Louie, Louis C. K. has the funniest, smartest, most honest show on the air, and aren't those qualities supposed to be sexy? He's not inexperienced either, ladies. He gets a lot of action on his show; it's just that it tends to be the kind of freaky action a middle-aged single dad who keeps odd work hours can only get from haphazardly selected fuck-buddies. Clearly there's something there that women respond to; this past season, the lucky bastard connected with Parker Posey, only to apparently lose her number, and any means of tracking her down, after they'd been on the weirdest first date in the history of prime time. It's Louis' show, so only he knows if he'll ever allow his alter ego to catch a break. But seeing him hook up with a real partner would be a lot more satisfying than seeing him land David Letterman's job.

Runners-up: Charlie Day, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia; poor long-suffering Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad; Jonathan Ames, Bored to Death; Olivia Munn on The Newsroom, who seems awfully smart to be hanging around those smug, gabby bores in the titular location when the entire population of Manhattan is dying to buy her a drink

 

SEXIEST PERFORMANCE, FEMALE

Alison Brie, Community

On Mad Men, Pete Campbell's wife is played by Alison Brie, and the character's compulsive straying indicates that he doesn't think he's got it so great. Pete is an idiot, but in his defense, he's just not watching the right show. It's on Community where Brie's mousey-little-thing-who-wants-permission-to-be-bad routine is driving viewers so crazy that they have to watch the episodes twice just to notice the jokes. Brie is one of those actresses who turns into a smoldering seduction goddess (and then into an animated GIF) whenever she does comedy; also worth seeking out are her occasional appearances on G4's Attack of the Show and her recent guest spot on the Adult Swim spoof NTSF:SD:SUV, in which she tried to destroy the city of San Diego just to get Martin Starr to pay attention to her. Martin Starr: also, apparently, an idiot.

Runners-up: Sofia Vergara, Modern Family; Nina Dobrev, The Vampire Diaries; Emily VanCamp, Revenge; Aisha Tyler, Archer; Christina Hendricks, Mad Men, now and forever

 

SEXIEST PERFORMANCE, MALE

Idris Elba, Luther

Idris Elba may have first grabbed our attention as Stringer Bell on The Wire, but it was only once he was able to use his natural accent on the British detective drama Luther that we realized just how sexy he could truly be. Elba's Luther is intense, brooding, aggressive — everything we like our troubled cop characters to be these days — while never letting us forget the brilliant mind behind the glowering façade. (It doesn't hurt that his blistering chemistry with admitted psychopath Alice Morgan held over from the first season.) Elba's career is taking off at the moment, but hopefully he'll find the time to give us more than four episodes in the third season. Anything less would be cruel.

Runners-up: Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad; Charlie Hunnam, Sons of Anarchy; Patrick J. Adams, Suits; Matt Bomer, White Collar; Jon Hamm, Mad Men, now and forever

 

SEXIEST VILLAIN

Gretchen Mol, Boardwalk Empire

It's anyone's guess whether we'll be seeing much more of Gretchen Mol's Gillian Darmody on Boardwalk Empire now that both the men she was using to advance her agenda are dead. But you never know; this is a woman who knows how to play a long game, as she revealed when she mentioned to her daughter-in-law that she had begun twisting her son to her fit her needs when he was an infant. (And that she used to "kiss his little winkie," an admission that caused spilled bowls of popcorn in living rooms from coast to coast.)

Runners-up: Jon Bernthal, The Walking Dead; Andrew Scott, Sherlock; Joseph Morgan's Klaus on The Vampire Diaries, returning a touch of malevolent European class to the vampire archetype that's otherwise been thoroughly Americanized and teeny-boppered

 

SEXIEST SHOW

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones isn't known for subtlety when it comes to sex. (Is there a character explaining his motivations in a lengthy monologue? Just put some lesbian sex in the background!) But frankly, that's why we love it. Sure, the series definitely has the highest boobs-to-screen-time ratio on TV, but if it were only gratuitous naughty bits, we wouldn't care as much. (Case in point: Spartacus.) Thankfully, the show's actors bring all the flavors of sexy you could want to the screen: arrogant swagger (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), steely beauty (Emilia Clarke), tortured soulfulness (Kit Harrington), scheming seductiveness (Lena Headey). We could go on — seriously, this cast is both huge and gorgeous. And while there were certainly sex scenes in the second season that made us deeply uncomfortable — can we never see Joffrey's bedroom antics again, please? — there were also enough moments of actual passion and even tenderness to keep us glued to the screen.

Runners-up: Mad Men; The Vampire Diaries; Downton Abbey; Revenge

 

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