My more recent small-screen crushes seem to involve hot, smart and incredibly competent female detectives with somewhat odd personalities.
Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) in The Fall.
Saga Noren (Sofia Helin) in Bron/Broen/The Bridge.
I’m pretty sure I blushed when I first saw Juliette Lewis in Cape Fear. I don’t recall having that reaction ever, well at least in a main-street movie. There was just something about her.
And the strawberry…ahem…
Going back a bit, Simone on Head of the Class, played by Khrystyne Haje. I was around 10 when that show arrived, and I think she was my first red-head crush, to be followed by Willow on Buffy, Tori Amos, Felicia Day. I may have a type.
Kaylee does nothing for me (in the pants department, I mean, she seems like a nice person in general), but I do have a thing for River. It’s something about the way she says “I can kill you with my brain”.
I guess there are two kinds of people.
At least four, since there are also those who prefer Zoe or Inara.
Inara, River and Zoe are all interesting, but I want to protect Kaylee!
I agree. Can we share him, ThelmaLou?
I was ready to propose to Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) before the end of her first scene in the new Ghostbusters movie. I think we’d be very happy together, at least until she managed to blow us both up in a bizarre lab accident.
I was vaguely familiar with McKinnon from SNL and have seen her doing some promo things for the movie, but while I think she’s both funny and good-looking she doesn’t really do anything special for me except as Holtzmann.
I’d also hang out in Point Place, but that’s so I could get a piece of Hyde (Danny Masterson). Just the right amount of smart ass and tenderness. Also, on Sons of Anarchy, there was tortured, soulful, hot Opie (Ryan Hurst) and after that, former fearless leader, Clay (Ron Pearlman), gone good. But my absolute biggest crush ever had to be on Kevin Bacon as Ren McCormack from Footloose. Holy bananas, Batman! Then you add on that dance scene (and I don’t care if it’s not him!) and my teenage daydream life was complete.
Jamie Buchman, as played by Helen Hunt, in “Mad About You.” But only until they started with the pregnancy plot.
Up until then, she was cute and funny and neurotic and sexy.
Janice Rand from the original Star Trek.
In still photographs, she looks rather homely. But in a moving picture, she is amazing.
Ha! When I first read your post I thought you’d meant Jane Hathaway and I was going to ask you which one, Nancy Kulp or Lilly Tomlin? 
I would be one of the former. But, honestly, I would push all four of them into a running turbine for YoSaffBridge.
Okay by me. I’m a good sport. 
Penelope Stamp (Rachel Weisz in The Brothers Bloom). Competent at just about anything, innocent and romantic but quick, adventurous, literate and gorgeous… 
Homely? God, no.
Dr. Maura Isles (“Rizzoli and…”); she can give my bloated corpse the once-over any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
When I was little and these sorts of things hurt…Becky Thatcher in Tom Sawyer from 1973
I also had a thing for Helen, Garp’s girlfriend then wife in The World According to Garp (1982).
I’ve fallen for Aquaman, just from the trailer.