TVSquad

I'm going to be completely honest with you: I sometimes choose to become a regular fan of a show for less-than-pure reasons. I've already detailed how I became a fan of Gilmore Girls: a crush on Lauren Graham that stretched back to when she guested on NewsRadio as an efficiency expert.  Well, hopefully Lauren won't get too jealous, because I have many TV crushes, ones that make me watch a TV show that I would not ordinarly watch, just to see the beauty in action.  Sela Ward is one of those crushes.

Now, let me give you a couple of disclaimers here: having a crush on someone will not keep me watching a bad program; after I'm drawn in by the star, the show usually has to be pretty good for me to keep watching.  Secondly, these are virtual crushes only; please don't write me and tell me to go out and meet real flesh-and-blood women (I saw a comment like that in my Gilmore Girls post). I have a fine social life, thank you very much, but I still can appreciate beauty and skill when I see it, and I'm not afraid to talk about it.  Now, on to Sela...  

Interestingly enough, when I first saw Sela Ward, in the early-Nineties series Sisters, I really didn't take note of anything but her stunning beauty; nothing about her role made her stand out from the other women on the show. But when she starred in her second big series role, as divorcee Lilly Manning in Once and Again, there was something about her that made me take notice.

If you remember Once and Again, you'll recall that it wasn't the feel-good show of the Nineties. The show examined how a romance between two recent divorcees affected their families and exes; to put it mildly, the show had a lot of melancholy.  Lots of pain, lots of crying, lots of fighting.  And lots of sweet, romantic moments, too. Kind of like real life.

Sela brought the effects of all of these events to her role. I don't know what it is, but something about the intervening years deepened her, made her more than just a pretty face.  Don't get me wrong, Sela was still a stunner.  But there was an accessibility to that beauty that she had never carried with her before.  Maybe real-life events made her into a better actress.  Or maybe she was just that good. But I rode the ups and downs of that show for its entire three years on the air mainly because Sela communicated those ups and downs through very effective non-verbal communication. Her eyes tended to say more about what she was thinking than the words she uttered.

Sela's carrying this ability with her to House, where she just wrapped up filming her limited stint there. Just from her first two episodes as House's ex-girlfriend Stacy Warner, you could see that she understood the depth of emotion and difficulty that was involved in her character's relationship with the prickly medical genius.  Her episodes injected needed character development into what is essentially a predictable (but eminently watchable) medical procedural, and added depth to Hugh Laurie's Dr. House character that should propel the show for another few years. If one person can do all that in a guest stint, how can a person not develop a crush?