Rachel Bilson vs. Mila Kunis
Battle of the FOX Foxes

The FOX television network wasn't always known as the home of pandering reality shows. At least, it wasn't only known for that. When FOX was a young upstart network, it was ground zero for America's youthquake, capturing teen audiences with shows like 21 Jump Street, Beverly Hills, 90210, and Party of Five. This programming strategy worked out so well for FOX in its infancy that when The WB was created in the mid-'90s, it did the same thing, starting with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series and then trying to repeat that demographic success with Dawson's Creek and Felicity and Popular and Smallville and One Tree Hill and right on up to Jack & Bobby, a new drama coming for fall 2004 about the future Kennedy politicos when they were kids. (No, that is not a joke.) Perhaps pissed off at how blatantly The WB bit its teen genre, or wanting to prove it could still put kids' asses on couches, FOX has gone back to the teen well again in recent years; some shows died quick and merciful deaths (Skin), but others have flourished beyond all expectation and made instant celebrities of their young stars. Two such celebrities are Mila Kunis of That '70s Show and Rachel Bilson of The O.C.

Many of our Eagle-Eyed Forum Posters observed the resemblance between Kunis and Bilson after the latter's recent guest shot on the former's show, which makes you wonder if the two young beauties' managers and hangers-on were really thinking straight when they threw them together and invited the comparison. Each plays a self-involved spoiled brat on her show. Each dates a callow Young Hollywood type offscreen (Kunis is with Macaulay Culkin, Bilson is with co-star Adam Brody). Each is short, dark, and lippy in both senses of the word; Kunis is so well-endowed lipwise that Kunis once portrayed the young Gia Carangi to a grown-up version played by Angelina Jolie. Bilson and Kunis look and act the same; they even whine the same. They are the same. They could trade shows without causing the least disruption to their many overexposed co-stars.

Having said all that: other than their looks, what is the appeal of either of these diminutive, flinty fishwives? Yeah, we're not into girls. But even if we were, we would not give a second glance at the kind of shrill, pouty nags Bilson and Kunis portray for FOX. The characters of Summer (Bilson) and Jackie (Kunis) are particularly off-putting given that they're still in their teens. They're still nubile young things; they have plenty of years ahead of them in which to stomp around grumpily and make their fellows miserable and, in short, turn into Patricia Heaton. But hey, some people must like pretty, sour-faced crabs who never, never stop making those who love them feel like gigantic disappointments. If that's your type, Kunis and Bilson must be your fantasies come to life. We just prefer our crush objects to be a little nicer and more agreeable.

Anyway. Mila Kunis and Rachel Bilson are utterly interchangeable. Here endeth the lesson.

Advantage: Bilson, since she's the one whose show isn't running on fumes. (Yet.) And also Kunis's name puts us in mind of a euphemism for female genitalia that one might find in The Canterbury Tales.