Sofia Milos vs. Ivana Milicevic
Battle of the Exotic Homewreckers

This is something of a H!ITG! crossover, since the names of neither Sofia Milos nor Ivana Milicevic is probably immediately familiar to you. Maybe it would help if we added that they're foreign, and they're in the habit of breaking up fictional relationships, trying to break up fictional relationships, or acting as obstructions between men and women we're supposed to think are Meant To Be. Now do they ring a bell?

It's not their fault, in a way. Both Milicevic and Milos are foreign. In movie and TV shorthand, any woman who talks all funny -- regardless of whether her accent is Peruvian or Polish -- is "exotic," and therefore irresistible to fictional men, who see in them a departure from the women they date, who hail from dull-ass locations like Connecticut or Indiana. The accent suggests that the women who use them will be exciting and adventuresome, and not bound by America's Puritanical taboos; if they're so earthy and at home in their bodies that they'll actually let their armpit hair grow, who knows what other crazy things they'll do -- or be willing to have done to them?

Sofia Milos is now getting to be practically an elder stateswoman among maneaters; she's been doing it since the first season of Friends, in which she played a glamorous married woman who was sleeping with both Chandler and some other dude named Ethan on the side. She played Tony's hot Italian cousin -- a female Mob boss, no less -- on The Sopranos, about whom he fantasized but didn't follow through. She came on to Paul on Mad About You. She ran afoul of Larry before he realized she was dating Richard on Curb Your Enthusiasm. She married Richard just in time for Caroline to have figured out her feelings about him (none of which feelings, surprisingly, involved her realizing that he was clearly gay) on Caroline In The City. In short, portraying befuddled men's unsuitable, temporary partners is Sofia Milos's business -- and business is good.

But as the years go by, and Milos segues from "she looks good" to the deadly "she still looks good," she has seemingly realized that her days as a foreign seductress may not last much longer, and that she'll have to cede the title to another accented up-and-comer -- maybe Ivana Milicevic. The Russian beauty has played love interests that were way out of the leagues of Jerry Seinfeld (on Seinfeld) and Scott Foley (on Felicity). She was the untouchable dreamgirl of all of Mike's fantasies on Mind Of The Married Man (and that dude was already married to a sexy-accented woman -- his wife on the show was British! Greedy much?). She was Ross's college crush and the only female classmate to show up for his fake memorial on Friends, only to flee in disgust when she learned he was actually still alive. And she showed up on Buffy just long enough to show our alleged heroine what Riley really wanted in a woman: someone intrepid and fit and into hunting demons, not fucking them. Marc Blucas's Riley had, in fact, married Milicevic's Sam -- suck it, Buffy! Even if Sam hadn't been cool, which she was, we would have loved her just for making Buffy look like a DoubleMeat-slinging chump by comparison.

Milicevic was on a show called Mind Of The Married Man; Milos had starred on The Secret Lives Of Men. Both were on Friends (nine years apart, but still). And when Milos finally threw in the sexpot towel, more or less, by joining the cast of C.S.I.: Miami as a homicide detective (oooh, talk blood spatter to me, señorita!), Milicevic showed up in a guest-starring spot, as one "Jen Kemp." That's a pretty banal, non-exotic handle for a woman who's played Katinka and Sensa and Oksana and Roxana Milla Slasnakova, but maybe she's trying to lose her accent and just be a regular sexy girl instead of one who's gotten up to all sorts of Slavic depravity to keep warm during those long Siberian nights. In which project we wish her luck; it's just too bad her latest role, in this week's Just Like Heaven, not only puts her at the centre of a romantic comedy with some uncomfortable echoes of the Terri Schiavo case but also has Milicevic playing a character called Katrina. They couldn't have gone for the hat trick and set the whole thing in Pyongyang?

Advantage: Milicevic