Has A Type / Live-Action TV

Those who Have a Type in Live-Action TV series.

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• 30 Rock:
  • In an early episode, Jenna is planning to seduce Jack:
    Jenna: I know Jack Donaghy. I know what he likes.
    Liz: Now you just have to make yourself ten years younger and Asian.
  • In truth, though, Jack's "type" seems to run more on the personality level—strong, intense women committed to their families and/or principles. This ties together all four of his girlfriends who showed up after he started getting fully fleshed out: C.C. (very liberal Democratic Congresswoman, their political fights were foreplay), Elisa (Puerto Rican nurse, seriously Catholic and serious about her family), Nancy (recently-divorced mother with a seriously Irish temper and seriously Catholic guilt), and Avery (whip-smart, hard-bargaining, basically Jack as a young blonde). Presumably, the same thing attracted him to Condoleezza Rice (who only shows up in the series once). Phoebe, his girlfriend in Season 1, doesn't fit the mold, but the writers were still testing things out with Jack at the time.
• Altered Carbon
  • While facing off with Lt. Kirstin Ortega, Reileen sardonically notes her brother's attraction to beautiful, passionate, idealistic women with a self-destructive streak like Ortega and his deceased lover, the revolutionary Quellcrist Falconer.
  • Takeshi Kovacs is wearing the body of Ortega's partner and lover.
    Ortega: He had the most open cases on the squad. Drove me crazy.
    Kovacs: Dumb and pretty, huh? Wouldn't have thought that'd be your type.
    Ortega: He wasn't dumb and you're not that pretty.
• On the spin-off to Buffy, Angel, Angel is shown to have a thing for heroes (it's called kyrumption, silly), and also for blondes. These are both fulfilled in his truest love, Buffy, but also in his other love, Cordy (hero, though not an Action Girl like Buffy, and blonde when they were falling for each other), and his relationship with Nina (blonde). Angel also had some UST with Kate, a blonde detective, but she was Put on a Bus before anything could come of it, and Angel's longtime lover and companion from when he was evil is Darla, also a blonde. Angel's preference for blondes is used as an Out-of-Character Alert when Angel's body is taken over by an old man and Fred catches "Angel" making out with Lilah.
  Cordy: What? This is totally like him. Doing the mystery dance with some cheap blonde?
  Fred: Brunette. She was a cheap brunette.
  Cordy: You're right. This isn't like him.
• Arrowverse:
  • Arrow invokes this trope by name: when Felicity Smoak walks in on a shirtless Ray Palmer, using a salmon ladder just like Oliver Queen's, she wryly realizes she apparently has a thing for handsome superheroes.
    Felicity: Oh, God. I have a type.
  • Roy Harper is searching for the mysterious female vigilante in the Glades.
    Roy: I'm looking for someone. A blonde, likes black leather.
    Hoss: Sounds like your type.
    Roy: And beats the crap out of guys with a bo staff.
    Hoss: That still sounds like your type.
  • In the episode "Birds of Prey", various people have fun pointing out that Oliver Queen tends toward Dark Action Girls who dress in sexy, leathery get ups. Ironically Oliver ends up with Felicity Smoak, who as their Voice with an Internet Connection is the furthest from this type.
  • In "Unthinkable", knowing that Slade Wilson intends to kidnap the woman he loves the most, Oliver fakes a Love Confession to Felicity in a Play-Along Prisoner ploy. Slade is puzzled that she isn't one of the strong women that Oliver normally prefers, though he says he can see the attraction on getting a close look at her. Felicity proves strong enough when she injects Slade with an antidote to his Super Serum.
  • The Flash (2014): A Running Gag in Season 5 is in regards to Sherloque Wells having five ex-wives, all of whom he owes alimony to. Eventually we meet them and learn that they're all doppelgängers of the same woman, possibly making this the most ludicrously extreme example of this trope ever.
  • Supergirl (2015): While Winn had a crush on Kara in early Season 1, every woman he has actually gotten with has been forceful, manipulative, and slightly criminal.
    Winn: She femme fatal'ed me!
    Alex: You do have a type.
  • While Sara Lance will have quick flings with some very varied people, all her committed relationships are with grim, serious-minded badasses who can match her fighting prowess (it'd be All Amazons Want Hercules, except her partners are women more often than not).
  • Batwoman (2019): Kate seems to be into feminine women, since all the ones she's been shown involved with have those looks, in stark contrast with hers.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine
  • Jake who was stated by Boyle to have a thing for Latinas, and seems to have a particular attraction to smart, pantsuit-wearing Latinas. We see enter into a relationship with competitive dark-haired Latina attorney Sophia in the second season, and at the start of Season 3, starts dating Amy.
  • From what we see of his past relationships and his husband, Holt seems to only date people just as stoic and no-nonsense as himself.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • Buffy appears to be attracted to doomed relationships, such as with vampires Angel and Spike. Though in the early seasons it's presented as a "bad boy" attraction, which Spike takes full advantage of when taunting Buffy's current boyfriend, Badass Normal Nice Guy Riley Finn.
    "Face it, white bread. Buffy's got a type, and you're not it. She likes us dangerous, rough, occasionally bumpy in the forehead region. (patronizingly) Not that she doesn't like you... but sorry, you're just not dark enough."
    • Later content seems to imply that Buffy may just have a thing for vampires in particular. Two is not a coincidence anymore after all, especially not when they're the only two she keeps going back to. By Season 7 and the comics, it becomes a Running Gag that Buffy has a "vampire fetish"; even she cracks the joke at her own expense a few times. Best illustrated in an exchange she has with a spirit haunting her sister's high school the first episode of Season 7:
    Spirit: I think I'd like Dawn to be my girlfriend.
    Buffy: Again, wrong sister. I'm the one who dates dead guys. And no offense, but they were hotties.
  • There's also a Running Gag that Xander is attracted to demonic, or otherwise evil, women: the praying-mantis monster, Ampata, former demon Anya, that random chick from Season 7... the main exception is Cordelia, and she became a demon after they broke up!
• Community:
  • Britta is attracted to disturbed and emotionally damaged men; as Abed bluntly puts it, this makes her feel saner by comparison. While this often manifests as All Girls Want Bad Boys, it's slightly more complicated than that. Though she does desperately try to go to an ex-boyfriend who she believes is sending her cruel texts (it's actually her friends trying to keep her away from this guy).
    Troy: What don't you get about this? Britta likes guys who are mean to her. She doesn't like herself.
  • Annie is attracted to aloof, emotionally distant men in general, and especially men who need her in some way so that she can ensure they won't leave her. This leads to some overlap with Britta's type, but not much. For the most part, Annie's type manifests as Jeff. She's initially attracted to Troy before he outgrows his Jerk Jock phase, Vaughn for being detached from the world, the Dark Rider in the second paintball episode for being a badass Bounty Hunter-type, Abed when he's playing Jeff's archetype (especially when he plays Han Solo), and of course Jeff himself. She even gets hot and bothered when the Dean is pretending to have switched bodies with Jeff, even though Annie wasn't aware of what he was doing.
    Shirley: What is happening with you?
    Annie: I don't know.
  • Jeff is attracted to intelligent and mature women, especially those who can match his banter. He spends most of the first season chasing after Britta but mostly gives up on her after she proves at least as crazy and stupid as he is, dates one of the few sane professors at Greendale, and first realizes he has feelings for Annie when they're studying alone together. He admits in the Season 3 premiere that he treats her like a kid in an effort to deny his real feelings for her, and the only time he is annoyed at her flirting is when she's acting like a kid. In the Season 2 premiere he brushes her off since she's acting like a blushing virgin, and in the musical Christmas episode of Season 3 he completely ignores her attempting to seduce him in a Sexy Santa Dress because she's acting like a babyish Brainless Beauty.
    Jeff: You are an intelligent woman. Also you're Jewish.
• Criminal Minds:
  • Unsubs tend to have specific types. Typically, it means that they're angry at one specific person that they can't or won't hurt (for whatever reason), thus are trying to kill them by proxy. Sometimes the "type" is very specific (pretty blonde-haired blue-eyed twentysomethings), sometimes it's more general (middle-aged women of varying appearance), and sometimes not appearance-related at all (married women, or meek women). In fact, figuring out what the unsub's type is tends to lead directly to him (or rarely her).
  • One person to note is Ian Doyle. In the backstory, Prentiss was chosen to go undercover in his organization because Interpol knew several of his previous romantic partners fit her type. Later, we see a photo lineup of said romantic partners when they're trying to determine which was the mother of his son, and they all bear a striking resemblance to Emily. There's not a single outlier in the bunch.
• Degrassi:
  • Emma Nelson seems to only want bad boys. She's the good girl who wants them to change or she's using him to be less good. There's Sean, Peter, Jay, and Spinner. Although, by the time she becomes involved with Spinner, he's already become a responsible and mature adult.
  • Jenna Middleton says that at her old school, she was such a boyfriend-stealer. Especially with bad-boy types. They're totally her weakness.
• Dexter
  • Dexter Morgan
    • Dexter seems to be attracted mainly to blondes, as evidenced by his relationships with Rita, Lumen, and Hannah, not to mention the high school acquaintance/former popular girl who fellates him at their reunion.
    • He also seems to connect with women of the Broken Bird and/or Troubled, but Cute type (Rita, Lila, Lumen, Hannah). In the first episode, he says that Rita is perfect for him because she is "in her own way, as damaged as me".
• On Downton Abbey:
  • Robert, the Earl of Grantham, has been in a committed, loving relationship to his wife, Cora, for thirty years. He briefly has a dalliance with a housemaid who — like his wife — is a brunette with piercing blue eyes, devoted to her family.
  • His daughter Edith seems to have a thing for older, competent men, who either are married or have been married in the past, and who are interested in teaching her about their area of competence. Or alternately, for anyone in unrequited love with Mary.
• Fellow Travelers:
  • Hawkins Fuller falls in love with men who are sweet, which is how he describes both his First Love Kenneth Willard and his Second Love Tim Laughlin.
  • Tim's type seems to be "older men in positions of authority." He lost his virginity to a Catholic priest who was also one of his professors at Fordham University. In his early twenties, Tim falls in love with Hawk, who is in his early-to-mid thirties, works for the State Department, and has enough clout to get Tim a job in Joseph McCarthy's office. (Tim also did not seem entirely disinterested in the older man who kissed him in the Nomad bar bathroom at Rehoboth Beach.)
• Forever (2014)
  • Henry's first wife, Nora, and his next on-screen love interest, Anne, are both petite brunettes. Later, after his life with blonde Abigail, he goes for a blonde cello player and the blonde Molly Dawes.
  • Henry could also be said to go for nurses (Anne and Abigail) although that could be a side effect of him working as a doctor, so that most of the women he meets would be medical personnel. Therapist Molly Dawes could be said to fit this too.
  • When Henry comments on the mathematical, objective attractiveness of Jo's face in "Fountain of Youth," he adds that personally, he prefers a more flawed look.
  • Molly Dawes says in "The Ecstasy of Agony" that the Victim of the Week wasn't her type, she goes for the lone wolves. (Bonus points for saying this to loner Henry!)
• Frasier:
  • Frasier would insist he's drawn to smart, sophisticated, cultured women (or to put it another way, just a female version of himself). And he is, but judging by his dating history over the show, his type is pretty much any woman who expresses interest in him. Meanwhile, his friends and family seem more of the opinion that Frasier is actually drawn to women who have some sort of flaw, whether minor or major, for him to obsess and self-sabotage over. During a bout of self-therapy, Frasier comes to the conclusion (as a Freudian fanboy) that actually his type is his mother.
  • Niles meanwhile seems drawn to relationships with abusive and controlling women, starting with Maris, then replacing Maris with a dog substitute, then Mel. Even when he gets together with Daphne, she tends to be slightly controlling and jerkish, albeit nowhere near the level of the previous two.
• On Friends, Rachel has a thing for doctors in the earliest seasons. The show brings up and then hastily backs away from the revelation that her father is a doctor. Eventually, she ends up with Ross, who's Not That Kind of Doctor.
  Chandler: What, is your dad a doctor?
  Rachel: Yeah. Why?
  Chandler: [Beat] No reason.
  • Charlie Wheeler, introduced in season nine, admits she has a thing for intellectual and academically successful men. She makes an exception to this when she starts dating Book Dumb Joey but they eventually break up after admitting they don't have anything in common. Charlie then moves on to Ross, the most intellectual of the group, before going back to her Nobel prize winning ex-boyfriend.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Jaime claims Renly is only attracted to "curly-haired 'little girls' like Loras Tyrell."
  • Ellaria Sand is bored by timid girls and prefers those with a vivacious personality.
  • Ramsay Bolton says he prefers redheads, though he's only seen ever sleeping with one — Sansa Stark, against her will — as the rest of the women he sleeps with are blonde and brunette.
• Rory Gilmore of Gilmore Girls, over the course of the series, seems determined to date the baddest boy in the series — so long as he's booksmart. First she dumps wholesome Dean for Jess. After Jess leaves town, she ends up back with Dean, who is a significantly darker character now, given that he's cheating on his wife with Rory. Later, she again dumps Dean for Logan, who is a member of a secret society and a rebel against the wealthy society of his upbringing.
• Puck from Glee states that cougars are his type. While that is clearly true, his love interests are usually his age or younger, Shelby aside. If he has any type, it's tough.
• High Fidelity: Rob claims the reason Kat broke up with her is Kat's preference for tall and blonde white woman (Rob's not any of these). However, when she meets Kat again Kat's reasons have to do with Rob's personality.
• Hightown: All of the women Jackie is shown being into are feminine (quite unlike herself). They're usually blonde and White as well. It turns out this also goes for Ray.
• Barney Stinson declares in the pilot of How I Met Your Mother that he's discarded his old type (half-Asian girls) for a new type (Lebanese girls). Later he declares he doesn't have a type; that's crass and limiting. Despite this, observations do point out that he is drawn to a certain type of women. His type is naive bimbos with daddy issues. However, his eventual main interest, Robin, has daddy issues but is very intelligent. Given that Barney also has some dad problems and can be perceived as shallow, but is more intelligent than he appears, makes a good amount of sense.
• In How to Get Away with Murder, new (black) character Gabriel Maddox is introduced as being the son of an established character, with it initially being suggested that Annalise's child didn't die before pivoting to suggesting that he's Bonnie's. It turns out that he's actually Annalise's stepson — her white husband Sam's son from his first marriage, showing he was with a black woman prior to her.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022):
  • Louis de Pointe du Lac is enticed by men with curly hair: he has fallen in love with Jonah Macon, Lestat de Lioncourt, and Armand, plus he flirted with Daniel Molloy in 1973.
  • When it comes to men, Lestat has a weakness for those of "infinite beauty and sensitivity," which applies to both his First Love Nicolas and his Second Love Louis.
• Mac on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is attracted to beefy hunks. Ironically, he's also implied to have feelings for his roommate Dennis, who is unfit and fairly thin.
• In Keeping Up Appearances, the Major explains to Hyacinth (while trying to molest her) that even as a young man, he's always been solely attracted to "matronly ladies".
• One time on Later with Greg Kinnear Dave Foley was talking about his time on The Kids in the Hall, where the guys on the show played all the characters including the female ones. After getting made up as a girl for a scene Foley looked in the mirror and got a little turned on. As he said on Later he thought, "Wow, I'm my type."
• In Killing Eve, Villanelle has a definite preference for smart women who are significantly older than her, with thick, wavy hair and palindromic names. Like Eve. The hair thing seems to be especially important; early on in the series, Villanelle is seen rubbernecking a random woman with long, curly hair (while out on a date with a young man, no less), and later on she brings a woman home to have sex with, asking to call her "Eve." Said woman bears no physical resemblance to Eve whatsoever... except for, of course, the hair.
• The L Word: Tasha says she's into girly girls, thus why Popi didn't work out with her (who's a tomboy).
• Mad Men's Don Draper begins the show married to a blonde Stepford Smiler, but every single one of his affairs, bar one, is with a brunette. The exception is the instance where he was the pursued, rather than the pursuer—and occurred shortly after his divorce from the blonde Stepford Smiler.
• The Mentalist has a scientist in "Red Bricks and Ivy" who has a thing for getting involved with brunettes and then getting them to color their hair blonde. Ex-wife, new wife, and girlfriend all fit the pattern, which is how the team figures out he was involved with the girlfriend in the first place.
• Murdoch Mysteries:
  • Detective Murdoch is by no means a seducer who would pursue women, but being Tall, Dark, and Handsome and extremely intelligent and accomplished, women just fall into his arms. If he's ever interested in a woman, she's always intelligent and usually blond (his deceased fiancée Liza ^note Not much is known about Liza's character, personality or background, Dr. Julia Ogden, Mrs. Enid Jones, Miss Anna Fulford and Mrs. Sally Pendrick). Inspector Brackenreid feels an urge to point it out to him in "Evil Eye of Egypt," saying that he should be careful during an investigation because beautiful intelligent ladies are his weak spot. The lady in question, Dr. Iris Bajjali, is a highly intelligent scientist, but a dark Arabian beauty.
  • James Gillies, who is hinted to be gay, seems to be drawn to dark-haired, good-looking, mild-mannered, smart men, which fits the description of his presumed boyfriend Robert Perry (a comely lad who was the brightest among his classmates as he was the teacher's assistant for a physics course) in "Big Murderer on Campus". It's revealed much later on that Gillies is also attracted to Murdoch — his only intellectual equal — after he kisses the detective on the mouth for a full three seconds in "Midnight Train to Kingston".
  • Constable Crabtree at one point lampshades his own attraction to determined, no-nonsense women (Dr Grace, Edna Brooks, Miss Cherry, Nina Bloom, and Effie Newsome), wondering if it might be easier to be attracted to a woman who wasn't, before realising he can't just decide that.
• Gibbs on NCIS has a thing for redheads.
• Never Have I Ever: Fabiola's Closet Key is Eve, a girl with short hair and masculine clothing, whom she then dates. After they break up and she's dating Aneesa she fixes Addison, who has the same style, with the Longing Look she had for Eve on first seeing her. Aneesa realizes it clearly, amicably parting with Fabiola as they remains friends as she encourages her to pursue Addison.
• Jan Bellows in Only Murders in the Building claims her type is men with noticeable age gaps from her that she meets in the elevator. Charles is almost twenty years older than her. Her previous lover Tim Kono was nearly twenty-five years younger than her.
• Orange Is the New Black: Boo seems to like "femme" lesbians from what we've seen.
• Ron Swanson of Parks and Recreation only likes dark-haired women because his first wife was blonde and she was so terrible that she turned him off blondes forever. Both of his ex-wifes are also named Tammy. Just like his mother.
• On The Orville, Captain Ed Mercer and Commander Kelly Grayson are divorced, Kelly having left Ed because he was working so much that he didn't really give much time to her. In "Ja'loja," Kelly starts dating a schoolteacher named Cassius. Ed finds out about it and is upset, but eventually talks with Cassius to try to clear the air. Cassius explains that he was previously married and that his work drove him to succeed but also drove a stake right through his marriage. Hearing this, Ed comments that Kelly definitely has a type.
  • Ed has his own type; he's definitely an Amazon Chaser. His past relationship with Kelly, his Ship Tease with Alara, and the two women he dated in the series were all Action Girl types, quite capable of kicking his ass and he knew it.
• Person of Interest.
  • Sameen Shaw has an enthusiastic interest in bad boys and an implied interest in Action Girls. However she tries to avoid responding to Root's flirtatious banter, eventually admitting that Root is entirely her type but two sociopathic Girls with Guns would add up to a Destructive Romance.
  • In "A More Perfect Union", a woman invites John Reese to a high society wedding they need to infiltrate. Harold Finch agrees that it's a lucky coincidence that Reese is her type... while glancing at her social page, where she states her taste in men is the strong silent Silver Fox, just like Reese.
• Pretty Little Liars:
  • Spencer, who is into Dating What Daddy Hates. Either working class boys with an attitude or her sister's fiances (yeah, that's a plural)—her father never approves. Her mother rarely approves at first, but then usually warms up to the boy. Like all of the mothers in the series. They always have dark hair, too.
  • As a general rule, it seems a big portion of the men of Rosewood (Ezra, Ian, Wren, Garret, Holbrook...) have a very clear, rather disturbing type: underage highschoolers.
• Roswell, New Mexico: Liz teases Kyle that he has a thing for "feisty Latinas" after dating her and then Steph, who both fit this.
• In a sketch on Saturday Night Live about how to meet people for relationships, Tracy Morgan plays a man with a very specific type: Chinese trans women.
• Dr. Cox on Scrubs has a thing for strong, venomous, even abusive women whom he can fight with verbally. He prefers them brunette, but is happy to settle for a blonde ball buster. When he rebuffs his ex-wife Jordan's advances because he's in a new relationship that he genuinely wants to work, she instantly sums the woman up without having even met her—"Let me guess? Petite? Dark-haired? Doesn't take any of your crap?". In other words, just like her.
  • J.D. has a tendency to date slender, leggy, blond women who are just a tad bit too kooky.
  • Molly has an explicit preference for emotionally-damaged men, leading to J.D. to become introspective so she'd be willing to date him.
    J.D.: My emotional journey began at five years old when I walked in on my parents having sex in a position my father would later playfully describe as "the jackhammer." I have a mentor that verbally abuses me every chance he gets, and no matter how much I try, I can't stop constantly narrating my own life... Molly, I'm narcissistic, I'm pessimistic, I'm obsessive, I'm insecure. And I'm so afraid of intimacy that every one of my relationships are a journey of self sabotage that inevitably ends in a black vacuum of shattered expectations and despair.
• Shameless (US) has Mickey Milkovich, whose self-proclaimed type are 'carrot tops'. Basically anyone that resembles Ian. Svetlana lampshades this by dying her hair red to try and seduce him.
• Deconstructed on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. When Jen has a hard time getting a date (despite looking like Tatiana Maslany), her friends convince her to make an online dating profile as She-Hulk and suddenly she has dozens of men interested in her. She dates a few and sleeps with one, but when he wakes up in the morning and sees Jen as her normal self for the first time, he's turned off and quickly leaves. He was an Amazon Chaser who was only into She-Hulk.
• Smallville:
  • Lex Luthor has a habit of hooking up with hot brunettes because they remind him of his mother as seen in the episode, "Bound".
  • After Martha in the episode "Crusade" says "Trust me, that can happen to the best of us" about falling for a "farm-boy type", Lois replies "Not me, give me a nerd with glasses any day of the week". In the comics, Clark Kent wears glasses to separate his appearance from Superman's.
• Star Trek: The Original Series: Almost all of Captain Kirk's ex-girlfriends are smart, professional women. He seems to have a thing for scientists, though one of his exes was a lawyer. And in the movies, the mother of his son invented the freaking Genesis Device.
• Star Trek: Picard: Dr. Agnes Jurati has a thing for bearded, older men; Bruce Maddox was her boyfriend, and she hooks up with Cristóbal Rios.
• In Supernatural, Sam mainly seems to go for monsters. Brunette monsters. May have something to do with the fact that his blonde, human girlfriend was brutally murdered in the first episode. (Not that his monster girlfriends fare any better.)
• Trigonometry: Gemma is with Kieran, a paramedic, and tells Ray how her First Love was the surgeon who saved her life. Ray jokingly says this means her type is medical staff.
• In one episode of Victorious, Cat meets (and falls for) a boy after filming a movie where she's required to wear a blonde wig. However, her friends look up the guy and find out that he only likes blondes to a ridiculous degree. Eventually, Cat is convinced to be herself and show the boy her natural red hair. The boy thanks her for being honest with him...and then dumps her because he only dates blondes.
• Welcome to Sweden: Viveka is very into sailors. Birger, her long-time partner, is a former sea captain, and she always wants to have sex with him wearing his cap (as he complains of). After they briefly break up, she gets on a dating site to look for other men, but two are also sea captains and the other works in the maritime association, as her daughter Emma notes (along with strongly resembling Birger).
• On White Collar, Peter tells Neal he used to have a crush on his algebra teacher.
  Neal: Thus beginning your lifelong fascination with numbers.
  Peter: And smart, leggy brunettes. [like his wife]
• The X-Files:
  • Mulder is most interested in his quest to reveal the truth about multiple conspiracies, but occasionally he shows attraction to tall, leggy, brunettes or blondes. He ends the series with Scully, a short, petite, redhead. This may be a Development Gag, as network executives originally wanted someone "taller, leggier, blonder and breastier" for the role of Scully, while Chris Carter pushed for Gillian Anderson.
  • Scully's type is powerful men; she dated two professors of hers and ended the series with Mulder, who is technically her superior.

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