Let’s face it: besides being the first show on TV to show bare (and oftentimes very unseemingly male) buttocks (I’m looking at you, Dennis Franz), ABC’s NYPD Blue also constantly offered up some of the hottest female cops to ever put on the fake police badge. And we’re going to ignore the non-cop characters here, like Sherry Stringfield or the slew of hot D.A.’s that followed her. Even with just limiting our scope to the female Detectives of the show, we have our hands full trying to sift through the ladies, because honestly, there are a lot of them. So let’s begin, shall we? Here, then, are our Hottest NYPD Blue cops.
#5 Jessalyn Gilsig (Kelly Ronson)
I’m not sure if the producers never really intended to do a whole lot with Jessalyn Gilsig’s Kelly Ronson character, one of the batch of new ones that showed up later in the show, or if they just did what they could and then hit a wall and decided to move on. All we know is that Jessalyn Gilsig didn’t stay on NYPD Blue for very long, which is a damn shame as her character had a lot of potential. And yes, the fact that Ronson was possibly a lesbian (although the show never really said either way) added greatly to the intrigue. Who didn’t have all kinds of fantasies about the innocent teacher from Boston Public finally letting her hair down and doing some handcuffing with a female suspect?
#4 Andrea Thompson (Jill Kirkendall)
Those long, long legs and that voice — how could you not be immediately drawn to Andrea Thompson and her tragic Jill Kirkendall character on the show? It’s too bad that Jill didn’t get a whole lot of airtime until towards the end of the character’s arc, which, true to NYPD Blue, didn’t end particularly well for our husky-voiced hottie cop. But if just for that voice and those legs, Andrea Thompson and Jill Kirkdendall lands at our #4. A little bit more skin, more roll in the haying, and she might have landed even higher, but alas, no.
#3 Amy Brenneman (Janice Licalsi)
Before Amy went on to judge people from a bench, she was dodging mafioso contacts and bullets on NYPD Blue. I don’t think there was another character with more of a convoluted background than Amy Brenneman’s Janice Licalsi. During the brief time she was on the show, and before Kim Delaney’s arrival, Brenneman held up the show’s hot cop quotient pretty much all by her little lonesome. And she did it well, too. Janice Licalsi and her mob ways lands at our #3 of NYPD Blue’s hottest cops.
#2 Jacqueline Obradors (Rita Ortiz)
Of all the new NYPD faces to show up at the 1-5 in the show’s later years, Jacqueline Obradors’s Rita Ortiz made the most impact on me. Besides adding much needed spice to the show (with much respect to Esai Morales), Jacqueline Obradors was smoldering hot, even if her character only had a few episodes where she showed off what was hiding underneath that shoulder holster. If Ortiz had been given more to do besides a lame ex-husband storyline early in the character’s lifespan, I might have put Obradors all the way at the top of our list. As it stands, Rita Ortiz lands at #2 with a bullet.
#1 Kim Delaney (Diane Russell)
I don’t think putting Kim Delaney’s Diane Russell at the very top of the list is really all that big of a surprise. Besides being one of the longest running characters on the show, Kim Delaney was also in her prime during NYPD Blue’s ’90s. Sure, the fritzy hair got less fritzy and the sex appeal dulled a bit in the millennium, but when Bobby Simone was around, Diane Russell was the NYPD cop to get arrested by. We all would like to think that Kim Delaney went on to find more fame and fortune post-NYPD Blue, but that would be a lie. Oh well, it was great when it was great, and when it was great, there was no one hotter than Kim Delaney’s Diane Russell.
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