Right-Hand Hottie

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Behind every powerful man (or woman, occasionally), there is a secretary, assistant, or aide to keep his schedule and organize the paperwork. This character is usually calm and meticulous, is likely to wear a crisply pressed suit, and may have hot little glasses. In other words, they're a perfect excuse to throw in a little Fan Service. Because Most Writers Are Male, this tends to take the form of the Sexy Secretary, but sometimes (especially in works that lean towards a female audience), it'll be an attractive guy: the Right-Hand Hottie.

If the boss is also a hot guy, there's opportunity for Ho Yay via Subordinate Excuse, for additional Mr. Fanservice value.

Spear Counterpart to the Sexy Secretary. If they are more than fanservice they function as The Face.

Examples of Right-Hand Hottie include:

Anime and Manga

Film

Live-Action TV

  • Mad Men: Lane Pryce's secretary right hand, John Hooker, is one of these even within the universe: as office manager at Sterling Cooper upon its takeover by Putnam, Powell, and Lowe, he replaces Joan...and is thus in charge of the secretarial pool. The secretaries (besides Joan, who hates him for personal reasons and disdains him for professional ones) all swoon over his good looks and sexy British accent.
  • In Friends, Rachel hires a totally unqualified guy for her assistant solely on the basis that he was cute.
  • On Heroes, the Haitian was right-hand hottie to Noah Bennet. Played by former Hugo Boss model Jimmy Jean-Louis, no less.
  • Torchwood's Ianto Jones. Although his boss/boyfriend is a greater source of Fan Service than he is, recurring character Captain John Hart refers to Ianto as "Eye Candy", apparently in the belief that that's why he's kept around.
    • In the first episode, Jack introduces him as the guy a) who handles clean-up, b) gets the team from place to place, and c) "looks good in a suit." So yeah, John wasn't too far off.
  • On Doctor Who, Harriet Jones (Prime Minister) and Torchwood One leader Yvonne Hartman both had attractive right-hand men.
  • Billy Keikeya, Gaius Baltar and (to an extant in Seasons 1-3 and fully in Season 4) Lee "Apollo" Adama fill this role for Education Secretary/President Laura Roslin on the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.
  • Maya on Just Shoot Me did this as an experiment for an article, pitting a handsome doof against someone who was qualified but plain-looking. Guess who won.
  • Merlin's Ensemble Darkhorse Sir Leon is Arthur's second-in-command. Having appeared throughout season 2 simply as a random knight, he was upgraded in season 3 to this trope.

Video Games

Western Animation

Real Life

  • Catherine the Great was fond of those. Platon Zubov was a particularly outstanding example of the trope.