It’s true that I really don’t watch much TV and remain clueless about a lot of the shows on the air, but why had I never heard about the new Syfy series Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files until last night?! ‘Cause I am here to declare in print (or whatever declaring something on the web counts as) that it is the greatest show to ever exist on television! And one of the things that makes the show awesome is one of its six hosts…photography expert Chi-Lan Lieu who I will now also declare to be the hottest woman on television.

The reason I’m surprised I didn’t know about this series (which premiered last month) is because Chi-Lan is Chinese American and I don’t remember reading about her or the show on any of the numerous Asian American blogs or sites I frequent. This is strange in that usually even if an Asian face appears for one second in some commercial, the blogosphere will pick up the story for all of Asian America to digest. Now, it’s possible someone has written about Chi-Lan and/or this new show, but since I don’t remember reading anything and I’m too lazy to do a google search, let’s just assume I am correct and no one has (come on, Angry Asian Man, if you don’t blog about something, it means it doesn’t exist in Asian America).

But why is this show so awesome?

Because unlike most of the other supernatural-based reality shows where everyone seems so eager to believe, there’s a heavy-dose of skepticism. This is a show that also wants to believe, but is unwilling to be so easily swayed. There’s more of a Muldar and Scully balance as opposed to most other programs that are pure Muldar (FYI, that’s an X-Files reference for the non-geeks). I dig Fact or Faked’s yin and yang quality; its Mythbusters approach to the paranormal.

The premise of the series is simple, the six members of the Fact or Faked team meet in the Situation Room, which resembles an old fire house converted into an Ikea showroom. Each member pitches a potential paranormal case (usually a viral video from the internet) and everyone votes on the cases worth investigating. Then, they go off in teams to either prove or disprove what’s in the video. Here’s a promo that gives you a feel for the show:

Which brings me to Chi-Lan. As much as I’ve repeatedly shared my lust for the Megan Foxes of the world on this blog, I have to say that for me, the one quality that really makes a woman incredibly hot is knowing that she’s smarter than me. It’s like playing basketball against Michael Jordan or acting in a scene with Marlon Brando—they’re going to bring out the best in you because they are better than you. I think that’s sexy!

And watching Chi-Lan busting out her knowledge on this show is definitely hot! The team will be sitting around talking about some video of an unidentified “animal” and she’ll just throw down a random fact like how 20,000+ previously unknown species are discovered every year or she’ll go on about how a photo showing an alleged lake monster might have been faked. She’s like that perfect Asian girl everyone had in class who was gorgeous, got straight “A”s, head cheerleader, class president—but she never seemed to be dating anyone and no one really knew about her personal life which made her even more hot because she was mysterious and unattainable.

What I also dig about Chi-Lan can be summed up in these lines from her bio on the show’s website:

Chinese-American Chi-Lan is torn between skepticism and true belief. Her Buddhist upbringing gives her a “different from the norm” perspective on the cultural and faith-based aspects of the paranormal.

Based on the two episodes I’ve seen, she does seem to best embody the show’s core “conflict” of belief vs. skepticism. This could be due to her bi-culturalism as her bio suggests or maybe…ah, to hell with it—she’s just friggin’ hot! Damnit, I don’t need to justify it any other way. Sorry to all of you who wasted your time reading this far because this should have seriously only been a four word blog: Chi-Lan is smoking hot!

But I’ll leave you with a clip from the show so you can check her out in action. In this episode, the team investigates a house in Los Angeles where some supernatural entity allegedly resides. If you ask the spirit a question and then take a Polaroid picture, words are said to appear in the photo answering your question. As this is a photo-based investigation, you can see how Chi-Lan really takes charge here:

Oh, and for anyone who’s interested, here’s the rest of the team:

(UPDATE 11-12-10: Read Chi-Lan’s Guest Offender blog about BigFoot and karaoke here.)