Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly asks this question, probably coming down from the non-stop drama of the Real Housewives franchise, or in Project Runway withdrawals. I think: too soon, man. It’s only the second episode and most Bravo shows simmer up to a spectacular finish. Give it time.

But, being the curious gal I am, I thought I’d see what Twitter thought of the show, since it made the trending topics last night. A sampling of what folks felt:

Skeeton Mischa wondered the same thing I did about Sebastian & Taylor’s date:

This lady doubted that PC’s “counselor” was even a real professional

And others wondered why these rich kids were all using Blackberrys instead of the far more “elite” iPhone:

This woman hated Jessie so much, she publicly made plans to talk trash about her on a message board:

Media analyst Jennifer Pozner broke down why this show is even on the air:

How are you liking NYC Prep so far? Or are you sitting this one out and just going to wait for Gossip Girl to return in the fall?

[Via EW]

• Whatever commenter ripped on me for my like of Caroline, check this out: the New York Daily News totally agrees with me and declares the family oriented redhead to be the breakout star of the Real Housewives of New Jersey. Bet he too is on the Manzo payroll (just kidding, folks!) [New York Daily News]
• Apparently, the idea of NYC Prep was born out of a desire to fight negative press that came out of Gossip Girl. Sounds like this idea might back fire. [Wall Street Journal]
• ]This blind item sounds like it could be a Real Housewife. Perhaps Countess LuAnn, newly single & on the prowl? [CDAN]
• Possibly former Real Housewife of Orange County Jeana Keough has put her gigantic Coto de Caza house on the market. It includes 7 bedrooms, 6 full bathrooms, and a 6 car garage. Jeana listed it for $5.5 million. [The Real E-Stalker]
• Danielle Staub claims that her kids wanted to be in the room during the last scene of the Real Housewives of New Jersey finale. It’s every kid’s dream to hear their mother be called a “prostitution whore.” [E! Online]
• In sad news, original Top Chef host Katie Lee Joel has split from husband Billy Joel. [Star-Ledger]
• Real househusband of New York City Simon VanKempen claims to be e-mail pals with Caroline Manzo’s hot son, Albie Manzo. [Daily Intel]
• Richard Lawson considers if there is an appropriate way to point out NYC Prep’s PC as being just a little gay. [Gawker]

[Image: Bravo/NBC Universal]

Hi everyone! I want to apologize for the slow posts this week! However, it looks like many of you found ways to occup yourself in the comments and I’m glad you’ve kept coming back. Now, on to the news for the week!

• Gretchen Rossi is in trouble once again. And no, no more photos on The Website That Shall Not Be Named, this time Bangs got busted for speeding, she was driving over 100mph in Nevada. Slow down there, Miss Rossi. [Radar]
• It’s official, Jeana Keough is not returning to Real Housewives of Orange County. In an interview with the OC Register (who’s article links to The Dirty’s post on Jeana’s departure), Jeana says that she didn’t sign the contract for Season 5 and that she was now embarassed to be associated with the show. Even money loving Jeana finds the flaunt of money to be unrealistic. [OC Register]
• Top Chef Vegas (Bravo finally announced that they filmed the season there, even though we’ve all known for months) wrapped up last weekend with a big party at the Wynn. [Eater]
• One detail I excluded from my NYC Prep review was how often the audience laughed at the ridiculousness of the kids. Lucky for me, a writer from the New York Times was also there and they mentioned it, and how embarassed the kids appeared to be.
• Similar to the Feministing post, another blogger has written a rant on how Bravo hates women and that they are depicted as “weak, shallow, vain, stupid, gold-digging, desperate delusional bitches” on Bravo reality shows. [Newsweek]http://www.newsweek.com/id/200241
• Bethenny Frankel says that Danielle Staub’s drama is boring because it happened 24 years ago. Hers is much more interesting because she was clubbing at the age of 14. Also, that photo of her showing off her thong to the audience at a book signing? She says it was a private photo, but it was her. [Daily Intel]
• The rest of the NY housewives are far more sympathetic to Danielle’s story, Mama Jill Zarin concerned for her daughters and Countess Luann de Lesseps telling a story about how Danielle cornered her at a party and asked for advice. [Gay Wired]
• A poorly timed decision: Bravo announced this week that they are developing a possible Top Chef magazine, in collaboration with its sponsor Food & Wine magazine. [Creative Loafing]
• To make sure you still remember her, Kim Zolciak threw herself a party along with new Atlanta housewife Kandi Burruss. Sheree was also there, but Nene was MIA. [D-Listed]

[Image: Picapp]

• 
• Some of you thought that the photos of Gretchen Rossi sent to The Dirty were not so bad because she looks good. Gretchen doesn’t think so; she’s filed a cease & desist to the owners of the website to take the photos down. [TMZ]
• Project Runway’s sixth season will be airing on Lifetime, but not any time soon. Tim Gunn told reporters that the reason for the hold up is the network doesn’t think people will watch both Bravo’s new The Fashion Show and Project Runway. They don’t seem to understand how fashion addicted we are. [Project Rungay]
• Tracie Egan of Jezebel loves Judge Judy and recently put up a hilarious webcomic of what would happen if the Real Housewives of New York met the judge. She also did one where Judge Judy meets Kathy Griffin.
• In an extremely strange move, Toby Young is coming back to Top Chef as a judge. His presence was almost universally hated by fans and it always seemed like Tom was annoyed with him, but he managed to strike a deal with Bravo to return as the fake Simon Cowell of the competitive cooking show. He’ll be alternating weeks at Judge’s Table with the beloved Gail Simmons of Food & Wine Magazine. [The Feedbag]
• Speaking of, the sixth season of Top Chef has been cast. The shooting location has yet to be announced. [Showtracker]

[Image: Pacific Coast News]

• 

• Kelly Bensimon tells US Weekly that her feud with Bethenny is over. No word on whether or not Kelly is still “up here”.
• Mama at the Real E-Stalker dug up the details on Countess LuAnn DeLesseps attempt to sell her Hamptons home. The most interesting part of the article? Finding out LuAnn rents her Upper East Side townhouse. How utterly dreadful.
• The news machine that is the Real Housewives never stops: Alex McCord is now an unemployed Huffington Post blogger.
• Now that he’s paid off NBC, Harvey Weinstein is back to talking trash about NBC post Project Runway deal. The legal battle for the show ended last week and the show will now air on Lifetime.
• Korto of Project Runway Season 5 did an interview with Blog Talk Radio this weekend; listen to the archived chat here.

[Image: Bauer Griffin]

No wonder Bravo announced the contestants and premiere date of The Fashion Show this morning; our beloved Project Runway is officially making the leap to Lifetime. The battle between NBC Universal (the owner of Bravo), the Weinstein Company and Lifetime for the show has been resolved and The Weinstein Company will pay NBC to move the show to Lifetime’s schedule.

No mention was made of when Season 6 will air on the network for women. As you may recall, the show has already finished taping and the final three presented their collections at New York Fashion Week.

This is such sad news. Project Runway belongs on Bravo. I’m sad to see it leave the fold as we get swallowed by nothing but shows about “housewives”.

[Via Reuters & reality blurred]

• Actress Natasha Richardson, who was a guest judge on Top Chef this past season (on the 12 Days of Christmas episode) very sadly passed away after a skiing accident. Bravo’s Andy Cohen attended the funeral and wrote a blog post dedicated to her memory.
• Another Bravo star got in trouble for fighting with her boyfriend. This time, Project Runway runner up Kenley Collins got arrested for assaulting her boyfriend with 3 apples, a laptop and their cat. She told him that “it could have been worse”.
• Real Housewife of Atlanta Kim Zolciak continues to be the classy broad she is and flaked on a fund raising event for her charity to go catch some rays in the Bahamas. That intense schedule of doing nothing really wore her out. An interesting note is that Kim’s charity is called Shoes for Shattered Hearts, a very similar name to Nene Leake’s Twisted Hearts Foundation.
• Orange County housewife Tamra Barney is finally starting to write like herself in her Bravo blog, to surprisingly hilarious results. In her last post she brainstorms some possible book titles: “How to Get A B*!@h Drunk. Housewives Gone Wild. Botox Gone Bad. 18 and Knocked Up.”

[Image: Bravo/Virginia Sherwood]

Formerly optimistic about Project Runway’s Season 6 airing sometime this year, its matron Heidi Klum is now pissed and wants fans to protest. She says “I think that people should be demonstrating outside of Harvey Weinstein’s house. If it were up to me, it would be on by now.” ABC News has just posted the most legible description of the show’s legal battles, which I will now translate for you, so you can explain it to people at parties and at work:

1. In April 2008, Harvey Weinstein, the producer of the show sold Project Runway to Lifetime for $150 million and a 5 year deal.
2. On that same day, NBC (the owner of the Bravo network) said “Not so fast!” and sued Harvey. NBC says they had the right to look at other networks offers to buy the show and also said that Harvey was two-timing NBC by pretending to negotiate a deal with them while actually making a deal with Lifetime
3. Harvey countersues, claiming that the network was leaking spoilers and that they had been copying the format for other shows, specifically Bravo’s “Top Chef”
4. Another reason Harvey wanted to sell is he has beef with Bravo’s president, Lauren Salsnick. In a meeting in January 2008, NBC offered ways to please Harvey without losing the show, including taking it to USA (WTF?).  Harvey tells NBC exec Jeff Zucker that Jeff is one of his only “5 friends in the world” and that he will not screw him over by taking the show elsewhere
5. A month later, Harvey got the offer from Lifetime, told Jeff that he’d be stupid not to take it, and cashed a big ole 20 million dollar deposit. In the court documents, Harvey says he now has “15 friends”.
6. In September 2008, a judge awarded an injunction to NBC temporarily blocking the show from airing on any network. The judge in the case thinks NBC will win. Harvey’s lawyers have appealed the decision.

This sounds like drama and backstabbing worthy of a Real Housewives episode, right? For now, until the injuction is lifted and all those egomaniacs go back to court, the show will remain suspended in time.

[Image: Bravo/NBC Universal, Sources: Jam, ABC News]

If you’re a Project Runway fan and wondering what happened to charismatic Season 1 winner Jay McCarroll, you now have a whole movie to watch: Eleven Minutes, a documentary following Jay as he develops his first independent collection for Fashion Week in 2007. The film is fascinating look into what it takes to produce a real fashion show, a whole year of work and stress that culminates into 11 minutes on the runway.

At the time the documentary was made, no other Project Runway contestant had made a fashion show independent of the reality show. Jay’s feelings about being associated as a “reality star” are ambivalent at best: he clearly wouldn’t be in the position he was in if not for being on the show (and to an extent, the winner), but he is eager to set the record straight that it is not a path to instant fame and fortune as a designer. There are times in the film when you think Jay wishes he wasn’t associated with the show at all. In a montage of Jay talking to press before his show, he finally asks a reporter not to ask any more questions about Runway. But the association remains and creates more pressure than normal. As Kelly Cutrone, the fashion publicist who’s agency People’s Revolution is organizing the show, says in the film: the TV show Project Runway is what’s highly successful, not the designers themselves.

All that aside, the film is much more about the business of fashion and the frustration for a creative person thrust into what is a harsh, unforgiving, cutthroat industry. We watch as Jay gets funding, goes through issues with his shoemaker, finding the right models, problems with Peoples Revolutions and actually creating the clothes themselves. A lesser protagonist would come off as whiny and unappreciative of the opportunities handed to him, but Jay’s sense of humor and willingness to stick to his vision, makes you root for him in the end. It’s the feeling that he’s with us and not above us or against us that shine through in the movie and what made him such a likeable person on Project Runway. We can feel his insecurities, we can feel his self doubt and when he finally puts on the show and it’s over, we want to cry right along with him and his PR rep Nancy Kane.

The movie ends with Jay getting down to the business of selling his collection to retail, a process that could fill another documentary. The movie does start off a little slow, but builds momentum and it is riveting to watch as the show finally comes together and the models take the stage for their precious eleven minutes.

All images courtesy of Regent Releasing, used with permission]

Our German matron of our beloved old Project Runway, Heidi Klum as usual couldn’t resist showing off a whole lot of leg on the Red Carpet of last night’s Academy Awards. And really who can blame her? The dress is by French designer Roland Mouret.

[Image: PR Photos]