Fall TV Blog

In a decidedly A-list move, Kathy Griffin will return for a sixth season of her Bravo reality laugh-fest, Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, her rep confirms to PEOPLE.

“Let’s just say we are hoping the premiere episode will be Cher-tastic,” Griffin says of her show, which documents the comedian’s adventures in Hollywood, where she sometimes gets the star treatment and sometimes does not. In the last season, Kathy got lessons on how to be an A-lister from stars like Bette Midler, Paris Hilton and Rosie O’Donnell.

In the new season, Kathy will continue traipsing around the globe with Team Griffin, her mother, a box of wine and maybe even Levi Johnston, her rep said.

“Wasilla here we come!” Kathy says.

Shooting of the 10-episode season gets under way in January. –Alexis Chiu

Tell us: Are you excited for more Kathy and more D-List? What antics would you like to see her get up to?

John Parra/Getty

Bananas!

Taylor Jacobson, who has worked with stylist Rachel Zoe for four years as seen on Bravo’s The Rachel Zoe Project, was fired this morning, effective immediately, according to sources.

Jacobson, who was often at odds with her boss and coworker Brad Goreski on the reality show but helped Zoe’s celebrity styling business run smoothly, wrote on her Twitter account: “Today is an end of an era and a beginning of a new professional chapter. Looking forward to what the future brings…!!!”

No word on the cause behind the termination or the future of the reality show, which has shot for two seasons.

Meanwhile, Jacobson is reportedly saying it was her decision to leave. Fashionista.com posted an email that she sent to her contacts: “After four amazing years at Rachel Zoe Corporation, I’m saddened and exhilarated at the same time to announce my departure. After much thought and consideration, I have decided to take the challenging leap to go off and style on my own.”

Zoe’s rep Carrie Gordon would only confirm to PEOPLE, “Taylor Jacobson is no longer with Rachel Zoe, Inc.” –Julie Jordan

Tell us: Are you surprised by the news that Taylor is done working for Rachel?

Mark Von Holden/WireImage

What do Kim Kardashian and Vanessa Minnillo have in common? Aside from both going out at one time with Nick Lachey, they’ll both be guest starring in an upcoming episode of CSI: NY along with Minnillo’s former TRL costar LaLa Vasquez and the members of the band Train.

“The ladies play two women who’ve managed to concoct a very interesting scheme that ends in murder,” Executive Producer Pam Veasey tells PEOPLE of the episode, which airs Dec. 16 on CBS.

“I am so excited to be working with Vanessa again,” Kardashian says. “I am fascinated by crime scene investigating. I swear, I wish I was a crime scene investigator sometimes!”

Minnillo and Kardashian appeared together in Disaster Movie and Kardashian also recently appeared on an episode of FOX’s sitcom Brothers.

“I’m having such a good time expanding my roles,” Kardashian says. “I truly love branching out into different characters.” –Lisa Ingrassia and Jennifer Garcia

Gregg DeGuire/PictureGroup; INF

The Visitors are back! ABC’s alien-invasion remake, V, debuted Tuesday night with a frightening (if familiar) opening scene of spaceships hovering over the world’s major cities. Anna (Morena Baccarin) — the soothing and, according to Scott Wolf’s anchorman character Chad Decker, “attractive” leader of the Visitors — quickly introduced herself and promised that they had arrived without plans to harm humanity, but rather bearing gifts of advanced technology and universal health care.

For the rest of the hour, the Visitors continued to charm most of the world while a few smart and suspicious people, like FBI agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell), began to realize that the Visitors are not nearly as docile as they appear.

So what’s the verdict on V?

Oxygen is bringing back its popular weight-loss show, Dance Your Ass Off, for a second season in 2010.

“We loved watching as contestants danced off nearly 500 pounds,” says Amy Introcaso-Davis, Senior Vice President of Original Programming and Development for Oxygen Media.

The show, which premiered earlier this year, paired a dozen professional dancers with overweight contestants, who competed to dance off the most weight.

Ruben Permel of Las Vegas ultimately won the competition when he shed 73 lbs. “On the show, we learned choreography, a routine. Now I can go social dancing. I can do the fox trot, I can do the salsa, I can do a swing dance with a complete stranger,” he told PEOPLE. “It’s kind of cliché to say, ‘Oh [the show] changed my life,’ but actually it did.”

The show’s second season will be produced by Magical Elves, the production company responsible for Bravo’s Top Chef. “We hope to inspire the entire country to eat healthy and get off the couch and dance!” says Introcaso-Davis.

No word on whether Marissa Jaret Winokur, who hosted the first season of the show, will be back for season 2. –Elaine Aradillas

Gregg DeGuire/WireImage

After spending three months in a house of backstabbers, liars, and cheats, Big Brother’s dazzling duo Jordan Lloyd and Jeff Schroeder apparently haven’t had enough. The newly-minted couple will try their hand at scripted subterfuge with a pair of cameo roles on CBS’s daytime stalwart The Bold and the Beautiful. From BB to B&B. What is it about that abbreviation that these kids just can’t get enough of?

Needless to say, not even the antics of their former housemates Russell and Chima could prepare these two for their daytime debut. “Oh my God!” Jordan tells PEOPLE, “I was so scared! I’ve never acted or anything like that. I only had one line, but I was like, ‘Please get this right, don’t mess up!’”

As for Jeff, cooler heads were prevailing. That is, at least until the 30-year-old got a look at the wardrobe. “It was an ’80s flashback,” he tells PEOPLE with a groan. “So I was wearing a vest attached to my shirt, and black pants with glitter thrown in there. I looked like a pirate, and not a cool pirate, but like a five-dollar costume you buy just before Halloween at the grocery store.” (more…)

The episode of the sitcom Brothers in which Kim Kardashian and a little army of her own cardboard cut-outs appear airs tonight on FOX at 8 p.m. ET. Playing herself, Kardashian and gets to punch Michael Strahan in the face during a scene in which she confronts him about false rumors that she’s carrying the football star’s love child.

For the reality star, playing a scripted version of herself was an interesting process. “It’s something that you learn along the way,” she tells PEOPLE. “You do it angry, then you play along with it a little bit and do it flirty, you try and think, ‘Okay. What do they want? And how would you really do it in real life? And how would you do it if you were kind of joking?’ You just go through different scenarios in your mind. I like acting. You’re just playing a character of yourself.”

Does Kim see acting in the future for the rest of her family? “I think so,” she says. “I mean, maybe not Kourtney. She’s way more low-key and not really into it. And now that she’s having a baby she probably wouldn’t. I definitely see Khloe.” –Christina Yoon (more…)

Get ready for more tears! But the healthy ones as Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels gets her own show on NBC next year, the network announced Tuesday.

In addition to The Biggest Loser, Michaels will star on Losing It With Jillian, an eight-episode series slated for 2010. The famed take-no-prisoners trainer will travel the country, living with families for a week and thoroughly examining the choices they’ve made that have caused them to be unhealthy and unhappy.

“When your health is out of balance everything else suffers — finances, relationships, work and family dynamics,” Michaels says. “I’m moving in with families across the country, getting down and dirty and rooting out bad habits in every corner of their lives that are preventing them from health and happiness.”

Michaels will get some help along the way from celebrity chef Curtis Stone, who will offer tips on cooking with healthy ingredients and teach families about nutrition.

“I love the idea of Jillian crisscrossing America to actually move in with unhealthy families in desperate need of her tough love wake-up call,” says executive producer Ellen Rakieten. “It’s the knock on your door that could save your life.”

Excited about helping families, Michaels encourages PEOPLE to “go to NBC.com/casting and get my bed ready, America, ’cause I’m heading out and you never know, I might just end up on your doorstep, so watch out!” (Casting information will be up on their site very soon.) –Cynthia Wang

Tell us: Are you ready to lose it with Jillian?

Mitchell Haaseth/NBC

Get ready for more table flipping — and some political backstabbing! The Real Housewives of New Jersey will return for a second season, while a new group of women in D.C. will become Real Housewives, Bravo announced today.

The Housewives of New Jersey’s season 2 will air in 2010, but the network hasn’t announced which of the women from its first season — Danielle Staub , Dina Manzo, Jacqueline Laurita, Teresa Giudice and Caroline Manzo — will be back.

Meanwhile, the network also revealed that it has chosen Washington D.C. for its next Real Housewives location. That show, the network’s fifth franchise, will also air in 2010.

“A place for power and politics, Bravo scouted the D.C. area to identify the city’s alluring and discriminating residents, the women who have their pulse on the most important cultural events, political galas, gallery openings and fundraisers in Washington society,” Frances Berwick, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Bravo Media, said in a statement. “The season will bring viewers inside the lives and homes of movers and shakers in the community, all connected in different ways to the political arena. The D.C. wives, cast to be determined, will move comfortably from fundraisers to discussing everything from the economy to high fashion.”

The Real Housewives of D.C. follows the women of Orange County, New York City, Atlanta and New Jersey. –Jason Lynch

Tell us: Which is your favorite Housewives show?

Bravo

Three of Bravo’s familiar reality-star faces are getting their very own series. The Real Housewives of New York star Bethenny Frankel, Project Runway winner Christian Siriano and Top Chef’s Fabio Viviani will all star in new shows about their professional and personal lives, according to Variety.

Fans of Frankel will be able to follow her career as a natural foods chef in New York City (and, we suspect, the Hamptons) as well as her love life on a still-untitled show. Camera crews will shoot Siriano, who won season 4 of Runway when it still aired on Bravo, as he sets up a new shop and markets his fashion line. And Viviani will star in Fabio: A Catered Affair, which will document the Italian chef and his business partner Jacopo Falleni as they try to grow their restaurant and catering company.

J. Graylock/JPI; Theo Wargo/WireImage; Bryan Bedde