Bravo Network

It’s kind of hard not to hate Jeff Lewis, the star of Flipping Out, when you see him in action on his hit Bravo reality show about rich people who buy expensive California homes, fix them up, and sell them for more money to even richer people. He’s smug. Obnoxious. Often rude to his staff. Neurotic in the sort of way that actually makes neurotic people cringe. Which is why we now sort of hate ourselves for thinking that maybe, just maybe, Mr. Lewis isn’t such a terrible guy after all.

On a recent Bravo special that recapped season two of Flipping Out, the 38-year-old real estate investor joked about the hideous portrait of his devoted housekeeper, Zoila Chavez, that he’d commissioned for her as a birthday present.  read more »

The suspense is over.

Bravo has finally unveiled the new cast lineup for Project Runway just two days before the premier of season five.

"I feel as though we set the bar higher every season," host Heidi Klum said in a statement released this morning. "We've got some truly talented, innovative and deeply creative designers this year, and I think it's fair to say, the most diverse—everyone from a rocker chick who mostly works with leather to a more bohemian, surfer boy and everything in between."

Guest judges this season will include Diane Von Furstenberg, Sandra Bernhard, Apolo Ohno, Brooke Shields, LL Cool J, RuPaul, Rachel Zoe, Cynthia Rowley and Francisco Costa.  read more »

MONDAY

The three Americans who were freed recently from a leftist guerilla organization in the jungles of Colombia traveled home to Florida for the first time in more than five years on Saturday after undergoing 10 days of treatment in an Army medical center in Houston. Their highly publicized rescue by the Colombian military on July 2 served as a reminder that the large South American nation still has lots of problems, like political strife, a slowing economy, poverty, crime and drugs. (Did you see that VBS.tv documentary on Colombian scopolamine? Scary!) But tonight, Anthony Bourdain focuses on the brighter side of Colombian culture in the latest installment of No Reservations.  read more »

Monday

Is the impulse that drives viewers to A&E’s reality series Intervention charity? Or what the newspapers used to call "human interest"? Or is it just Schadenfreude? Either way, the show, which chronicles those confrontations between self-destructive people and their families and friends brokered by "intervention" specialists, certainly doesn't play for laughs. What you’re seeing is usually pretty horrific, and the train wrecks it picks through can actually become pretty touching stories. Methamphetamine and OxyContin addictions are common fare here; and the success stories, which are not guaranteed, are definitely the more edifying programs. So maybe it is charity after all? Tonight we meet Chad who, like most of the show's subjects, had a pretty troubled childhood—he ended up in juvie for felony arson. At age 15, Chad’s father introduced him to cycling, and he went pro and even cycled on the same team as Lance Armstrong. When he got kicked off the team for “personality conflicts,” however, he turned to drugs. He's homeless and spends his days drinking, panhandling and smoking crack. Can an intervention save his life? The show airs at 9 p.m. Of course before reality programs there were nonfictional programs about science and nature and history. The History Channel takes a break from reconstructing Hitler's last hours in the bunker to trot out an hour-long program about the origins of life on earth at 9 p.m. At any rate switch to Bravo at 10 and watch Clueless if you haven't seen it a few too many times already, or fire up the fourth season premiere of Weeds at 10 p.m. on Showtime.  read more »

Monday, June 9

This week kicks off with a controversial documentary about the Oscar-winning filmmaker-cum-Humbert Humbert, Roman Polanski (9 p.m. on HBO). As you may recall, Mr. Polanksi, a Polish Holocaust survivor who was married to the eight-months-pregnant actress Sharon Tate when members of the Manson family murdered her in 1969, pleaded guilty to getting it on with a 13-year-old in 1977. A year later, he fled the U.S for Paris, likely evading years worth of prison time. But Marina Zenovich’s new film, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which the LA Times calls a “surprisingly haunting examination of the politics, personalities and legal complexities of the 1977 case,” argues that Mr. Polanski’s flight to France was more than just a means of avoiding the slammer:  read more »

Now that HBO has hired Tina Brown and Frank Rich for consulting gigs, Felix Gillette wonders, "So what’s next?" He also notes, "the truly free-range journalist-consultant—one with a broad editorial mandate to roam here and there gnawing lustfully on some projects while trampling others willy-nilly—remains a rare and exotic beast."

Speaking of television, Doree Shafrir meets Bravo's Flipping Out host Jeff Lewis, "a deeply neurotic man who treats his staff like a dysfunctional family and has managed to turn his obsessive-compulsive disorder to his advantage."

John Koblin looks at this past week's New York Times Magazine and writes, "Sex sells, of course—but this was not Maxim. And women writers in Manhattan could be forgiven for a slightly sickly feeling as they regarded the images. This again?" Plus: Slicing the SATC Pie.  read more »

LOS ANGELES—Jeff Lewis is a 38-year-old real estate investor who, last year, agreed to have his life filmed by Bravo for a television show about flipping houses. The first season of his show, Flipping Out, showed audiences six episodes of a deeply neurotic man who treats his staff like a dysfunctional family and has managed to turn his obsessive-compulsive disorder to his advantage. “I’m very fortunate, because I found a business that validates and celebrates my disorders,” he told the cameras.  read more »