Runway vs. Housewives

Lifetime; Getty Images Project Runway finally returns with a new network and a new competitor in its old slot—Bravo’s Real Housewives of Atlanta.  Choire Sicha handicaps the Thursday Night Smackdown.

Out in Hawaii today, reality-TV fembot Heidi Klum, enormously pregnant with her fourth child, is bobbing ethereally about the beaches in a white shift-dress, on an extended vacation with Seal and the kids. Meanwhile, down in Atlanta,  NeNe Leakes, the newly minted tabloid darling and former stripper, is busy stomping around and snatching wigs (and whatever else she does for fun and profit).

But at 10 p.m. tonight, when Klum’s Project Runway returns to television after a harrowing 309-day hiatus—spurred by a wild legal fight and network switch—those two ladies will go claw-to-claw in this summer’s Great Thursday Night Reality Show Smackdown.

Within the first minutes, a maladjusted designer is weeping over a personal matter. What is this, The Real World?

Behind the scenes, two tough female cable-network heads are counting on their star proxies to deliver every eyeball they can. The network morning shows have been loaded; the sides of every city bus bought; the fan blogs are all seeded with clips, and it's now essentially all over but the gloating and recriminations—and some parties.

In L.A., Andrea Wong, the president and CEO of Lifetime, Runway’s new cable home after the bloody exit from Bravo last year, has invited her staff to gather and watch the East Coast feed live tonight in the office. After that, Jonathan Murray, co-creator of MTV’s Real World, now an executive producer of Runway, will throw a swank party at a Beverly Hills hotel.

Runway host Tim Gunn, however, is in hot, stinky New York City. His co-star Klum has long since finished doing press—"We're going to go on holiday for a few weeks!" she told me on July 15, and split for the beach. ("She was able to do a bunch of late-night shows in July before she went into her final stages of pregnancy," said Wong.)

Poor Tim Gunn! He has been too busy this summer even to leave New York for a visit with his  dying mother. His recent duties included doing Good Morning America with Nina Garcia yesterday—and a cameo on Lifetime's Drop Dead Diva, a show about a model living in the body of a fat woman (just like his co-star!).