It's enough to make Sugar Pie dial back on the Prozac.
Yes, we're guessing TV's most famous pill-popping poodle is in a naturally good mood after some especially good news for master Anna Nicole Smith.
The zaftig former Playmate--and Sugar Pie, too--will be back for a second season of Smith's hit reality sitcom, E! Entertainment Television announced Thursday. (E! Online is a division of E! Networks.)
There are two more original episodes yet to air from the first year of The Anna Nicole Show, with the penultimate installment premiering this Sunday at 10 and the season finale scheduled for November 3.
Production on the second season will begin next month. The 13 resulting new episodes are to be unveiled sometime in early 2003.
"The Anna Nicole Show has been a huge success for E!," says Mark Sonnenberg, E!'s executive vice president of entertainment. "Viewers are captivated by Anna Nicole's surreal world. They are rooting for her to turn her life around, get back into shape and revitalize her love life."
Smith's camera-preserved misadventures debuted on E! August 4. The premiere episode notched a 4.1 household rating--the highest rating ever for the cable network and the highest debut for a cable reality series.
The inaugural season of The Anna Nicole Show saw Anna Nicole and her far-flung family--16-year-old son Daniel, lawyer Howard K. Stern, assistant Kim Walther, decorator Bobby Trendy and, of course, Sugar Pie--go house hunting, go road-tripping to Vegas and go blotto during an eating contest.
No word on the "storylines" for the second season. But the network promises the first-season finale will show our widowed heroine on an actual date with an as yet unidentified "lucky guy."
Those who fear not being able to hold up in the months between the end of the first season and the start of the second season, take heart--the Anna Nicole bobbleheads are here.
Yes, in perhaps the surest sign of pop-culture immortality, Smith has been immortalized in bobblehead form. The 8-inch, limited-edition plastic figure, introduced this week via shop.eonline.com, depicts Smith in a Marilyn Monroe-esque pose. So as to not exclude Sugar Pie from this big moment, the doggie is shown loyally sitting at Smith's feet.
Prozac, not included.