TWO HUNDRED FORTY-EIGHT.

BRAVO's Work of Art premiered last night, much to my cautious delight. You know all BRAVO shows are like crack - great for rainy days, sick days, days where CSI isn't going to do it for you. But then, this is the network that gave us Project Runway and say what you will about fashion and the mainstream, but what BRAVO did for fashion is open the door into an entire market of people that otherwise wouldn't be so familiar with the likes of W, Vogue, the impact of YSL and Valentino. It gave an opportunity to designers to step into the limelight in an entirely different way, as well allow major designers to make themselves more personable and not mythological characters that we only know through glossy pages and the occasional, cool, indie documentary.

So what does Work of Art do? For starters, the New York Times kind of digs it. They have some art world giants like Simon de Pury, who serves as a mentor to the contestants, and Jerry Saltz, who is one of the judges. It helps that Sarah Jessica Parker is the producer, for sure. The cool thing too is that these are artists that represent all kinds of disciplines and mediums and all avenues of experiences. They were individually selected by self-portraits, which then turned into their first challenge, if you will, where they were each partnered up and asked to create a portrait of their partner. My favorite? Abdi's. I like Miles' too, but ... sort of have a crush on Miles' cute, cute face, so my glee outweighed what I liked about his piece. There are some characters, some really interesting people - Trong! Trong, in fact, is another big NYC name.

But we have to remember that this is a television show and that this kind of format still has to work because there's a villain, there's hero, we love the judges or hate the judges - personally I want to live in China Chow's closet, but she's no Heidi in terms of being a charismatic host. Regardless of how we may initially feel about the show and what it has to offer, there could be really great things that may stem from this. The question is, now, how will it translate in the long haul? It's too early to tell, but if there's a second season - I'm taking enlistments to get Michelle on this show. They haven't seen anything yet.

Let's keep watching.