Entertainment Weekly’s Fall TV Preview offers readers a complete guide to 85 of the season’s biggest shows – from Melrose Place to The Mentalist. And a look at Fringe, which is back with a mission to bring sci-fi to the masses.

Last year’s most heavily hyped new drama, the gory and witty Fringe was engineered by creators J.J. Abrams and screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci to be a high-impact hybrid of The X-Files and CSI – a serious yet accessible sci-fi series. Though the highly anticipated thriller started shakily, making geeks wonder if Abrams and his reliably mind-bending production company had finally let them down, Fringe ended its first year with a finale filled with insane, chat-room-exploding twists that won over a skeptical fan base. Now Fringe will try to maintain its momentum in TV’s most competitive time slot. “We’re not looking to take down CSI or Grey’s Anatomy,” says Kevin Reilly, Fox’s president of entertainment. “But if it can get in there and remain consistent, that’s important. We can make money, even at a more modest rating.” But if Fringe is to thrive, Abrams’ team will have to apply the lessons learned from its rocky first season. Says Abrams: “It’s going to sound weird, but a show starts talking to you and telling you what it wants to be. It took us a while to hear it.”

As the series approached midseason, some elements began to jell, and buzz began to grow. At the same time, Fox launched a viral marketing campaign and while Fringe’s ratings stayed much the same, feedback and Web chatter indicated that the show was beginning to inspire more viewer loyalty. Joshua Jackson says “This has been the total opposite of my Dawson’s Creek experience.” Unlike the teen soap that was an instant hit when it debuted in 1998, “Fringe has taken a while for the show to percolate in the pop culture. I would never complain about being on a show with the words ‘J.J. Abrams’ above the title, but the expectations were impossibly high.”

The show’s most crucial story line belongs to Jackson’s Peter Bishop. “Eventually, he’s going to learn where he really comes from, and everything is going to blow up,” says Jackson. He adds that his character will be getting a heroic makeover in season 2; it’s a project that the writers couldn’t address in season 1 because of the other kinks they were working out. “Season 1 never figured out the question, What’s Peter’s function as a member of this team?” says Jackson. Season 2 will tackle that immediately.

The premiere also hints at romantic potential between Peter and Olivia (Anna Torv), even though both Torv and Jackson hope it’s not the case. “I see Peter and Olivia more as a brother and sister with a truly bizarre father figure – three broken people, coming together as a dysfunctional family,” says Jackson. Adds Torv, “I hope they don’t put us together. That would be so conventional. What’s interesting about this show is that in many ways, Olivia has the masculine role, and the two guys are the women. She carries the gun, they sit around and talk. I think that’s pretty cool.”

In the midst of its creative surge, Fringe strives to be considered a hit. Not a niche hit, not a cult hit, just a hit. “There is an agreement here that we are seeking excellence,” says actor John Noble. “When things are ‘just okay,’ we don’t feel like we got away with something – we take it personally….If we can hold our own on Thursdays, it’ll say that we’re not some misplaced Friday-night science-fiction show – we’re mainstream entertainment.”

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As Brad Pitt copes with tension at home, he has been getting support from an unlikely ally — his ex-wife, Jennifer Aniston.

Friends say that in recent weeks, Brad and Jen, 40, have been talking frequently on the phone and texting each other, their conversations becoming longer and more personal as he confides in her about his current situation. In fact, In Touch can exclusively reveal that on April 23, after Brad visited Angelina, 33, on the NYC set of Salt, he drove across town to where Jen’s film The Baster was in production — and the pair quietly met face-to-face.

“He pulled up in his black SUV,” reveals a mutual friend of the former couple, although Jen’s rep denies the story. “He arrived on the opposite end of the set from where Jen’s trailer was, and Jen snuck into his car. They drove around New York City together, talking,” according to a friend of the former couple.

“Brad confessed his feelings to Jen,” the friend says. “He told her that he is trying to make his relationship with Angelina work, but it is failing.”

After about an hour, Brad dropped Jen off at The Greenwich Hotel and drove away. The meeting had been something they’d been organizing for weeks. “They had to plan it meticulously so no one would find out,” the friend says.

After so much time has gone by, Brad and Jen seem to have grown to value their friendship more. And he’s proving it by wearing a necklace she gave him for his 45th birthday on December 18. “It’s an antique pendant,” a confidante shares, adding that she left it for him at the offices of his production company, Plan B. “She found it, and knew Brad would love it.”

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Man, the US has a huge Jennifer Aniston obsession! She’s on the cover of like every magazine! (Check them out behind the cut!) (more…)

Awesome!

1. DANNY McBRIDE, The Breakthrough Actor, writer, producer.
He-e-e-e-e-re’s … Danny! In the last couple of years he’s burst through the door like no one since Jack Nicholson in The Shining. In Pineapple Express, he was sick funny as Red, a freakish low-life dealer who never starts a fight he can’t lose in an extremely painful manner. (In real life, McBride’s head was split open by a bong during filming.) And in a cast of brilliant comic actors, he still managed to steal a corner of Tropic Thunder for himself as the lunatic pyrotechnician. McBride has a special talent for taking your average everyday dumb-*** and making him into someone you hate to love. That’s what he’s been doing as the star of the new HBO comedy series East Bound and Down, in which he plays an ex-major-leaguer working as a gym teacher. The show’s co-executive producer is Will Ferrell, who appears on it from time to time. McBride will in turn be lending Ferrell comic support in the likely summertime comedy blockbuster Land of the Lost. Photographed by Mark Seliger in Los Angeles.

2. RUSSELL BRAND, The Comic Actor, writer, naughty boy.
The flamboyant, handsome, and very hairy Russell Brand may not attain the worldwide fame and influence of Charlie Chaplin, but he’s a huge talent with an adroit physicality and large ambitions. Americans got a taste of this British provocateur in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Brand’s character, the vain pop star Aldous Snow, made for an unusually multifaceted comedy villain: he’s shallow, obnoxious, and pompous, but also shows himself to be insecure, self-aware, good-hearted, and given to bouts of melancholy. Aldous will return as the hero of Get Him to the Greek, a rock ‘n’ roll comedy from the Judd Apatow factory scheduled for 2010. Before then, Brand will try to kindle a love affair with American audiences via his first Comedy Central special (his stand-up is influenced by Richard Pryor and Bill Hicks); a turn as the jester Trinculo in Julie Taymor’s film of The Tempest; and the U.S. release of his memoir, My Bookie Wook, a U.K. best-seller, which chronicles an odd upbringing, heroin and crack use, sex addiction, rehab, and his dismissal from British MTV after he arrived dressed as Osama bin Laden on September 12, 2001. Photographed by Mark Seliger in Los Angeles.

6 More after the jump! (Including Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill and Seth Rogan!) (more…)

The tough guys who protect the stars know all their scandalous secrets!

In the Dec. 8 issue of Star, bodyguards who kept tabs on celebs including Britney Spears, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Richie and Mary-Kate Olsen expose secrets about eating disorders, backseat strip shows, x-rated text messages and tantrums.

For instance, although Britney’s gearing up for a comeback, she’s still a seriously sick girl who lives in a fear-filled fantasy world and is now in the grip of a dangerous eating disorder, the people who were paid to protect her. A source close to one of her bodyguards tells Star that her Brit’s diet consists mostly of “Taco Bell and turkey jerky washed down with Red Bull.”

And she often doesn’t keep it down.

“She throws up after meals, both at home and at restaurants,” says the insider, “and she isn’t very discreet about it. People around her think she’s bulimic.”

The pop star who has a history of battling that eating disorder, is also “taking diet pills,” according to another insider close to Britney’s employees. “They’re like diuretics. She has to go to the bathroom constantly. It just runs right through her. And everyone knows she still throws up when she’s eaten too much. You can smell it in the bathroom.”

Gotta love it.

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Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps debuts his record-breaking eight gold medals on the new cover of Sports Illustrated (on stands Aug. 20).

The 23-year-old pays homage to Mark Spitz by draping the golds around his neck, just as Spitz did after he won seven golds in the 1972 Munich games.

The photo was taken on August 17 — the same day Phelps broke Spitz’s record for earning the most gold medals during one game.

It’s the fifth time Phelps — who has won 16 career medals, 14 of them gold — has appeared on the magazine’s cover (more than any other swimmer).

“He broke a record every time he went into the water,” Sports Illustrated Group Editor Terry McDonnell said in a statement. “He won eight gold medals, all on heart, ability and courage.”

SI isn’t the only place to spot Phelps.

His agent tells Access Hollywood that he’ll appear on Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes cereal boxes — not Wheaties — beginning in mid-September.

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Don’t you just love these covers of Star Magazine.  I just think they’re so terrible.  (And yet here I am, posting it). 

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