Once again it appears that Anna Nicole Smith is having the last laugh.

The merry widow, 34, whose E! Entertainment Television reality series, "The Anna Nicole Show," was scorned by critics, has been picked up for a second season, Mark Sonnenberg, E!'s Executive Vice President of Entertainment, announced Thursday. He called the program "a huge success" and added, "What's in store next for Anna Nicole remains to be seen."

Production on the second season is due to begin next month, his statement said, and the show will debut sometime in early 2003. The announcement also revealed that Smith -- a former Playboy playmate who inherited $88 million when her 90-year-old husband, oilman J. Howard Marshall II, died in 1995 -- will finally get a date before the first season ends, with an episode to be aired Nov. 3.

As PEOPLE critic Tom Gliatto wrote of Smith when her show premiered last August: "Prattling on in a slurred, widdle-girl voice, she tries squeezing into bustiers (she refers to her breasts as 'my puppies'), makes infuriatingly inane observations (on Palestinian suicide bombers: 'Don't they think it was kinda painful?') and whimpers tearfully as she places her husband's urn on the TV."

Gliatto went on to say: "You may wonder whether Smith, who seems pathetically unaware that she comes across numb and dazed, like an enormous baby dumped from its bassinet onto a hot sidewalk, is being exploited by E! -- or is she exploiting herself? Like I care."

Obviously, though, somebody does.