`Gotti' should sleep with the fishes

I don't think "Saturday Night Live" will do a parody of "Growing Up Gotti." And I don't think Maya Rudolph will don her blonde Donatella Versace wig to lampoon the dapper don's daughter, Victoria. Because A&E's new reality show is already a joke, and Victoria Gotti is already a parody of herself, a shallow, smug woman who's as hard and sharp as her daggerlike fingernails.

You think I exaggerate? See for yourself when the show premieres tonight at 9. Watching Anna Nicole Smith whine and loll her way through her E! reality show is a breeze compared to watching Victoria, who seems to view herself as some kind of American princess. And Anna Nicole doesn't have three obnoxious sons, John, Frank, and Carmine, who do little but shoot rude looks and throw keg parties in odd wings of the Gotti estate. Of all the vanity reality shows that have been on TV, including Roseanne's quickly canceled attempt last summer, this one is the most grating.

There are two big ideas at play, and Victoria explains them to us in her frequent voiceovers. One is that she's tired of being perceived as a member of the Mafia, as "the Godmother," since her father was crime boss John Gotti. The other is that she's ready to move on after her failed marriage -- to date men and to buy a new house despite her sons' resistance to both. "This house has a lot of battle scars," she says.

In the premiere, she hires a real estate agent, with whom she compares breasts ("I've had these since I'm 13," she says), and she goes on a blind date courtesy of a celebrity matchmaker. The sale of the house is unresolved by the end of the half-hour, but the date comes to a screeching halt when she gives the man, who has committed the unforgivable sin of being bald, a nasty dressing-down. By the time she walks out on him, you'll probably want to get away from her. She's making you an offer you definitely can refuse.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.