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Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott open a B&B on "Inn Love." (Oxygen Network) |
Is there no end to celebrity reality shows?
Did Tori Spelling give birth to a baby last week -- son Liam Aaron McDermott -- to promote her new reality series? Did I really just ask that question? Is watching too much celeb-reality TV making me too cynical? Is any self-promotional activity too far-fetched at this moment of "Breaking Bonaduce" and "My Fair Brady" and "Flavor of Love," when mental breakdowns and weddings are effective career moves?
Do I have the promotional scheme backward ? Did Spelling create the Oxygen series, "Tori & Dean: Inn Love," tonight at 10:30, to promote her newborn son, who will surely be the subject of People magazine's interest? Or is she just hoping to promote her new California bed-and-breakfast, Chateau La Rue , with the idea that it will become a chain? And then she might not even have a specific promotional goal in mind, as she rides a wave of attention since falling out with her mother, Candy, and only getting $800,000 from her father's will, right?
Isn't making your private life an integral part of your Synergistic
Do you think Spelling and McDermott seriously want to run a bed -and- breakfast, or do you think they thought it would make a good reality show? Didn't they see Rob and Amber's forgettable "Against the Odds," which just as hokily made Rob into a professional poker player? Why is "Tori & Dean: Inn Love" so unoriginal? Isn't it just tedious at this point to watch "real" couples such as Trista and Ryan gush over each other and then have lovers' spats? Couldn't Spelling have followed up her wickedly enjoyable "So NoTORIous" with something similarly self-ironic and culty?
She doesn't think the shopping jokes on "Inn Love" are campy, does she? Could there be a more tired celeb-reality bit than the look-how-much-I-love-to-shop famous person? Are we really meant to believe Tori didn't script the lines, "Shopping is hard work. You should see the way couture makes me break a sweat"? And shouldn't it be funnier that she's out buying clothes the day before having an "estate sale" of knickknacks and "Beverly Hills 90210" kitsch to make money to buy the inn?
Is "Tori & Dean: Inn Love" just another banal, self-massaging reality show with a punny title? Or is it the height of basic cable reality entertainment? I just don't know anymore!
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog. ![]()
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