Let's get all the bad things about Inn Love out of the way, because they are legion. First, the name: it's wretched. Second, the concept: it's wretched. "They're reinventing the B&B!" the show's cloying commercial tells us. "Watch them go from 'the in crowd' to innkeepers." Ugh. Wretched!
On a likability scale, Tori Spelling has always ranked somewhere between Luke Perry and minor surgery, but her husband Dean McDermott is just a straight-up bottom-feeder. He's probably a nice guy; he would probably be a hoot knocking back shooters with Dane Cook. But every time I recognize him on television or the tabloids, it makes me seethe with self-loathing for how much I don't know about international news. Who is the president of Spain? No idea. Who is Tori Spelling's husband? Dean McDermott. Watching a show about the two of them "bringing back the B&B for our generation" is on my to-do list, somewhere around "drill hole in head to let in sunlight." Oh, and did I mention it's on the Oxygen network? This has never boded well for any show, ever.
But Inn Love isn't terrible, and I'll tell you why: Tori Spelling. Infamous for her lack of talent as an actress,
Spelling has found her true calling as the subject of tabloid gossip and reality shows. She is genuinely likable, if a bit dotty, spoiled and lacking boundaries. Whether this appeals to you — or makes you want to break a flat-screen television over your head — is another question entirely, but Spelling is part of a generation who may actually be more comfortable on-camera than off-. Along with lifers such as Danny Bonaduce, Spelling has withstood the microscopic glare so long that it may rankle her not to have a boom mic dangling in her face. Back in 1991, when Truth or Dare came out and Warren Beatty said of Madonna, "She doesn't want to live off-camera, much less talk," it seemed novel and strange and harrowing. Now, it just seems like another Hollywood existence — all these children of the spotlight, parlaying their lives into reality-television fodder. (Tori Spelling's brother Randy is also currently the subject of his own show, the nearly unwatchable Sons of Hollywood. At this rate, Aaron Spelling's offspring may one day reign over a trash empire comparable to their father's. Oh, who am I kidding? No, they won't.)
But unlike other Tinseltown tartlets — the Paris Hiltons and Nicole Richies and Lindsay Lohans, swinging around their sex tapes and rehab stints — there is something girlishly charming about Tori Spelling. She actually seems nice. I sometimes wonder if it has to do with the way she was so painfully ridiculed for her appearance as a teenager. Like Sofia Coppola and Chelsea Clinton, she was an awkward girl with very little of the prom queen about her. And yet, there she was, sandwiched between Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth on television's hottest show. Maybe this doesn't make her more interesting; maybe it just makes me feel more sorry for her.
But whatever. Spelling also has an appealing eagerness to spoof herself, hinted at with a fag-hag role in the 1999 sleeper Trick and writ large with last year's reality spoof on VH1, So NoTORIous. That underrated show
(written by Mike Chessler and Chris Alberghini) was viciously funny, with barbed jokes about Tori's boob job, lack of acting ability and shallow, trophy-wife mother. It was almost uncomfortably self-parodic, like a dorky kid who will let you make fun of him as long as you let him stay at the party. Inn Love extends this theme: Humiliation is not a problem for Tori Spelling, as long as she can buy the new Fendi. The first episode of Inn Love finds her selling her treasure trove in a giant garage sale to make money after receiving a surprisingly small inheritance (of $800,000). As she prepares for the sale, she sighs, "Love me or hate me, please let people shop!"
