The garage-sale scene is actually fascinating, beginning with an eyeboggling journey into the beast that is Spelling's storage space. Seriously, it's a warehouse as big as a department store. "Thus Spake Zarathustra" plays in the background as the camera pans across boxes piled three stories high and packed with designer clothes, furniture, memorabilia and straight-up crap. It's a staggering display of excess, and it's staggering how Tori Spelling doesn't seem to grasp the ridiculousness of this. She's like a bubble girl, born into luxury and vast wealth, and now forced to mete out a proper existence. But for all her spoiled-little-rich-girlisms, Tori Spelling also has an appealing down-to-earth quality. She waddles around town, ballooning with pregnancy, as she and Dean tack up garage-sale flyers. She stays at her house while strangers tear through her belongings. She chats with fans, happily signs a microwave oven. She lets people rifle through her bedroom drawers. (Did I mention she lacked boundaries?)
In the second episode, Tori has a panic attack after a night of rough sex with hubby. "I'm worried it was too shaky for the baby, and now he had a heart attack and died." This was the kind of quotable absurdity that made Newlyweds (which this show resembles) and The Simple Life (which this show also resembles) popular. And at times, Inn Love does play up the dumb-blonde factor too much. Thing is, I believe Tori Spelling when she says she thinks her baby had a heart attack. I believe that her understanding of biology is so foggy and spotted with half-truths and internet lies that death-by-doggy-style seems entirely plausible. She really is that neurotic and confused. "I'm a bundle of nerves with boobs, basically," she says, and I suspect a lot of first-time mothers can relate to that.
More annoying (and less relatable) is the couple's search to find a bed & breakfast which they can then transform from doilies and antiques into something "all kitschy and cute." This takes them on a tour of rustic, provincial towns where Spelling has no problem bagging on the friendly neighbors and acting the Los Angeles diva. "Is there a McDonald's?" she asks. "No? Oh, I might die." Fortunately, this segment ends fast when they find a "real fixer-upper" in Oak Creek Manor, a replica of Monticello, and thus usher in what I imagine to be the Extreme Makeover portion of the series, and lots of fights about fabric and who's going to wash the dishes.
I'm doing a terrible job of selling this television show, aren't I? Well, the problem is that I'm not sure I want to. It's a reality show rehash that basically answers a bunch of questions no one had. Spelling understandably doesn't tackle the real drama and tragedy of her life — i.e., her father's death, her disinheritance, her ugly public estrangement from her mother — and so we have a softshoe rom-com about domestic life and baby woes. Part of that nasty subtext does make the marriage a bit sweeter: do these people have anyone else but each other?
