What we have here is so meta it may already be de trop; ad nauseam and beat vigorously. In VH1’s first scripted comedy, Tori Spelling, the poster child for affirmative action in Hollywood, stars as herself, or at least somebody not altogether unlike the Tori Spelling we’ve read about in gossip mags, trying to live an autonomous life despite an executive-producer father, “Aaron” (whom we hear but don’t see) who would buy her a studio if she asked, and a penny-pinching mother, played by Loni Anderson, who sells Tori’s childhood keepsakes on eBay. Such autonomy involves friends who tell her too much truth about herself; flashbacks in which a very young Tori is called “Toto”; an acting job in “a girl-ghetto cable movie” as a crime-solving sex addict; and jokes about Farrah Fawcett, Charlie Sheen, breasts, barf, and hypoglycemia. I think we are supposed to feel that not even Hollywood could be this shallow.

VH1, Sundays, starting April 2, 10 P.M.

Related:

• Archive: “Television”
• Articles by John Leonard
• Table of Contents: Apr 3, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!