'Grosse Pointe' shoots blanks

The WB's new comedy "Grosse Pointe" (8:30 p.m. Friday) tries hard, really hard, to spoof teen dramas like "90210." It should be easy for Darren Star, the show's creator/executive producer, since he was co-producer on "90210" and "Melrose Place" before doing "Sex and the City." But just like John Wayne Bobbit, "Grosse Pointe" seems too short and unable to rise to the occasion.\n"The Simpsons" proved that you can fit a lot of material into a half-hour comedy. But Darren Star tries to say too much in the allotted time and ends up saying nothing at all, like George Lucas with "Star Wars: Episode I."\nThe show revolves around the characters of a fictional teen show, aptly titled "Grosse Pointe," named after the exclusive Detroit suburb. As in "Sex and the City," the characters in "Grosse Pointe" are exaggerations of types of people. Also just like "Sex and the City," I could care less if each character on this show contracted super-gonorrhea number three and died of bleeding ulcers.\nThere's Quentin (Kohl Sudduth), one of the male superstars on the show who wears a toupee to hide his chrome dome (a la Luke Perry). You've also got Hunter (Irene Molloy), the egomaniacal female lead who tries to manipulate her fiercely codependent fellow cast member Marcy (Lindsay Sloane). She convinces Marcy that the show's producers don't find her sexy enough and new cast member Courtney (Bonnie Somerville) will soon replace her.\nThere are some subplots too, but they just reinforce the show's comic premise: Stars of teen dramas are really shallow, insecure or overly secure primadonnas who bang extras and other cast members when they're not stabbing each other in the back.\nThis has to shock you to be funny. And if any of this comes as a surprise to you, then you have been living in a coma on the planet Tralfamadore with duct tape over your eyes and rubber glue in your ears since the Reagan administration.\nMy problem: I don't care about what goes on behind the scenes of a TV show anymore. We are constantly spoon-fed gossip about which cast members on "Three's Company" got along as well as Bugs and Daffy, or who knocked up Dana Plato from "Diff'rent Strokes," or how far Barry Williams (Greg Brady) got with his TV mom Florence Henderson.\nI'm sick of it.\nThis May, "The Simpsons" brilliantly lampooned America's craving for inside dirt in an episode entitled "Behind The Laughter." But while "The Simpsons" exposed the cliches of tabloid shows like "E! True Hollywood Story," Darren Star's "Grosse Pointe" embraces them.\nIn the premiere, there's even a subplot in which the Mike-Brady-ish TV dad has a crush on the actor who plays his TV son, Johnny (Al Santos).\nMaybe I am the problem. I can't stand the stars of "90210" -- and by default the characters on "Grosse Pointe" who lampoon them -- because I don't like beautiful people. I see them all the time at the SRSC, wearing their halter tops and spandex package-huggers, doing their mating dance on the treadmill, leg press and stair master so they can pair off, return to a frat or sorority house and make more beautiful people with the help of Jim Beam.\nTo all the beautiful people in the world, I quote the immortal William Jefferson Clinton when he told one intern "Blow me"