Jersey Shore Recap Catch Up: Not Mike’s Party and He’ll Cry If He Wants To

Previously on Jersey Shore: Snooki did something naughty with Mike and is afraid that Jionni will find out about it; Vinny’s anxiety became too much for him to deal with, and he left the house, breaking Pauly D’s tender little heart in the process. I may or may not have found myself actually caring about these people. Shut up.

Pauly D stands at the railing on the rooftop patio as Vinny’s cab drives away. “At this point, my man leaves me,” Pauly says, “I gotta go tell the rest of the household that Vinny may not be coming back.” He drags himself down to Karma to break the news to his partying housemates. He finds Sammi and JWoww and the information goes over about as well as one might expect.

“That’s the last fucking thing that I thought that was gonna happen,” JWoww interviews.  She finds Snooki and Jionni in a corner and tells them, “Vinny is gone.” I guess Jionni didn’t hear her, because he asks Snooki “What’s wrong?” She explains, and he says, “Tell me right now, do you love him?” At first I thought this was a really weird and possessive way for him to react about his girlfriend being sad about one of her roommates moving out, but then I remembered that Snooki and Vinny made with the squelchy, so that makes it a slightly more reasonable thing to ask. Snooki answers that she loves Vinny as a roommate and that he’s a really good friend.

JWoww now goes to tell Deena. “Is he coming back?” Deena asks. “Did he take everything?” Yep. Deena starts crying, and JWoww says, “Not now.” “I love him!” blubbers Deena. “Deena’s very dramatic with the waterworks,” JWoww interviews, “so, hearing Vinny stubbed his toe, she might have cried.” We follow the girls into the bathroom, where Deena weeps, “He was, like, my soul.” So Deena’s soul wears wife-beaters and has a stupid haircut. That explains a lot. JWoww, clinging to her last shreds of patience with her impeccably manicured nails, tells Deena that they need to stop being selfish and put Vinny’s needs above their own feelings.

God grant me the serenity to not kick Deena’s weepy ass.

“I’m drunk Deena’s mom right now,” JWoww tells us, “and it is what it is. I’m used to it.” JWoww reminds me of Gemma Teller. I think it’s the way she tolerates no bullshit and always looks like she’s ready to slap a bitch, should the need arise. And she definitely does have that mom-of-the-house vibe going on.

JMomm helps Deena readjust her clothing and tells her that they just have an hour left in the club, so they should go enjoy it for Vinny. Meanwhile, Deena is drunk-babbling about how Vinny was her rock and she loves him. JMomm finally talks her into leaving the bathroom, and then this happens:

Yes. Yes you do.

 Mike’s scoping out girls, and finally approaches one and offers to buy her a drink. “I’m like a shopper at a store,” he interviews. “I see someone I like,” pointing, “right there, come with me.”

Much like the elderly gentleman in this picture selecting his prostitute.

The girl asks Mike what he’s doing tomorrow, and he replies, “Having breakfast with you.” Rather than kneeing him in the gonads, she laughs and says, “Well all right.” Mike promises her French toast for breakfast. I weep for my gender.

Pauly says something about wanting to use a grenade hammer on the girl that Mike is bringing home, and while I know what all of those words mean separately, this sentence makes no sense. Instead, however, Pauly feels duty-bound to pick up a cute girl “to get it in for my man Vinny.” So basically Pauly is going to bring a girl home and have sex with her while thinking about Vinny the entire time. That’s sweet. And disturbing. We know nothing about the girl Pauly nabs, except as she gets in the car, JMomm drawls, “Oh, aren’t you pretty.” She is so delightfully bitchy.

Drunk Deena checks Vinny’s room and sees that all of his things are really gone. She interviews that she thought maybe he would leave some stuff behind and come back after a while, but seeing everything gone makes her realize that he really is gone. Which is why they told you he is gone, Deena. “Vinny is gone,” was the exact quote. Deena and JMomm go to the rooftop patio and Deena emotes some more about the gaping hole that Vinny’s absence has created in her life. Showing an amazing amount of restraint, JMomm does not throw her over the railing. Also, I have yet to see anything positive happen on that patio. It is the anti-Disneyland: The Saddest Place on Earth.

It is really hard to tell Mike’s and Pauly’s smushees apart because they’re both wearing turquoise-ish colored tops and have long dark hair, but I think it is Pauly’s date that Mike is quizzing about dirty phrases in Italian. Pre-smushtage. I feel like a whole lot of nothing is happening in the show so far.

We see Vinny arriving at his mother’s house. His mom and sister are waiting at the door as the cab pulls up, and once Vinny and his 10,000 pieces of luggage are inside the house, his mom hugs him like he just returned from the front lines in Iraq.

More like the front lines of Herpetonia and Hepatitis C-istan

She does the mom thing of adjusting his clothing and jewelry as she gives him the once-over to make sure that he was returned to her in the same condition as he was in when he left. Once she’s established that there is no visible scarring, she tells him to go to sleep. She seems like a really good mom.

Back on the Rooftop Patio of Sorrow, JMomm and Deena are still discussing Vinny’s departure. “I just miss the kid,” Deena sobs, “I don’t want him to be gone.” And seriously, I understand that the mindset of knowing that he’s really moved out affects her perspective, but time-wise he’s probably been away from the house longer than this to GTL. If Deena doesn’t stop crying soon, she’s going to need IV fluids.

In the morning, Snooki kisses Jionni goodbye at the door and says, “Love you. I won’t cheat on you.” Which is how I always say goodbye to my husband. “Have a good day at work, honey. I won’t cheat on you.” “I’m going to the grocery store. I won’t cheat on you.” “Taking the dog to the vet. I won’t cheat on you.”

After Jionni leaves, Snooki and Deena are super excited because they are going to have a “Meatball Day.” In my house, that means that ground beef was on a really good sale, so I bought a ton of it and am making a whole lot of meatballs to freeze. Strangely, that is not what Snooki and Deena have in mind. Also, National Meatball Day is March 9, so mark your calendars.

“Let’s celebrate for Vin today!” says Snooki emphatically, and I suspect that a lot of debauchery is going to take place at the house over the next few days “in honor” of Vinny. “We’re probably gonna make out,” Snooki adds, and Deena shrugs her agreement. They take a cab to the boardwalk, and as they clomp down the sidewalk, both girls complain that their butts are hanging out of their clothes. In my experience, this is what happens when you wear skirts so short that the world is your gynecologist.

Snooki interviews that they haven’t had a Meatball Day since being back in Seaside, “so let’s just get waste-y pants!” In other words, a Meatball Day is a day that ends in “Y”?

Snooki & Deena are doing shots, grinding on each other, and doing body shots off each other. “Jionni’s going to kill me,” Snooki yells. I thought straight guys liked seeing girl-on-girl stuff, but Snooki and Deena together is deeply unsexy.

While this may appear to be your typical groping scenario, the guy at the bar is actually pulling Deena’s skirt down.

“We met this awesome gay guy,” Deena interviews, and we see her gushing to said gay guy, “I love gay men. LOVE THEM!” Which is really kind of a bigoted attitude, because it comes from a place of presuming that all gay men are stereotypically campy and fun to be around. “I can hang out with gay men all freaking day,” she interviews. Yes, but how do the gay men feel about it? “You can get freakin’ hammered and you don’t have to worry about giving them, like, a blow job at the end of the night.” Fair enough.

We see a pixellated shot of Snooki’s ass as she falls over on the dance floor, and Deena tells us that Snooki is drunker than she herself is. “Can you walk at all?” Deena asks Snooki, and Snooki says that she can. Turns out she can’t so much walk, but she can be semi-dragged by two of the gays from the bar. They maneuver her past a police patrol and get her into a cab. Snooki sobers up enough to regain her basic motor functions, so she and Deena decide to go to Aztec. They get into a dance-off with some skinny wanna-be gangster types, and I’m pretty sure Snooki and Deena win, because they make it rain.

I hear the drums echoing tonight

They arrive back at the house, and Deena’s skirt has ridden up so high that Mike asks her what corner she was working. Upstairs, she discovers that her extensions have decided to turn into dreadlocks. Deena is freaking out that she’s going to have to cut her hair, and Snooki tries to comfort her, but in an interview Snooki says, “You might as well go fucking Britney Spears and shave your head, because she’s screwed.” Pauly gets involved in trying to rescue Deena from her rebellious hair. Since his idea of hair care is to dip his head in a can of shellac and then hang upside down until it dries, I’m not so sure that he’s the first person I would turn to if I were in Deena’s shoes. JMomm comes in to help and recommends deep conditioning.

“My identity is just tearing off of me at this point,” Deena interviews. “It’s like fingerprints. How the frick are you going to tell a Guidette apart without their extensions?” Retinal scans, since facial recognition is clearly not on the table.

The housemates are going out to Karma again. How Deena and Snooki are still conscious at this point is beyond my comprehension. Mike’s bestie, “The Unit” (or as I like to call him, One Inch) is at the club, and Mike’s inner drama queen is super excited thinking about all the ways the two of them can ruin Snooki’s night. Mike tells One Inch, “I say we take this fucking club over. Fuck all these people around here. And let’s grab some real estate.” Well, it is a buyer’s market right now.

Snooki interviews that seeing One Inch at the club has put her on high alert. “I thought Mike was bad with drama, but [One Inch] is, like, ten times more worse.” Since avoiding the Drama Duo worked so well the last time they were all in the same place, Snooki plans to keep Jionni occupied on the dance floor all night. And again, I say: everything you do is being filmed! It’s only a matter of time until Jionni finds out about what happened, so ‘fess up all ready, Nicole!

Pauly meets a “tattooed chick” at Karma, and he tells us that she has “Vinny’s name all over her.” At first I thought he meant literally, because of the tattoos, but then I realized that he meant she was the kind of girl Vinny would be attracted to. This girl is DTF and they leave the club way ahead of everybody else. “I’m gonna smash this tattooed chick in my man Vinny’s bed in honor of my man Vinny leaving the house.” Pauly would have done well in one of those ancient sex cults where they would have sex as an offering to the gods.

Mike is looking for Snooki so that he and One Inch can play “a little game that I like to call Gym, Tan, The Truth Will Set You Free.”

I am so screwed

Someone points Snooki’s location out to him, and the Drama Duo start working their way across the club. Before they reach their destination, however, a fight breaks out, and One Inch ends up getting thrown out of Karma. Snooki takes advantage of the chaos to duck out of the club so that she can keep the truth from coming out for another day smush with Jionni.

Mike, Ronnie, and JMomm open the Shore Store the next day. Mike is not really motivated to work today. He tells some customers that if they need help with anything, to just ask JMomm, who is sprawled across the counter napping. Ronnie interviews that he always has to work with Mike and Jenni, and that neither of them have anything remotely resembling a strong work ethic. I assume that the Shore Store has “real” employees who handle the complicated things like making change and customer relations, because if the Jersey Shore cast had any real responsibilities there, the place would have burned to the ground long ago.

Mike spots a cute girl trying on a pair of white booty shorts over her purple bikini, and suddenly becomes the most motivated little worker bee in all of Seaside Heights. He asks what she wants printed on them, and she chooses “I (heart) The Situation.” Oh, goody, so she’s a fan. There is no way that this is going to end well. She gives Mike her phone number, and tells him that she wants a grilled cheese sandwich in the morning, “with no crust.”

Awww, shucks, ma’am, I’ll even call you a cab!

After work, the housemates gather around the duck phone to call Vinny. He says he’s doing better and he’s sorry he didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. Pauly wastes no time in telling Vinny about his tattooed conquest. “I made her call me Vinny and everything,” he says, which probably isn’t true. Probably.

The roommates head out to party at Aztec. Mike spies the booty short girl and they do a shot together. She toasts to “Grilled cheese with no crust,” which is her subtle way of telling him that she wants to spend the night with him. He toasts to “Snuggle naked,” which is his not so subtle way of telling her that his penis does 98% of his thinking. Mike interrupts his flirting with Booty Shorts because he sees Paula, who he identifies as his “main squeeze.” Booty Shorts isn’t feeling slighted at all.

I’m not gonna be ignored, Dan!

Since Mike would rather be with Paula, he interviews that he’s going to pass Booty Shorts on to Pauly as a birthday present. And then when Pauly’s done with her, he can trade her for some goats.

Deena sees a guy who looks familiar; he is the twin brother of a guy she made out with last year. “Typical Deena scenario,” she tells us. She tells JMomm that she’s going to be bringing this guy, Joey, home with her. They’ll probably do sex, after they’ve cleaned out the gutters and mowed the lawn.

Booty Shorts is flirting with Pauly, who says that she is being so persistant that she must want to do something. “It’s my thirty-first birthday, I need to get laid, and…” Wait. What?! Did he say that it is his thirty-first birthday? THIRTY-FIRST?! As in three decades and one year? He always struck me as the youngest of the guys, if he’s turning thirty-one then Mike is turning what, eighty?

Pauly is  willing to take Booty Shorts home, since she’s going out of her way to get on his radar. Also because birthday sex is one of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution for ever American who has reached the age of consent in his or her home state.

And that’s why I’m proud to be an American.

On the Rooftop Patio of Anguish and Misery, Deena is making extremely awkward conversation with Joey, including such bon mots as “Even though I look like I’m a nutcase, I’m actually a good girl.” Downstairs, Pauly tells Booty Shorts, “You can come to bed, or I can call you a cab. It’s up to you.” After a few seconds of tense silence, Booty Shorts asks, “Can we just talk in the room?” Yeah, no. Pauly goes to call the cab.

“It should be against the law to come to my house at four in the morning, on my birthday, and not give me birthday sex,” Pauly interviews. He should write to his congressman. In the kitchen, Sammi and Deena are gossiping about how Booty Shorts seemed like she was DTF but turned out not to be DTF after all.  Pauly walks Booty Shorts to the door and shakes her hand! That is harsh, considering that Pauly even kisses the plumber goodbye after he fixes a clog in the sink. “She seems like a nice girl, though,” Deena whispers, and Ronnie answers, “That’s why she doesn’t belong here.” Paula has been sitting at the kitchen counter, this whole time, and starts cracking up when Ronnie says this. He quickly adds, “No offense, Paula.”

“I think Mike like Paula,” Sammi tells us. “I really like Paula,” she continues. “She may be dirty and grimy and disgusting, but she’s just a nice girl.”

Which one is the dirty hippy?

Someone is tap-tap-tapping at the door, and when Pauly goes to open it, there is Booty Shorts. “I don’t want to go home yet,” she says. She wants to hang out with Mike, and Pauly directs her outside. Sammi is frankly a little bit grossed out that his girl would rather be with Mike than Pauly. “That’s absurd! That’s just crazy shit,” she interviews, and amen to that.

Booty Shorts joins Mike outside, and he and Ronnie have a silent conversation through facial expressions and shrugs. Mike: “What the fuck? Is she a stalker? Please, please help me!” Ronnie: “You’re on your own for this one, brother. But I do plan on watching. And laughing.” Booty Shorts quizzes Mike on the status of his relationship with Paula, and he plays it very diplomatically, even telling Booty Shorts that he might have made the wrong decision that night, while still making it clear that he doesn’t plan on changing his mind. In an interview, he compares Paula to AAA: you call her, she’s there. “There definitely is room for Paula in this crazy heart of mine. The Sitch could get wifed up, who knows?” And if she catches him alone in a dark alley, Booty Shorts will see to it that he gets knifed up as well.

It’s Pauly’s actual birthday now, and he wishes that Vinny was there to celebrate with him. There’s a knock on the door, and when Pauly answers it, there is his mom and a bunch of other family members. They troop up to the Rooftop Patio of Suffering, and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before this joyous celebration turns south. Pauly’s mom goes to get one of his birthday presents – it’s Pauly’s barber from back home! Pauly gets his hair cut right then and there, while his mom reminisces about when he first started wearing his hair like that. “I’m like, ‘What are you doing to your head?’” she laughs. “‘Why do you put glue in your head?’” Because gel only holds for a few hours, but epoxy is forever.

We get a brief glimpse of Pauly with his hair unstyled, and it’s easy to picture what he’s going to look like when he grows up.

Freshly shorn and feeling awesome, Pauly invites Mike and Ronnie to go out with the family for his birthday dinner. Mike is feeling sorry for himself. “This is the first year that we’re celebrating myself and Pauly’s birthday all together, so it would have been nice for my family to come for a birthday dinner.” And this raises a nature/nurture question: Did Mike’s family not come because he is a pain in the ass and they don’t want to be around him, or did Mike’s family not come because they are all self-centered egomaniacs like he is?

The girls are planning a surprise party for Pauly & Mike, and Deena says that they need at least two strippers to pull this party off. I’ve always wondered – how do you know how many strippers are needed for any particular event? Is there a strict guests/stripper ratio, or is there a more complicated algorithm that takes into account such factors as the size of the venue, types and quantities of alcohol to be served, and average age of the party-goers? While on break from the Shore Store, Deena tells Snooki and Sammi, “We should call the pimp place or whatever….”

Not the sharpest crayon in the box.

Snooki clarifies that if they call a pimp, they’re likely to end up with prostitutes instead of strippers, which would be “weird.” Deena thinks they should try to get some nice transsexuals. I know this is a crazy thing to say about anybody in the Jersey Shore cast, but Deena strikes me as being somewhat naive, or maybe just uncomfortable, about sex. Something about the way she’s always adjusting her boobs in public, and the way she was talking with Joey on the roof, not to mention “doing” sex, it seems very childish.

At the restaurant with Pauly and his family, everybody is enjoying insanely huge plates of food, except for Mike. He is sitting a corner, pouting. He is feeling sorry for himself because it’s his birthday too, but Pauly’s the one who is having all the fun. “I’m like a house with no legs right now,” Mike interviews. What the hell does that even mean? Maybe if you weren’t an enormous douche-canoe with a penchant for incomprehensible similes, you would have friends, Michael. He excuses himself from the table, finds some leather couches in the restaurant, and takes a nap.

Ronnie recognizes the dulcet tones of Mike’s snoring, and hushes the rest of the group so they can all listen to it. Because they are all fun-loving, free-spirited individuals, the plan is hatched to play a practical joke on Mike. Ronnie gets a bag of frosting and puts some on one of Mike’s hands, then tries to put some in his mouth, but wakes Mike up instead. Everyone is highly amused. Except for Mike. “Who’s great idea was it to put cake in my face,” he whines as they leave the restaurant. “Pauly’s birthday cake, it may taste good, but it doesn’t look good,” Mike interviews. Yeah, because you were so irresistibly sexy while you were lying there drooling and snoring on the sofa. It’s a wonder you weren’t jumped by half of the wait-staff.

So very sexy.

Snooki and Deena baked a birthday cake for Pauly, and Sammi is decorating it. When the boys return home, Mike sees the cake and his poor little feelings get hurt all over again. “I must be the devil in this house,” he interviews. Considering that he’s spent the past three episodes not only being a manipulative bitch and looking for ways to torture Snooki psychologically, but also boasting about it, I don’t understand why he is surprised about this. “There’s a good guy and a bad guy in a movie,” Mike says, “and in this house Pauly’s the good guy and I guess I’m the bad guy a lot of the time.” Only because you choose to be. As Snooki says, “That’s what you get for being a fucking douchebag.”

In the morning, Mike asks Pauly if he had a good birthday, and being Pauly, of course he did. Pauly probably has good root canals. JMomm wants the car keys so she and Snooki can go somewhere, and Mike hands them over with a bit of an attitude. After the girls leave, Mike goes outside and throws a mini temper-tantrum. “Ever since Italy, Mike’s been, like, crazy weird,” interviews Pauly. Mike goes up to have a good cry on the Rooftop Pain-io. “There’s always going to be drama with the roommates,” he voice-overs, “but I’m tired of being the bad dude.” Then stop being the bad dude! Honestly.

The girls get home, and while the rest of the roommates are hanging out and having fun, Mike takes off. He’s on foot, so I wouldn’t imagine that he’s going to go terribly far. If he doesn’t turn up within 48 hours, they should probably check Booty Shorts’ basement. None of the housemates are all that concerned or interested that Mike has “dipped out.” Living with him has got to be exhausting.

Stay tuned next week to find out how many strippers Deena hires for the surprise party! Thanks for reading!

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