Jersey Shore Recap: FREE VINI!

OMG, you guys! Okay, first of all, I want to make it clear that I am completely philosophically opposed to the Jersey Shore cast being “celebrities.” I think it is ridiculous that they are household names simply due to the fact that they were chosen to be filmed while they make increasingly bad life choices. It makes me a little bit nauseous to think about the fact that Snooki makes enough money in one season to not only pay off my mortgage, but also put all four of my kids through college debt-free. It is terrifying to consider that there are people out there who actually try to emulate America’s Orangest Citizens, and that those people will soon be of an age to vote, if they aren’t all ready. I believe that the entire cast should quietly retire from public life and get real jobs, maybe after an extensive stay in rehab. That being said:

Have you seen the video of the Jersey Shore cast doing Twilight? I found it on YouTube the other day, and it is one of the five best things that happened to me this week (it was kind of a slow week.) My two favorite things to mock came together and made a beautiful, snarktastic sandwich. Seriously, check it out!

So very, very full of win.

Previously on the Jersey Shore: Vinny left due to severe anxiety issues; the roomies are worthless Shore Store employees; Mike and Pauly D had a birthday and the girls are planning a surprise party for them; Mike’s tired of being perceived as the bad guy even though he goes out of his way to screw with people and brags about being the bad guy.

Danny, in his ubiquitous Shore Store T-shirt, stops by the house to discuss some work/house issues with the cast. He reminds them that part of the deal with them living in the house is that there has to be eight roommates, and now with Vinny gone… wait a second, where’s Mike? They explain that Mike’s gone walkabout and they don’t know when/if he’ll be back. Danny pretends to be annoyed by the whole (lack of the) Situation (see what I did there?) and half-heartedly berates everyone for slacking off at work. He then threatens that he’s going to find a couple of new roommates to replace Vinny and Mike, and tells everyone that he expects to see a much bigger effort when they show up for work tomorrow. The housemates respond with the enthusiasm of the English army at Agincourt after hearing Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech.

We few, we happy few, we band of Guidos.

Sammi whines in a talking head about how unfair it is to punish the six remaining cast members for Vinny and Mike being gone. Snooki interviews that she doesn’t want anybody coming into her “family” and messing things up, and that if they do, she will kill them. Yeah, it would be a shame if some new blood came into the house and interfered with the nightly singing of “Kumbaya” around the campfire. Also, Mike just went for a walk, I’m sure they could find him fairly quickly if they would check every tanning salon within a five block radius.

JMomm is emptying the dishwasher when Mike comes back from his walk. She tells him about Danny’s visit, and then he goes out to the back patio where Snooki and Deena are smoking. Snooki asks where he was, and Mike babbles something about it being a really bad day and he doesn’t want to talk about it. In an interview, Mike says, “Usually every day on my birthday, I just kind of isolate myself to see if anybody will make that extra attempt to say ‘Happy birthday.’” He is such a whiny, self-centered bitch.

Dear Mike: Comparing you to a thirteen-year-old girl is an insult to every thirteen-year-old girls who ever lived. I’ve known post-op male-to-female transsexuals who still had bigger balls than you do. Get over yourself. Also, STFU.  Sincerely, SuburBint.

JMomm has no patience with Mike’s pity-party, and tells everybody to brush their teeth and go to bed.

The next day, Pauly, Snooki, and Deena open the Shore Store. Snooki interviews that she is really motivated to make sales because she doesn’t want a new roommate. In fact, all three of them have magically developed a powerful work ethic overnight. Danny even lets Deena work the cash register, which is amazing considering that Deena can’t count to twenty unless she’s barefoot, and even then she needs a Sharpie to mark the digits she’s already counted.

Continuity error! We see Snooki and Deena getting airbrushed “tattoos” supposedly after work, but they had the tattoos on their arms in some of the shots at the Shore Store, so they either got them done while on break, or they combined two different shifts and tried to make it look like it was all the same day. Why do you treat me like I’m stupid, MTV? I would never try to fool you like that!

Exhibit A. Look at their arms!!!

Back at the house (who knows when since this show is a lying liar who lies and I can’t trust anything it says anymore) Deena calls Vinny to invite him to the surprise party for Mike & Pauly D. Vinny isn’t coming. Deena tells him that Danny is threatening to saddle them with new roommates. Rather than packing his bags and taking the next cab out of Staten Island, Vinny chuckles about this. How long has he been gone at this point? I get that they miss him and everything, but give the boy some space to get his head together.

Deena and Snooki are practicing their “gangsta walk,” I have no idea why. It’s not like it becomes an important plot point later in the episode. They meet up with JMomm and Sammi down at Karma to check on preparations for the surprise party. The “gentleman who arranged the girls” is there to find out exactly what they’re looking for in their stripper experience. It gets very weirdly specific, and JMomm interviews, “Dude, it’s not like you’re directing porn!”

Maybe not yet, but it’s in my five-year plan.

The stripper purveyor’s phone rings, and he answers it, “Wizard of Ass.” I think maybe they did end up calling the pimp place instead of a strip club. Sammi interviews that this guy is super creepy, and we see Snooki asking him if he bangs the strippers. “I plead the fifth,” he replies, and I’m hoping that means that the strippers won’t let him near them with a ten-foot pole. Er, so to speak. JMomm is totally squicked out, and tries to redirect everyone into getting the rest of the party set up and then go home and clean their rooms.

Looks like Ronnie, Mike, and JMomm are working the afternoon shift at the Shore Store, but JMomm is the only one who shows up on time. Danny bitches to her a little bit about how this is exactly what he was talking about the night before, and did they talk about it at all after he left and agree that they needed to step it up, or did they just blow it off? JMomm just shrugs and sighs.

I know, Jenni, my kids never listen to me either.

Looks like Danny’s decided to stop being nice and start getting real, because he’s put up a “Help wanted” sign in the front of the store. A couple of girls approach the counter to tell Danny that they’re interested in the job, but JMomm is having none of it. She goes  to the front display and takes the sign down. “If I eliminate the help wanted sign, there will be no more interviews,” she explains, “and therefore there will be no more possibilities of getting new roommates.”

Danny sees that the sign has mysteriously vanished, and tells JMomm to make another one. “What’s a good name for Danny since he’s being a douche?” she asks Mike. “Hmm… ‘Help wanted, see the old dude?’” he lame-gests. JMomm replies, winning my undying affection, “They might think it’s you.” BWAHAHAHAHA!!!! Seriously, though, why does Mike look like he’s in his forties?

JMomm and Ronnie moan for a while about getting new roommates, and it’s interesting to me that they’re so worked up about this and makes me wonder what’s going on behind the scenes. Ronnie interviews that if they do get new people, the original roomies are going to make their lives hell. Wouldn’t they be getting, at most, one new person, since they only need to replace Vinny? When Angelina left, they only replaced her with Deena (right?), so why do they think that the house is going to suddenly be inundated with a plethora of newbies? Either the producers told them to really play this storyline up, or they’re being fed a load of B.S. about what’s planned for the show. Or both. Reality TV lies, y’all. Don’t trust it, it will only let you down in the end.

The Meatballs go to a party store to buy more supplies for the surprise party. Wouldn’t they be doing this before they went to Karma to set up for the party? There I go again, expecting this show to make sense. The girls try on enormous bunny heads, and the level of kink in the house is about to increase by a factor of 50.

If I had to look at this, then so do you.

“What do we look like?” one of them asks. Rhodes Scholars, as per usual. Snooki interviews that she feels that they need to bring the bunny suits home to add a little craziness. “When you need a freaking bunny suit to add life to this house, that’s when you know you have problems.” When that’s what it takes to know you have problems, then your problems have already spiraled out of control. I am sincerely concerned about what is going to happen to these people when the show ends.

It’s the night of the party! Some super-tall dude in a plaid shirt comes to the house carrying some bags, so I’m guessing that he’s JMomm’s boyfriend. Can anybody confirm this? Mike tells Sammi that he really wants to bring somebody home from the club, and wants to be sure that their shared bedroom is clean. I keep forgetting that Mike shares a room with Sammi and Ronnie. I think Sammi’s getting a little bit tired of being witness to Mike’s sexual encounters.

I get to listen to Mike having sex again, yippee!

Mike and Pauly precede the rest of the housemates into Karma, and are greeted with “SURPRISE!” and vast quantities of silly string. I’m a little bit worried about the silly string in Pauly’s hair, because the resulting chemical reaction could be catastrophic.

Quick, somebody call a HAZMAT team!

“It’s pretty hard to surprise me,” Mike interviews, “because I’m pretty paranoid.” I don’t understand how you can possibly be paranoid when you spend so much time with your head up your own ass, but whatever you say, Michael.

Not that it would have kept me from acting like an entitled little brat if I had known….

Pauly’s birthday cake is naked breasts, and Mike’s is a thong-wearing, tattooed arse. I never get invited to parties where vaguely pornographic cake is served. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Snooki is very happy about how well the party is going, and she and Mike hug and exchange “I love you”s. It is truly dizzying how quickly these two vacillate between being worst enemies and best friends. They should get married.

The girls bring out the wheelchairs, and Deena shakes her butt in Pauly D’s face. “I’m too old, I can’t get it up!” he yells. I’m thinking the problem has more to do with whose butt it is. How does Deena manage to be so profoundly unsexy all the time? Pauly and Mike are handcuffed to the chairs, and they’re both concerned that guys are going to pop out of the paper cakes that are rolled out in front of them.

I am so afraid that I am about to see wiener right now.

The birthday boys are greatly relieved when two female strippers pop out of the cake, and… holy cannoli, Batman!

Flipit? Is that you?!

“I got cake, I got strippers, I got friends – this is the best day of my life,” Pauly interviews.  Oh, Pauly. With your personality’s default setting being “Pathologically Cheerful,” we could replace cake, strippers, and friends with any three nouns and it would still be the best day of your life.

I just realized that we haven’t seen Jionni all episode.

Mike interviews that he’s thinking about bringing the blonde stripper home. Doesn’t that violate the stripper code, to go home with your client? I’m not really sure on the legalities here, but I would imagine that if you make a habit of that sort of thing, you eventually get called up before the governing board of the Stripper’s Guild and have to explain yourself. Then again, I don’t know a whole lot about strippers.

Pauly’s found a “cute brunette” who’s DTF, and Mike is bringing the blonde stripper home. Post-birthday sex for everyone! Blonde Stripper wants some socks, and gets a smidge high-maintenance on Mike when he doesn’t have a pair of matching socks to give her. He finally finds a matching pair, but they have a hole in them. After Sockgate 2011, Mike is no longer interested in smushing, and just wants to go to sleep.

Deena and Ronnie call Vinny, and it goes to voicemail. Good for Vinny. I have no idea how long he’s been gone at this point, but given the way they like to play fast and loose with the editing on this show it could be anywhere from 48 hours to a month. Regardless of how long it’s been, way to establish some boundaries, Vin! Ronnie and Deena are super bummed at not getting through to Vinny. “I don’t think he’ll be back,” Deena mopes.

Mike stumbles downstairs in the morning and he does not look good. That’s how it was when I turned thirty too, Mike. I started choosing sleep over sex, and if I stay up later than midnight, no matter how late I sleep in the next day, it’s not enough. In the confessional room, he says that he doesn’t remember the stripper’s name. “Could’ve been Anita?” he says, “Cos it was I-need-a-cigarette, I-need-some-french toast. You know what? I need you to get the hell out of here.”

Curb-sit of shame.

Deena calls Ronnie’s friend Joey because she needs a date for a couple’s night out. It’s going to be Ronnie and Sammi, Snooki and Jionni, JMomm and Roger, Mike and Paula, and Deena and Joey. I wonder how much MTV is paying him to be a part of this?

Snooki and Deena dig the bunny costume out of the closet. Snooki interviews that it looks like a serial killer, “like a Jason or a Halloween.” Michael Myers is what you’re looking for there, kiddo. Fun fact: Michael Myers’ mask is actually a Captain Kirk mask that the props department for Halloween spray-painted white. And that is why you never want to go up against me in a game of Trivial Pursuit. They trick JMomm into coming upstairs, and when Snooki pops out of the bathroom in the bunny suit, JMomm screams. I’m thinking it was more from being jumped out at than from the bunny suit itself, but the Meatballs are happy that their prank succeeded. “I want to get Ron while he’s shitting or sleeping,” Snooki says, so JMomm can’t tell anybody else about the costume.

There’s nothing we can’t face!…except for bunnies

Couple’s Night! Jionni arrives with a bouquet of long-stemmed red roses for Snooki, and she hustles him up to the smush room. Sammi is annoyed that Snooki always wants to smush Jionni and then go to sleep instead of going out with the rest of the roommates. I would be relieved to not have to deal with her drunken shenanigans, personally.

Deena is wearing fairy wings out, and asks Joey if that will embarrass him. He just doesn’t want her to hit him in the face with them, which she then does on purpose. She has all of the seductive charm of a dead rhinoceros. Pauly doesn’t have a date since Vinny isn’t there, and Paula offers to be his wingman. He joins the rest of the group, and they go to party at Bamboo.

Within seconds of getting to the club, if Pauly’s account is to be believed, Sammi gets into a fight and gets bounced. Apparently some girl yanked on the back of Sammi’s hair, and chaos quickly ensued.

I don’t think that’s the proper collective noun.

“I was always taught to like, self-defend myself,” Sammi tells us. Which is far less confusing than self-defending other people. Lesson learned: don’t mess with Sammi’s new weave cos she will take you down.

Now that everybody’s back at the house, Mike is odorizing himself and his bedroom in order to make both more appealing to Paula.

Can somebody please explain this to me?

Deena is still wearing her wings, and she asks Joey if he wants to see her fly. “Go ahead, knock yourself out,” he replies, and I’m fairly certain that he means that literally. She belly-flops onto the big red beanbag/ottoman thingy and sadly for Joey and the rest of us, remains fully conscious.

In Deena’s room, she asks Joey, “Do you really like me?” Deena! Deena, Deena, Deena. Why are you so bad at this? Any heterosexual male in the world will answer yes to that question if he thinks that it might lead to sex anytime in the next three years, much less when he is already lying on your bed waiting for you to take your clothes off! She makes me so sad, you guys. As if her entire persona wasn’t already doing everything possible to perpetually cock-block her, the alarm clock beside her bed goes off as she and Joey are preparing to do sex. And then it goes off again. And again. Even after she unplugs it, it goes off, and she finally shuts it in a drawer. The universe is trying to tell you something, Deena. Please listen, for all our sakes.

Mike calls Paula’s cab the next morning and interviews that the night before was awesome. “There’s a 100% chance that Paula’s going to get a second date.” What is this, Love Connection? You’ve been boning her for years, Mike, we know she’s your go-to for nocturnal companionship. “I haven’t found one thing wrong with her yet,” he adds. Except for the fact that she keeps sleeping with you, neither have I. Snooki interviews that she thinks Mike and Paula are perfect for each other because they’re both lunatics. That explains why she keeps coming back for more, then.

Pauly is wandering aimlessly around the kitchen. He opens the refrigerator and stares into it longingly for a few minutes, but it doesn’t have what he’s looking for. “Let’s go get Vinny,” he tells the others, “I can’t take it anymore.” He runs around the house, waking JMomm up and shouting through closed doors, “We’re going to get Vinny!” He’s so excited to be going to see his boyfriend. I hope he brings Vinny a nice bouquet of long-stem roses like Jionni did for Snooki. That’s sure to get him some touch.

What does every good kidnapping need? Commemorative T-shirts, of course! They stop at the Shore Store, and Danny is fully supportive of their scheme. Once properly attired, the housemates load into the SUVs and take off for Staten Island.

Estimated travel time: 1 hour 10 minutes

Pauly and Ronnie cross themselves as they get close to Vinny’s house, probably after praying to St. Jude that Vinny will come with them instead of slamming the door in their faces. They all leap out of the SUVs and start knocking on the front door and yelling for Vinny to come out. It would be awesome if they were at the wrong house. Someone finally answers the door and the roommates run in. “We barge into Vinny’s house like we were a SWAT team,” Sammi interviews. She would be absolutely correct in this comparison if actual SWAT teams were unorganized and ineffectual groups of dangerously tanned, overgrown adolescents with a base blood alcohol level of 0.15%.

Vinny’s mom watches the gang run up the stairs to Vinny’s room, and you know she’s thinking, “Why in God’s name did we let these people know where we live?” Vinny does seem happy to see everyone, and Mike interviews that his face was like a kid on Christmas. I am distracted from the reunion by noticing that Deena is still wearing those stupid wings.

During his time away from the house, Vinny got a new tattoo under his collarbones that says “Let go – let God.” Ronnie interviews that he has no idea what Vinny’s tattoo means, but that it looks cool, demonstrating once again that although he was in the front of the queue when muscle mass was distributed, he was hiding behind the door when they handed out brain cells.

Pauly D. and I agree that it looks pretty hawt.

Everybody goes downstairs to say hello to Vinny’s mom before they leave, and she’s crying. “Those are happy tears, right?” one of the girls asks. Considering that her son came home a hollow shell of a man due to the stress and insanity that living with you hoodlums creates on a daily basis, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that no, they aren’t happy tears. Mama Vinny is not happy at all.

“Am I a hundred percent?” Vinny interviews. “I don’t think so.” But he’s willing to risk it and go back to the shore with his friends. “I’ma try to get laid tonight,” he says as they drive away from his mom’s house, earning a fist-bump from Pauly. On the drive back to Seaside Heights, the roommates flash various body parts at one another through the windows, which we are spared from seeing, even in pixellated form. So that’s something to be thankful for.

Well, ‘Gasmii, what do we think? Did Vinny come back too soon? Someone commented under another episode that they heard Vinny give an interview in which he said that he was only gone for three days. Based on editing and what Deena said in the show, it looked like he was gone for more like a week, but I trust neither editing nor Deena. It will be interesting to see how this whole thing plays out, and I truly hope that Vinny doesn’t suffer any setbacks from deciding to return so soon.

Next week: Snooki has either a UTI or is pregnant (I so hope it’s a UTI!) The bunny suit makes its reappearance. And Mike has been playing super nice, but is it genuine or does he have some new malevolence planned?

As always, thanks for reading! I love your comments, so keep ‘em coming! You guys know way more about this show than I do, and I appreciate your insight.

<3, SuburBint

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