Jersey Shore: Sex, Lies and Self-Hate

Oh, Jersey Shore. You’ve gone and jumped the pepperoni. I was trying to reserve judgment on this season, but so far not so good. Faithful JWoww and Snooki = not entertaining, Situation banging the same girl on consecutive episodes = boring, Sam speaking in sentences instead of grunts when she’s thrown off of balconies = an improvment for her but a loss for the rest of America. I’m still going to hang in there though because I secretly wish I’d auditioned for this show and just added an “-ino” to my name so I’d seem Italian.

This week we pick up where Brittany’s panties left off last week. Brittany AKA Florida Whore, and Mike have finished doing dirty things to each other in exchange for fluids and he calls her a cab while she looks for her shirt. Remember 20 years ago when we would have spent our Thursday nights laughing at the the Huxtables shenanigans? Or reveled in the sad sack-ness of Judd Hirsch on “Dear John”? Yeah, this is what we do now. I swear I cringe every time he calls a cab for some girl. It’s beyond humiliating but it’s what they signed up for…right? One bright spot, perhaps the brightest thus far, is when Mike decides to take a nap and those pigeons from a few episodes ago scare him off the couch. I BELLY laughed at that one.

Going…

Going…

Idiot.

Snooki asks Ronnie to go to the gym and he agrees because Sam’s not going to be intimidated into love by a man with Vinny’s arms. Ronnie is so impressed that he and Snooki are both “dedicated” to working out, drinking and partying. I didn’t know that one could be dedicated to the two latter activities – addicted yes, dedicated, not so much. He’s amazed that they have this much in common but minus the working out, I’m pretty sure that drinking and partying are the sole reasons that they’re millionaires and not restocking the Shoprite can-can sale.

The two of them have a hard time finding the gym which shocked the hell out of me, so they end up eating first. I actually want to kill Snooki right now because she is telling Ronnie that he and Sam should just have sex. What??!! I thought everyone was on a mission to keep these two apart as long as humanly possible! I suspect that the producers made Snooki say this to give them some material for this season and figured that Ron is so dumb that he wouldn’t even realize that he’s being manipulated for ratings.

Sam and Deena are out to eat and Deena starts flirting with the waiter, Ellis. She so desperately wants a guy that she’s now reduced her qualifications to “straight teeth.” She gets his phone number by asking “Do you have phone number?” Why do Americans leave out words when they speak to someone who isn’t fluent in English? They’re not idiots! They leave out essential words like “a,” “the,” and “buttaface”. As they walk away, number in hand, Deena says that he speaks “…well English.” I take it back. She’s the idiot.

Snooki and Ronnie finally make it to the gym after Snooki drinks a glass of wine which she states is the equivalent of some people drinking coffee in the morning. The first step is admitting you have a problem but I like her theory. The perv guy who runs the place is “training” Snooki while Ronnie just laughs because he likes when girls are treated like objects.

It’s like an outtake from Couples Retreat.

After all of the working out and harassment is done, the group gets ready to the club. Mike tells Sam that Brittany is bringing her twin sister that night to get in on the action. Everyone is having fun, even Ronnie, but then Sam shows up drunk and starts the relationship conversation again! Deena meets up with her waiter friend, Ellis, and they Jersey Turnpike the night away.

So this is what Pee Wee Herman would look like if he changed his clothes and humped Miss Yvonne. Tequila!!

The group is happy but I feel bad for Deena because it’s like everyone knows that she is attractively challenged and they just want someone, ANYone to give her the time of day. She makes out with the Ellis while Mike cuddles up to the twins and promises to take them home on the secret condition that he doesn’t meet anyone else at the club. It’s time to go home, and it looks like everyone has a girl or two to take home with them. Deena is in the car with Ellis and explains that even though he’s a foreigner that she’s taking home although they met less than 12 hours ago, she’s not easy.

Ellis: So you’re just simple?
Deena: Yes, you said that gooder than me.

Mike’s backup plan to take other chicks home didn’t work so he calls Brittany after convincing Snooki to get off of the phone with her father. Snooki pretends to be annoyed that he’s calling another girl and she feigns jealousy. Note to MTV: I believed the Pauly D/Deena romance more than this crap. Meanwhile, Deena and Ellis start making out in her room. Vinny and Pauly D start teasing Deena about her getting it in in the room. They actually find the teasing so funny, that the guys double over with laughter and begin humping each other. It was mostly Vinny though. He’s becoming real suspect these days.

Vinny: Oh look, I’m Deena and I’m hugging Ellis.
Pauly D: Ha ha. This was funny Vinny. Let’s leave them alone now.

Vinny: Look at me. I’m Deena. I like to feel Ellis’ rippling chest while he writhes uncomfortably beneath me.
Pauly D: Umm, ha ha. That’s a little less funny Vinny.

By the way, what happened to the girls they walked out with?

I was looking forward to Vinny having some hot chocolate. And don’t tell me she just went heavy on the bronzer.

Vinny, mostly, keeps yelling about Deena hogging the room and the fact that he has to sleep on a bench while waiting for her. In his defense, she probably should have used the smush room since no one else was using it. Then again, if Vinny hadn’t resorted to his toddleresque complaints, we wouldn’t have gotten this.

Yep. She’s definitely the one who left her period panties in the bathroom last season.

Deena flips out and rightfully so; Vinny could have handled the situation better but it came with a real payoff. My bet is he’s the one who wanted a night on Ellis’ Island. You know…in honor of his ancestors and all that. After that uncomfortable exchange, you’d think that one of two things would happen: 1) apologize to your guest and ask him to leave or B) Go into the smush room, have the memory of the argument banged out of your head and then take a night stroll to Notre Dame down the street. Instead, Deena chooses 3) make your date really uncomfortable by keeping him in the same room and making him spend the night against his will and better judgment. After Ellis says that he’s going home…

Deena tries to rip the head off her prey a la JWoww’s opening credit quote and Ellis bites her.

Deena starts doing that super fast vampire thing and Ellis realizes that she is made of the same stuff as those Twilight vampires and surrenders.

“How did I manage to hook up with zee crazy meataballa?”

The next morning a girl calls looking for Mike. Ronnie and Pauly take turns answering and hanging up on her. Pauly is happy that someone else has a stalker and this time “she’s twins.” I just wanna pinch his cheeks. And then his face. Finally, Ronnie answers the phone and imitates Mike. It turns out that it’s the twins and the girls totally fall for it. Ronnie/Mike tells them to come to the house in about an hour and he and Pauly D take off to leave Mike with a – situation. An hour later, the twins get to the house and head to Mike’s room. Who let them in? Are there no locks in Italy? Snooki wonders aloud why the girls are there during the daytime. Thats funny, sad and true all at the same time. When they walk in, Mike can’t even speak for a full 30 seconds. He just laughs nervously and finishes applying his foundation. Oy, this is getting weirder each day. Mike sits them in the living room while Pauly and Ronnie show up and start telling the roommates what they did. Ronnie goes into Mike’s room and laughs hysterically essentially telling on himself. Mike is too stupid to figure this out, is wondering aloud at what the hell happened and starts speaking like English is his second language. Mike makes the best out of the situation and takes the girls out to breakfast. Pauly, once again, takes the prize as the hero of this series when he asks if he pulls one’s hair will the other twin feel it.

“Now that you mention it, she felt a sense of shame at about 3AM on Tuesday too.”

Ron and Sam go out for dinner and try to heal they’re dysfunctional, broken, embarrassing, abusive relationship. Sam says that she isn’t that girl from Jersey and now she knows what she wants.

“I wanna give Sam a big hug like that Flowers for Algernon guy.”

“I want to be with you so bad. I’ll take off these glasses right now. I, like, want you to ruin more of my property.”

“I do miss crushing your self esteem, much like this straw.”

“It’s yours for the crushing.”

And they’re back together. My theory: besides being co-dependent, Sam realizes that Ron’s probably the hottest guy she can get. Remember Arvin? Ronnie and Sam celebrate their love by sharing a kiss in front of the Vatican whilst the Pope took pictures. Oh, and after the kiss, Ronnie told Sam that she needed a breath mint. Love at first insult.

Sam and Ronnie get back to the house and Snooki is thrilled that they are back together because when they aren’t fighting, things are boring. Oh Snooki, you took my review of the season and wrapped it up in a sentence. As much as I hate them together, the season has been boring without trashy American backgrounds and their fights. Vinny and Pauly hilariously celebrate the return of Rammie with a song about conservative Ronnie and Sam who are suddenly both dressed in black. Pauly is regretting that he swore to kill himself if they got back together. Regretting but not totally ruling it out yet. The group goes to the club that night and they’re all having a great time until the twins come in and take over the Jersey Shore circle. Then they’re having a totally awesome time!

“Woo hoo! It’s incest y’all!”

That whole sexy twin thing always freaks me out. I get that it’s hot for the guy, but who wants to see their sibling naked and/or be involved in sexual situations with them? Anyway, one of the twins is supposedly a virgin and Snooki takes that one to the side to convince her to have a threesome with Mike. We’re supposed to believe that she has feelings for him but she’s trying to orchestrate a threesome? What. EVER MTV!! Deena must have decided to cut her Ellis losses and starts dancing with Erica the virgin and then makes out with her.

Deena’s gonna get a lot of use out of that tongue tonight.

They get back to the house and Deena’s really adapted to her new role as the house lesbian.

“Back up off my bitch, Snooki. She won the Miss Fruit Roll-Up pageant. Check the sash.”

Snooki, whose mission is to get as many people to hook up as possible, tells Erica that she would hook up with her if she was feeling lesbianic. That’s all that Erica needs to hear to get her into bed with Deena. Meanwhile, Mike practically begs Brittany to get into his bed and wait for him. Wow, Deena‘s robbery really messed up his head. Ronnie tells JWoww and Sam that Mike claimed to have had sex with Snooki a couple of months ago because Mike ratted him out in Jersey and Miami. JWoww is shocked and annoyed that they interrupted her chin tuck.

“Pretty soon, my face’ll be tighter than Erica.”

While all of this is going on, Deena gets a snack and comes back to find Erica in bed with Vinny. Deena gets Erica out of Vinny’s bed, Erica falls out of bed and gets back into Deena’s although Deena suddenly gets a case of the “morals” and tells Erica to put pants on first. I watched this scene a couple of times and it looked like there was some non virginal, penetrable stuff going on with Vinny.

Weird is not the word I was going for but okay.

Mike takes Snooki aside to have his mandatory weekly “I care about you Snooki” conversation. Mid-script, JWoww comes in and snatches her away for an emergency. JWoww tells her that Mike told everyone about what they did. Snooki keeps saying that they didn’t do anything but JWoww just keeps repeating that he told everyone everything. Her TV BFF isn’t even willing to go along with Snooki’s denials so maybe it is true. By true I mean in the script.

JWoww: Mike told everyone what you did last summer!
Snooki: But we didn’t do anything!
JWoww: He told everyone.
Snooki: Told them what? We didn’t do anything!!
JWoww: Oh yeah, then why did he give all the details. Like how that old, dead fisherman showed up with a hook!
Snooki: Dude, that’s my gyno.
JWoww: Turn page.
Snooki: Huh?
JWoww: Turn page.
Snooki: You don’t actually say that part Jenni. You’re supposed to turn to the next page.
JWoww: Oh. got it. You know what you did. You and your boyfriend started a sick little rumor about me!

Snooki: Jenni. You read the wrong one. That was The Hills!! So what should I say to Mike?!
JWow: You’ll find the answer in the basement of the Alamo; which incidentally is around the corner. Can you push me back up? These boobs are really weighing me down lately.

I noticed that JWoww seems to hold Snooki in mild contempt or maybe it’s just everyone. She’s barely been a part of this season and that especially includes her interaction with Snooki. It could just be the infamous “editing” and I did catch them holding hands an episode or two ago but here are my theories: A) JWoww feels like a goddess now that she’s done things to her body and doesn’t need to deal with the common hamster B) she doesn’t like the fact that Snooki cheated on Jionni and Roger probably doesn’t want JWoww around her or 3) she’s scared to get into any more fights what with her new physical investments. I say it’s all four.

Snooki flips out and starts yelling at Mike. We’ve seen her when she gets caught in a lie and she always does the same things. She yips like a little Chihuahua but never really addresses the accusation. Let’s just say we get an encore performance. Snooki confronts Mike about saying that they hooked up “recently” which indicates that something did happen. Mike retorts that he said they hooked up two months ago. Snooki’s response “you’re psycho!” In short, Mike is telling the possibly scripted truth. She throws the fact that no one in the house is really friends with him in his face. Ugh, all of these shows go the same way eventually and I’m afraid that Jersey Shore may have reached its peak with last season’s Jersey drama. No one can stand Sam and Ronnie together, Mike is unbearable all on his own, Deena is already over the manufactured Pauly story, and JWoww doesn’t talk anymore. While all of this is going on, Deena passes Erica back to Vinny. Gross.

Snooki tells Jenni and Ronnie what really happened that night. Her whorish friend Ryder hooked up with Mike’s friend. Mike wanted to hook up with Snooki but she refused, he was pissed off and went out on the balcony. Ronnie keeps telling her that if she did it to just tell Jionni now and woman up. Even he doesn’t believe her – and he’s Ronnie! Mike is upset at Ronnie for squealing but the two of them were never friends anyway so why would he trust him? One thing about Mike, he never lies but he always instigates. Uh oh. Did you hear that? That was the sound of my mother weeping as she realized that I analyzed an episode of Jersey Shore. I’ve got to stop this. Tension is brewing between Mike and the entire house but he ends up just getting into bed with Brittany and calling it a night.

Next week is the big Mike and Ronnie fight and they better not keep that until the last 30 seconds of the episode either! I really hope that the next season at the shore feels a little more authentic. It’s starting to seem a little bit like the Real Housewives series; by the third go round everyone hates each other and they’re just showing up for the check. Please don’t turn into that Jersey Shore! I’ve already watched all of my Roseanne, Golden Girls and Cosby Show DVDs like 17 times. Each! So what do you guys think? Are my theories accurate? Do you have some of your own? Did Ellis only get with Deena because she bore a striking resemblance to Chairy? I need to know!