Yo, kid. Nathan is out tonight, leaving me to guide you through the landmines, grenades, and confusing acronyms awaiting us in tonight’s episode of Jersey Shore. GTL, GFZ, MVP, IFF… what are these people so busy with that they can’t take the time to utter complete phrases? It’s not like the sentences they do manage to eke out are much more complex. But the Jersey Shore kids manage to say so much with so little, whether they’re aware of it or not. They’re a veritable Greek chorus, albeit a generally oblivious one. Let’s review the various theses thrown down in tonight’s episode:
“Your fun conflicts with our fun.” Thus spoke Pauly D unto Angelina, though it could just as easily apply to Ronnie and Sammi. The episode kicks off with the fallout from the fourth-most-scandalous slap in this show’s short history, with Angelina descending into the murky depths of her own delusion, insisting, “I have nothing to do with this!” despite having absolutely everything to do with it. She spends some time in the same doghouse that Snooki kicked off last season in, but unlike Snooki, who charmed her way back into everyone’s good graces on her own, Angelina pouts until Sitch and Snookie take pity on her. “You’re not in the family yet,” Snooki says, but admitting you talked shit about J420 and Joey Yanks is a good place to start. Say what you will about these people, but they do seem to value telling it to you straight. Unless it’s about the boys… you can talk about them behind their backs all you want.
With Angelina tentatively back in the girls’ good graces, Mike, Vinnie, and Pauly are left to haggle over whether they should go trolling for puss at Klutch or b.e.d…. but not before they ditch the ever-oblivious Angelina with the most basic “Look over there, RUN!” maneuver ever. But can you blame Angelina for wanting to tag along? Even if she’s on slightly steadier footing with JWoww and Snooki, she’s not getting invited to pool night anytime soon. When your “fun” consists of getting blackout drunk, doing and saying horrible things, and denying them minutes later, it’s going to conflict with a lot of other people’s fun. Luckily for Angelina, Ronnie and Sammi’s conflicting definitions of “fun” moved to the forefront in the episode’s second half, making her only the second runner-up for tonight’s Most Terrible Person award.
“Ronnie when he’s drunk is a different person lately.” Yeah, that’s because he’s on coke. Now I don’t wanna be telling tales out of school, but you can’t tell me that boy’s not rockin’ some sugar boogers out at the club. It makes sense that Ronnie would turn to cocaine in the wake of his Jersey Shore “success,” what with the pressure to be “on” and “wild and crazy” all the time, especially for a guy who seems fairly soft-spoken in his normal state. But it seems Ronnie’s ’roid rage of season one has given way to coke-fueled agitation, and the roommates are noticing. “I don’t know how drunk he got… or whatever it was,” says Sitch, confirming that the Ronnie who’s been three-way kissin’ and shovin’ Snooki in Miami is not the same Ronnie who was beating up the beat and random dudes on the boardwalk in Jersey. And despite her own terribleness, what with her manipulative “tests” of her and Ronnie’s relationship, it’s hard not to feel a little bad for Sammi when Ronnie swoops in for his nightly smoosh. When Pauly D and The Situation are questioning your morals, it’s time to take a good look in that mirror you’re snorting a huge line off of, Ronnie.
“We’re in a mist of grenades.” How erudite of The Situation to reference the Dian Fossey naturalist classic Grenades In The Mist when bemoaning the MVP’s poor choice in female accompaniment for the evening. What’s that? You’re saying he’s just a moron who doesn’t know the word “amidst”? Well, surely that won’t stop him from mercilessly mocking the appearance of three nice-looking, albeit clearly stupid girls who for some reason deigned to spend the evening with his oldface and Pauly D’s giant zit. Nor will the fact that he, Pauly, and Vinnie regularly drool over girls with beach balls tacked to their chests keep them from mocking the girl whose push-up bra insert wound up floating in the hot tub. Then again, self-awareness has never been The Situation’s strong suit. (See also, via Snooki: “He looks like a freakin’ dirty old man outside with his shirt off at an ice cream shop.”)
Elsewhere in the episode, Snooki and Vinnie drunkenly pawed at each other in what may have been the most endearing, hiccupy attempt at a random hookup in this show’s history; the housemates struggled with the complexities of transporting gelato from one receptacle into another; and Vinnie sucked up to his boss and God saw fit to reward him and his thick Sicilian hair with a decent ’hood haircut. Oh, and Ronnie and Sammi made a few more rotations on their endless “drink, fight, smoosh” cycle, which I’ll gladly leave Nathan to deal with when he returns next week.
Stray observations:
• I do not want any of these people serving me food. At least novelty T-shirts can be washed, bleached, and/or burned after they come incontact with a Jersey Shore cast member.
• JWoww’s work uniform suffocates her boobs. Luckily she has her trusty tit hammock to air them out at night.
• On that note: “I think Albert Einstein should come back and rewrite his laws of physics and work it around Jenni’s tits.”
• “That’s a true pig right there. No offense to Ronnie.”