‘Jersey Shore’ Recap: Gloom and Doom
Roger is dead to me. Let’s just get that out there up top. Just when you start to think two people can see through each other’s tight sausage casing biceps and comically large bazooms to the tiny nugget of true innocent humanity inside, J-Woww and Roger up and have a fight. Trouble has been brewing in paradise for quite some time, it turns out, coming to a head when Roger calls last-minute to say he’ll be late for a date. There is something heart-rending about seeing such an Amazon break down.
J-Woww has long been the show’s voice of reason, our beacon of rationality and, dare I say, our surrogate mother. Oh…no? Just me then? The point is, if Jenni loses faith, the moral center of the show cannot hold. After running into the boys at the gym, Roger puts a nail in his own coffin (Roger Coffins! Now with more shoulder room!) as far as I’m concerned. “I treat my girl like gold,” he crows, before explaining the litany of reasons he shan’t be calling J-Woww to work things out. That would be “kissing her ass.”
Jenni eventually calls and apologizes for being angry, as one does a thousand times during every relationship, but Roger has built up a good head of steam in the meantime. (Roger Coffins! Now available in steam-powered!). “It’s always gloom and doom and drama with you,” he chides her, complaining, “You just said your piece, and you hung up like a coward.” A coward? Are we talking about the same goddess? Sadly, their fight leaves Jenni devastated. Or mildly peeved. Or completely neutral. Sometimes…it’s kind of hard to tell at a glance. You guys feel me?
Meanwhile, I can only assume the Situation is keeping track of his various hatreds and vengeances with some kind of huge ideogram, drawn using a sort of horrific non-Euclidean geometry such as the world of man has never known. No human soul can look upon it and hope to keep his mind from the ravening void of insanity. At one point Mike wakes up alone in the house, and the fact that everyone is out somehow proves the existence of a hidden network of duplicity and diabolic treachery all designed to drive him to the edge. Either that, or he cray.
Either way, the Situation chooses to call up the Unit and have him finally tell Snooki’s manfriend Jionni The Truth about That One Gross Night Where They All Smooshed In The Same Room. Luckily the Unit was in Miami and no available to destroy a young woman’s relationship for sport. “Although in the back of my head I have plans of demise, I’ll go get a drink with her,” Mike says of Snooki, i.e. the one cast member still willing to talk to him. “I’m keeping my friends close and my enemies closer.” Ah yes, and what happens if you have neither?
On an unrelated note, in a scene that finds Snooki stumbling drunk and alone back to the house, I believe she mumbles the phrase, “Everybody’s dying right now, man.” Right now! Mike later finds out that Deena’s younger sister Joanie (Who else is the world would still be named Joanie? Flawless.) is dating the Situation’s younger brother Frank. Oh, and Joanie’s a squirter. And lo, the entire world shall know the contents of your vagina, and the velocity and splash zone there of! Not surprisingly, everyone remains leery of Situation despite his acting “nice,” probably because “nice” translates into “like a reasonable human being for short bursts.” Concludes Deena, “A leopard never sheds it’s stripes.” I need to stop for a moment. My hands are trembling. They somehow know I will never type truer words with them than these.
Later at the club, Vinny meets a young woman by the name of Deanna, a lovely girl he isn’t sure he immediately clicks with. “She’s like a 5 or a 6,” Vinny explains. “During the weekend, you’re looking for a 7 or an 8.” Ah yes, it’s like Jesus himself said, “Let go and let God…find you some booty, son. I’ll be up in Heaven, kicking it with all my 10s. BROS BEFORE HOES 4 AFTERLYFE!”
Vinny soon meets the enchanting Nikki, a gorgeous girl who happens to be a lesbian. A lesbian who loves camera time! Vinny is undeterred by Nikki’s self-proclaimed lady love. “I’ve got soft features. I think I’m a good transition for a lesbian girl,” Vinny proclaims, at one point declaring, “When you take a lesbian back to the straight team, that is like Christopher Columbus discovering America.” Nikki walks back to the house with Vinny, and in a feat of daring wingwoman derring-do, Deena manages to finagle the willing Deanna back as well.
Their creepy seductive choreography pays off when Nikki bids them adieu and Vinny picks up when he bleeeeeeeched off with Deanna. “Nothing extraordinary,” Vinny laughs afterward. “Released some demons. You know.” Little known fact: the demons released by said horrific fornicating mingle with Deanna’s old damaged weave and the ghosts of all the hermit crabs as they floated for eternity in the downstairs tub, twitching with sentience even as they wait in their unending slumber. The more you know!
Because your mama demanded more drama, Pauly D also deals with his “stalker,” a sweet, grinning , round-bellied lass by the name of Vanessa, who keeps showing up everywhere to smile intensely at him. Cameras constantly surround the entire cast so it’s not that tricky for her to find them, but I guess that’s neither here nor there. Vanessa wears a Pauly D hat, a “Cabs Are Here” baby-tee and the naïve grim of a person who has no idea they’re being depicted as a bag of mixed nuts on national television. “You ever seen Misery?” asked J-Woww. “She’s gonna smash your kneecaps.” While that would have been one hell of a twist, Vanessa instead finds herself face-to-face with Pauly in persone…only to stare at him, nervous and silent, when given the chance to speak. Vanessa’s a stalker, but she’s a stalker with a heart of gold. And a sledgehammer of pig iron.
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