Jersey Shore Recap: A Pain In Our Eye

As Earl barrels down on the East-Coast, we also have, in Jersey Shore land, a force to rival a hurricane: the insanity of JWOWW. What is wrong with her? What could have possibly happened in her childhood to provoke such violent hostility? When something angers her, or even just rubs her the wrong way, there’s a strange shift in her eyes, a subtle flashing, a slight tic of her massive bosoms, and then you know…it’s on. Run away! For whomever lands in the path of Jenni’s wrath will no sooner survive than someone lying down on the tracks in the face of a Hamptons-bound LIRR train, filled with those not deterred by the warnings of flooding and power outages. And here’s another thing: The longer this glorious show focuses on Ronnie and Sammi, the less likely it is that we’ll continue to tune in for the seasons to come (okay, fine, you called our bluff — we’ll still tune in…but we won’t like it!). But seriously, producers, can’t you create a different, less annoying storyline for all of us to enjoy? We’ll happily take more of Vinny and Mike’s sister; we’ll be thrilled to see additional footage of drunk Pauly. Heck, we’re even okay with watching Angelina and Jose, who looks like a very tall eight-month-old baby. But please, please, please no more of Ronnie and Sammi. PLEASE. It’s giving us a pain in our eye, and we don’t think it’s just a speck of sand. So we’re switching up our format yet again! “Everybody here is shady,” observes Sammi. And so we ask: Who’s the shadiest of them all?

Ronnie — Least shady, if you can believe it!
Surprisingly, Ronnie fared pretty well this episode, never once (that we saw) hooking up behind Sammi’s back. Which is sort of a miracle. He nicely helped Pauly D to bed when Pauly was too drunk to do it himself, and Ronnie stayed out of the fight between JWOWW and Sammi. Could it be, gasp!, that Ronnie’s learned his lesson? Nah. But this week he gets a pass.

Pauly
It’s so sad that the funniest guy has been getting the least airtime, right? This week, Pauly’s not really shady, he’s just really drunk. Which is totally amusing. First, though, he accompanies Vinny to the eye doctor, where he continually ribs him about his “condition” (which turns out to be nothing more than dry eyes. Where’s Ben Stein when you need him?). “You know what I think it is? Your eyebrows are so bushy, they collect so much more bacteria than normal eyebrows would,” says Pauly, who then mentions to the doctor that Vinny has a history of pink eye. Ha! And even when Pauly gets wasted, and his hair is all messed up (“that’s how you know he’s fucked up,” according to Ronnie), and he’s making out with nasty Angelina, he’s still endearing and hilarious. “Right now, Pauly would hook up with me, he’s so drunk,” says Vinny. Whatever, it’s fine, and nothing that a cloud of Axe Body Spray won’t cover up in the morning.

Sammi
Saaaammmmmi, you are still so annnoyyyyying. And yet her paranoia and jumpy vibe this week are actually justified, given that everyone in the house has been lying to her face. As usual, she spends the hour moping and crying and refusing to help with dinner, so, yes, she’s irritating, but she’s certainly not shady. “This letter has really destroyed me…mentally and physically,” she says dramatically. Oh, come on. It’s not the letter, it’s your cheating boyfriend who’s to blame. Our advice to Sammi is to get the F out of JWOWW’s way — Jenni can throw down, and “prissy” Sammi is no match for the ferocity of JWOWW, as is evidenced by the fact that she ended up on the floor. Watch out, Sam. JWOWW’s coming to git you.

Jenni
Jenni’s not that shady, she’s just kind of scary. Why is she obsessed with Sammi’s “low self-esteem”? Clearly she has her own self-esteem issues to work out (her inexplicable rage is a good clue that she’s not a very happy person, right?). “She’s lucky I don’t go in there and backhand her while she’s stilling on the fucking couch,” she says of Sammi’s reluctance to get up, go outside, and talk to her and Snooks. They were ready to confess! And the fact that they didn’t (again) is so obviously Sammi’s fault for not following their orders. Then JWOWW starts in with Sammi, screaming in her face and then dropping this bomb … “You’re a naive bitch, while your man’s putting his dick in other bitches!” Yikes, that’s not very nice. To JWOWW’s credit, she does step up and make Sunday dinner for everyone, but not happily. “Why am I doing this by myself in anger?” We don’t know why you’re so angry all the time, Jenni! You should see someone about that. The final, crazy straw is the end scene. Vinny is the instigator when he tells Jenni that Angelina was talking shit about her, but JWOWW, true to form, takes the bait, and uses it as an opportunity to go off on Sammi, and then, POW, hit her and throw her to the ground. Not shady, just, well, psycho. Well done, JWOWW. Well done.

Snooki
Snooker Doodle is too simple to be truly shady ever, and that is why we love her. She hilariously straddles a sleeping Vinny, throws herself at him, and then proudly tells Sammi about it the next morning. “He was like, ‘take your panties off!’ And I was like, ‘ahhh,’” she says of the hook-up, admitting that she was actually more like, “okay.” “You have no idea how big this thing was. Like, this big [here she puts her hands about a foot and a half apart]. It’s like putting a watermelon into a pin hole,” she jokes. Okay, that’s gross, but really, really funny. And good work, Vin! Snooks seems to feel guilty over the anonymous-letter-situation (though doesn’t actually do anything about it), and tries to keep the peace, albeit somewhat lamely. “We should never have gave her that letter, because obviously she didn’t appreciate it,” she justifies. But shadiness aside, there’s one thing for sure: She knows a lot about “garlic knots and balls.”

Vinny
Vinny had a strong showing this episode, to our delight, first hooking up with Snooki, then getting all giggly around Mike’s sister Melissa, and unfortunately having to deal with some eye pain. He’s kind of shady — “This year, I’m a little more DTS, down to snuggle,” he says after of the Snooki affair (and according to next week’s previews, this applies also to Angelina…uh oh). He gets in this great line about his “ice”: “It’s like your tits — it look sick, but it’s fake,” he says to Jenni. His courtship of Melissa is very sweet, but then he kind of ruins the goodwill by starting up the drama between JWOWW, Angelina and Sammi. That said, he assures us, “My eyebrows are clean.” So there you go, folks.

Angelina
After promising Snooki and Jenni that she wouldn’t tell Sammi about the note … Angelina goes and tells Sammi about the note. She is a shady, shady girl, and really just tries to play to whomever she’s around at that moment. “I feel like I want to tell you things, but I can’t tell you things,” she says to Sammi, before she goes ahead and tells her things. Plus, she’s a bad driver. And Jose seems nice (in spite of his resemblance to an infant), and it looks like she’s playing him. Angelina, you are shadddddyyyyy.

Mike — Shadiest of the bunch!
The Situation and ego are back in top form this week, winning him the top spot as the shadiest dude of the bunch. First of all, he continues to tell Sammi stuff behind Ronnie’s back, which isn’t so much shady as self-serving, since we’ve long known that Mike has a thing for Sammi. “He’s 100 percent wrong … He fucked up hardcore, and made you look fucking stupid. You look horrible,” he tells Sammi bluntly. Ouch. And he’s not one for peacekeeping. “I’ll be flipping pancakes while people are punching each other in the face,” he says of watching Sammi and JWOWW fight. But when he really gets shady is in dealing with the girls he meets at the club. The first, a “blond headed girl,” who Mike “sniped,” patiently waits in the Smush Room as he carb-loads on pasta before heading back to her to get it on (“I’m not ready to perform right now, I’m like a Ferrari, I’m high maintenance.” Yeah, okay). When she falls asleep, he goes outside and plots how to get her out of the house, which we witness firsthand. “Yeah, so, um, I got a taxi for you, baby, it’s all set up. I set everything up!” he tells her as she sweetly rubs his belly. Aw, yuck. In an unlucky twist, the next “chick” he targets doesn’t turn out to be a chick at all. “This one’s a winner,” he tells us, breaking the cardinal Miami rule of …”If you have to think about it … it is (a dude…a tranny…stay away).” Pauly explains: “She’s got all the clues that leave me to believe she’s a man. She’s got something to hide that adam’s apple, she had something on her hands … we think the Situation might have got himself into a situation with a tranny out here.” Mike, ever a good sport in manners related to hook-ups, shrugs it off. “That was the first time that had happened. But I’m a trooper, man, I’m the Situation, man,” (was he addressing the tranny with that “man” repetition? unclear). We’ll leave you all with some questions: What do you think about Mike’s constant looks to the camera? Funny? Or too much? And how about his chances on Dancing with the Stars? Important things to think about until next week.