When watching Jersey Shore, the most important sociological experiment of our time, we're looking for new and exciting behavior. However there is one pattern that repeats constantly: Sammi and Ronnie breaking up. It happened again, this time with more violence!

Yes, Sammi and Ronnie break up and make up more frequently than most of us floss, buy new yachts, or apply contact paper to the bottom of our drawers. It's that often! A vicious cycle of incrimination, squabbling, punching, emotional manipulation, and "done"ness. Yes, that is "done" with quotation marks, just the way Sammi likes it, where she says she is "done" but makes up with Ronnie mere seconds later. But before we can get to their unique roundelay of abuse, we have to talk about a few of the guido's magical artifacts, so we can better understand their living conditions.

  • The Grenade Whistle: The grenade whistle is a bright red horn that has been passed down through the generations of guido men. When a "grenade" enters the house, it should be sounded by one of the men. The note is so low that it isn't heard by the female of the species, whose ears are toned to the shrill spectrum of their own voices. Therefore, it doesn't scare off or eradicate the grenade, but warns the other men that there is a very dangerous weapon that needs to be extracted from the premises. It is a very handy tool indeed. It has gone down in lore that a woman who can hear the note of the Grenade Whistle will end up being the whistle blower's bride.
  • The Stripper Pole: Interestingly enough, this is a device that is installed by the women of the house to please the men. Supposedly it will convince girls to dance enticingly and take off their clothes upon it. What the men don't know is that it holds a strange power over them. It is the men, in fact, that can't resist its magic pull and end up twirling and disrobing upon it. Placing it in the house is a trick by the guidettes to make the men feel more powerful and like they're going to get laid, but it is really just there for female amusement.

Speaking of men and women, we have seen time and time again then the men stick with the men and never interfere with them getting laid. That is true in all but one case. Let us see the exception.

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When Vinny meets a purebred Sicilian named Gina at the club, he also meets her uncle, Nicky Ducks, who warns Vinny that he better treat Gina like a lady and that she won't be putting out for him tonight. Vinny heeds his warning, but takes the girl home anyway. What happens shortly after they arrive, Nicky Ducks flits in with another relative in tow to defend Gina's honor and escort her home. Yes, the men always stick together, but there is one thing that supersedes the fraternal and that is the familial. A man can not dishonor his own kin by letting her be treated badly by another man. Now, if this girl was just a friend or acquaintance of the older man, then he would have no right to escort her home, because it would break the guido brotherhood code.

You might also notice that Nicky Ducks has a rather suspicious name. Where do you think he got that last name "Ducks" from? It's because he is one of the children of the Duck Phone, the guido's vengeful household god. See the Duck Phone has an insatiable sexual appetite and can transform himself into various and assorted animals and couple with women. Once it turned itself into a wild horse and chased down a fair maiden along the sandy beaches of Seaside Heights. When she got up from the coupling, she was with child. Nine months later, she gave birth to a miraculous creature that she named Nicolas, after her favorite Italian restaurant (Nicola's), and Ducks, after his father.

He was a strange and magical creature that had wings coming out of his ankles. Yes this Nicky Ducks, as he was later known, was a messenger for his father, going about doing his will and heralding the silent deity's dicta. That is why he is there to rescue Gina. Not only is Vinny unfit to couple with a woman who is one-quarter divine, but also the Duck Phone does not want any of the guidos getting laid. He is still upset they didn't worship him while they were in Miami and he is punishing them. Oh poor Vinny, to have to deal with this swift Mercury when he was just trying to hook up.

Now is the time we have all been dreading. We must discuss, yet again, Sammi and Ronnie breaking up. Sammi and Ronnie breaking up is sort of like having sex. The first time it happens, you're a combination of excited and anxious, and once it's done you feel great and tingly all over and you wish you could do it every day. Then you do it a bunch of more times, and it's still good, but each time it gets more and more normal. It loses the specialness of the first time. Then, after doing it about 100 million times with the same person, it's more like a chore and you don't want to have to go through this ordeal again and you're wondering just what the hell is happening on TV that you're missing right now because you are engaging in this spectacularly unspecial event.

That said, this was a good one! It all started when they went to Karma—the guido's "battlefield"—and they both got especially drunk. Neither Sammi or Ronnie are good drunks. Sammi gets mean and paranoid when inebriated and Ronnie gets overtaken by malicious giggles. Together, they are like George and Martha of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe but with a combined IQ of -16. Sammi accuses Ronnie of flirting with another girl, but Ronnie says that she has a C-section scar so she is totally nasty and doesn't want her.

When they get back to the house, Sammi pulls her stunt where she accuses Ronnie of doing undefined things and forces him to confess, hoping that she'll find out he did something wrong. As we have established before, Sammi is such a Helen of Troy type that she's happiest when they're fighting. She needs to be constantly reinforced that Ronnie loves her so she starts these squabbles so he'll have to convince her of his love. That's the only way she can make it feel real.

But this time, Ronnie isn't having it. He's ready for her to leave. He's done—without quotation marks—it seems.

That's when JWOWW steps in with the finishing stroke.

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Oh, what a Shakespearean drama this has become with JWOWW poisoning the porches of Ronnie's ears with her harsh words for Sammi. Naturally JWOWW has an ulterior motive in all of this. Sammi has ostensibly made up with all the other girls in the house, but JWOWW. The two have an incurable blood feud. What does JWOWW do? She uses this opportunity to ouster Sammi for good, telling Ronnie that she and Snooki wrote The Note while the crew was in Miami to get her to leave the house.

As a scientist, I'm not sure if this is entirely true, especially because JWOWW keeps suspiciously looking over her shoulder the whole time she's talking to a blubbering Ronnie. If it is true, that is some devious shit. If it isn't true, it's still some devious shit, but for a whole different reason. But she continues to talk to him, convincing him that removing the quotation marks around their constant state of "done" is what is best for Ronnie and best for the house. He should just let Sammi walk away, like she vowed she was going to.

It's then that The Situation goes up to his room and asks Sammi for some condoms while she's crying on her bed. Way to keep it klassy, Sitch. He also tells her, without malice it seems, that JWOWW is talking to Ronnie. This sets Sammi off. Her hatred of JWOWW is the only thing that is stronger than her love for Ronnie.

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First of all, A+ on Sammi for that solid punch to the jaw. Now, it's not excusable to hit your romantic partner, but still it was a solid showing for Sammi's boxing skills.

What's funny about this is that Ronnie is forced to answer Sammi's ultimate ultimatum. He has to choose his friends (including JWOWW) or her. Sammi doesn't see room in their lives for both, especially because everyone is going to take Ronnie's side in the break up. He chooses his friends, and that infuriates Sammi.

The other great part about all this is the drama is going down while the rest of the crew is trying to sing happy birthday to Snooki's best friend Ryder, who is there for a visit. It was really like some Harold Pinter theater of the absurd bullshit, with these two marauders fucking up an entirely nice birthday celebration.

Once the candles were blown out, the night continued. Everyone stayed up well into the morning, as the sun came up and the sky was the color that your mouth feels after an especially long trip on LSD. Sammi's bags were packed, she was ready to go, she was standing there outside your door, she hated to wake Ronnie up to say goodbye. Finally, we thought, she was leavin' on a jet plane. She was done.There were no quotation marks, no regrets, no second thoughts. Sammi was on her way out and once and for all she was D-O-N-E done.

And under that just forming sun that was the color of licking an ashtray, Sammi walked up to Ronnie with a pair of quotation marks held tightly in her fist. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.

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Yup, they're "done." A-gain. Fuck. Not the Duck Phone, with blinking hatred in its eyes; not Nicky Ducks, the fleet footed guardian of women; not even the Grenade Whistle, with it's piercing tenor, can end Sammi and Ronnie's reign of terror.

We're not saying their relationship is abusive (though, she punched him in the face, so it clearly is) but it follows the cycle of abuse. Fight, abuse, apology, reconciliation, hoping things will be better. And then it all starts again. Sammi isn't Sysiphus pushing a rock, because there is no goal in sight. She is not Tantalus, with her ultimate prized ripped out of her. She's not Orpheus, with her great love ripped away from her by nature. No, she's just a sad, sad girl who doesn't understand that this is a bad relationship.

And Ronnie too. He is also to blame. He may think he loves her, but when you love something you have to set it free. Especially when it's this destructive. Especially when we're all sick of watching the same pattern over and over again. Oh god, when will this thing be done?

There is a completely different humiliation in store for Deena, who is our new favorite creature in this little experiment. She went out on a double date with Dean (the Ronnie clone for our last dispatch) and JWOWW and Roger, Ms. WOWW's new man. We love Roger for a number of reasons. First of all he calls Deena out for trying to be classy on date number two when she already smushed Dean on date number one. Also we love him for not letting JWOWW's yippy puppies get between him in a good time (and by a "good time" I mean JWOWW's vagina).

Anyway, Deena certainly didn't keep it classy on date number one, at least according to what Dean told all the guys at the barber shop, who passed along the information to Deena's housemates who, of course, passed the information along to Deena.

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So, apparently Deena likes to suck butt. Well, you can't really blame her for liking what she likes. We have a feeling that Deena really likes to suck butt—a euphemism which is simplistically hilarious. Deena's the kind of girl who wants a guy to think she's freaky, so she's always busting out new adventures in the bedroom. But she's also the kind of girl who doesn't want her friends thinking she's disgusting, so when he tells everyone her nasty secret she denies it. Our favorite part is that at the end Deena says that she's going to "rip him a new asshole" for telling everyone her secret. Why, Deena, so you can have something else to suck?

Sucking butt, to the guidos, is offensive. After all the butthole is closely associated with the bathroom, which is the most important room in the guido house. It is something like a temple. To suck on the butthole is not only unclean, but it is an act of hubris that can not be tolerated. It's like eating a sacred cow in India, but with far pervier connotations.

And when Deena meets up with Dean later at the club, she dismisses him for talking shit behind her back. Just like Ronnie was forced to make a choice between his friends and a girl, Deena has to choose between the respect of her friends and continuing to toss the salad of a boy she just met.

Her friends win. She has to keep up the public facade that she's a good girl. She can't have it getting out that she is a butt sucker. That would be horrible for her. She makes a valiant sacrifice and says goodbye to Dean and dances off into the dark of Karma, looking for another man to love her, looking for more prey, looking for someone to take home and get under a blanket so she can say, "Hey, wanna try something new?" The cycle repeating itself, over and over, like a snake sucking it's own butt.