Jersey Shore: Big Trouble in Little Italy
The most wonderful thing about the eight subjects of the most important sociological experiment of our time is that they are extremely bonded to each other but also constantly at odds. Then last night one of our experimental monkeys turned into a rage-filled super gorilla of death.
Yes, Ronnie, thanks to a magical concoction that he injected into his veins, could not deal with the anger he had toward The Situation and, like a stupid Bruce Banner, turned into a muscle-flexing beast creature intent on destroying everything in its path. Oh man, it was something to behold. But before we can finish talking about that, first we need to discuss their vocabulary so that we know just what the hell the guidos are talking about.
- Robina: This is a form of a robbery, a common activity where one guido steals another man's guidette at the club through preening, cunning, and a mickey or two. This is a robbery that is performed by a woman. It is very rare, but that there is a term for it proves that it is, indeed, more common than the guidos would like to admit.
- Ga Ga Ga: This is the onomatopoeic sound effect a guido makes to express chugging alcohol. It is also the same sound a guido makes when choking on his own vomit in the gutter, but the former is certainly much more common than the latter.
- Gully: To get angry and violent. This term derives from the great guido ancestors, who were shoved into giant ditches and made to fight each other for the amusement of the ruling classes. The only way to get out was to go completely insane and physically destroy the other. This is the creature's sad heritage.
Now that we know what they're saying, can we talk a second about what they're wearing. To these guidettes on vacation in their spiritual homeland, they do not have the chic sophistication of the natives. Sure, they can buy slutty dresses, knock-off purses, and enormous belts on the street, but that doesn't mean they should wear them altogether like some sort of Hustler Club Barbie. So they're trying to ape the style of the women they see around them, and they do that by channeling the spirit of the great Italian sex siren Sophia Loren. But they only outfit of hers they know is this one where she's wearing lingerie and a giant hat. She's like the original guidette!
So all the girls decide to put on giant floppy hats for Sunday dinner to try to be classy and Sophia-sticated like the Italians expect them to be. However, being rubish Americans who rarely leave the tri-state area, they instead think that they look like women from the Peekskills named Flo and Gloria. Even when trying to infuse their lives with classic Hollywood glamor, they totally miss the point. And somewhere in a Roman cemetery, Sophia Loren rolls over in the grave that she isn't even occupying yet. These women have killed her. She is dead.
Speaking of dead messes, it's time to discuss Deena.
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When the dispatch from last night began, we see Ugly Brittani and her twin sister Busted Eriqua still in the house. When The Situation finally kicks Brittani out, he tries to get Eriqua to leave to and she shouts, "I'm an individual!" back at him. Damn, he touched a nerve. It's like he brought home Jan Brady and moaned, "Marsha" in her ear by mistake!
But Eriqua wrecked even more havoc in the house. If you'll remember correctly, Deena started making out with Eriqua at the club and brought her home. Then Eriqua wandered into Vinny's bed and Deena came back and took Eriqua back to her bed before deciding she didn't want to slurp her spaghetti and sent her running back to Vinny.
The next morning, Vinny, DJ Paulie Displaced, and the rest of the boys are giving Deena shit for being a cockblocker and pulling a "robbery" on Vinny. Excuse me? They forget that Vinny pulled the robbery on Deena before she pulled the robbery back. She stands up for herself, as she should, because this is another painful double standard in the house. If a guy robbed a girl and the original guy robbed her back, it would go without mention. In fact, this back and forth happens so regularly between Vinny and The Situation that it's like their own version of Foosball. But if a girl does it, that's wrong.
I'm not sure if this is some innate homophobia or because they think that Deena's lust toward this woman was disingenuous or if they just think that girls are somehow lesser than men, so they shouldn't be getting between the men and their sexual prey. It's probably all of these things.
However the fallout from this incident has left Deena in a tailspin. Though she is technically a woman, she has been socialized like a man, and hangs out with the boys, displays many of their qualities, and thinks of herself as one of them. This is what drives her to pick up a girl. If she can pick up a hot girl and impress the boys, she thinks she will finally be one of them. But this gambit proves to her that she can never be. Her bicuriosity was answered in the negative, and she has become an outcast from the group of boys.
Poor Deena. Poor awful, confused Deena. She's like the ending of Boys Don't Cry except she's like the love child of Chloe Sevigny and Hillary Swank (ouch, those are some unfortunate genetics) and she doesn't know what to do. Then, to enact their final revenge, Vinny and DJ Paulie Debilitate throw her bed out of their room and put it in the living room. In the guido culture, the bed is the most important piece of furniture in the whole house. It is a symbol for the person as a whole and it is not only where they recharge by sleeping until 3pm, but it also the place where they engage in their favorite activity: drunken sexual congress. To throw Deena's bed out of the room is to throw Deena out of the room and to show her that she is no longer welcome in their inner circle.
This rejection sends Deena's delicate psyche reeling and she has a panic attack in the smush room. JWOWW, the beneviolent (yes, that benevolent and violent smashed together) mother figure of the house, arranges a discussion between Deena and the boys where Deena tearfully apologizes to the boys for committing the robbery and admits that she isn't being herself in the house. No, Deena, you were being yourself. You were being your true, boyish self. Don't let these mean-spirited boys force you to apologize for doing nothing wrong and forcing you back into a restrictive gender norm. That's good for no one.
But her fight with the boys was nothing like Ronnie's fight with Sam.
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Sam and Ron, who are like the bomb you made in fifth grade out of a birthday candle, a paint can, and some flour, have been together for about 3 hours and 52 minutes. That means it's time to start fighting! After a rather romantic courtship that consists of Ronnie buying Sam shit and then calling another girl to flirt on the phone and plan her visit to Italy, they get drunk at the club (which has the remarkably awful name "Yab") and Sammi freaks out at Ronnie for dancing near another girl.
This is, sadly, a rational response for Sammi, considering that Ronnie has cheated on her more than once and is, you know, kind of talking to another girl right under her nose. He's all like, "You have to trust me!" while holding another girls moist panties in his fist behind his back. She is a horrible screeching harpy, but he is a horrible sludge monster. Together, they're like the only creatures in The Labyrinth you didn't like.
So, yes, they start fighting, again. About the same shit, again. Doing the same thing and expecting different results isn't the definition of insanity, it is the definition of tedium, and that is what these two have become. They are the least self-aware beings on the planet. They are basically rocks with eyes and gym memberships. Fucking pathetic. But it's their fight that somehow leads to Ronnie and The Situation trying to beat the shit out of each other.
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This fight is so insane. So, somehow Sammi mentions that The Situation told her that Ronnie was talking about how he was going to bring like five girls home. Instead of getting mad at Ronnie for saying this, somehow the fight turns on The Situation for talking shit. Ronnie is always telling everyone to butt out of his relationship (and JWOWW and Snooki, after the disaster of their Anonymous Note in Miami have learned this lesson and decided not to employ any more plot devices from Charles in Charge in their real lives). The problem is, they can't. Why? Because shit like this happens!
Haven't I said all this before? Haven't we seen all these arguments already? While it is fascination to observe this species, it is also dreadfully boring. There is no learning or evolution. There is no upward curve. There is just the same old harsh conditions, repeated over and over, like monkeys never figuring out that they'll get a shock if they take the cookie. Stop taking the fucking cookie, already!
The sickest thing about this fight is you can see Ronnie fly into a alcohol- (and other substance) fueled rage. You see it escalate. You see him rip through his shirt like cloth can no longer contain his straining muscles. You seem him work further and further and further into a froth, like he's a pint of beer that someone just threw a shot of Jaegger into. It was disgusting.
Again, we see someone's anger manifest in destroying a bed, the guido's synedoche and effigy. Ronnie has done this before, but this is the first time he destroyed a bed that isn't Sammi's. The Situation's reaction is what is surprising. Usually Sitch shies away from a fight, but now he is getting right in the thick of it. I think this is mostly based on growing frustration in the house with the continued Sammi/Ronnie drama. Also, Ronnie is testing Situation's position as the alpha male in the house, which The Situation can not abide. However, he has about as much chance of winning this as one of those screaming Japanese people running through the streets of Tokyo as Guidzilla approaches, his tiny arms extended as his stumpy legs clomp, clomp, clomp slowly towards destruction, tangling themselves in power lines.
We didn't see the entirety of the fight until next week, so more then.
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The worst part of every new phase of this experiment is the forced labor that the guidos must endure. It has become clear that, due to the remuneration from the experiment, the guido subjects no longer need to work, so they do not care at all about keeping this job or even pretending like they are interested in working. At least at home in Seaside Heights, they could be kicked out of their housing if they refuse to work, here they have no recourse. Instead, the footage of them isn't about work, it's about the new and creative ways they get out of work so that they can engage in their favorite activities, like drinking, hitting on girls, and hopping into over-sized plastic bags.
And having a boss who is a hardass sure doesn't help. Does Marco Pollo realize he's never going to get these kids to do anything. It's best to just take the stance of Danny at the Shore Store and just use them for publicity and laugh at their antics rather than thinking he's going to get any free labor out of them whatsoever.
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We have to discuss a little problem with the language on our little experiment here. More and more, the scientists in charge of this little experiment are censoring the guidos so that they can't speak freely. While sometimes it is fun to guess what they're saying underneath the beeps, at other times it is entirely infuriating. Trying to ascertain what they're talking about here is like trying to read one of those UFO memos by the CIA where every word but "the" is covered by an impenetrable black bar.
Would anyone care to transcribe this conversation below in the comments? Thank you!
And somewhere, back across the Atlantic, a dark mass of plastic and regret stew on his altar in Seaside Heights, upset that someone else is silencing his subjects, his worshipers. He is the only one who can befuddle their communications with the outside world. And as his red eyes glower and blink, he bleats out a sound louder than any beep, a boisterous rumble that will shake the snow off the mountaintop. And with that, the Duck Phone calls his guidos home.