We’ve known from the very beginning that the Jersey Shore was just too much. Too much drama and silliness contorted by the inebriated and raucous ramblings of the eight people stuffed into a shore house in the buttcrack of New Jersey’s Wendigo realm called Seaside Heights. It has all been too much; the braying at the top of their lungs, the fights, the smushes, the showing of kookas, the living in a mini-hoarders wet dream, the sometimes psychotic repetition of the same people doing the same things, expecting different results, but ultimately pooping out shoulder-shrugs and continuing on their merry way toward lunacy and an enlarged liver.
These are all things we know. What we didn’t anticipate was the eventual toll this would take on one of the participants.
With a group that has nothing in life to do at this point that isn’t partying until the sun peaks over a crust strewn New Jersey horizon, cavort their way out of their own underpants and into the glitter-bang basketball shorts owned by the Situation, or throw tantrums periodically like babies fighting in a sandbox — you would think the daily existence of all this plus the added bonus of being paid handsomely for it, would be enough to fortify one’s soul, and keep the main prize, which we suppose is celebrity, or a pickle juice brand, in focus. Not so.
Apparently, there comes a time when you can take only so much debauchery and shared smells, before you just want to get off the fucking tilt-a-whirl. Vinny has decided his roller coaster stops here.
We start the episode with most everyone walking gingerly around Vinny while he paces, and sleeps, and looks outright distressed. No one knows quite what to do with a friend who’s obviously going through some sort of turmoil. Putting on Axe body spray, tanning, hitting on girls, and thrusting their loins at said girls with the reckless abandon of a minnow in an electric eel pool — these are things the men of Jersey Shore know. Talking about feelings with someone who’s obviously dealing with a serious mental issue — this is far out of the JS Guido bailiwick, but it’s not for lack of trying. Everyone gets dressed up to go to club Karma, wherein the first night at Karma is like some sort of push up bra and oily body paint parade. The group of girls leave the house looking like fantastical creatures if “Glitter-Sluts” were such a make believe beast. There’s leather and sequins and boobs pushed up to the eyebrows as far as the eye can see.
Everyone is doing their thing. Mike is scheming on Paula, a hookup monster who apparently lives at club Karma just waiting for The Situation to rub her head like a genie lamp so she can launch into a whirling dervish of sex pheromones and Fritos to be summoned back to the shore house on command. Snooki and Jionni garble nonsensical gibberish at each other in the imp language they’ve adopted that sounds like a mix of belches and horse whinnys. But Vinny, he’s walking around the club by himself, wandering in a lonely fashion, as if finally realizing that everyone, and everything at Karma is a sad reproduction of everyone and everything at Karma night after night, summer after summer, year after year, like some sort of demonic carnival version of Groundhog Day.
After a short time, Vinny returns to the house in order to find some measure of peace. And who can really blame him? Just how often can you carouse with the same people, who speak the same Neanderthal language of gin and genitals and not be on the verge of despair? What may seem like a charmed life can, when looked at myopically, really be a bit of sad existence where your celebrity is the only thing keeping you tethered to adulthood. Everything else about your life is dependent on someone else’s say so. Vinny hasn’t had to grow up or do anything of substance, just smushing and joking, getting wasted and crawling back to the house at near dawn. This does seem incongruous to the fun-loving yet somewhat studious, un-tanned, un-tattooed, mama’s boy he came into this experiment as. The fact that Vinny has been eaten by a celebrity succubus who required the flint and flash to sustain itself is really a kind of sad thing.
To that point, if Karma were actually more of a theme in this episode and not just a club, you could possibly point out its affect on one of our other Jersey Shore friends. One who prayed at the temple of MTV Manufacturing since this damnable show started. Pauly D realizes that his addiction to tanning has led him to an overdose. In this episode he ends up with a face that looks like he stuck two raw pork chops on both cheeks. He over tanned, burned his face, then exfoliated himself into a chemical peel, and basically ran around with a discolored flesh-face for the rest of the episode which to his credit he took affably. We’re not sure what would have to happen to Pauly D to rid him of his pervasive smile and easy going attitude. Earthquake? Hair Gel Recall? Stolen Diamond Chain? Ah, perhaps the last one. Nope. On one of the group’s quests to club Karma, Pauly D comes back to the house with a being called Shantel. And what we can infer from the Shantel, GirlBeast With Yearning Loins, is that she is DTF, and in this case we’ll say DTF stands for Diamond Theft Forevah!
You see, pre-smush, Pauly D discards his diamond chain on the floor next to the smush bed, because obviously there’s no better place for a diamond chain then strewn carelessly on the sperm-stained floor of the smush room. And smushing with said chain on is out of the question because everyone knows diamonds around the neck while smushing will blind your partner and THAT could lead to some sort of seeing-impaired smush accident, like a shark eats your penis. Yes? YES!
After the smushing is done, Pauly wants that girl “Outta Here!” since Shantel the GirlBeast With Yearning Loins has now become the GirlBeast With Sated Loins, and the only thing you can do at that point is stuff her in a cab, shoeless, before the sun comes up to scorch the eye sockets of a once humping, thrusting Guido and thusly shining a light on his dastardly deeds until it’s time to get manicures in the morning. However, Shantel the GirlBeast With Sticky Fingers (ew) sees Pauly’s chain glinting in the sunlight and shoves that bad boy down her pants. Pauly goes around harping about his missing jewelry to which everyone states the obvious about Shantel, and then because nothing bad ever truly happens to Pauly, Shantel the GirlBeast Who Knows She Was Probably Caught on Camera comes back for altruism sake (more TV time) wearing a sex bikini and returns the chain, however Pauly doesn’t take the smush bait and kicks her out again. FOILED!
During the heist episode of The Muppets Take Seaside, Snooki and Jionni had another of their mouth burble fests this time about Snooki’s drinking and all around Snooki Tomfoolery. He doesn’t want her to drink (Has he met her?) doesn’t want her to show her crotch (This is her meal ticket) and would generally like her to tone it down or become someone else. There’s no way this will happen since this is who Snooki has always been.
It’s Vinny who needs to find himself again. He’s miserable. He admits to Boss Danny that he has a problem with anxiety and depression — and to everyone else — that it’s just not getting better. The group tries to help in the only way they know how, grooming, games, and guy talks, but to no avail. Vinny has just really and truly had enough of the wall-to-wall Guido extravaganza and decides that he needs to head home for some much needed rest and time off. A vacation is no vacation if you spend every waking second with your coworkers. Word. Pauly, probably the best friend he has in the house, gently asks if leaving is what he really wants, and genuinely looks helpless and concerned for his friend. There is a true love between the two. And as Pauly sadly helps his friend pack, having been charged with the task by the strangely sensitive group, we are suddenly hit with the notion that these kids are real people, and despite it all, sometimes doing the best thing for you is leaving the party early.
Fare thee well, Vinny.
