Jersey Shore season finale recap: Could this be the end?
- TV Show
Jersey Shore is finished. Snooki is pregnant and engaged to Jionni, and although we can all expect the birth of the Snooki-baby and the wedding of Snooionni to invade our television later this year, it seems unlikely that Jersey Shore‘s mascot will return for a sixth season. Snooki’s already starring in her own spin-off with J-Woww, who has barely been a presence on the show since getting wifed up by Jolly Roger. (Pity poor J-Woww — she thought her spin-off was going to be “Nicole and Jenni have wacky adventures!” and instead it’s going to be “Snooki’s having a baby and getting married, and Jenni is boobs!”) The Situation has a burgeoning new career in litigation, and he’s surely savvy enough to realize that it isn’t helping his brand very much to skulk through an entire TV season like the world’s most steroidal Gollum impersonator. Pauly D has his own vanity spin-off, which airs later this month, and having seen the series premiere I can tell you that it’s exactly like Entourage if Adrien Grenier had played every character on Entourage.
Vinny seems content with his role in the show, and Deena seems desperate to become a more prominent character, and the formerly-contentious Ronnie and Sammi spent the last two seasons proving to their insurance company that they are no longer a danger to themselves or others. So we might be staring down the barrel of a few more seasons of a reduced Shore. Picture Deena leading a new cast of tandroid clone housemates through Seaside. Picture Vinny plotting every-more-elaborate bucket list orgies: “I’ve always wanted to hook up with three transvestites dressed as pandas while Andrea Bocelli sings ‘Con Te Partiro’ on a trampoline!” And Ronnie and Sammi will sit quietly on the deck, growing old together in the quiet manner of those couples who caused each other too much emotional damage to not grow old together.
But for all intents and purposes, last night’s episode was the end of the original incarnation of Jersey Shore. So it makes sense that the cruel demi-gods who govern the netherverse of reality television offered up an apocalypse. The episode began with Pauly and Vinny sitting in the inside-out Jersey Shore household. They daintily sipped mai tais in their prefab pool. (Pauly D briefly pondered, “I wonder what the poor people are doin’?” knowing full well that us poor huddled masses were doing what we always do: Watching Jersey Shore.) The campers returned from camping all had a good laugh about the prank.
Except for The Situation. A black depression descended upon Uncle Mike, who sat darkly on the couch. Storm warnings rang throughout the town, and everyone else quickly brought their things inside. The Situation did not, and so his shoes were all outside when the rain came. He walked up to the deck and stared down at the ruins of his shoe empire. “Every shoe is brand new,” he said. “They’re all soaked.” He got down on his knees and ran his hands over every shoe. “They were all so beautiful,” he said, his voice muffled in thick folds, “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shoes before.” Were those tears on The Situation’s corrugated face? Or was that just the rain?
That evening, the gang went out to Jenks, and something very important happened. Now, in the past, I’ve theorized that Vinny’s private Jersey Shore narrative is essentially a downward spiral: The story of how a perfectly nice and smart and family-oriented boy became a juicehead gorilla. From that perspective, Vinny’s breakdown at the beginning of this season was his own conscience — and his decision to return to the show marked his moral downfall. (ASIDE: Cross-reference this theory with my running hypothesis that The Situation is actually a time-traveling Vinny from twenty years in the future, and then add in a double-cross-reference to the possibility that The Situation’s best friend The Unit is actually also Vinny. Basically, Vinny traveled back in time twenty years to become The Situation, then lived for two decades in the past, and then traveled back in time again to become The Unit. So basically, Vinny is 24-year-old Vinny, The Situation is 44-year-old Vinny, and The Unit is 64-year-old Vinny. END OF ASIDE.)
But what if Vinny was actually the hero of Jersey Shore all along? And what if the whole show has built up to the moment last night when Vinny achieved the impossible? “This is the moment where heroes are made,” said Vinny. “They write history books about this s—. This story’s gonna be told for generations to come. On this day,” he paused, sounding the trumpets, “On this day, Vinny banged two lesbian chicks!!!“
NEXT: The Last Conflict
“I’m always intrigued by lesbians,” said Vinny. “Two lesbians is the Holy Grail of hooking up.” At Jenks, Vinny ran into a couple of lesbians — one girl introduced herself and claimed her friend was her “ex-girlfriend.” Initially, they played wingman for Vin-Vin, but it was clear that Vinny had some other ideas on his mind. Imagine, for a moment, that Vinny is the last surviving Grail Knight. After many years of questing, he has weathered all manner of devastation. He has been forced to travel to distant lands. He has been tempted by the advances of a magical orange elf creature. He has survived his own internal doubts. And now, here, at long last, at the end of his journey, he has discovered something he never would have imagined possible, something all straight men dream of in the secret corner of their hearts: A pair of lesbians who cheerfully agree to a threesome.
Vinny’s allies were dismissive. Ronnie deadpanned, “One of them looks like Matthew McConaughey,” which sounded kind of funny coming from a guy who looks like a blow-up-doll henchman in a Chuck Norris movie. Pauly D marveled, “It’s gonna take a lot of work, and he’s not gonna get any sleep.” But Vinny persevered. He claimed the smush room as his own, and made a night of it with the two women. Afterwards, one of them giggled that she had lost her underwear. “I’ll keep it,” said Vinny. “I’ll dip it in amber and will carry it with me all the days of my life. When my time is nearly finished, I will bury it in a deep mountain pass. Someday, many eons from now, when all our world’s hopes and dreams have faded to dust, the scientists of some unimagined future civilization will discover it, and they will know that gods once walked this earth.” The lesbians agreed this was appropriate.
What else is there to say about Jersey Shore? Mike spent the episode tormenting Deena with some secret about her sister. Apparently, Mike’s brother said that Deena’s sister was a BLEEP, whose BLEEP could BLEEP with BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP, or something, and Deena thought that was just BLEEP. (Listen, I have a pretty sick mind, and I had no idea what they were talking about.) The gang had a final Sunday dinner, where Sammi said that this summer was the best summer she ever had, and everyone had a good laugh, thinking to themselves that Sammi contains multitudes, all of them terrible. The girls launched a water balloon fight on the boys from the upper porch, but their prank quickly backfired when Ronnie locked the door, proving once again that old Halo adage that a sniper perch is only a sniper perch until it becomes a death trap.
The first sign of the storm was a single harsh gust of wind, which sent a wave back-and-forth in the upstairs hot tub, that was once the site of such revelry in days gone by. Then came the distant sound of thunder, the crackle of lightning, and then the purging rain. “This is the biggest storm I’ve ever seen in Jersey Shore history,” said Pauly. Alarms sounded all around Seaside Heights, and all the dogs and horses in the tri-city area began running Westward to find shelter, and somewhere there was a child screaming. Inside the house, pandemonium rules. “Grab the tarp!” screamed Ronnie. “I’m scared!” screamed Deena. “My boobs! My boobs!” screamed J-Woww.
Then came the tornado, and the earthquake, and the fire, and the descending clouds of black. The housemates scattered, racing for their lives in every direction. And it is here, my friends, that the history becomes uncertain. We know that J-Woww snuck into a nearby telephone booth, came out wearing her superhero costume with a red cape, and spent the ensuing days helping those in need and complaining that Roger wasn’t paying enough attention to her. Deena was carried away by a tornado to a magical land over the rainbow, where she met a scarecrow and a tin man and a lion, and she loved them all madly, but they just thought of her as one of the guys. Ronnie disappeared, but for many years there were sightings of a stub-shouldered ape-man with a head shaped like a bowling ball swinging through the trees of upstate New York. Sammi also disappeared, but there is a popular urban legend among fifth-grade girls that, if you brush your 24 hours in a row, Sammi’s face will materialize in the mirror.
As the boardwalk burned and the tidal wave approached, Vinny and The Situation had one final duel. Witnesses report that The Situation — who apparently had blue electric bolts firing out of his eyes — said, “Don’t you see, Vinny? You cannot defeat me…because you are me! Stare into my eyes, and see YOUR FUTURE!!!” “Noooo!” screamed Vinny. “I’ll never be you!” The boardwalk collapsed, and Vinny escaped to his home in Staten Island, where he swore to live a quiet life in peace and prosperity…until, one day, he convinced himself that the only way to save mankind was to build a time machine and harness the power of evil, and thus did the cycle continue forevermore.
About Pauly D we know nothing. Perhaps he returned to his home among the stars, providing his galactic overseers with definitive evidence that humanity would never be ready to join the Federation of Planets. Perhaps, in the end, he found that he had developed some affection for our curious race, and even now he walks the earth filling lonely hearts with song. He’s a DJ.
And in the end, Snooki found herself a lifeboat and began to row through the flooded devastation. She saw a light on in the second-floor bar of Club Karma — the water had risen over the first floor. “Hello,” she said, “Is someone in there?”
A familiar voice responded: “Who is it? Have you brought a boat?”
“It is I, Sitch — Snooki.”
The Situation poked his head out, and although all his evil power had left his skin rotting, Snooki could still spot some goodness in him, and offered him a place on her lifeboat. It was not till Sitch had pushed off and they were on the wide water that the full meaning of what had happened rushed upon his mind. Could it be that all was forgiven? Could it be that, despite it all, The Situation and Snooki could be friends once more?
But some wooden machinery had just given way on one of the wharves, and huge fragments were being floated along. The sun was rising now, and the wide area of watery desolation was spread out in dreadful clearness around them; in dreadful clearness floated onward the hurrying, threatening masses. Boss Danny was in a nearby boat — he had smartly built the Shore Store on inflatable rafts, you see — and seeing their danger, he shouted, “Get out of the current!”
But that could not be done at once; and Sitch, looking before him, saw death rushing on them. Huge fragments, clinging together in fatal fellowship, made one wide mass across the stream. “It is coming, Snooki!” Sitch said, in a deep, hoarse voice, loosing the oars, and clasping her. The next instant the boat was no longer seen upon the water, and the huge mass was hurrying on in hideous triumph. But soon the keel of the boat reappeared, a black speck on the golden water.
The boat reappeared, but The Situation and Snooki had gone down in an embrace never to be parted — living through again in one supreme moment the days when they had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the daisied fields. Together.
Follow Darren on Twitter: @EWDarrenFranich
(9/3/2010-3/15/2012)