The Jersey Shore Season Two Premiere Episode

Illustration courtesy of Alan Gray

Is everyone seated?  Do we all have our wrist support bandages on for fist pumping action?  Are your grimy orange tans carefully streaked? Because it’s time to get crazy, get wild with the filthy creepers of the Jersey Shore.  Our East Coast snowbirds have relocated to Miami for another summer of the show we all love to mock.  Whatever will they get up to this season?

Last time we saw the Jersey Shore cast, Ronnie and Sammi were deep in lurve but they barely made it to their rhinestone anniversary (three months) when the bottom dropped out of their romance.  Now they’re going to be reunited on the shores of Miami.  Awkward!  Snooki is done ‘snookin for love’ and has found an ‘amazing gorilla juicehead’ (feel free to consult your J-Shore glossary right about now) in Emilio.  She says she really doesn’t want to cheat on him while she’s away but it’s said in the tone of someone who knows they really shouldn’t have that last drink, but is going to do it anyway.   Emilio doubles as Snooki’s beautician, helping her apply her tan by spraying her with what looks like a pot of percolated coffee.  Snooki explains she has had to resort to home tanning as President Barack Obama has imposed a tax on her beloved sun bed, and she’s convinced he did it because of the Jersey Shore crew.  It’s only a 10% hike, I’m sure she has the dough to cover it nowadays!  She reveals her political affiliations by saying that John McCain would never put a tax on tanning as he’s pale and would probably want to be tan (doesn’t seem to be the case, has she seen his wife?  She’s almost transparent!) and that Obama ‘doesn’t have that problem, obviously’.  Oh so the President taxed tanning out of spite?  Of course, that makes perfect sense Snooki!  McCain backed up her hair-brained comments by tweeting that he would never tan taxing.  Guess he’s got the Guido vote sewn up then. 

The housemates’ get on the road to reach their new home in Miami.   DJ Pauly D stops off to pick up The Situation so they can go road tripping together and Snooki collects  J-WOWW and her rucksack full of bronzer.  Snooki and JWOWW and Pauly and Mike are vying for first place in the house so they can get dibs on bedrooms.  Pauly and Mike speculate whether Angelina aka ‘Jolie’ will turn up and Pauly confesses that he and Angelina had a recent rendezvous.  Angelina is en route solo; she’s excited about returning to the house and having a second chance at her fifteen minutes of fame.  She says the girls in the house were all jealous of her, but she doesn’t elaborate on the root of their jealousy.  Her illustrious bartending career perhaps?

Snooki has a life-changing experience on the drive down when she and JWOWW discover the delights of deep fried pickles and southern hospitality in Savannah, Georgia.  Although they are not particularly enamoured of the local boys, one of whom gifts them with shots and tries to demonstrate his fist pumping technique, for which he is mercilessly mocked.

Mike and Pauly beat the girls to the house and claim their bedroom.  Angelina appears and surprise, she has traded in her trash bags for actual luggage (much to Pauly’s amusement)! The boys give her tentative hug and Mike makes the mistake of telling Angelina she should hurry up and choose a room because she doesn’t want to get stuck with someone she doesn’t like (translation: any of the other girls). This prompts her to ask if she can stay in their room, to which they reluctantly agree. Pauly isn’t overjoyed with their sleeping arrangements but looks for the silver lining by saying it might be useful having her there ‘on a slow night’, and Angelina reminds them she’s already ‘made out with both of youse’. 

The Miami house looks like a slight improvement on the Jersey Shore shack, but it’s no fancy Real World house, and more importantly, where is the duck phone?  There is a helpful sign on the wall reminding everyone that ‘In Miami nobody’s ugly after 2AM’.  Angelina hugs a surprised Sammi hello and asks if they’re cool but Sammi says she doesn’t know as she’s heard a lot of shit talking coming from Jolie’s direction.  Sammi is nervous about seeing Ronnie and says she’s still hurt over what happened.  What did happen exactly?  Last we saw, Ronnie was upset with Sammi being less than truthful on the reunion show but what actually occurred after that is a bit of a mystery. Vinny arrives and isn’t hopping on the Angelina welcome wagon, just yet, although from the looks of the promo that won’t last long; Vinny may have a rendezvous of his own with Angelina.  Ronnie says he plans to outdo The Situation when it comes to hook ups now that he’s single and breaks the tension with Sammi by giving her a hug; the two continue to flirt while they unpack and it’s clear they still have goo goo eyes for each other.

JWOWW and Snooki arrive last in the dark of night, so much for their plans to be first!  They can’t believe their eyes when they see Angelina and choose to ignore her.  Mike encourages Angelina to go talk to them and says ‘you need to handle that, girl’.  He’s not as dumb as he looks, he knows that if she doesn’t make up with the girls he and the boys will be stuck with her, and we all remember what an impediment she was to their attempts at ‘creeping’ last time.  Snooki says Angelina needs to apologise for talking crap about her, as all the girls have heard rumours about Angelina’s trash talking.  However, Angelina doesn’t think she has done anything wrong and doesn’t see why she should ‘reach out her hand’ to the girls.  She is clinging desperately to Mike as he is the only one who will talk to her but his body language says he doesn’t want her near him.

The crew pile into cabs to hit the Miami clubs on their first night out together.  The girls all share one cab with an exiled Angelina in the back seat alone.   When the conversation turns to Sammi’s relationship with Ronnie, Angelina interrupts to berate them over what she considers to be their poor treatment of her last season for leaving the house to be with her boyfriend. Angelina is under the deluded impression that the girls are pissed off with her because she left. JWOWW almost climbs in the back seat in her haste to take the trash out but they manage to make it to the club in one piece.  Once they arrive Mike says the tension at the club was incredible and you could probably slice it in half.  All the girls are pissed off; looks like you got the drama you wanted MTV!  Angelina thinks the girls are backstabbers and says she’s way too classy for them.  Ronnie soon busts out his patented moves but he and Sammi quickly get into a confrontation.  Ronnie says he still has some anger towards her over their breakup. 

On the cab ride home an obliterated (or obliviated in Vinny speak) Ronnie continues to fight with Sammi, resulting in Ronnie getting out and heading back to the club with Vinny and Pauly.  Pauly says Ronnie is releasing all his pent up demons on his night out and that he loves single Ronnie.  The Situation spies a grenade (a tubby, unappealing lady) and a land mine (a slender unappealing lady) latching on to Ronnie; they engage in a foul and sloppy three-way make out session which even Ronnie seems rather appalled by.  Back at the house Sammi is devastated about Ronnie and says she still loves him.   JWOWW speculates to Sammi that Ronnie is probably getting it in right now and she’s not far from wrong.  We leave Ronnie in the club in a drunken daze groping an upside down pole dancer.  It’s just another day in the turbulent life of our star-crossed lovers.  When will they realize they’re meant to be together?  Who else could put up with them?