Previously: Withdrawal from Ron Ron Juice and a reunion with Sammi, coupled with The Situation's love of gossip, made for a violent combination.
We rejoin the scene of the grime, in media res as Ronnie tosses The Situation's things all over the house for meddling and Sitch launches an expectorant offensive at Ronnie. He roars that he doesn't get involved in SamRo 2.0's relationship and gets so worked up that he challenges Ronnie to exchange fisticuffs right then and there. Then, inexplicably he lunges at the wall head-first, quickly bouncing back and onto the floor. Ronnie leaves the room while JWOWW checks out Sitch, who is now in a glassy-eyed daze. She worries that there's something seriously wrong.
Yet, less than a minute later, Sitch pops back up and starts baiting Ronnie again. Like the feral bear that he is, Ronnie goes for it. For the several minutes, they're on top of each other in a series of wrestling holds all over the room. Gone are the innocent days of JWOWW Atlantic City face pops. This is serious. Sammi is crying. Everybody is screaming, and each is trying to rip the other's head off. In charge a couple of lumbering body guard types that the production staff have clearly have retained in anticipation of this very moment. The outsiders finally pull the guys apart and pin them down. Ronnie screams from underneath, "I've been waiting for a long time to fuck you up, bro. A long time." Sitch, whose neck is bleeding I should mention, says that Ronnie started this mess for nothing. He stands up, short torn and walks off, bragging in his interview that "all those muscles didn't do shit to me."
Oh, but it's not over. Sitch calmly takes a perch out in the parlor, but Ronnie calls out to him with more threats. Sitch stands up and yells out that he'll take on Ronnie every day. Sammi tries to calm Ronnie down, but he just tells her to shut the fuck up. JWOWW, Snooki, and Deena follow in suit, telling Sammi to leave Ronnie alone. If she doesn't, it'll be Jersey all over again. Hate to tell you, girls, but it already is. When the first bed frame got flipped, I was certainly having flashbacks. To wit, Ronnie assumes gorilla stance and sublimates his desire to crush skulls by verbally abusing Sammi. He tells her that he's been calling girls since he's been in Italy and that she "ain't shit," so "get out of my fucking face." She wisely takes his advice... or whatever you want to call it.
All in all, Pauly was underwhelmed by the show. Neither Ronnie's big muscles or Sitch's supposed karate skills added up to much. The most effective beatdown was the one that Sitch put on himself courtesy of the wall. Pauly jokes that he thinks Sitch tried to commit suicide by smashing his head into the wall because he was sick of dealing with SamRo 2.0's bullshit. On a serious note, though, it is only by the grace of thick walls and unscrupulous producers has Ronnie avoided criminal prosecution for the way that he acts. He is nothing short of abusive on every level. A couple weeks ago, Pauly showed some girls around the house, pointed to Ronnie, and joked, "That's what happens when you're on steroids." That was funny. This horror show tonight? Not funny. And worst of all, he gets paid for this fuckery. Handsomely. I know it's a little rich for me to be calling this out since I, too, get paid to write about his shenanigans, but consider this: In what world should be he be financially rewarded for acting in a way that would otherwise land in him in jail to get forcefully backdoored on the regular? If you think I'm disingenuous, then consider this also: I used to recap Living Lohan, people. I know the wages of human ugliness, and I dare say that, in this battle, Ronnie leaves me feeling ickier than Dina Lohan. Now them's fightin' words.
While everyone continues to reel from the melee, Snooki checks in on The Situation, who is quietly laid out on the couch with an ice pack on his head. She urges him to go to the hospital after his run-in with the concrete wall. JWOWW calls the ambulance, and they wheel Sitch out on a stretcher. JWOWW cries, "I don't want him to die!" It seems like a bit of stretch, but then again, if you've been living with The Situation 24/7 for the better part of the last three years, and he suddenly goes silent, that could be a very scary thing indeed.
She pulls herself to go see about Ronnie, who is still fuming in a violent rage. Downstairs, Sammi continues to show what a thick-headed jerk she is by getting angry with JWOWW for trying to talk to Ronnie. Sammi thinks she's the only one who can calm him down. Despite years of empirical, recorded proof to the contrary. She marches upstairs, where Ronnie warmly greets her and apologizes for being such a horrible beast of a person. Oh wait, that's not what happened at all. He bellowed at her to "Get the fuck out!" JWOWW tearfully begs her to walk away and leave Ronnie alone, but Sammi has to get a few more words in about how Ronnie should accept that she fucked up and move on. Then she walks away, screaming, "I'm sick of it! I'm sick of you putting me in this position! I didn't do shit to you!" Productive.
Reality starts to set in on Ronnie, who realizes that The Situation has gone to the hospital over their little dust-up. He says he can't believe he let the animosity between him and Sitch to get them to this point. And like a boy who just got caught breaking something, he starts to cry. Despite her histrionics about Sitch's exit in a stretcher, JWOWW actually justifies that the fight was long overdue. If that doesn't encapsulate how fucked up this whole scenario is, then I don't know what can. Every interaction between these people goes from "Let's rumble!" to "Oh no, we really just hurt someone/ourselves" to "I can't believe what horrible people we are" to "Well, (s)he kind of had it coming" within minutes. And no one ever learns anything.
As such, Vinny is outside with Snooki and Deena bonding over their disbelief of what went down. Snooki's all, "I used to get concussions all the time from cheerleading," and Vinny asks, "You sure you didn't get them when you were blacked-out drunk?" Snooki: "Well that happens, too." And they're laughing. Sitch isn't even out of the hospital. And they're laughing. Then again, that asshat managed to head butt himself, so they might have a point. The only person who appears to be stepping up in a serious way is Pauly, who travels to the hospital and stays with Sitch while he gets checked out.
Morning begins breaking as Ronnie concedes that he and Sam can't be together because "it's not healthy right now." Right now? When then? How could you ever imagine a time when your toxic nonsense won't be the very fuel propelling this train wreck of a relationship forward? He goes to her bedroom, where she's still sobbing about what happened. He admits that he owes everyone in the house an apology and invites her to talk to him when she's ready.
In the meanwhile, he goes out and makes his reparations. He first approaches Vinny, who tells Ronnie that he's a bear when he's drunk. He thinks they need to work on his temper together and, in an interview, pinpoints the problem to Ronnie being with Sammi. Sammi emerges from her room, and they sit down together. He apologizes very calmly and lays out the reasonable points why they can't be together. Sammi only looks away like a petulant child, then zeroes in on the stuff Ronnie said about calling other girls. As if she has any rights over him after they've been back together for, like, 12 hours. She demands to know a name. Ronnie will only admit that it's someone he knows from Long Island. For some reason unbeknownst to me, this is a damning fact. Sammi gives him the hand and curtly tells him, "Goodbye," then says she doesn't want to have anything to do with him ever again in her life. (Looks like she really stuck to her guns on that one...) He admits that he feels a bit of relief after blurting out about the other girls. Because that's how you should feel when you're finally being (spitefully) honest with the love of your life -- relieved.
There is one redeeming fact to emerge, phoenix-like from all this wreckage: Ronnie has the bright idea to leave the house altogether. Thus begins the packing up of his questionable pills and 700 freshly ironed T-shirts. Vinny hears the rattling of plastic jars and goes to check on Ronnie. He asks him to sleep off this knee-jerk reaction. Ronnie continues to pack (in a Delta First Class freebie bag, no less!) and says he doesn't have peace of mind. Vinny says he'll only achieve peace of mind by getting through the time times instead of running away from them. Ronnie's resolve weakens, and he finally succumbs to Vinny's (and, no doubt, the producers') pleas. In what's probably the meanest statement, he says, "Vinny's like the Dr. Phil of the house," then says, "There's a reason why I'm here." As if his inclusion in this embarrassment of a cultural phenomenon is fated by the gods. Yes, Ronnie, your blipping meat head on my TV is nothing short of kismet. The universe depends on it! Pssssh.
A bit later, the phone rings. Lest you think it's some important message from the hospital, it's not. It's a local florist, who has deliveries from "Nooki" and "Sally-Jenny." Vinny is not amused. The girl on the other end offers to call back that afternoon. Vinny gruffly says, "Si," before hanging up on her before she can finish her sentence. Meanwhile, Ronnie pats himself on the back for putting Sitch's bed back in its place so that The Concuss-uation can actually have somewhere to rest when he returns from the hospital. Before then, Pauly returns home with the news that Sitch is still under observation for the time being. He and Vinny finally head to sleep after a long, grueling night.
Sitch finally returns, saying he suffered from "a little head trauma, a little sprain, a little this, a little that..." Did I mentioned he's wearing a hoodie that says "HEADRUSH: DEATH B4 DEFEAT" on his triumphant return? It's also worth noting that he isn't wearing a neck brace when he walks up the stairs, yet he is wearing one when he gives the full doctor's diagnosis in a later interview. What poor P.A. had to run around Florence looking for that thing, you think? The most traumatic result of Sitch's self-inflicted injury is that he can't GTL for the few days. This is the stuff of Greek tragedy, y'all. He heads back to his room to get some sleep, wherein Ronnie heads in to ask him if he's okay, shaking him about the neck and shoulders all the while. Sheesh. Ronnie does apologize for what he said and promises he didn't mean any of it. Sitch takes it in silently, then interviews that he'll be poised to reignite the fight at any point in the future since there was no clear victor this time around.
Ronnie leaves the house and heads to the gym. He wants to spend a day by himself so he can collect his thoughts and stop beating himself up. Not so sure that second part is entirely merited yet, since it's been a total of six hours (if that) since you ripped apart the house. He says he needs to learn how to stop bottling up his emotions and stop freaking out over things he can't control.
Back at home, Snooki and JWOWW are happy to receive their flowers from Roger and Jionni. Vinny informs them that Sitch is fast asleep in bed, and they make a plan to go drop off their laundry and get something to eat. Vinny says they're somewhat back to normal -- in that "normal" essentially equates to "irreparably fucked up" in this house.
As they head to the laundromat, they rehash the foregone conclusion that SamRo 2.0 is destructive to the house dynamic. Pauly says the drama between Ronnie and Sammi is like repeatedly vomiting, and that he's sick of it. They make their way to the restaurant, where they run into Ronnie. He immediately apologizes to Pauly. They sit down to talk out what happened. Ronnie sips on an ill-advised beer and the conversation quickly turns into a "let's all hate on Sammi" diatribe. It all amounts to nothing because Ronnie says defeatedly, "You can't help who you love." Oh, just pull the pin already. For the love!
They head back home, and Snooki gets a call from Jionni. He tells her he's sexually frustrated, and she informs him about this nifty little thing called masturbation. When he asks what else is going on, she tells him she wants his boner. Oh, sweet nothings! To his credit, Jionni has the presence of mind to be embarrassed by Snooki.
Later that afternoon, Sammi decides it's a smart and totally non-shit-stirring move to take everything Ronnie has ever given her and put it back in a raggedy pile on his bed. What is wrong with her? Then she heads over to Sitch's bedside to apologize for starting the trouble between him and Ronnie. Sitch takes it with little regard, saying, "I just went through a wall. I can't hear that shit." He gets up and wanders the house in sunglasses and a neck brace, dejected that all his roommates have left him to fend for himself. He admits he feels alone and alienated as he sits down in various spots and sheds tears while thinking, "Nobody loves me after I head butted myself, waaaaah!" The roommates return home and immediately start ribbing him on the neck brace. Pauly laughs that he looks ridiculous. I love that it took the inclusion of a neck brace to make Pauly realize something the rest of us isolated long ago.
Ronnie returns to his room and sees the pile of shit Sammi left on his bed. He angrily starts tossing it into the garbage can. Sammi strolls up and starts taking it all back because this, she says, is a step too far. Your distinctions of class and decorum are what the Italians would call arbitrario, Sammi. She takes special exception to a pair of diamond earrings he gave her and yanks them from the garbage can. She even reclaims a pair of shoes that she gave him and for which she has no use. So what, then, was your point in putting that stuff on his bed? If you didn't intend to give it all back to him (thereby giving him full permission to do with it as he wished), then what did you intend? What was your point?
That night, the gang preps for a Situation-less night out at the club (he's been prohibited from going out for the week). Perhaps loopy from the pain meds, Sitch admits to Ronnie that he was inspired to head butt the wall after pulling the same move in a fight with a much larger guy two years prior. He wanted to show how crazy and fearless he was, so he charged the wall. Only the wall two years ago was sheet rock. Last night, it was concrete. Ronnie can't help but laugh at what a jackass Sitch is. He knows full well that he never would have gone so far as to put Sitch in the hospital. And yet here that numbskull is, neck brace and all, thanks to his own harebrained high jinks.
Sitch continues pill-drunkenly rambling a semi-apology for meddling in SamRo 2.0's business and for fighting with Ronnie. All the while, Ronnie checks the trash and finds that all the stuff from Sammi that he threw in there earlier has been mysteriously removed. He recollects the shoes Sammi took and walks back into the room just as Sitch slurs, "...bangin' my head, you know what I mean?" Ronnie: "Exactly." Heh.
The ladies head out for a girls' night at what I'm guessing is the only Mexican restaurant in Italy (and, in fact, if you Google "Mexican restaurants in Florence, Italy," it's the top result). After the first shot and a round or two of margaritas, JWOWW gives Sammi some advice on how not to be a grubby bitch when talking to her boyfriends. For example, don't store up shit talk to use in case of an argument. Address gossip when and if it arrives. Sammi acknowledges she needs to work on herself a little.
Back at home, the guys plans their own night out as Sitch tries "to find a way to apologize to the wall" (Ronnie's words). They hit up il club, where Ronnie immediately zeroes in on a lady of questionable looks who is willing to buy him mojitos. But the real problem sprouts when an Italian guy creeps up on Pauly and keeps taunting, "Che cosa?" ("What?). Perhaps having taken in some of last night's hostility through osmosis, the normally good-humored Pauly gets in the guy's face and screams like a hyena. Vinny clarifies that Pauly is "white boy wasted" and in no state of mind to deal with such effrontery. Pauly eventually gets pulled back to cool off while the Italian in question stands back and smirks like a louche European villain of the cinematic variety. I'm surprised the producers didn't give him an adhesive mustache to twirl.
The ladies head home, where JWOWW invites everyone to get naked and spray tan each other. Do they write lines like these to perpetuate frat boy fantasies, or what? Meanwhile, Snooki takes aside Sitch to affirm that, despite all the bullshit he spread about her cheating on Jionni with him, she still realized how much she loves him as a friend when she thought he might be gravely hurt. Sitch goes to put his brace on, hoping maybe that he'll get a motorboat out of Snooki's sympathy. Instead, she teases him that he should wear it out so girls will fawn over him. Then the editors Frankenstein a quote together. Part one (I'm paraphrasing): "Snooki and I made up with each other." Part two: "I don't think Nicole and Jionni are meant for each other." Not smooth at all, editors. You can do better!
Back out, Pauly and Vinny are exercising excellent judgment as they encourage Ronnie to bring home a girl that he's macking on. Vinny thinks he looks scared of Sammi but doesn't understand how he could go two whole months without getting it in. Somehow, between a multitude of shots and the girl in question inviting Ronnie back home with her, Ronnie realizes he doesn't want none of that granata action. Nor does he want to hook up with a girl just to piss Sammi off. He excuses himself to buy roses for Sammi and make amends... "and show her, 'You're the asshole. I'm not the asshole.'" Ohhhhhh! So close!
He arrives home, where Sammi is flipping out that he's going to have a girl on his arm. She literally runs away when she sees the door open. He tracks her down and presents her with the flowers. She juts out her pouty lips and asks, "Are those for somebody else?" (Well, it wouldn't be the first time...) He says they're meant to show that he's moving on and will be happy either way. Since when did red roses communicate "moving on"? Sammi immediately asks if he brought home another girl. He reacts with sarcasm and anger instead of honesty, which serves absolutely no purpose. Sammi admits she's confused. They sit out on the smoking couch and have a passive-aggressive conversation that amounts to nothing. Ronnie decides to pull a Sammi and take the damn flowers back. Sammi pulls a double-reverse Sammi and pulls the flowers from the trash can. And nobody knows what anybody wants, means, or needs. At least The Situation has drugs to credit for his fuckery at this moment. What can these guys blame?