Previously: Italia! It was all fun and games until Jionni and The Unit got involved. Thus began rift between The Situation and, well, everyone, and that will continue to play out as the kids return to the Shore.
But first! We return to Italy, where Pauly D is getting out his finalmente urli (that's "last insanely obnoxious shouts" in Italian). The bullhorn known as Pauly will be strictly Inglese from here forward. Pauly can't wait to get back to the States because he misses those pillars of American society: gym, tanning and (no, not laundry) haircuts. Apparently there is no Italian translation of "shellac the shit out of my blowout," therefore the country is lacking. Third world even! Pauly squeezes one last song in: "I wanna go home. Yeah!" It's no "T-Shirt Time," but these kids are really burned out, so what can do you do? Snooki and Crocodilly bid arrivederci to Italy, and with that, the kids have had their first, last and only culturally enriching experience of their lives.
They land back in New York, and Deena is super-pumped to come back to a place where her lack of panties is normal -- welcome, really. She literally kisses the ground at JFK upon arriving. Which, gross. Then again, with all the cretins she's made out with, that's probably a step up, cleanliness-wise. In case you thought I was being harsh on the kids' cultural horizons in the above paragraph, Pauly whips out his passport and promises, "I'm never leaving you again." up, take a shot because it's the first bit of Ronsense of the season! "We're so excited to see America. I feel like I was at boarding school, and America is my mother. I feel like I'm coming home to my mother right now."
They pile into the van to head straight to the Shore House, and they get almost all the way there without incident. Guess who shits on the vibe with only 10 exits to go. If your first thought was, "Rhymes with Bitchuation," ding ding ding! (Also, congratulations. You have seen more than five seconds of this show in your life because, obvs, who else would it have been?) So Sitchy makes a BFD of announcing that he doesn't care which room he goes in. Cue the clanging cymbal of ridiculousness because neither does anyone else -- as long as it's not their room. Basically, it's going to be a swift sprint into the house to fill up rooms before Sitch can lay down his hat. I sure hope those producers have greased the floors for added comic effect. There's definitely not enough physical comedy in this show. Oh wait... This. Pauly explains that no one wants to room with Sitch because of all the drama he brings. Everyone who wasn't in Sitch's room is all, "I liked the room I was in last year!" as a means of avoiding switching it up. (Or Sitching it up, as it were.) Even Snooki would rather sleep in the bed she peed in the year before. She asks, "Who would want to sleep in that bed?" Well, you apparently. They agree to all take their old rooms, which screws SamRo 2.0.
They reach the house and run jubilantly inside. Yay! It's clean! The toilet works (for now)! And, lest we forget about him, the beloved duck phone is back! Vinny, like the dog he is, expresses his excitement by jumping on top of Pauly in his bed and dry humping him. I'll remind you that Vinny is pretty much the smartest and classiest of all of them. As SamRo 2.0 and Sitch schlep their stuff miserably upstairs, Vinny affirms there's no way in hell he would have roomed with Sitchy. Pauly: "Upstairs is the crying room." Cue forlorn music as Sammi voices her displeasure at rooming with Sitch. On his end, it's not exactly rainbows and kittehs living with the world's worst couple, what with the intercontinental, room-destroying fights. Sitch says he's trying to put the bad blood behind him "and maybe we can be friends again... or not."
Sammi takes the reins, proactively telling Sitch that they need to establish they're all cool with each other. Sitch of course says they are. What do you expect? He'll say anything to snake his way out of a confrontation. Unless there's a shit-talking wall in his vicinity, at which point, he's all, "Game on!" Ronnie assures that, if Sitch interferes in his relationship, he will put Sitchy's bed out on the porch.
But you really know the kids are home when Snooki finds the refrigerator pre-stocked with pickles and just dives right in to take a shot of pickle juice straight from the jar. God bless America! (It's like the time I spent a semester in England. When I landed in the Atlanta airport, literally the first thing I did was chug a Mountain Dew. My insides will eventually rebel at this treatment, but damn that stuff is good.) Also? The triumphant return of Ron Ron Juice! I must admit, I'm nearly as excited about this as Snooki is about pickle juice.
The kids get Ron Ron Juice-wasted and head to place of employment (just like me every morning), where Danny teases them for being pale: "You're all Vinny's color!" They sign up for their shifts, Danny invites them for drinks the night, and they head back out to the Boardwalk for fun with rollercoasters and mechanical bulls. As you would expect, Deena does not have a future career as a bull rider. Rodeo clown, maybe.
The day, the guys resume their GTL lifestyle with incredibly urgency. Says Sitch, "This is a serious situation right now. We're losing weight, and we're getting pale. It's like the end of civilization." Pauly self-diagnoses as tanorexic before actually sprinting into the store screaming, "I have an emergency!" and lunging at the counter. He orders up the strongest bed they have, the most absorbent lotion, and a double-session. Once inside the booth, he shouts, "Oh yeah! Tanning yeah!" He has 40 days of GTL to make up for. Shit is real, y'all. For his part, Ronnie is most excited about the gym. They hit up the Laundromat and take a positively ecstatic ride to the barber (or, as Pauly calls him, "baaaaah-buh") as Pauly declares, "This is America. I can breathe, I smell the smog, I love it!"
At the house, Snooki desperately tries to get in touch with Jionni and keeps getting voicemail. She's worried, considering how they left things (quick recap: huge fights, emotional abuse, cheating with Vinny). The trauma is somewhat broken up when the guys return, and Vinny shows off his close-shorn mullethawk. Truly, it's an indescribably hideous haircut. Someone describes him as looking like a UFC fighter, and that about sums it up. Snooki: "Vin's a juicehead! ... In training."
The kids get ready for their drinks with Danny, which they're not altogether excited for, but they figure at least he's probably paying. They moan about how dead it is (at 7 PM, mind you) as they walk in, only to be surprised by a huge crowd of their family and friends. Snooki is especially happy to see Jionni, and Vinny is so touched, he can't hold back the tears. Soon he's laughing through them, though, as Nino (the man who taught Vinny how to say DTF in Italian, you'll recall) starts working his Italian Stallion act on all the ladies. Ronnie calls Uncle Nino "the ultimate creep," saying, "I feel like he should be in this house with us. Honestly, he should get the smush room."
The joyful reunion doesn't last very long, though, because JWOWW quickly realizes that things could easily get ugly between Jionni and any number of housemates (primarily Vinny and The Situation). Witness Jionni's unhappy sidelong glances when Snooki gets chummy with Vinny's entire family.
Across the room, we finally meet The Unit, a.k.a. Sitch's wingman in stirring up a world of trouble between Snooki and Jionni in Italy, fellationically speaking. Sitch notes that Snooki's friend Ryder, who was also witness to the alleged "gettin' down," is also at the party and calls it a perfect storm. The Unit takes much pleasure in announcing that he's going to mess with Jionni all night, specifically by coming back to the Shore House. Of course Snooki is opposed to this idea. She immediately gets into with Unit, calling him a loser and insulted his improperly gelled curly hair. He moves across the room, and Snooki continues screaming at him, hating hardcore on his ridiculous name. It's pretty tough talk coming from a girl wearing a gold lamé cheetah print headband with a crinoline flower on top. The Situation pretends like he wants to play peacemaker, but it's a classic Sitch maneuver, letting his friend do the dirty work for him. Inside, you know he's relishing this.
Even Pauly notes how absurd it is. All this happens in a matter of minutes as Jionni has stepped away. When he returns, Snooki is has worked herself into tears, which only serves to confirm her guilt in Ronnie's mind. When Snooki goes to the bathroom to touch up, JWOWW makes a beeline for Unit and asks what he saw. He tells her, "I saw everything." I can't even begin to describe how gross that is. Who watches his friend get a blowjob? Oh yeah, this is Jersey Shore. They all do. Unit threatens to bring down Snooki's night if she keeps throwing him shade. Cue card: "HURRICANE SITUATION."
Knowing this night is spiraling out of control, JWOWW heads to the bathroom to calm down Snooki and tell her that her sass toward Unit could have serious consequences. She tells her to chill out before they return to the Shore House.
Back outside, The Situation is wetting his pants with glee at the "poetic" (his word) justice of having "all two witnesses" will be in the same place with Jionni in just moments. I love how he keeps trotting out this idea of witnesses like he's a damn prosecutor in his own little kangaroo court. Ronnie piles on another metaphor: "Nicole shouldn't be blowing up at The Unit if he has dirt on her. That's like a bad chess move there. That's checkmate for Snooki" First off, I'm quite certain Ronnie as much about chess as Sitch knows about being a lawyer. Second off, if anything that would be a bad checkers move. It's not like her blowing up will have consequences five or 10 steps down the road. It will have an immediate impact. Game over. What I'm saying is, don't give yourself or your peers too much credit for class or intellect, Ronnie. To wit, I will finish this portion of the evening by simply quoting Unit verbatim: "She should be licking my asshole right now."
Snooki returns to Jionni, who of course assumes it was about him, but Snooki glosses over the drama. The bartenders make last call, and all the families bid their goodbyes. It's especially difficult for Vinny, who didn't realize how much he missed his family until he got a few hours with them. While he's spinning, so is Hurricane Situation... "and it's headed straight for Snooki Island."
The gang gets back to the house, where Snooki immediately corrals Jionni back to her room for some preemptive smushing. Upstairs, The Situation is similarly instructing The Unit to take off his pants and offers him an array of amenities, including fresh underwear and face wash. Sammi is in the room at the take and casts many a side eye at Sitch's "gay tendencies." Sexy music plays as she notes the similarities between the way that Sitch "wifes up his grenades" and how he's currently treating Unit. Sitch dabs on some moisturizer and douses them both with body spray (about as much body spray as hair spray that he used on his three-quarters of an inch of hair back at the baaaah-buh shop), at which point JWOWW heads upstairs and asks, "Is it supposed to smell like skunk up here?" Ha!
With that, Sitch announces, "Time for war," and they head downstairs. Proving my earlier statement about Sitchy's BS puppeteering, Sitch interviews that he plans to sit back and enjoy the show while Unit and Snooki come to blows. But first, Unit has to get his carnivore on. As we know, a guido doesn't go more than two hours without food, specifically meat. As Ronnie makes the burgers, Sitch notices that Snooki is missing. JWOWW tells him that Snooki and Jionni went to bed, but that simply won't do. Sitch actually goes back to her room to try to get this scene popping. He sees a closed door and curses the wasted potential.
Speaking of wasted potential, poor Deena is forced to sit and seethe as Pauly works his game on Ryder. Not that it takes much; she's already banged Vinny and The Unit. Even Sammi notes that she's kind of the Shore bicycle. Ronnie finally tells them to make out already, so they do, in front of everybody. It is awkward and silent, save for the smacking. Pauly quickly takes a sauced Ryder back to his room presumably to close the deal. Except he can't because Deena just walks right in to cock block the living daylights out of him. They sit in glaring silence for about 30 seconds until Deena relents and leaves the room with her head hanging down and her skirt hiking up.
Then Vinny enters the room to go to sleep and Pauly is reminded that Vinny has, in fact, also entered Ryder. Pauly wiles away the time by banging Ryder with a big hammer. That is a literal statement. There is some out-of-place blow-up toy shaped like a hammer, and Pauly is so reluctant to take Vinny's sloppy seconds that he spends many a minute hitting Ryder with the thing. Then he realizes that his penis isn't going to exercise itself, so he decides to get on with it anyway. Who says these kids don't have standards?
The morning, the cue card reads "SLOPPY SECONDS" as Ronnie, Vinny and Pauly snicker as they quote Jay-Z: "Everybody [Ryder] just like a bus route." For spatial reference, she is in the kitchen, they are in the living room. There are no walls between them. That's how a guido respects the girl who just got him off. Classy. I mean, I totally recognize that that's all she is to him -- a means to get off -- but couldn't he at least wait until she was out of earshot? Congratulations, show, you've lowered my standards this far -- now re-read the italicized part and imagine a child parting her hands vertically as far as she possibly can. Speaking of children, I really hope someone else is meticulously cataloging these episodes so the wee ones of the future will have a full education on how to be horrible to each other. After all the die-and-let-die politicians have smothered each other with unfiltered vitriol and doggy sunglasses and have neither health care nor that elusive yet superfluous third department of government to fall back on, who will lead the way? Think of the children!
Pauly heads off for breakfast with his trick, and Unit wakes up. He and Sitch are in prime position to set a mood of hostility when Snooki and Jionni wake up and head through the main transit room of the house. Seeing that Snooki went out on the porch for a cigarette, Sitch takes the opportunity to head out for a smoke himself. Totally innocent! Totally not trying to start trouble! Never! Snooki says, "I never get Mike. I never know who he's going to be today. Is going to be the nice guy, or is he going to try to fuck shit up?" Word to the wise, Snooki, always err on the side of "fuck shit up." Outside, Sitch tries to guilt Snooki about being "mean" to Unit and tells her to apologize. "The ingredients of the bomb are here right now," he insists. Yeah, and they are two spoonfuls of Situation, a half cup of Situation, set to Situation degrees, Situation for 45 minutes, then sprinkle with powdered Situation.
Jionni heads upstairs, and Unit comes out to a mumbled, half-hearted apology from Snooki. Instead of accepting it and moving on, he drags her through the mud and basically tells her to grovel. After she apologizes about 10 times, he says he'll take it as a first step. Speaking of bombs, Situation is frustrated to find that his plan to rile up Snooki has blown up in his face when she actually followed his reverse psychology-style advice. Realizing he has been outplayed (though that might give kowtowing Snooki too much credit), Sitch must temporarily retreat or else he will be exposed as the pot-stirrer everyone plainly knows him to be. Then he adds, with a shit-eating grin on his face, "But we got the whole summer, so... we'll see what happens."
As the day wears on, the love ones all leave, including Roger with a pink suitcase in tow(!), and JWOWW makes plans to meet up with him at da club later that night. Vinny, on the other hand, is in no mood for merry-making. Even his pleasure trail of a new haircut gives him no pleasure because he desperately misses his family. He admits that seeing his mother only intensified his homesickness. Ronnie heads up to the deck for a pep talk that mainly involves offering to hire a stripper. On the inside, he secretly thinks Vinny should man up and stop being such a mama's boy. When Vinny remains glum, Ronnie ups the ante to a hooker, and Vinny gets a devilish glint in his eye. Deena says in exasperation, "God, do you want to do sex?!" Vinny doesn't flinch before rejecting that makeshift offer. Deena pretends she didn't mean it that way, but come on. We know you, Deena.
Night falls, and Vinny perks up in time to head to da club with everyone but SamRo 2.0. He hopes getting it in will build up his "Seaside Momentum," and Pauly is ready to lend a hand to the cause. Unfortunately, da club is teeming with grenades, including one dance-happy lady who looks exactly like a Rachel Dratch caricature as she breaks it down for a one-sided dance battle with JWOWW. There are end zone dance wobbly legs, y'all. Pauly and Vinny decide to call it an early night and head home glumly.
Back at the bar, Jionni buys a couple rounds of drinks for The Situation, who takes perverse pleasure in getting comped by the cuckold of Seaside. Jionni notes that he's getting along with Sitch at last, noting that Sitchy told him several times that night, "You're the nicest guy I've ever met." Snooki thinks it's really weird that Sitch isn't being a complete dick for five seconds, so she takes her confusion out on Jionni by telling him, "I don't know why everyone says that. You're not that nice." As we've seen, it's a completely accurate statement. Jionni is a jealous, controlling, a-hole, but Snooki is a moron to be a bitch to her boyfriend while her nemesis is being nice to him. Bad maneuver, Snickers. Poorly played. Note to Ronnie: This is where the chess metaphor would have been appropriate.
Back at the house, Vinny tosses and turns. Such are the depths of his misery! He gets up and completely blows through the living room without acknowledging Pauly and Ronnie. Sensing something is wrong, so they head up to the roof deck to check on him. He is totally adrift in Seaside. They tell him to take it one day at a time, just get through the weekend, but he says he can't function in this environment and doesn't care anymore. Pauly, normally cool as a cucumber, is worried for Vinny, who threatens to go home.
This season: Bunny-suited humping! Snooki pees on the deck! Fights galore! Sitch gets wifed up, JWOWW and Roger break down, Vinny peaces out and the house falls apart. The guidos go camping! And Snooki imparts some words to live by: "I look like a Jersey skank, and I love it!" She can be downright Confucian in her phrasing, can our Snooki.