“But first,” she tells me, “I want to show you the most fantastic thing ever on television.”
And then Jersey Shore was on.
I’m not entirely certain that what C said to me was, “But first, I want to show you the most fantastic thing ever on television;” I’m paraphrasing because the mental trauma that Jersey Shore caused me was severe enough to cause short term memory problems. But I think it was close.
Jersey Shore is, as far as I can understand, a show about eight strangers, picked to live in a loft beach house in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, and find out what happens when people stop being nice and start being real acting like parody versions of those guys in that “My New Haircut” YouTube video, which is already, in and of itself, a parody. I’m not sure if I can identify the characters beyond “three guys from Red Hook who might actually be brothers,” “the trashy girl,” “the trashy girl with larger boobs,” “other characters who may or may not be recurring cast members,” and “The Situation.”
The Situation, although it is rarely a proper noun and almost always used to describe a concept, is, in fact, a person. And he is a fascinating person in the way that sociopaths, homeless people dressed as Egyptian gods, carnival workers and exotic dancers are fascinating people – fascinating because no matter how weird or fucked up your life becomes, it will always be less weird and less fucked up than the lives of these people; keeping them on the periphery of your life is cathartic and obviates your need to own a television.
In The Situation’s own words, “Everybody knows The Situation, and everybody loves The Situation and if they don’t, I’ll make them love The Situation.”
To recap:
- He refers to himself by his nickname
- He refers to himself in the third person.
- He wants to force his love on you.
In the epsiode of Jersey Shore that I watched, the major conflict was between The Sitch, as I’ve taken to calling him*, and Ronny, who gets ready for an evening of binge drinking and disrespecting women by mixing up some “Ronny Juice” (not as disgusting as it sounds, and full of antioxidants!) and who, because he says things like “You look pretty tonight” instead of something like “Yo, you want The Situation in you?” – which is how I imagine Sitch coming onto girls and is a pivotal line of dialogue in my Jersey Shore fan fiction – is, I think, supposed to be the ‘sensitive guy’ in the cast. See, one of the girls in the beach house was in love with The Sitch, but then later Sitch was heartbroken when he found her making out with Ronny. Sitch verbally assaults the girl, whose name is maybe Sammi or something like that (but her MTV-appointed nickname – because everybody on reality TV now needs a dumb nickname, thank you Flavor Flav – is Sweetheart) for violating the sacred trust of the five minutes of flirting that happened between them earlier, and threatens Ronny before lurching away to sulk. C’est la vie, Sitch. I, too, know your heartache.
Oh, and one of the other interchangeable male cast members punches a stranger in the face for “looking at him.” Classy.
*leading me to wonder when Disney was going to make a movie about him befriending a morose Hawaiian pre-teen.**
**Lilo and Stitch, see what I did there?
